An old Japanese guy: His secret? Hamburgers. Lots of hamburgers.
Courtesy isadoYou heard it here first, folks, unless you heard it somewhere else already: There are a ton of really old people in Japan. And when I say really old, I mean older than 100 years old. And when I say a ton of people, I mean more than 40,000 people. Considering that the average weight for a Japanese centenarian (people over 100) is about 110-118 pounds, “a ton” is really way too small an amount. There are actually about 2,280 tons of really old people in Japan.
Although the US still blows Japan out of the water with the number of 100+ people in the country (We’re creeping up on 100,000. USA! USA!), your chances of living to be a super old dude or lady are much higher if you’ve lived your life in Japan. And people on the Japanese island of Okinawa are five times more likely to live to be 100 than even the rest of the Japanese population.
Plenty of research has been done on centenarians to isolate what factors might have allowed them to live for so long, and… the results aren’t super surprising. Certain genes are associated with long life, but so are certain diets and certain lifestyles. Basically, if you want to live to be one hundred, you should walk a lot, think a lot, poop a lot, don’t eat a lot, and hope your parents live to be one hundred. Or you could just start counting your age in dog years.
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Citrobacter freundii: can have concentrations of uranium in their bodies 300 times higher than in the surrounding environment.
Courtesy CDC
Looking toward the day uranium mines become depleted, Dr Masao Tanada is working on a sponge like material that can extract uranium from the ocean currents passing by Japan.
The world's oceans contain an estimated 4.5 billion tons of uranium, around 1,000 times the amount that is known to exist in uranium mines.
Japan is drawing up innovative plans to extract uranium from seawater in an attempt to end the country's reliance on imports for nuclear power stations. Telegraph.co.uk
This link to Next Big Future illustrates two proposals for mining the ocean for $720 trillion worth of Uranium.
Visitors at a Tokyo zoo are rubbing their eyes in wonder as they view green polar bears. Here's a link to the full story and a photo. An overgrowth of algea in their pen caused their unique coloration, not their youthful rebelious nature of changing their fur color to make their parents upset.
What's the coolest new summer drink in Japan to combat oppressive heat? Eel – "Surging Eel" is the English translation for Unagi Nobori – is the new product that proclaims to give an energy boost to those drained by the heat. I don't think Red Bull or Gatorade have anything to worry about any foreign competition from this product.
Killer earthquake strikes Japan
Hundreds of troops armed with shovels and power-saws sifted through the splintered remains of a resort hotel in Japan Sunday in search of survivors after a powerful earthquake struck at around 8.45 a.m. on Saturday. (TurkishPress)
7.2 magnitude quake in Japan
Nine people were killed, 11 are missing, and more than 220 others were injured in the earthquake, the most powerful to strike inland Japan in eight years.
Read more by clicking the link below.
7.2 magnitude earthquake shakes Japan (TimesOnline)
A great American: taking an energy efficient, zero water bath.
Courtesy mikekanyoThe Japanese government is encouraging its citizens to strike a grimy blow to the forces of overconsumption.
In an official report sparkling with figures and spinning with good intent, the government recommended that people take speedier showers, and not screw around in between baths.
“We’re savin’ water this way, see? And we don’t got to heat up as much, see? That saves energy, kid,” said Prime Minister Fukuda of the recommendation. “Now scram—ya bother me,” he added.
Still below the average American and European consumption levels, energy use per capita in Japan has increased by 44 percent over the last fifteen years or so. An, unlike America and Europe, where household energy use is primarily for heating and air-conditioning, the bulk of Japanese household energy use is applied to heating water for kitchens and bathrooms.
Shorter showers is an old trick, but traditional Japanese bath time customs leave some room for improvement—bathing is often done outside the tub, and followed by a soak in the hot water. Family members then will reuse the water when it’s their turn. Baths in quicker succession would require less reheating of the water, thereby saving energy.
“So simple a baby could have come up with it,” says Fukuda. “It’s genius, I tell ya!”
It’s a thought-provoking plan, certainly. I don’t recommend that Americans adopt it, however. No, while we could all stand to use a little less energy, who wants to constantly play catch up to another country? Not us. I say, then, that we stop bathing altogether! Let’s see another country try to beat that.
Sidenote—Does Pigpen have fleas? Or are those just dirt particles?
Okay, make your guess. Is the world record for flight by a flying fish 10 seconds, 25 seconds, 45 seconds or 1 minute and 10 seconds? Watch this video to find out and see the fish in action.
Guess which country is betting on robots... No, guess!
Your future bath assistant: Not yet waterproof, but adequately creepy. Those eyes...
Courtesy JanneMYes! You were totally right! It’s Japan!
JGordon, “betting on robots” is more than a little bit vague. What exactly do you mean?
Good question, Guy. What I’m getting at is this: Japan’s population is shrinking. Birthrates are much too low to sustain current population levels, and, just like our baby boomer generation, a huge chunk of the population is racing toward old age. By 2030, it’s thought that the size of the Japanese workforce will shrink by 16 percent, leaving the country with a couple of problems to consider: who will replace all those workers, and who is going to help take acre of all those old folks? It’s the sort of situation often alleviated by a foreign workforce, but Japan is unused to, and generally unwilling to accept, large-scale immigration. So what’s the solution?
The oddly-named think tank, Machine Industry Memorial Foundation (maybe something was lost in translation), has proposed that robots be used to help make up for the declining workforce. From vacuumbots to robo nannies, robots could be filling the jobs of 3.5 million people by 2025. That doesn’t necessarily mean the robot population of Japan will increase by that number—we all know that one robot can do the work of several humans.
MIMF also points out that a robot workforce could also make it so that older people no longer “have to rely on human nursing care,” saving the government 21 billion dollars in elderly insurance payments. Robots could do housework, read aloud, and “help bathe the elderly.” We all know how much people hate human contact, especially the elderly, so I’d say things are shaping up pretty well for the pensioners of Japan.
Naturally, there are some obstacles to this perfect robot future. I won’t even get into the obvious ones, but robot technology, high cost, and, MIMF points out, human mindsets need to adjust to robot workers, leading to my favorite quote of the spring. Says one MIMF researcher, “People need to have the will to use the robots.”
So right.
I love to go to Minnesota Twins games when they have the paper airplane promotions. It's so fun to see the Metrodome air currents flooded with paper flyers. Japanese officials are thinking even bigger paper airplane thoughts as this article explains.
Robo-feeder: A new robotic arm product -- My Spoon -- is able to allow elderly and disabled people to feed themselves without the help of another. (Photo courtesy of Secom Co.)We’ve recently had stories here about new Japanese robots doing some cool things: dancing, tasting food and identifying objects on the streets. But here’s an especially cool and practical new application for robot technology.
Secom Co. this week demonstrated its new robot product – My Spoon – which is able to feed elderly or disabled people with a mechanical arm wielding a spoon or fork. The operator needs to control a joystick, just like on a video game, to maneuver the arm to bring food to the eater’s mouth.
It’s the first application of robot technology in Japan’s increasing aging community. Other applications being discussed include robotic wheelchairs that drive themselves, remote-controlled beds and easy-entry cars.
With the feeding robot, about 300 have already been sold to be used by consumers. The cost is about $3,500 each.
And developers think there will only continue to be more need for such technological advances as older people make up a greater percentage of the population and families become more spread out geographically.
Here are some other snippets of robo-technology being proposed in Japan:
• The intelligent wheelchair uses a positioning system to automatically travel between preset destinations and uses sensors to detect obstacles or safety concerns along the way.
• A different robotic wheelchair will respond to vocal commands like “forward,” “back,” “right” or “left.”
• As an aide to caregivers, a full-body suit being developed for them to wear will assist in lifting people they need to hoist. A system of 22 air pumps will inflate the suit and provide back-up for them their lifting efforts.
However, several press accounts on these innovations report that older Japanese people are not embracing the new technology too fast. They prefer to have traditional, human-provided care. Does that surprise you? What do you think about robots providing care to the elderly and disabled?
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