The signals have been developed by Taro Ochiai, a professor at Kyushu Sangyo University, with the first set of traffic lights installed in the southern city of Fukuoka. A second month-long test is to be started in Tokyo before the end of February.
Prof Ochiai began researching the use of light-emitting diodes in 2003, when they first began to be used in traffic lights in preference to regular light bulbs. Drivers with colour-blindness quickly reported that the LED signals were more difficult for them to discern based only on brightness as …

Under a year since a huge tsunami inundated paddy fields in Japan with salty sludge, scientists are near to developing locally-adapted, salt-tolerant rice.
Following a Japan-UK research collaboration, a new method for marker assisted breeding is being used to slash the time it takes to isolate new traits such as salt tolerance. Details of the new method, called MutMap, will be published in Nature Biotechnology on Sunday so they can be used by scientists and breeders worldwide to dramatically accelerate crop breeding.
“The beauty of the new method is its simplicity,” said …

The builders of Tokyo Sky Tree have announced some of the technologies that have been installed to deal with the winter weather, after it was confirmed that chunks of snow and ice had fallen from the upper portion of the structure to the street below between January and March this year.
Read the rest of the story: Locals worried by ice, snow falling from Tokyo Sky Tree ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion.

Japan has released a new long-term cleanup plan for its tsunami-hit nuclear plant that would take as many as 40 years to fully decommission while keeping the still vulnerable facility safely under control.
Trade Minister Yukio Edano said Wednesday that the government plans to move through the process firmly and safely while paying attention to the views of residents displaced by the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
Read the rest of the story: Japan releases 40-year nuke plant cleanup plan.

Scientists in Japan have begun studying the “language” of oysters in an effort to find out what they are saying about their environment.
Researchers are monitoring the opening and closing of the molluscs in response to changes in seawater, such as reduced oxygen or red tide, a suffocating algal bloom, that can lead to mass die-offs.
Using a device they have nicknamed the “kai-lingual”, a play on the Japanese word “kai” or shellfish, scientists from Kagawa University want to see if they can decode oyster movements that might warn of possible problems.
Read …

Radioactive cesium from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant may have reached as far as Hokkaido, Shikoku and the Chugoku region in the west, according to a recent simulation by an international research team.
Large areas of eastern and northeastern Japan were likely contaminated by the plant, with concentrations of cesium-137 exceeding 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of soil in some places, says the study, which was posted Monday on the website of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers for the U.S.-based organization said the study, which was based on partial data …

New research has found that radioactive material in parts of north-eastern Japan exceeds levels considered safe for farming.
The findings provide the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011.
Food production is likely to be affected, the researchers suggest.
The results are reported in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.
Read the rest of the story: BBC News – Japan farm radioactive levels probed.

The genetic make-up of our brain cells changes thousands of times over the course of our lifetimes, according to new research.
Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh have identified genes, called retrotransposons, responsible for tiny changes in the DNA of brain tissue.
They say their discovery completely overturns previous theories about how the brain works.
It could also increase understanding of conditions such as Parkinson’s disease.
The study shows for the first time that brain cells are genetically different to other cells in the body, and are also genetically distinct from each other.
The …

The sunken wreck of a Japanese World War II submarine was found partially buried in the seabed of a Papua New Guinea harbor during a search for unexploded munitions, Australia’s military said Friday.
Australian and New Zealand warships found it 55 meters underwater while working in the area to clear WWII-era explosives Thursday, a Defense Department statement said.
Simpson Harbor is in the town of Rabaul, which was a major Japanese base on the northeast coast of the South Pacific nation.
The wreck is partially buried in sand but upright. Australian navy historians …

The Fukushima nuclear accident released double the amount of cesium-137 into the atmosphere than the government initially estimated, reaching 40 percent of the total emitted during the Chernobyl disaster, a preliminary report said.
The estimate of much higher levels of cesium-137 comes from a worldwide network of sensors. Report coauthor Andreas Stohl, of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, said the government estimate came only from data in Japan and didn’t include emissions blown out to the Pacific Ocean.
Cesium-137 is considered harmful because it can remain in the environment for decades, …