Workers at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have begun removing fuel rods from a storage pool near one of the three reactors that suffered meltdowns eight years ago. The measure marks a milestone in efforts to decommission the plant, although the more critical removal of melted fuel from inside three damaged reactors will prove far more difficult.
Recently, the ancient art of origami has begun to merge with modern engineering. Origami principles have inspired novel ways of packaging airbags, fashioning heart stents, folding solar sails designed to propel spacecraft, and even collapsible bullet-proof shields.
You've probably heard that automation is becoming commonplace in more and more fields of human endeavor. You may also have heard that the last bastions of human exclusivity will probably be creativity and artistic judgment. Robots will be washing our windows long before they start creating masterpieces. Right?
I visited Rutgers University's Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where Ahmed Elgammal's team has created artificial-intelligence software that generates beautiful, original paintings.
In 1989, physics researcher Jim Berners-Lee began writing code for what would become the World Wide Web. Thirty years on, and Berners-Lee’s invention has more than justified the lofty goals implied by its name. But with that scale has come a host of troubles.
“Ultra-lightweight space blankets have been around for decades, but the key drawback is that the material is static," said Alon Gorodetsky, UCI associate professor of chemical & biomolecular engineering. "We've made a version with changeable properties so you can regulate how much heat is trapped or released."
The researchers took design cues from various species of squids, octopuses and cuttlefish that use their adaptive skin to thrive in aquatic environments.
A small cylinder called Le Grand K has defined the kilogram for more than a hundred years.
Le Grand K was forged in 1879 and is held in a locked vault outside Paris—revered and kept under lock and key because its mass, a little over 2 pounds, is the official definition of the kilogram.
If Le Grand K gets heavier or lighter—or absorbs atoms of something from the air—the definition of the kilogram literally changes.
The minister in charge of cybersecurity said he doesn't use computers.
Yoshitaka Sakurada, who just last week was criticized for stumbling over basic questions during Diet deliberations, found himself once again in hot water Wednesday after making it known that he doesn't use computers even though he is a deputy head of the government panel on cybersecurity and is tasked with overseeing policies on such matters.
The internet today isn’t what Tim Berners-Lee pictured when he invented the World Wide Web nearly three decades ago.
Berners-Lee says the web is “at a tipping point” as it faces threats like market concentration, data breaches, user frustration with ads and privacy, hate speech and so-called “fake news.”
“If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have said humanity is going to do a good job with this,” he said. “If we connect all these people together, they are such wonderful people they will get along. I was wrong.”
Nagoya-based husband-and-wife vlogging duo Rachel and Jun Yoshizuki run the YouTube channel Rachel and Jun. Their on-the-ground accounts of daily life in Japan have been viewed more than 200 million times.
There are few technologies being more rapidly adopted and expanded in 2018 than voice A.I. In just a few years, the use of voice systems has evolved from simple voice commands to entire ecosystems of applications and interactions.
Imagine the impact individual organizations could make if they teamed up to solve the world's most intractable societal problems.
That new mindset took center stage in Copenhagen at the inaugural global innovation lab, UNLEASH. There, a thousand carefully chosen, young social entrepreneurs came together from across the world to develop innovative approaches to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Japan landed two unmanned rovers on a 1-kilometer-wide asteroid named Ryugu in late September, 2018. It was the first time robot rovers have successfully landed on an asteroid surface.
"I felt awed by what we had achieved in Japan. This is just a real charm of deep space exploration," Takashi Kubota, a spokesman for the space agency, told CNN. The two rovers together are called MINERVA-II1 and came from the spacecraft Hayabusa2.
Two scientists who discovered how to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer won the 2018 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. James Allison, of the US, and Tasuku Honjo, of Japan, shared the 9m Swedish kronor ($1m/¥113m) prize.
The scientists’ groundbreaking work on the immune system has paved the way for a new class of cancer drugs that are already dramatically changing outcomes for patients. It is the first time the development of a cancer therapy has been recognised with a Nobel prize.
Steep tariffs, challenging geography and government subsidies come to mind when we think about the barriers to international trade. But there are lots of different languages in the world, and translation problems can slow things down, too.
Tokyo has topped a list of the world’s most innovative cities, leapfrogging London and New York after embracing the “globe-shaking trends of robotics and 3-D manufacturing.”
Tokyo has risen rapidly since entering the top 10 of the Innovation Cities Index three years ago behind Paris, and was one of three Asian cities to feature this year.
“What really surprised us this year was the resurgence of Tokyo, moving up to eclipse rival cities like Boston,” said Christopher Hire, director of commercial data provider 2thinknow, which published the annual ranking on Friday.
Until now, generating nuclear power has required massive facilities surrounded by acres of buildings and infrastructure. The nuclear industry is trying to change that picture—by going small. Efforts to build the nation’s first "advanced small modular reactor" (SMR) in Idaho, U.S.A., are on track for it to become operational by the mid-2020s.
Blockchain technology is still in its infancy but is growing at a rapid pace. It is hard to be an expert in the field, but you should at least know the basics.
At the core, Blockchain uses a shared ledger managed by multiple computers that are networked. This is much different from current systems that rely on one central system with a database.
Bernice Belcher needed an artificial aortic valve replacement. Her surgeons decided to use a new 3D modeling technique.
Using CT scans that are manipulated via special software, a team of engineers creates a model fashioned from flexible materials that re-create the texture of the aorta and its surrounding structures. Then the model is loaded into a heart simulator: a box filled with pumps and bloodlike fluid.
Your next smartphone might just throw you a curve.
Picture this: You pull your phone out of your pocket and unfold it like a napkin into a tablet. You press your finger on the screen, and it unlocks. You switch to the camera app, and a spider-like array of lenses shoot simultaneously to capture one giant photo.
Scientists have recently discovered two exoplanets, Kepler-62f and Kepler 186f, which are located within the habitable zones of their respective stars, and the best part is that the planets probably have stable climates and regular seasons. The astronomers also believe that one of them is similar in size to our home planet.
