According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Japan will start field trials for self-driving buses next year, as the government aims to ease the shortage of drivers in the public transportation system.
The pilot program, starting as soon as April 2020, will focus on transit buses with fixed routes. The partially automated system will help the driver maintain proper spacing with other vehicles and stay in the correct lane. A Japanese test using higher-level automation, in which the system drives the bus except for emergencies, could begin as early as fiscal 2021 pending legislation.
At least two bus companies, with no overlapping territory, will be solicited for the pilot. The government will purchase the buses, retrofit them and provide the vehicles to the participating companies. The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology will be contracted to oversee the project.
The trials will last at least one month for each bus company. Passengers taking part in the experiment will receive free or reduced fares. The buses will be made to operate as normally as possible so that issues with the technology can be identified from the perspectives of both the companies and passengers.
Local governments previously have rolled out automated mobility with compact buses. This program differs by using conventional midsized buses for the first time in Japan, and by recruiting major bus companies.
Over the past several years, bus companies operating in outlying areas have increasingly struggled to maintain the size of their fleets and routes as Japan's population ages and decreases. The acute lack of drivers amplifies the problem. The central government hopes driverless buses eventually can serve such locales.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan-puts-self-driving-transit-buses-to-the-test-next-year

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/-201728241 
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, five severe eye disease patients at risk of blindness have maintained their level of eyesight a year after receiving retina cells made from a donor’s induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, a Japanese study team determined.
The patients' positive condition provides the world's first confirmation that eye surgery using iPS cells from third-party donors can be safely performed, said a Riken research institute researcher, who led the project team.
“We finally climbed as far as the seventh stage,” said Masayo Takahashi, using a mountain-climbing analogy to describe the team's achievement, at the Japanese Ophthalmological Society's 123rd annual meeting.
The safety confirmation comes about 11 years after human-induced iPS cells were first created.
The third-party iPS cells allow patients to receive transplants quicker and cheaper than using stem cells created from the patients' own bodies.
The study by the Riken team and other entities, whose objective was to ascertain the safety of the surgery, found no major rejections, cancers or other abnormalities in cells transplanted to patients with age-related macular degeneration in the year following the surgery, Takahashi said.
The study showed that cells were successfully transplanted without developing into aggressive tumors. One patient showed a mild rejection but medication was able to alleviate it.
The team put about 250,000 retina cells, which were converted from third-party IPS cells, into solutions and transplanted them through injections into the eyes of five male patients in their 60s to 80s from March to September 2017.
The donors of the cells created for the iPS cell stock possess a special type of immune system that is unlikely to trigger a transplant rejection in most Japanese patients.
The five patients the team selected for the project have a match with this system.
It is extremely expensive to create iPS cells from a patient’s skin or blood cells and then produce the nerve cells or other cells the treatment requires.
Masahiro Kinooka, professor of biochemical engineering at Osaka University, said it is more realistic to create high-quality iPS cells made from the blood of healthy donors first and then increase the number of such cells to store them for commercial use.
A stock of various types of iPS cells allows doctors to choose ones that are a match for individual patients.
Currently, many clinical studies use iPS cells from third-party donors.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904190066.html

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/ips1 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group efforts to gain exposure to booming demand for battery metals remain focused on exploration but it has left the door open to buying into a established lithium project.
The cashed-up miner has been exploring for lithium in its iron ore heartland in Western Australia where Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources, Pilbara Minerals and Altura Mining already have lithium mines.
Fortescue has now turned its attention to Portugal, which makes up about 10 per cent of global supply, and applied for tenements covering about 7000 square kilometres it considers prospective for lithium.
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https://www.afr.com/business/mining/fortescue-iron-ore-prices-jump-47pc-20190418-p51f9g

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/1184021
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, using calculations from a math whiz, a Japanese team developed “microwave mammography” that offers painless breast cancer screenings that are more accurate and take only 10 minutes to complete.
The method involves sliding a device that emits microwaves on the surface of a patient’s breast to determine possible cancerous tumors and provide a 3-D image in an instant.
Mammograms are essential to detect breast cancer at an early stage, but the current method can fill women with dread.
Conventional mammography involves squeezing a breast between two plates and using X-rays that expose the patients to radiation.
It can be an excruciatingly painful experience.
In addition, the X-ray scans may miss cancer in patients with dense breast tissue, common among young women, because both mammary glands and cancer appear as white areas in images on a mammogram, according to experts.
The new method was spearheaded by Kenjiro Kimura, professor of chemical and condensed matter physics at Kobe University.
According to the team, microwave mammography allows technicians to find even a 0.5-millimeter cancerous tumor, a size that has been difficult to detect using conventional methods.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in Japan, and more than 14,000 women die from the disease every year.
Microwaves, which are used in microwave ovens and cellular phones, can pass through fat and mammary glands in the breast and reflect possible cancer tumors after colliding with them.
Taking advantage of such properties, the team said it could determine the location and the shape of cancers by transmitting a microwave of one-thousandth the power of the ones used in cellular phones.
Previously, no screening device using microwaves had been made because a tough question of an applied math theory had to first be solved.
Kimura, a specialist in applied physics, came up with a solution by tackling the conundrum in applied math: the inverse scattering problem.
When radio waves and acoustic waves are transmitted to an object, the waves scatter in every direction.
Leveraging such scattered waves, Kimura could determine the shape of specific objects. In 2012, he found the world’s first formula for solving such shape identification problems.
Through this formula, he developed a method to survey cracks and scratches of a tunnel using microwaves that bounce off the damaged parts.
The study was triggered by a 2012 accident in which concrete slabs fell from the ceiling of the Sasago tunnel on the Chuo Expressway in Yamanashi Prefecture. Nine people were killed after their cars were crushed by the slabs.
Kimura then turned his attention to screening for breast cancer.
Clinical studies with microwave mammography are currently under way at four medical institutions in Hyogo Prefecture.
“This technology can be used only for breasts, but nothing is better for cancer screening than this technology using microwaves,” Kimura said. An outside-the-box idea beyond common sense in medical treatment may make a difference in future breast cancer screening.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904170001.html

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/7437277

According to The Australian Financial Review, the boss of Australia's biggest paint maker, Dulux Group, says he wants to keep running the company after Japanese giant Nippon Paint's agreed $3.8 billion buyout, and claims the core business is largely immune from a housing downturn.
Nippon Paint, the No.1 paint company across Asia that employs 20,000 people around the world, made a surprise takeover bid at $9.80 per share recently. The shares immediately jumped 27 per cent to $9.75, indicating investors think it's a near certainty investors will approve the deal at meetings scheduled for July.
The move underlines the increasing appetite of growth-starved Japanese companies for well-run Australian businesses. In October, 2018 Commonwealth Bank sold Colonial First State Global Asset Management to Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group for $4.1 billion. Hitachi Construction Machinery bought heavy engineering group Bradken in 2017 in a $689 million takeover.
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https://www.afr.com/business/manufacturing/dulux-agrees-to-nippon-paints-3-8b-takeover-20190417-p51f41

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/3977912
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According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Toyota Motor and about 40 other leading Japanese companies will create a framework for sharing technologies and business ideas to spur innovation, joining a growing global trend for collaborative development.
Toyota and partners launch a consortium on April 15. Other participants include All Nippon Airways, brewery Asahi Group Holdings, trading house Itochu, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking and advertising agency Dentsu. Businesses competing in the same fields are welcomed to join as the organization aims to expand membership to 100 companies in 2020.
Japanese companies have traditionally taken a go-it-alone approach toward innovation, keeping new technologies and business ideas to themselves. The consortium represents the first large-scale attempt at so-called open innovation in Japan, a trend gaining traction abroad as revolutionary technologies grow increasingly elusive.
As early as May, company representatives in charge of new business ideas will start sharing relevant technologies and data. Those at other companies interested in the ideas will evaluate them, with their scaled grading converted into numerical results by an artificial intelligence program developed by Visits Technologies.
The companies believe that showing the potential of each business idea with a numerical grade will make it easier to find business partners or sell the technologies.
In particular, ANA is interested in businesses that can be offered to consumers upon arriving at airports. Asahi, meanwhile, wants to develop technologies used in environmental protection.
In other countries, top companies across different sectors, such as Intel and Disney, often collaborate in nurturing startups.
In China, search engine giant Baidu is leading the Apollo project to develop autonomous driving technology, recruiting more than 100 companies, including Intel and Honda Motor.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Location/East-Asia/Japan#page=8

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/409487059
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According to The Australian Financial Review, Propy, a real estate platform that enables the buying and selling of properties using fiat money and cryptocurrency, has closed its first blockchain-recorded residential land sales in Asia-Pacific.
The two sales in the St Moritz neighbourhood of Niseko in Japan were to Hong Kong investors.
The sales were struck as the blockchain-powered platform makes inroads into the Australian market.
Private owners in Sydney and Melbourne are also selling land and houses on Propy, asking that sales be completed using either standard currencies or cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Ripple and bitcoin. There have been no transactions completed yet.
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https://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/australians-selling-houses-and-land-with-cryptocurrencies-20190411-p51d6v

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/8227744 
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, a major housing manufacturer is touting its iron frame for houses that can withstand shocks four times greater than those suffered by houses in Kobe during the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.
Panasonic Homes Co. in Japan conducted a test in its plant here for the media, in which a one-ton iron ball struck the iron frame of a house.
Although a conventional brace was bent, the vibration control equipment developed by the firm suffered no problems. The equipment is utilized in vibration control technologies used in high-rise buildings.
The frame will be installed in houses to be put on sale on April 13 under the name “Bousai-Jizokuryoku o Sonaeru Ie” (House equipped with enduring strength against disasters).
The houses will also have storage batteries and a water storage tank that can hold three days of drinking water for a family of four.
In addition, the houses will be equipped with “Home X” functions that connect household electric appliances and housing devices with the Internet. As a result, for example, shutters will be automatically shut when violent wind warnings are issued.
For a house with a total floor space of 120 square meters, the construction costs will be about 29 million yen (US$ 259,200), excluding tax.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904120068.html

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/1ok
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, to enhance “omotenashi” (hospitality), McDonald’s Japan on April 10 started new services that will help customers avoid waiting in line or balancing their food precariously on trays.
The fast-food giant deploying special staff members at its 75 outlets in Shizuoka Prefecture and plans to cover 1,500 restaurants, or half of its outlets in Japan, by the end of this year.
The staff members help customers choose their food items before they get in line at the counter and guide the customers to their seats. The staff members will then bring the orders to the customers’ tables.
An average of five omotenashi workers will be stationed at each outlet on a rotation basis.
In another new service that removes the need to place orders and receive meals over the counter, customers can place advance orders through a smartphone app, as well as specify the preferred outlet and the time they want their meals served.
Although the food-service industry is known to promote labor-saving in customer service, McDonald’s Japan will hire additional staff in an effort to increase contact with customers and raise the number of visitors to its restaurants.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904100069.html

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/1926988 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, cross-border payments start-up Airwallex has become the quickest company in Australian history to achieve so-called unicorn status, with a $US1 billion valuation, after closing a $US100 million ($141.3 million) funding round.
The round, led by US investor DST Global, which has also backed the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify and Stripe, makes Airwallex the third Aussie company to become a unicorn in the last 18 months.
It was founded in late 2015 by its chief executive, Jack Zhang, alongside three University of Melbourne friends and a former partner in a coffee shop. Mr Zhang was raised in Qingdao, China, before moving to Australia in his mid-teens for high school.
Airwallex has created a payments infrastructure that enables businesses to manage cross-border payments easily and cheaply, and has grown to employ 260 people, while raising more than $US200 million in capital.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/airwallex-becomes-the-fastest-aussie-unicorn-after-us100m-raise-20190322-h1covg

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/airwallex-1 
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