Tag - nature

 
 

NATURE

Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Apr 5, 2014
Horses power across time and places
As a wee nipper I'd sometimes be treated to donkey rides on our local beach at Port Talbot in South Wales, but the first time I sat astride a pony was near my home in Neath when I was 8. Around then, the old dairyman occasionally let me join him as he made his daily rounds with his horse-drawn cart collecting...
JAPAN
Mar 14, 2014
Stem cell papers had 'grave errors'
The president of the government-backed Riken institute admitted Friday there were "grave errors" in two papers produced by its researchers on a possible method to create pluripotent stem cells but wouldn't say whether the alleged irregularities were intentional.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 6, 2014
Butterfly mimics found to use just a single gene
The masquerade party never ends for these ladies.
BUSINESS
Mar 2, 2014
Underwater gold rush spurs fears of ocean calamity
This is the last frontier: the ocean floor, 4,000 meters beneath the waters of the central Pacific, where mining companies are now exploring for the rich deposits of ores needed to keep industry humming and smartphones switched on.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 15, 2014
Stem-cell leap defied Japanese norms
It's not surprising that last week Haruko Obokata issued a plea for privacy. On Jan. 29 she published a scientific paper on stem cells that could revolutionize medicine, and overnight the researcher based at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe became a domestic and international...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Dec 29, 2013
Hungry animals, people use 'Levy walk'
Imagine you are a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe living in a remote part of the sprawling African plains, and your stomach is growling. How do you search for something to eat?
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 27, 2013
Scientists now creating 'app-style' life-forms
For scientist Jack Newman, creating a new life-form has become as simple as this: He types out a DNA sequence on his laptop, and clicks "send." And nearby in the laboratory, robotic arms start to mix together some compounds to produce the desired cells.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 16, 2013
Bats, snakes face deadly fungi threat
Jeremy Coleman was on the trail of a ruthless serial killer recently, studying its behavior, patterns and moves at a Massachusetts lab. The more he saw, the more it confirmed a hunch. He had seen it all before. He was looking at a copycat killer.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Sep 4, 2013
Scientists tracing ancestry of India's large mammals
About 120 million years ago, the supercontinent of Gondwana broke into a jigsaw puzzle of continents and isles in the Southern Hemisphere. One of those was a giant island forming what we now call India.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 28, 2013
Dolphin deaths, linked to virus, worst in years
Marine scientists said Tuesday that a die-off of bottlenose dolphins along the U.S. Atlantic coast is the largest in a quarter-century and is almost certainly from the same cause as a 1987-88 outbreak: cetacean morbillivirus, which is spreading throughout the population.
WORLD / Science & Health / FOCUS
Aug 28, 2013
Air gun noise sparks alarm in war over offshore drilling
The use of "seismic air guns" to determine how much oil and gas lies beneath a vast swath of the ocean floor off the southeast coast of the United States is provoking an early skirmish in a battle over oil drilling that is still years away.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 15, 2013
Russian activist pays high price for actions
After three men in this heavily polluted city west of Yekaterinburg beat Stepan Chernogubov unconscious, fracturing his skull and knocking out three teeth, criminal investigators took him, still bleeding, to a police station where they questioned him for four hours and then threatened to bring charges...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 1, 2013
U.S. plans first tribal national park to protect buffaloes
Buffalo stroll undisturbed, pausing occasionally to wallow in the grass and caked dirt, while prairie dogs yip intermittently as they dive into their holes and pop out again to survey the landscape. This northern stretch of Badlands National Park, known as Sage Creek Wilderness, is what the northern...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 25, 2013
Asia demand making ginseng in U.S. scarce
The long tradition of ginseng hunting in the U.S. can be traced from Daniel Boone, the folk hero frontiersman, to Glenn Miller, a retired concrete inspector.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 23, 2013
Little bird on the prairie could help save entire ecosystem
Under an indigo predawn sky, as a frigid wind whipped across the plains, a half-dozen brown-and-white birds emerged from tufts of dry grass. They emitted a low cooing sound, akin to the hooting of an owl.
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 2, 2013
Exxon Mobil mops up large pipeline spill
Exxon Mobil said that one of its pipelines leaked "a few thousand" barrels of Canadian heavy crude oil near Mayflower, Arkansas, late Friday, prompting the evacuation of 22 homes and reinforcing concerns many critics have raised about the Keystone XL pipeline that is awaiting State Department approval....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 30, 2013
Brazilian chief wields high-tech tools in battle to save tribe, forests
As a small boy in the early 1980s, Almir Surui hunted monkeys with a bow and arrow, wore a loincloth and struggled with Brazil's official language, Portuguese.
WORLD
Mar 24, 2013
Obama to name five national monuments
President Barack Obama on Monday will announce five new national monuments that will be added to the U.S. list of protected land.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 11, 2013
Brazil dams Amazon to feed energy-hungry economy
When it is completed in 2015, the Jirau hydroelectric dam will span the Madeira River, feature more giant turbines than any other dam in the world and hold as much concrete as 47 towers the size of New York's Empire State Building.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 26, 2013
Cuttlefish could be key to revolutionary camouflage technology
Cuttlefish are ugly-cute. With their big eyes, stubby tentacles and bulbous head, they look like creatures from an H.P. Lovecraft horror story. When they move forward, rippling their fins underneath their body, they resemble prehistoric flying saucers. And they hunt at night and are masters of disguise....

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji