User interface issues are not glamorous — but they do matter. Many irksome problems linger for years or decades. Sam Byford reports, in The Verge, on a cleansing case: Japanese toilet industry agrees to standardize complex bidet controls The Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association, a consortium of companies producing plumbing products including Toto, Panasonic, and […]
Tag: Japan
Report of the scientific investigation: Can farts be lit on fire by a laser?
There was indeed a scientific investigation after the (widely reported) fire that ignited during a patient’s cervical conization procedure at the University of Tokyo Hospital, causing “a wide range of burns [to the] thighs [and] rear” to the patient. That scientific report is lavishly illustrated with photographs. To determine whether the accident could have been caused by an […]
Five Japanese extensive interviews with Ig Nobel winners
The magazine Tech Notes is conducting a series of extensive interviews with Japanese Ig Nobel Prize winners. Here are links to the first five interviews. All are in Japanese [we present here machine translations of the headlines]: The Ig Nobel Prize interview Laugh and Think [1st] research and Kitazatodai Mabuchi Mr. skin of banana and […]
Podcast 29: Eat a shrew, and an epidemic of penile amputations
The secret of why onions make people cry; the scientist who ate and excreted a shrew; the one-armed man who was arrested for applauding; the question of when cows lie down and stand up; and surgical management of an epidemic of penile amputations in Siam; and a cat unexpectedly taking over the podcast — all these all […]