The Air Danshin Systems company of Japan says it offers pneumatic technology to protect buildings in the event of an earthquake. The shaking triggers a stream of air that levitates the house. The diagram below, from the company, shows to some extent how the system works, with blue representing the stream of air. (The Spoon & Tamago blog […]
Tag: Japan
The Ig Nobel Prizes (NHK’s fab documentary)
In 2002, NHK, Japan’s public TV network, made this documentary about the Ig Nobel Prizes. They broadcast it in Japan on Christmas eve, a time when much of the nation stays home, imbibes delicious substances, and watches television. We were told that the broadcast received the largest audience of anything broadcast on NHK during that […]
Ritual: Carp’s sake-drinking
One of our readers, a scientist who spent the first half of his life in Japan, tells of a ritual that seems to be not terribly well known or studied. He writes: This is a strange tradition in some part of Japan which I was not aware of until today, when I saw a report in Yomiuri […]
A look at the Wasabi fire alarm (Chemistry Prize)
Here’s a BBC News report about the wasabi fire alarm, whose inventors received the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry. The photo below (by Alexey Eliseev / Improbable Research) shows Makoto Imai (center) and one of his co-inventors (several others also attended the ceremony) at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, receiving their Ig Nobel Prize from Nobel laureate Roy […]