Japan to shoot lasers from the moon to solve power crisis

Mark Hiratsuka — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:34:14 +0000

It’s funny, but last time we had a good, hard think about how to solve the planet’s looming energy crisis, we didn’t come up with the idea of girdling the moon’s equator in a 400-kilometer-wide solar panel belt and shooting power back to Earth in a laser beam.

But that’s probably because we don’t count ourselves among the crack team of big-brains at Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corp. Those guys really know how to think outside the box, push the envelope, nizzle the shizzle and a whole lot more besides.

Show map at bottom of page

Japanese turn sex doll into dental-training robot

Mark Hiratsuka — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:26:16 +0000

Tokyo frequently presents a story that’s borderline fiction -- sex dolls for cavity-filling practice, puhlease -- but the pedigree of the new Hanako Showa 2 dental training robot tells us this is no product of a fevered imagination.

We previously saw big sister, plain Jane Hanako Showa, in early 2010, noting that the synthetic patient was being used in the Showa University dental school for more than simple caries-evacuation practice on her plumbed-in dentures.

Show map at bottom of page

Japan turns high-def up to 11 with new world-beating display

Mark Hiratsuka — Thu, 19 May 2011 04:20:05 +0000

Canny consumers still hesitant about upgrading their old TV sets to spanking new high-definition models might want to cast a glance toward Tokyo, where NHK and Sharp have unveiled the world’s first LCD screen ready for a standard that’s 16 times sharper than HDTV.

The Super Hi-Vision technology has been around since 1995, but has been limited to trials and demonstrations to date.

Get higher, baby

With the development of the new LCD screen -- a 216-centimeter whopper, if you’re asking -- the logical progression will be to incorporate it into an actual TV set that can be marketed to those of us dissatisfied with definition that’s merely “high.”

Show map at bottom of page

Recent Posts by Author

Japan to shoot lasers from the moon to solve power crisis

Japanese turn sex doll into dental-training robot

Japan turns high-def up to 11 with new world-beating display

Get higher, baby