Fresh & Hot from Japan, 19 to 23 December 2016

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Please enjoy fresh & hot news from Japan with comments by Europe-Japan Dynamics.

19 Dec.”Bioplastic” which is painting-free, Roadster to adopt

Bioplastic resin, produced by Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. from bio materials, is being used for an increasing number of automobile parts. Though more expensive than the resin derived from oil, attention is being paid to bioplastic for its eco-friendliness and cost-saving effects due to no need for painting.

Comments: Bioplastic could be a breakthrough for ecological production.

20 Dec. NEC to establish a company for development of medicines for cancer treatment using AI

NEC announced that the company would enter an innovative drug development business using artificial intelligence (AI). By using AI, the company has already discovered a promising material which may be used to create “peptide vaccine” that is attracting attention as a new therapeutic drug of cancer. NEC has established a new company to push forward the drug development to put the new medicine into practical use around 2025.

Comments: What an interesting development it is to stretch its core competence of information technology to medical science!

nec-medicine

21 Dec. Assessment of economic status raised for the first time since one year and nice months, “recovery continued”

The Cabinet Office raised an overall assessment of the domestic economy one year nine months since March, 2015, according to a monthly economic report of December. It is judged that movement of the improvement came out to export and individual consumption, saying, “the delay in the improvement was partly seen, but a gentle recovery tone continued”.

Comments: It’s a good news.

22 Dec. Honda, to partner with Google to develop automatic driving, starting a run experiment in the US

Honda announced that the company would start collaborative investigation of the “complete automatic driving” with the US net search major Google. Artificial intelligence (AI) of Google will be loaded in the car provided by Honda. The two companies will repeat run experiments in the United States and share know-how of the automatic driving.

Comments: A merger between the automobile manufacturing and information technology companies are taking place over the automatic driving, and the connected car.

23 Dec. Diplomatic documents related to Asia after the WWII to be open to the public on the web

The Asian history document center of the National Archives decided to extend the coverage of the documents related to international relations with Asian countries available to the public via its web site from those covering from Meiji era to the Second World War (WWII) to the era that include post WWII period. It is intended to fill the gap between different interpretations of historical incidents that sometimes cause disputes among different views by enabling to share the common documents between researchers and scholars. This change will start from 2017.

Comments: Better late than never — it is a good idea.

  • All the news items are picked up from “Asahi Digital”, and summarized and translated by Europe-Japan Dynamics. The articles are not an official translation by the Asahi Newspaper.

 

Fresh & Hot from Japan, 12 to 16 December 2016

Welcome to Europe-Japan Dynamics!

This is our blog page.

Please click here for what we do.
Please click here for who we are.
************************************

Please enjoy fresh & hot news from Japan with comments by Europe-Japan Dynamics.

12 Dec. Inquiries and doorstepping investigations in the cyber space by a special force of Fukuoka Prefectural Police

Eradicate cyber crimes! — a special force of Fukuoka Prefectural Police, whose members are special investigators who had studied the computer science, “Cyber security special team (F-CST )”  started operating. The team deals with the investigation to go back and forth between the cyber space and real world, and started seeing the results.

Comments: Police needs competence of hackers to investigate cyber crimes.

13 Dec.  Automatic driving bus in campus, field experiment by a group of public and private organizations including Kyushu University

Four private and public organizations including Kyushu University announced that they would start a field experiment of the automatic driving bus from next January, and showed a demonstration run in Ito campus of Kyushu University  (Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi). The Road Traffic Act does not allow the unmanned driving in the public road, but premises in the campus is all right as it is not the public road.  The group of organizations plans to progressively  test the bus in the environment near to the public road and improve safety and convenience. It is aimed to put the automatic driving bus into practice as a means of transportation in campuses in the latter half of 2018.

Comments: The automatic driving cars may start being used for specific purposes in the private premises, such as Universities, factories, hospitals, etc.

14 Dec. Please read it before you use!, “Toilet paper to read” getting popular

It is too good to just use — “Toilet paper to read” by Hayashi Paper (President Hiroyuki Hayashiof Hina, Fuji-shi, Shizuoka produces is popularFrom a quiz to a novel and disaster prevention information, here are more than 30 products of this kind. The company is receiving a number of requests for an original toilet paper from public institutions and companies inside and outside the prefecture.

Comments: It is a great value-added of toilet paper!

xmas-toilet-paper

15 Dec. Fuji Film acquired Wako Pure Chemical Industries from Takeda Pharmaceutical to strengthen its medical business

Fuji Film Holdings Corp. purchased Wako Pure Chemical Industries  Ltd. (Osaka-shi), a subsidiary of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited specialized in reagent for studies for approximately 154,700 million yen. Fuji Film intends to acquire techniques necessary for research and development of the regenerative medicine and thus to strengthen its medical business.

Comments: With decreasing demand for films, Fuji Film is undergoing a strategic shift to the medical business using its core competence on chemicals.

16 Dec. Christmas tree of high-quality melons, “If you hit the right number, please get one”

“The melon tree” which used the high-quality cantaloupes is displayed in the Nishijima gardening housing complex of Hataeda, Nankoku-shi, Kochi until 24th and heaps up a Christmas season.

Comments: Japanese are good at using Christmas for marketing of high quality melons!

melon-tree_comm

  • All the news items are picked up from “Asahi Digital”, and summarized and translated by Europe-Japan Dynamics. The articles are not an official translation by the Asahi Newspaper.