AmiMoJo writes: The operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which suffered core meltdowns in 2011, is considering a new submersion method for removing radioactive fuel debris that would wholly encase a reactor building in a water-filled, tank-like structure, a source close to the company said earlier this month. Conceptual breakthroughs with the method, whose advantages include using water's ability to interrupt radiation and thereby provide a safer working environment, have made it a promising candidate for the cleanup of the defunct nuclear plant, according to the source close to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco). But with no proven track record in the nuclear field, investigations are ongoing into future technological issues and costs, among other contingencies. The source said it could "require advanced technology to stop water leaking out and become a huge construction project."

Were it to go ahead, the process from building to actual debris removal would be lengthy and would likely affect total decommissioning costs, currently pegged at about $57.45 billion. In the aftermath of the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, nuclear fuel cooling processes failed at the Fukushima plant's reactors 1 through 3, causing the fuel to melt and re-solidify into radioactive debris mixed with concrete, metal and other materials present in the reactors. Debris removal is the operator's most challenging issue in the Fukushima plant cleanup. Some 880 tons of the radioactive waste material is estimated to have been created by the nuclear meltdown across the three reactors. The new submersion method, which is currently expected to be applied to the No. 3 reactor, would involve building a strong, pressure-resistant structure, much like a ship's hull or a plane's body, completely encapsulating the reactor, including underground. The structure could then be filled with water, and removal work would take place from the top.

CNBC reports that former Tesla CFO Deepak Ahuja (now at Alphabet's Verily Life Sciences) will join the leadership team at Zipline, a Silicon Valley-based company providing drone deliveries: It initially focused on medical supplies, but is expanding into e-commerce and food delivery. The company has previously partnered with the Rwandan government to deliver medical supplies and handled Covid-19 vaccine distribution in Ghana, and has expanded operations from three to seven countries over the last two years, according to a release....

"Rarely do I see this level of disruption and impact paired with the world-class technology that Zipline's team is building," Ahuja said in a release. "It's an exciting time for Zipline, and I'm thrilled to join the team as we keep building to offer these solutions at a massive scale."
The move comes "as the drone delivery and logistics startup accelerates its global expansion in Africa, the United States and other regions," reports TechCrunch, noting that Ahuja will be the company's first chief business and financial officer: Zipline also operates in Japan and in the United States, including Arkansas and North Carolina. The company is expanding to Utah later this year through a partnership with Intermountain Health and announced plans to begin operations with Multicare Health System in Washington starting in 2024.

Ahuja will focus on building Zipline's business in the United States and other regions globally, the company told TechCrunch.... His appointment signals Zipline's growing aspirations fueled by partnerships and $250 million in venture capital it raised last year. (The company has raised $486 million to date.) The company, founded in 2014, has developed the entire ecosystem from the drones and logistics software to launch and landing system....

It also recently received FAA Part 135 approval for its long-range drone delivery service in the United States.... Zipline has partnerships with Toyota Group and UPS, it delivers medical equipment and personal protective gear for Novant Health in North Carolina and health and wellness products for Walmart.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: In a new study, published Monday in the journal npj Flexible Electronics, an international team of researchers revealed it has engineered a system to remotely control the legs of cockroaches from afar. The system, which is basically a cockroach backpack wired into the creature's nervous system, has a power output about 50 times higher than previous devices and is built with an ultrathin and flexible solar cell that doesn't hinder the roach's movement. Pressing a button sends a shock to the backpack that tricks the roach into moving a certain direction.

Cockroach cyborgs are not a new idea. Back in 2012, researchers at North Carolina State University were experimenting with Madagascar hissing cockroaches and wireless backpacks, showing the critters could be remotely controlled to walk along a track. The way scientists do this is by attaching the backpack and connecting wires to a cockroach's "cerci," two appendages at the end of the abdomen that are basically sensory nerves. One on the left, one on the right. Previous studies have shown electrical impulses to either side can stimulate the roach into moving in that direction, giving researchers some control over locomotion. But to send and receive signals, you need to power the backpack. You might be able to use a battery but, eventually, a battery will run out of power and the cyborg cockroach will be free to disappear into the leaf litter.

The team at Riken crafted the system to be solar-powered and rechargeable. They attached a battery and stimulation module to the cockroach's thorax (the upper segment of its body). That was the first step. The second step was to make sure the solar cell module would adhere to the cockroach's abdomen, the segmented lower section of its body. [T]he Riken team tested a number of thin electronic films, subjecting their roaches to a bunch of experiments and watching how the roaches moved depending on the thickness of the film. This helped them decide on a module about 17 times thinner than a human hair. It adhered to the abdomen without greatly limiting the degree of freedom the roaches had and also stuck around for about a month, greatly outlasting previous systems. "The current system only has a wireless locomotion control system, so it's not enough to prepare an application such as urban rescue," said Kenjiro Fukuda, an expert in flexible electronics at Japan's Riken. "By integrating other required devices such as sensors and cameras, we can use our cyborg insects for such purposes."

Fukuda notes the design of the ultrathin solar cell could be applied to other insects, like beetles and cicadas.

A surprise from the Associated Press. The head of America's Environment Protection Agency "said Friday that advanced nuclear technology will be 'critical' for both the United States and Japan as they step up cooperation to meet decarbonization goals." Michael Regan, after holding talks with his Japanese counterpart Akihiro Nishimura in Tokyo, told a joint news conference that nuclear energy in their countries plays a role... "I think the science tells us that we have to respond to the climate crisis with a sense of urgency and nuclear energy and nuclear technology has and can have a role in continuing with a zero emissions contribution to the climate," he said, showing support for Japan's recent shift toward returning to nuclear energy.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said last week he instructed his government to consider developing safer, smaller nuclear reactors, in a renewed emphasis on nuclear energy years after many of the country's plants were shut down. Kishida said Japan needs to consider all options of energy mix, including nuclear, to bolster its "green transformation" effort to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and to secure stable energy supply. Japan has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.... While maintaining a 20%-22% target for nuclear energy as part of its energy mix for 2030, Japan's government had previously insisted it was not considering building new plants or replacing aged reactors, apparently to avoid stoking criticism from a wary public. Kishida's recent comment represents a sharp change from that stance.

Kishida asked a government panel to decide by the end of the year on its proposal for the development and construction of "new innovative reactors," such as small modular reactors, while also considering extending operational lifespan of aging reactors.

President Joe Biden also believes that it is an "all hands on deck approach," Regan said, adding that investments in nuclear technology and carbon capture will complement the big potential for renewable energy.

The Ocean Cleanup project has an announcement....

75% to 86% of plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch "originates from fishing activities at sea." Plastic emissions from rivers remain the main source of plastic pollution from a global ocean perspective. Plastic lost at sea has a higher chance of accumulating offshore than plastic emitted from rivers, leading to high concentrations of fishing-related debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch [or GPGP]. New findings confirm the oceanic garbage patches cannot be cleaned solely through river interception and highlight the potentially vital role of fishing and aquaculture in ridding the world's oceans of plastic....

Our previous research has shown that almost half of the plastic mass in the GPGP is comprised of fishing nets and ropes (fibrous plastics used, for example, to make our The Ocean Cleanup sunglasses), with the remainder largely composed of hard plastic objects and small fragments. While the provenance of fishing nets is obvious, the origins of the other plastics in the GPGP have — until now — remained unclear.... In 2019, System 001/B, an early iteration of our cleanup technology, retrieved over 6,000 hard plastic debris items (larger than 5 cm) from the GPGP, providing our scientists with a unique opportunity to study larger objects not studied by previous research efforts. Each item was sorted into predefined item categories and inspected individually for evidence of country of origin (evidence may include language or text on the object, company name, brand, logo, or other identifying text such as an address or telephone number, etc.) and date of production. This comprehensive analysis revealed that roughly a third of the items were unidentifiable fragments. The other two-thirds was dominated by objects typically used in fishing, such as floats, buoys, crates, buckets, baskets, containers, drums, jerry cans, fish boxes, and eel traps.

Nearly half (49%) of plastic objects which could be dated were produced in the 20th century, with the oldest identified item being a buoy dating from 1966. This distribution is in line with our previous research showing significant occurrence of decades-old objects in the GPGP and re-emphasizes that the plastic in these garbage patches persists and can cause harm for lengthy periods, continually degrading into microplastics and becoming increasingly difficult to remove. In short, these results underline the urgent need to clean the GPGP; no matter what actions are taken to prevent riverine plastic emissions, the GPGP will persist and its content will continue to beach on remote islands, such as the Hawaiian Archipelago, and fragment into microplastics that will eventually sink to the seabed.
Surprisingly, countries near the edge of the northern Pacific (like the Philippines) weren't major contributors to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and instead their research blamed Japan (34%), China (32%), the Korean peninsula (10%), and the USA (7%). While they're not major sources of plastic from rivers, "they do carry out the majority of industrialized fishing activities in the GPGP region....

"[T]rawlers, fixed gear, and drifting longlines accounted for more than 95% of identified fishing activities that may account for emissions of floating plastic debris into the GPGP. "

When games like Dragalia Lost shut down for good, what happens next? From a report: Dragalia Lost launched in 2018 as a statement of intent from Nintendo in partnership with Japanese developer Cygames. Nintendo may have first jumped into the field of mobile games in 2016 with the launch of games like Super Mario Run and Miitomo, but this was the first original property the company had produced exclusively for mobile devices. This free-to-play gacha game (a game whose content is generally free to access while charging microtransactions for loot boxes and randomized lotteries for rare and limited-time characters) had a flashy multi-region launch campaign collaborating with major Japanese musician DAOKO, banking on the game's success at home and abroad. And it was a hit. Less than a year after launch, the game had already earned over $100 million, with a steady stream of merchandise following soon after. Yet, as of last month, Nintendo and Cygames published the game's final update, and this week, it was revealed that the game would shut down on November 29th after just three years of operation.

Without any announcement from Nintendo of an official offline version or archive to memorialize the game after servers shut down and the game is no longer accessible to the public, fans are working across the community to preserve everything they can of a game they dedicated themselves to over the last few years. "Especially with games like Dragalia Lost and games that are on a live server and stuff, once the server closes down, you can't play that anymore," explains Sei, an active member of the game's community. "It's not like you can download a ROM of a Game Boy game and play it: once it's gone, it's gone." Free-to-play games have risen from an anomaly to the most profitable sector of the games industry. In 2012, the mobile games market hit $9 billion in revenue at a time when free-to-play revenue systems were only starting to grow more popular, challenging the norm of games charging a one-time price of entry.

At the same time, free-to-play revenue on PC was at an impressive $11 billion, thanks to titles like League of Legends, already eclipsing the revenue earned by premium titles. By 2020, free-to-play revenue across mobile, PC, and console accounted for over $96 billion. Unsurprisingly, the industry has adapted to increasingly cater to players in this bustling sector. Yet, for every headline boasting of the phenomenal revenue-generating success of titles like Fortnite or Pokemon Go comes a host of titles that burn out within a year or sometimes even less. Japan is one of the biggest regions for free-to-play games, particularly on mobile, where titles like Uma Musume: Pretty Derby have broken into the top 10 highest-grossing mobile games worldwide despite only being available in a single country. Yet, even games based on major properties like Bandai Namco's Tales of Luminaria have struggled, shutting down in under six months.

Japan's digital minister, who's vowed to rid the bureaucracy of outdated tools from the hanko stamp to the fax machine, has now declared "war" on a technology many haven't seen for decades -- the floppy disk. From a report: The hand-sized, square-shaped data storage item, along with similar devices including the CD or even lesser-known mini disk, are still required for some 1,900 government procedures and must go, digital minister Taro Kono wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday. "We will be reviewing these practices swiftly," Kono said in a press conference Tuesday, who added that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has offered his full support. "Where does one even buy a floppy disk these days?" Japan isn't the only nation that has struggled to phase out the outdated technology -- the US Defense Department only announced in 2019 that it has ended the use of floppy disks, which were first developed in the 1960s, in a control system for its nuclear arsenal. Sony Group stopped making the disks in 2011 and many young people would struggle to describe how to use one or even identify one in the modern workplace.

Tesla has unveiled a new virtual power plant using Powerwalls home battery pack, and this time, it's on an island, Miyako-jima, in Japan. Electrek reports: A virtual power plant (VPP) consists of distributed energy storage systems, like Tesla Powerwalls, used in concert to provide grid services and avoid the use of polluting and expensive peaker power plants. Tesla launched one in California earlier this year, and it had its first emergency event earlier this month with great results. Now the company is trying to deploy a virtual power plant in Texas, and of course, it also had one in operation for years in Australia that is still expanding.

But now we have learned that Tesla also quietly built a new virtual power plant in Japan, and it has now decided to unveil it. The project is called "Miyakojima VPP" because it is located on the island of Miyako-jima, the most populous island in the Okinawa Prefecture. Tesla announced that it started to install Powerwalls in partnership with the local electric utility in 2021, and it now has over 300 Powerwalls on the island as part of the VPP. [...] Tesla explains that VPP is helping the island take better advantage of its renewable energy, but it is also proving more grid resilience, especially in the case of a natural disaster. The Miyakojima VPP is still growing, and Tesla expects that it will include 400 Powerwalls by the end of this year and 600 Powerwalls by the end of 2023. In 2024, Tesla expects to start installing Powerwalls for similar projects throughout the Okinawa Prefecture. "[W]hen power supply and demand are tight on Miyako Island, electricity generated by photovoltaic power generation is stored in Powerwall before the tight time period and discharged from Powerwall to the home during the tight time period," said Tesla in a statement translated to Japanese. "It contributes not only to the households where the is installed, but also to the stabilization of Miyako Island's grid power supply, and stabilizes the power supply on the island. In addition, in the event of a power outage due to a typhoon, etc., power will be supplied from the Powerwall to the installed home, making it possible to prevent power outages in the home."

The war in Ukraine has "reshaped" energy markets, reports the Washington Post, with gas and oil shortages driving up the price of fossil fuels.

The end result? "From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones." The shift is especially notable in Japan and Germany, where both turned decisively against nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.... This week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that his government is considering constructing next-generation nuclear power plants with the goal of making them commercially operational in the 2030s. The government may also extend the operational life of its current nuclear power plants. German policymakers, meanwhile, are considering prolonging the life of three final nuclear power plants that had been scheduled to go offline at the end of the year. The reprieve would be temporary — just a year or two to get through the current energy crisis — but it would still mark a significant policy reversal that has been a major focus of Germany political life for the last decade...

Any decision in Germany would have to be approved by [German Economy Minister Robert] Habeck and his Green party — which was founded decades ago to focus on abolishing nuclear power. It remains a core policy position of the party — but so is opposition to Russia's war in Ukraine and a desire to be as strong as possible against the Kremlin. "We are in really special times," said Dennis Tänzler, a director of Adelphi, a Berlin-based climate think tank. "The bottom line is that German climate and energy policy has been shaped since Fukushima by a cross-party consensus that overall the technological risks, the security risks, are just too great."

Even some prominent nuclear critics appear open to keeping existing plants online for longer, though they oppose building any new ones. "There's no connection between building nuclear power plants and dealing with the price spike caused by the loss of Russian gas," since they take at least a decade to construct, said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, a London-based climate think tank. But, he said, extending the life of existing reactors could make sense. "If you can do it safely, and it's worthwhile economically to do it, I don't see any good reason not to extend the life of nuclear reactors," he said.

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Telegraph: Academics from Japan have found that ethanol helps make plants more drought-resistant (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) and better able to survive an extended bout of dry weather. Experiments found that getting plants drunk helps crops flourish while sober plants become shrunken and disheveled. Plants lose water through their leaves when pores called stomata open to allow it to escape, but ethanol helps keep these closed, the scientists found, thus improving water retention. Genetic analysis of the plant also showed that plants switch on drought-fighting genes when ethanol is picked up by the roots. This not only stopped the loss of water through the vent-like stomata but also saw the plant activate a process where it actually uses the alcohol for fuel.

Photosynthesis, the vital process that plants use to make energy from sunlight, needs water, but in the study, published in the journal Plant and Cell Physiology, the team found the plant can do this with ethanol instead in times of drought to further conserve dwindling supplies while also still making energy. This metabolizing of alcohol also means that shops would not be stocked with alcohol-infused foods if an alcohol-aided plant was harvested as it would have long ago been turned into energy by the plant. "There are some interesting questions to ask about WHY this pathway exists in plants," adds Slashdot reader Bruce66423. "The article doesn't talk about the concentration needed."

The world's largest comprehensive database on Japanese anime, Anime Taizen, was opened to the public today, August 25, at 13:00 (JST). Taizen means "A book that collects all things related to the matter" in Japanese. Crunchyroll reports: Since 2015, The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) has been promoting the "Anime NEXT_100" project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Japanese animation. As a major initiative of the project, this database was first released on a trial basis on October 22, 2021, and after confirming functionality and operation, and making improvements and updates, it has now been released to the public. As of the end of July 2022, Anime Taizen has approximately 15,000 registered titles, mainly Japanese commercial anime works released from 1917 to the present. In addition to title name searches, the database has search functions for chronology, Japanese syllabary, keywords, etc. As a result of the research to date, the number of episodes amounts to approximately 180,000.

Sony has raised the price of PlayStation 5 in most major markets, citing "challenging economic conditions" such as high global inflation rates and adverse currency trends, the latest in a series of challenges engulfing the current generation gaming console. From a report: The new price, which largely varies between $30 to $80, goes immediately into effect in Europe, the UK, China, Australia, Mexico and Canada, the company said in a blog post. The revised price will hit Japan on September 15, said the Japanese conglomerate. The U.S. is not impacted by the price hike, the company confirmed. "While this price increase is a necessity given the current global economic environment and its impact on SIE's business, our top priority continues to be improving the PS5 supply situation so that as many players as possible can experience everything that PS5 offers and what's still to come," Sony said in the post.

Japan will restart more idled nuclear plants and look at developing next-generation reactors, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Wednesday, setting the stage for a major policy shift on nuclear energy a decade after the Fukushima disaster. Reuters reports: Japan has kept most of its nuclear plants idled in the decade since a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 triggered a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Quake-prone Japan also said it would build no new reactors, so a change in that policy would be a stark turnaround. Kishida told reporters he had instructed officials to come up with concrete measures by the year end, including on "gaining the understanding of the public" on sustainable energy and nuclear power.

Government officials met on Wednesday to hammer out a plan for so-called "green transformation" aimed at retooling the world's third-largest economy to meet environmental goals. Nuclear energy, which was deeply opposed by the public after the Fukushima crisis, is now seen by some in government as a component for such green transformation. Public opinion has also shifted, as fuel prices have risen and an early and hot summer spurred calls for energy-saving.

If your canine companion ain't nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time, it may be because they are brimming with emotion. From a report: Researchers in Japan say they have found that dogs produce tears when reuniting with their owners. What's more, the blubbing appears to be linked to levels of the "bonding hormone" oxytocin. "This is the first report demonstrating that positive emotion stimulates tear secretion in a non-human animal, and that oxytocin functions in tear secretion," the team said. Writing in the journal Current Biology, they describe how eye contact between humans and dogs encourages the former to care for the latter, while the gaze of a dog can cause a release of oxytocin in its owner. Dogs have also evolved the ability to raise their inner eyebrows, a trait that scientists say induces humans to nurture them. Now researchers in Japan have found tears might have a similar effect.

"I have two standard poodles and I had one female pregnant six years ago," Prof Takefumi Kikusui, a co-author of the research at Azabu University, told the Guardian. Noticing her face was more tender than usual when nursing her puppies, Kikusui realised her eyes were teary. "That gave me the idea that oxytocin might increase tears," he said. "We previously observed that oxytocin is released both in dogs and owners when interacting. So we conducted a reunion experiment." In the first step, the team measured the volume of tears produced by 18 dogs when in their normal home environment with their owner, using Schirmer's test. This involves placing a special strip of paper inside the lower eyelid and measuring how far along the strip the moisture travels.

Taiwan said on Friday it has not been informed about a so-called 'Chip 4' meeting that would include it, the United States, South Korea and Japan but added the island has always cooperated closely with the United States on supply chains. From a report: South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin this week said Seoul expects to attend a preliminary meeting of the four chip manufacturing nations, describing the gathering as U.S.-led. He did not elaborate on what would be discussed. A meeting would come amid a global chip crunch that began two years ago with the onset of the pandemic and on the heels of a new U.S. law this month called the CHIPS Act that includes $52 billion in subsidies for companies that make chips or conduct chip research in the United States. The Biden administration has also sought deeper cooperation with Japan and South Korea to become more competitive with China's science and technology efforts.

The Japanese government has been hit in the pocket by an unusual problem -- its young people aren't drinking enough. From a report: Since the pandemic began, bars and other premises selling alcohol have been hit hard by Covid-19 restrictions, causing sales -- and liquor tax revenues -- to plummet in the world's third-largest economy. The government's solution? Launch a contest to find new ways to encourage young people to drink more. The "Sake Viva!" campaign, overseen by the National Tax Agency, invites participants to submit ideas on how to "stimulate demand among young people" for alcohol through new services, promotional methods, products, designs and even sales techniques using artificial intelligence or the metaverse, according to the official competition website.

"The domestic alcoholic beverage market is shrinking due to demographic changes such as the declining birthrate and aging population, and lifestyle changes due to the impact of Covid-19," said the website, adding that the competition aimed to "appeal to the younger generation ... and to revitalize the industry." The contest includes promotional ideas for all types of Japanese alcohol, with applications open until September 9. Finalists will be invited to an expert consultation in October, before a final tournament in November in Tokyo. The winner will receive support for their plan to be commercialized, according to the tax office.

Germany plans to keep its remaining nuclear power plants open for longer in a major U-turn as it scrambles to keep the lights on this winter with less Russian gas. The Telegraph reports: Officials have concluded the plants are needed due to gas shortages and they can be kept open without safety concerns, the Wall Street Journal reported. Germany pledged to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, which hardened opposition to the technology. Berlin has been under pressure to change course since the invasion of Ukraine to limit the impact of the gas crisis on manufacturers and households. Germany has three plants left, operated by E.ON, EnBW and RWE, supplying about 6pc of the country's electricity. They are currently due to close at the end of the year. Any extension has yet to be officially adopted and details remain under discussion, the Wall Street Journal added. It came as Norway warned it could not do more to help Germany avoid a gas crisis this winter as Russia restricts supplies.

On Thursday the International Atomic Energy Agency's director "warned that parts of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had been knocked out due to recent attacks, risking an 'unacceptable' potential radiation leak," according to CNN: "IAEA experts believe that there is no immediate threat to nuclear safety," but "that could change at any moment," Grossi said.... Ukraine's nuclear agency Energoatom said 10 shells landed near the complex on Thursday, preventing a shift handover. "For the safety of nuclear workers, the buses with the personnel of the next shift were turned back to Enerhodar," the agency said. "Until the situation finally normalizes, the workers of the previous shift will continue to work."

Energoatom said radiation levels at the site remained normal, despite renewed attacks.

Several Western and Ukrainian officials believe that Russia is using the giant nuclear facility as a stronghold to shield their troops and mount attacks, because they assume Kyiv will not return fire and risk a crisis.
Later CNN added: Ukraine and Russia again traded blame after more shelling around the plant overnight on Thursday, just hours after the United Nations called on both sides to cease military activities near the power station, warning of the worst if they didn't.

"Regrettably, instead of de-escalation, over the past several days there have been reports of further deeply worrying incidents that could, if they continue, lead to disaster," UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement....

Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company, accused Russian forces on Thursday of targeting a storage area for "radiation sources," and shelling a fire department nearby the plant. A day later, the company said in a statement on its Telegram account that the plant was operating "with the risk of violating radiation and fire safety standards."

Ukraine's Interior Minister, Denys Monastyrskyi, said Friday that there was "no adequate control" over the plant, and Ukrainian specialists who remained there were not allowed access to some areas where they should be.... Last weekend, shellfire damaged a dry storage facility — where casks of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, making detection of any potential leak impossible, according to Energoatom. Attacks also damaged a high-voltage power line and forced one of the plant's reactors to stop operating.
Tonight the BBC reported on a response from Ukraine's president. In his nightly address on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky said any soldier firing on or from the plant would become "a special target" for Ukraine. He also accused Moscow of turning the plant into a Russian army base and using it as "nuclear blackmail"...

Zelenskiy added that "every day" of Russia's occupation of the plant "increases the radiation threat to Europe"....

A BBC investigation revealed earlier this week that many of the Ukrainian workers at the site are being kept under armed guard amid harsh conditions.
UPDATE (8/14): "Ukraine's military intelligence agency said that on Saturday, Russian artillery fire hit a pump, damaged a fire station and sparked fires near the plant that could not be immediately extinguished because of the damage to the fire station," reports the New York Times: Engineers say that yard-thick reinforced concrete containment structures protect the reactors from even direct hits. International concern, however, has grown that shelling could spark a fire or cause other damage that would lead to a nuclear accident.

The six pressurized water reactors at the complex retain most sources of radiation, reducing risks. After pressurized water reactors failed at the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan in 2011, Ukraine upgraded the Zaporizhzhia site to enable a shutdown even after the loss of cooling water from outside the containment structures, Dmytro Gortenko, a former plant engineer, said in an interview....

"Locals are abandoning the town," said the former engineer, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oleksiy, because of security concerns. Residents had been leaving for weeks, but the pace picked up after Saturday's barrages and fires, he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: China has overtaken the US as the world leader in both scientific research output and "high impact" studies, according to a report published by Japan's science and technology ministry. The report, which was published by Japan's National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTP) on Tuesday, found that China now publishes the highest number of scientific research papers yearly, followed by the US and Germany. The figures were based on yearly averages between 2018 and 2020, and drawn from data compiled by the analytics firm Clarivate.

The Japanese NISTP report also found that Chinese research comprised 27.2% of the world's top 1% most frequently cited papers. The number of citations a research paper receives is a commonly used metric in academia. The more times a study is cited in subsequent papers by other researchers, the greater its "citation impact." The US accounted for 24.9% of the top 1% most highly cited research studies, while UK research was third at 5.5%. China published a yearly average of 407,181 scientific papers, pulling ahead of the US's 293,434 journal articles and accounting for 23.4% of the world's research output, the report found. China accounted for a high proportion of research into materials science, chemistry, engineering and mathematics, while US researchers were more prolific in research into clinical medicine, basic life sciences and physics. "China is one of the top countries in the world in terms of both the quantity and quality of scientific papers," Shinichi Kuroki of the Japan Science and Technology Agency told Nikkei Asia. "In order to become the true global leader, it will need to continue producing internationally recognized research."

Scientists have discovered that by microwaving fish waste, they can quickly and efficiently create carbon nano-onions (CNOs) -- a unique nanoform of carbon that has applications in energy storage and medicine. This method could be used to make cheaper and more sustainable LEDs in the future. The researchers from Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan published their findings in Green Chemistry. Smithsonian Magazine reports: CNOs are nanostructures with spherical carbon shells in a concentric layered structure similar to an onion. They have "drawn extensive attention worldwide in terms of energy storage and conversion" because of their "exceptionally high electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as large external surface area," per the paper. They've been used in electronics and for biomedical applications, such as bio-imaging and sensing and drug delivery, write the authors in the study. Though CNOs were first reported in the 1980s, conventional methods of manufacturing them have required high temperatures, a vacuum and a lot of time and energy. Other techniques are expensive and call for complex catalysts or dangerous acidic or basic conditions. This "greatly limits the potential of CNOs," per a statement from Nagoya Institute of Technology.

The newly discovered method requires only one step -- microwave pyrolysis of fish scales extracted from fish waste -- and can be done within ten seconds, per the authors. How exactly the fish scales are converted into CNOs is unclear, though the team thinks it has to do with how collagen in the fish scales can absorb enough microwave radiation to quickly increase in temperature. This leads to pyrolysis, or thermal decomposition, which causes the collagen to break down into gasses. These gasses then support the creation of CNOs. This method is a "straightforward way to convert fish waste into infinitely more useful materials," and the resulting CNOs have a high crystallinity, which gives them "exceptional optical properties," per the statement. They also have high functionalization, which means they're "bonded to other small molecules on their surface," writes Ellen Phiddian for Cosmos. This combination of attributes means the CNOs can glow bright blue.