AmiMoJo shares a report: Fujifilm has announced it will re-start black and white film manufacturing this year and will bring out a new version of its former Acros film. The new NEOPAN Acros 100 II will feature finer grain and the company claims it will be the sharpest black and white film on the market. The film will initially go on sale in Japan, with expansion to other markets depending on demand. In a press release on the Fujifilm Japan website, President Kenji Sono explains that after the company stopped production of monochrome film last year many of its users asked for production to be started again. Part of the issue for the company, he says, was that some raw materials in the film were hard to source. For the new film alternatives have been found and the production process radically changed to account for them.

Operating a drone in Japan while drunk could lead to a year in prison thanks to new legislation. From a report: The law, passed by the country's parliament this week, seeks to rein in growing use of the unmanned aerial vehicles. Those found to be intoxicated while flying a drone could also face a fine of up to 300,000 yen ($2,765). The law covers drones weighing more than 200g (7oz) and also puts limits on where drones can be flown. "We believe operating drones after consuming alcohol is as serious as (drink) driving," a Japanese transport ministry official told the AFP news agency. As well as fines over drunken use, the legislation also levies fines on pilots who perform dangerous stunts with their drone. Those caught quickly plunging the craft towards crowds could face fines of up to 500,000 yen.

Group of 20 finance ministers agreed over the weekend to compile common rules to close loopholes used by global tech giants such as Facebook to reduce their corporate taxes, a copy of the bloc's draft communique obtained by Reuters showed. From the report: Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other large technology firms face criticism for cutting their tax bills by booking profits in low-tax countries regardless of the location of the end customer. Such practices are seen by many as unfair. The new rules would mean higher tax burdens for large multinational firms but would also make it harder for countries like Ireland to attract foreign direct investment with the promise of ultra-low corporate tax rates. "We welcome the recent progress on addressing the tax challenges arising from digitization and endorse the ambitious program that consists of a two-pillar approach," the draft communique said. "We will redouble our efforts for a consensus-based solution with a final report by 2020." Britain and France have been among the most vocal proponents of proposals to tax big tech companies that focus on making it more difficult to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions, and to introduce a minimum corporate tax.

schwit1 shares a report from the New York Times flagging America's surprising low usage of an engineering technique protecting buildings from earthquakes: Chile, China, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Turkey and other countries vulnerable to earthquakes have adopted the technologies to varying degrees. But with notable exceptions, including Apple's new headquarters in Silicon Valley, the innovations have been used only sparingly in the United States. Seismic safety advocates describe this as a missed opportunity to save billions of dollars in reconstruction costs after the inevitable Big One strikes....

The debate over whether to build more resilient buildings in the United States has been held largely out of public view, among engineers and other specialists. But at stake is whether places like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Salt Lake City, San Francisco or Los Angeles might be forced to shut down after a direct hit -- and for how long. A federal study last year found that a quarter of the buildings in the Bay Area would be significantly damaged after a magnitude-7 earthquake, a disaster that would be compounded by the fact that 9 out of every 10 commercial buildings and 8 out of 10 homes in California are not insured for earthquakes. "Cities won't be usable for many months, if not years," said H. Kit Miyamoto, a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission, a government body that advises the state Legislature and the governor on earthquake issues. "Throwaway buildings equal a throwaway city."

In a severe earthquake, most American buildings are designed to crumple like a car in a head-on collision, dissipating the energy of the earthquake through damage. The goal is to preserve lives, but the building -- like a car after an accident -- may be useless. Ron Hamburger, an American structural engineer who is perhaps the leading authority on the building code, estimates that half of all buildings in San Francisco could be deemed unoccupiable immediately after a major earthquake.... Evan Reis, a co-founder of the U.S. Resiliency Council, a nonprofit organization, says the biggest impediment is that unlike in Japan, buildings change hands frequently in America and the developers who build them do not see the incentive in making them more robust. "Short-term thinking is absolutely the biggest villain," Reis said.
The article also points out that California's governor vetoed a bill last year that would've required buidings to be functional after an earthquake.

Boston Dynamics is about to launch its first ever commercial product -- a quadrupedal robot named Spot. The Verge reports: Spot is currently being tested in a number of "proof-of-concept" environments, Boston Dynamics' CEO Marc Raibert told The Verge, including package delivery and surveying work. And although there's no firm launch date for the commercial version of Spot, it should be available within months, said Raibert, and certainly before the end of the year. "We're just doing some final tweaks to the design," said the CEO. "We've been testing them relentlessly."

Rather than selling the robot as a single-use tool, it's positioning it as a "mobility platform" that can be customized by users to complete a range of tasks. A Spot robot mounted with 3D cameras can map environments like construction sites, identifying hazards and work progress. When equipped with a robot arm, it has even greater flexibility, able to open doors and manipulate objects. At Re:MARS, a Spot with a robot arm used it to pick up items, including a cuddly toy that was then offered to a flesh-and-blood police dog. The dog was unimpressed with the robot, but happy, at least, to receive the toy. Raibert says it's this "athletic intelligence" that Boston Dynamics will be selling through its robots. Think of it like Amazon's AWS business, but instead of offering computing power on tap, its robotic mobility. How much will Spot cost? Raibert only said that the commercial version will be "much less expensive than prototypes [and] we think they'll be less expensive than other peoples' quadrupeds."

He did, however, reveal that the company had already found some paying customers, including construction companies in Japan who are testing Spot as a way to oversee the progress of work on sites.

Ikea has partnered with American furniture startup Ori Living to develop a new robotic furniture system for people living in small spaces. Called Rognan, the collection includes a large storage unit that can slide across a room via a touchpad to divide a room into two living spaces, a bed, desk, and a couch for people to pull out when needed. It will launch first in Hong Kong and Japan in 2020. The Verge reports: Rognan is built on Ori's robotic platform, and works with Ikea's Platsa line of storage furniture. It's also compatible with Ikea's Tradfri line of cabinet and wardrobe smart lighting. Ikea says the Rognan can save an extra eight square meters (about 86 square feet) of living space. That might not sound like much, but if you live in a tiny home, it could make all the difference. The Verge notes that Ori's line of automated furniture started as a concept from MIT's CityHome concept project in 2014. It launched for real estate developers and Airbnbs for $10,000 as Ori Systems.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Sony is quietly launching a chip that could change how e-bikes, cars, street lamps and all kinds of other connected devices can relay information. The module, when installed on any IoT object, will allow it send data to Sony's proprietary low-power wide area (LPWA) ELTRES network launching this fall. It can transmit up to about 60 miles and work in noisy urban environments on objects moving at high speeds, opening up a lot of new applications in security, monitoring, tracking and more. Sony's ELTRES LPWA network harnesses low-power wireless technology to transfer low-bit data across a wide area, with lower power consumption, making it feasible to connect a wide range of devices.

The CXM1501GR chip transmits signals in the 920MHz band to Sony's ELTRES network, and is also equipped with GPS/GNSS sensors to obtain time and position data. Sony said it'll work in a "broad range of IoT devices, aiming to develop various services making the most of stable wireless communications over long distances and while moving at high speeds, thereby creating a new market." In a use case document, Sony said the tech could be used to "help friends find each other at a ski hill," track wildlife, geolocate ships, follow yacht races, monitor bike rentals, while tracking numerous things like drones, rental cars and trains. The chip is limited to Japan for now, but Sony has launched an application program for interested companies and the company does have plans to build out the network.

While the United States is banning the use of Huawei equipment from its fifth-generation infrastructure, the Chinese telecommunications company is working to expand its share in the undersea cable market, which is dominated by the U.S., Europe and Japan. Nikkei Asian Review reports: About a decade ago, Huawei entered the business by setting up a joint venture with British company Global Marine Systems. It expanded its presence by laying short links in regions like Southeast Asia and the Russian Far East. But last September, Huawei surprised industry executives in Japan, the U.S. and Europe by completing a 6,000 km trans-Atlantic cable linking Brazil with Cameroon. This showed Huawei has acquired advanced capabilities, even though it is still far behind the established players in terms of experience and cable volume.

During the 2015-2020 period, Huawei is expected to complete 20 new cables -- mostly short ones of less than 1,000 km. Even when these are finished, Huawei's market share will be less than 10%. Over the long term, however, the company could emerge as a player to be reckoned with. Huawei is estimated to be involved in around 30 undersea cable projects at the moment. It also reportedly has a hand in about 60 projects to enhance cable landing stations to boost transmission capacity. The reality is, even if the U.S. succeeds in shutting out Huawei from 5G networks in major countries, the Chinese company could still thwart American efforts to maintain leadership in handling global data traffic. The report goes on to say that the U.S., Japan and Australia are working to address this potential threat. "Steps they are considering include banning Huawei from laying cables connected to one of the three countries, and urging other governments to prevent the company from getting involved in the construction of any major cables Informed sources."

Malaysia will return 450 tonnes of contaminated plastic waste to the countries that shipped it, in a refusal to become a dumping ground for the world's trash. From a report: Nine shipping containers at Port Klang, west of Kuala Lumpur, on Tuesday were found to contain mislabeled plastic and non-recyclable waste, including a mixture of household and e-waste. Yeo Bee Yin, minister of energy, science, technology, environment and climate change, said the plastic was shipped from the US, the UK, Australia, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, the Netherlands and Singapore. Five containers of waste were returned to Spain last month.

On April 24, Malaysia launched a joint task force to crack down on the growing problem of illegal plastic waste imports. The authorities have since carried out 10 operations. Last year, China banned plastic waste imports as part of an initiative to clean up its environment. That move caused a ripple effect through global supply chains, as middlemen sought new destinations for their trash, including Malaysia. A recent Greenpeace report found that during the first seven months of 2018, plastic waste exported from the US to Malaysia more than doubled compared to the previous year.

Japan's government said on Monday that high-tech industries will be added to a list of businesses for which foreign ownership of Japanese firms is restricted. From a report: The new rule, effective Aug. 1, comes amid heightening pressure from the United States in dealing with cyber-security risks and technological transfers involving China. The Japanese government made no mention of specific countries or companies that will be impacted by applying existing foreign ownership restrictions to the IT and telecoms industries.

The announcement came on the same day visiting U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are holding talks in Tokyo on trade and other issues. The United States has warned countries against using Chinese technology, saying Huawei Technologies could be used by Beijing to spy on the West. China and Huawei have strongly rejected the allegations.

"Some student loan borrowers are packing their bags and fleeing from the U.S. to other countries, where the cost of living is often lower and debt collectors wield less power over them," reports CNBC: Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. "I've put America behind me," Haag, 29, said. Today he lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. "I saw four elephants just yesterday," he said, adding that he hopes never to set foot in a Walmart again. More than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don't feel real anymore. "It's kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really exist?" he said...

Although there is no national data on how many people have left the United States because of student debt, borrowers tell their stories of doing so in Facebook groups and Reddit channels and how-to advice is offered on personal finance websites. "It may be an issue we see an uptick in if the trends keep up," said Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.... Struggling borrowers should enter into one of the government's income-based repayment plans instead, in which their monthly bill will be capped at a portion of their income, he said. Some payments wind up being as little as $0 a month.

But the fact that people are taking this drastic measure should bring scrutiny to the larger student loan system, said Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice. "Any rational person who learns that people are fleeing the country as a result of their student loan debt will conclude that something has gone horribly awry with this lending system," Collinge said.
Haag tells CNBC that because of his student loan debt, "I have a higher standard of living in a Third World country than I would in America." The average student now has around $30,000 in debt when they graduate, according to the article (which is nearly double the inflation-adjusted average of $16,000 in the early 1990s) -- while inflation-adjusted salaries "have remained almost flat over the last few decades."

One 39-year-old even tells CNBC, "I feel that college ruined my life." (He's been living overseas since 2011 -- first in China, then Ukraine -- and hasn't checked his student loan account in nearly eight years.) Another graduate teaching English in Japan told CNBC that they wanted to return to the U.S. -- but their student debt is now over $100,000.

"The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.

"Most snails are 'righties'. Now scientists have found genes that can change the shell coiling direction," writes the New York Times. ( Non-paywalled version here )

Suren Enfiajyan shares their report: Studying these snails offers clues to the evolution of body plans in many animals. It also could be important for understanding why up to 10 percent of people are born with sinus inversus, a condition where their internal organs are flipped like a lefty snail's shell. Now scientists are turning to Crispr -- the powerful gene editing tool -- to figure out why some snails turn out this way. A team in Japan led by Reiko Kuroda, a chemist and biologist, has successfully used the technique to manipulate a single gene responsible for shell direction in a species of great pond snail.

The research, published last week in the journal Development, offers definitive proof of the genetic underpinnings of handedness in this species, and could lead to clues about left- and right-handed mysteries in other organisms. "Ten years ago you might not imagine there were any similarities in the left/right asymmetry of a snail and the left/right asymmetry of humans. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that is the case," said Angus Davison, an evolutionary geneticist, who has studied chiral pond snails, but was not a part of Dr. Kuroda's study...

In the current study, Dr. Kuroda and Masanori Abe used Crispr to edit out the Lsdia1 gene, and then raised the resulting mutant snails. Confirming previous work, they showed that even in the first embryonic cell, genetic information started picking sides. And by the third cleavage, when four cells become eight, the mutant cells were rotating in the opposite direction of what is expected. These snails grew into lefties, and so did their offspring. Without two working copies of Lsdia1, snails can survive with Lsdia2 -- but their shells won't coil to the right.
In the article Dr. Davison says that there's still more research to do. "Unfortunately, snail research doesn't move quickly."

Japan's Panasonic has said it is scrutinizing whether any of its products break U.S. restrictions on trading with Huawei. "Panasonic announced in [an] internal notification that it should suspend transactions with Huawei and its 68 affiliates that were banned by the U.S. government," the company said in a statement provided to the BBC. From the report: Panasonic caused confusion earlier by appearing to announce that it had suspended business with Huawei. But it later said that business operations that were not in breach of U.S. regulations would continue to trade normally with Huawei. "Panasonic will continue to strictly abide by the laws and regulations of the countries and regions in which we conduct business," it said.

Solandri writes: In 2014, scientists began detecting plumes of CFC-11 in the atmosphere. The compound had been banned in the 1987 Montreal Protocol after it was discovered that it was contributing to the destruction of the ozone layer that protects life on Earth from ultraviolet radiation. Unfortunately, the releases were detected using global monitoring equipment, so the origin could not be determined. Using data from measuring stations in Korea and Japan, and computer modeling of atmospheric patterns, researchers have now pinned down the source of the emissions to eastern China. They also determined that the emissions were too large to be releases from foam which had been produced before the ban (CFCs were a common aerosol and foaming agent). And that the amounts most likely indicate new illegal production. The paper is published in the latest issue of Nature. dryriver shares an excerpt from the BBC: CFC-11 was primarily used for home insulation but global production was due to be phased out in 2010 [to allow the Ozone layer to heal]. CFC-11 was the second most abundant CFCs and was initially seen to be declining as expected. However in 2018 a team of researchers monitoring the atmosphere found that the rate of decline had slowed by about 50% after 2012. That team reasoned that they were seeing new production of the gas, coming from East Asia. The authors of that paper argued that if the sources of new production weren't shut down, it could delay the healing of the ozone layer by a decade.

Further detective work in China by the Environmental Investigation Agency in 2018 seemed to indicate that the country was indeed the source. They found that the illegal chemical was used in the majority of the polyurethane insulation produced by firms they contacted. One seller of CFC-11 estimated that 70% of China's domestic sales used the illegal gas. The reason was quite simple -- CFC-11 is better quality and much cheaper than the alternatives. This new paper seems to confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that some 40-60% of the increase in emissions is coming from provinces in north eastern China. The authors also say that these CFCs are also very potent greenhouse gases. One ton of CFC-11 is equivalent to around 5,000 tons of CO2. "If we look at these extra emissions that we've identified from eastern China, it equates to about 35 million tons of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere every year, that's equivalent to about 10% of UK emissions, or similar to the whole of London."

Friday the Washington Post published an essay by Gregory Jaczko, who served on America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009 and was its chairman from 2009 to 2012. He says he'd believed nuclear power was worth the reduction they produced in greenhouse emissions -- until Japan's 2011 nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima power plant.

"Despite working in the industry for more than a decade, I now believe that nuclear power's benefits are no longer enough to risk the welfare of people living near these plants..." [Non-paywalled version here] The current and potential costs -- personal and economic -- are just too high.... The technology and the safety needs are just too complex and demanding to translate into a facility that is simple to design and build. No matter your views on nuclear power in principle, no one can afford to pay this much for two electricity plants. New nuclear is simply off the table in the United States....

Fewer than 10 of Japan's 50 reactors have resumed operations, yet the country's carbon emissions have dropped below their levels before the accident. How? Japan has made significant gains in energy efficiency and solar power.... What about the United States? Nuclear accounts for about 19 percent of U.S. electricity production and most of our carbon-free electricity. Could reactors be phased out here without increasing carbon emissions? If it were completely up to the free market, the answer would be yes, because nuclear is more expensive than almost any other source of electricity today. Renewables such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power generate electricity for less than the nuclear plants under construction in Georgia, and in most places, they produce cheaper electricity than existing nuclear plants that have paid off all their construction costs...

This tech is no longer a viable strategy for dealing with climate change, nor is it a competitive source of power. It is hazardous, expensive and unreliable, and abandoning it wouldn't bring on climate doom. The real choice now is between saving the planet or saving the dying nuclear industry. I vote for the planet.

Drinking and droning? It could soon cost you up to a year in jail in Japan, where an amendment to the country's civil aeronautics law being debated in the Diet would make it illegal to operate unmanned aerial vehicles while under the influence of alcohol. From a report: According to the transport ministry, there were 79 incidents involving drones in the last financial year. None of them involved a drunk operator but tighter restrictions were nonetheless regarded as a necessary pre-emptive move. "There are lots of different types of accidents that are reported each year but the majority are relatively minor and involve, for example, a drone operating on a predetermined route making an accidental landing," a ministry official said, adding that there were 63 reports of accidents in 2017 and 55 the previous year.

"We have no records of someone causing an accident with a drone while drinking, but we do know that in the US about three years ago, a drunk person landed a drone in the grounds of the White House," the official said. "We obviously want to avoid that sort of situation, so these new laws are designed to stop something before it happens." Under the new rules, a drone operator will be legally required to carry out preflight checks of the vehicle and authorities will carry out on-the-spot inspections when an accident occurs.

Japan's communications ministry plans to create for assignment some 10 billion 14-digit phone numbers starting with the code "020." From a report: With the commercialization of fifth-generation, or 5G, superfast mobile communications fast approaching, 11-digit numbers are expected to run out as early as fiscal 2022. The plan to introduce the new numbers, by the end of 2021 at the latest, was proposed at a recent meeting of a panel of experts. It was accepted by the three major mobile phone operators -- NTT Docomo Inc., KDDI Corp. and SoftBank.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, a U.S.-based company named Hermeus announced plans to develop an aircraft that will travel at speeds of up to Mach 5. Such an aircraft would cut travel time from New York to Paris from more than 7 hours to 1.5 hours. Hermeus said it has raised an initial round of funding led by Khosla Ventures, but it declined to specify the amount. This funding will allow Hermeus to develop a propulsion demonstrator and other initial technologies needed to make its supersonic aircraft a reality, Skyler Shuford, the company's chief operating officer, told Ars.

The announcement follows three years after another company, Boom Supersonic, declared its own intentions to develop faster-than-sound aircraft. As of January 2019, Boom had raised more than $140 million toward development of its Overture airliner, envisioned to travel at Mach 2.2, which is about 10 percent faster than the Concorde traveled. Officials with Boom Supersonic have said its planes could be ready for commercial service in the mid-2020s, and they added that Virgin Group and Japan Airlines have preordered a combined 30 airplanes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, Japanese railway company JR East showed off its new Alfa-X, a high-speed bullet train that is designed to achieve a top speed of 400kph, or 249mph, which would make it the fastest commercial train in the world. In day-to-day operations, the train would shuttle passengers at 360kph, or roughly 224mph. On Friday, JR East will begin testing the Alfa-X, without passengers, on its railways. According to Bloomberg, the 10-car train will make the trip "between the cities of Aomori and Sendai at night" for the next three years during a testing phase. JR East hopes to use the Alfa-X commercially by 2030. Japan News says the line will eventually be extended to Sapporo. Bloomberg's report notes that there's a magnetically-levitated train in the works that may win the top-speed crown. It's been built between Tokyo and Nagoya and takes advantage of a tunnel-heavy route to achieve a top speed of 505kph (314mph). If all things go according to plan, it'll open in 2027.

The "exascale" computing race is getting a new entrant called Frontier, a $600 million machine with Cray and AMD technology that could become the world's fastest when it arrives at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2021. From a report: Frontier should be able to perform 1.5 quintillion calculations per second, a level called 1.5 exaflops and enough to claim the performance crown, the Energy Department announced Tuesday. Its speed will be about 10 times faster than that of the current record holder on the Top500 supercomputer ranking, the IBM-built Summit machine, also at Oak Ridge, and should surpass a $500 million, 1-exaflops Cray-Intel supercomputer called Aurora to be built in 2021 at Argonne National Laboratory. There's no guarantee the US will win the race to exascale machines -- those that cross the 1-exaflop threshold -- because China, Japan and France each could have exascale machines in 2020. At stake is more than national bragging rights: It's also about the ability to perform cutting-edge research in areas like genomics, nuclear physics, cosmology, drug discovery, artificial intelligence and climate simulation.