According to The Australian Financial Review, an insurance offering for gig economy workers and a new visual detection technology are among the first Australian companies funded by international incubator Antler, which plucks entrepreneurs from their day job for a tilt at start-up success.
The start-up "generator's" Australian outpost, which launched in March, has finalised its first 12 companies, where the fledgling entrepreneurs leave their jobs and get an $8000 stipend for their first two months, as they set about starting a new company.
The companies aim to get pre-seed investment $100,000 and a further seed investment at the end of the program.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/start-up-generator-funds-12-australian-companies-20190809-p52fin

If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/6177056
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According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Marubeni plans to manufacture clothing made from recycled materials starting next year, tapping the fiber-recycling technologies of an American startup that it is poised to invest in.
The Japanese trading house will take a roughly 1 billion yen ($9.4 million) interest in Virginia-based Tyton BioSciences, which has developed a way to recycle polyester and poly-cotton blends into the building blocks of polyester.
Amid growing interest in environmental, social and governance investment principles, major apparel makers are expanding offerings of eco-friendly products. Development of green materials is becoming more important for trading houses that provide clothing under manufacturing contracts.
Tyton aims to begin commercial production of recycled fiber sometime in 2020, with Marubeni planning to use the materials.
Fellow Japanese trading house Itochu began recommending materials made from recycled polyester to apparel companies in June, and these are expected to be adopted next spring. The company has been developing eco-friendly materials, having decided in 2018 to build a pilot plant for recycled fiber with a Finnish partner.
Fast Retailing, the Japanese company behind the Uniqlo casualwear brand, and Zara owner Inditex of Spain have pushed for the use of Earth-friendly shopping bags and packaging. Now the green movement is reaching clothing materials.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Marubeni-teams-with-US-startup-to-recycle-fiber-for-clothing

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/7217418 
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According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Japan's core private-sector machinery orders saw the largest increase on record in June thanks to strong demand from the transport industry, government data showed last week.
The orders, which exclude ships and those placed by electric utilities due to their volatility, rose 13.9 percent from the previous month, the most since comparable data became available in April 2005. They totaled 960.3 billion yen (US$9.0 billion), the largest amount since last August.
The Cabinet Office maintained its assessment that the orders, seen as a leading indicator of capital expenditure, are showing "signs of picking up."
An official who briefed reporters said while the data showed solid domestic demand, the office had taken into consideration that the record increase followed a 7.8 percent decrease in May.
"The data is prone to swing from month to month, so we take that into account," she said, adding that impact from the trade war between the United States and China was unclear.
Four big-ticket orders for railway cars significantly boosted the figures, pushing up demand from the transport industry, the official said.
Orders from nonmanufacturers, minus ships and those from electric utilities, soared 30.5 percent to 614.7 billion yen, also pushed up by the financial and information service sectors.
From manufacturers, meanwhile, orders fell 1.7 percent to 364.4 billion yen amid weak demand from makers of telecommunications equipment and production machinery.
Orders from overseas, seen as a bellwether of future exports, were up 6.7 percent to 855.5 billion yen, while overall orders including from the public sector were up 6.3 percent to 2.35 trillion yen.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-machinery-orders-see-record-rise-in-June

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/6139 
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, Japanese researchers have upturned the conventional belief that collagen breaks down with age, a finding that is expected to help uncover the mechanism behind the skin's flexibility and advance research on anti-aging.
The researchers, mainly from Kyoto University, found that collagen, a fibrous protein related to the skin's elasticity and firmness, is arranged in a mesh-like pattern, rather than being randomly organized.
“The structure of collagen does not break owing to aging," said team member Shin Saito, a Kyoto University lecturer specializing in plastic surgery. "The skin loses elasticity for other reasons."
The study was published in the British journal Scientific Reports on July 23.
Skin has the dermis, a layer below the surface that plays a key role in protecting the body.
It has been conventionally thought that collagen, a major component of the dermis, is randomly arranged because the protein appears disorganized when observed under an electronic microscope.
However, the team believes that the structure of collagen has yet to be fully observed until now owing to the sagging of the dermis and other factors.
The researchers used surplus dermis obtained from medical operations such as skin transplantation for the study, stretching it into a circular shape like the skin of a Japanese drum and making it transparent using a special chemical. They then analyzed how collagen fibers are organized using a laser microscope.
When examining the dermis in skin from the thighs of six men and women aged between their 40s and 80s, it was found that collagen fibers were arranged in a mesh-like pattern.
While the protein is considered to deteriorate with age, the study team's analysis showed that collagen's structure was maintained even in the skin of elderly people.
Saito said that determining the dermis' structure could further anti-aging and skin regeneration research.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201908140012.html

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/5103360 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, tourism jobs have grown 34 per cent in the past 10 years, leapfrogging the transport sector and wholesale industry, underlining its growing importance to the economy.
Tourist spending grew for the ninth year in a row to reach $143 billion a year, an increase of $50 billion in the past decade, according to new figures from Austrade. As a result tourism now employs almost 1 million people – or 1 in 13 of Australia's workforce.
The rapid growth of the tourism sector across all states and territories means it is close to overtaking the manufacturing sector in terms of total jobs created.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/tourism/tourism-now-employs-one-in-13-australians-20190815-p52hbv

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/1316170395
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According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Toyota Motor has brought its successful kaizen philosophy, which focuses on continuous improvements in efficiency, to agriculture. The company launched its Hosaku Keikaku service -- meaning a plan for a bountiful harvest -- in 2014, and it has spread to 90 farms across the country.
It could be key to helping Japan's aging farmers in the face of a severe labor shortage. Agriculture has a particularly difficult time attracting workers, in part due to the long hours and the perception that farmers do not have flexibility in taking time off.
But an incorporated farm named One in the city of Kanazawa on the country's northwestern coast was able to implement a five-day workweek earlier this year after introducing Toyota's service.
There are two main parts to the system. One is a cloud-based system in which workers collect data about individual fields and rice paddies using smartphones. The other involves employees from Toyota coming to farms and identifying practices that are wasteful or inefficient.
At One, things started with clearing clutter from the workplace. Equipment that had been left on the floor was placed on shelves with spaces labeled for each tool. Casters were affixed to boxes filled with lotus roots, and direction arrows were painted on the floor. These simple steps made the work easier and safer.
After that, attention turned to core farm management. One of the most effective changes was altering how orders came in. Previously, if for example the farm planned to harvest 300kg of lotus root and an extra order for 50kg came in late, the field workers would need to rework their plans, which created stress and confusion. On Toyota's advice, the farm started asking customers to submit orders two days in advance.
Data management also helped things run more smoothly. Demand for lotus root surges in December, when people prepare traditional dishes for New Year celebrations. Before introducing Toyota's system, One would be overwhelmed with orders that exceeded their harvest capacity. Workers now harvest ahead of time based on the previous year's order data. The farm also installed a large refrigerator to store crops waiting to be shipped.
These improvements created enough breathing room for workers to take more days off. After shifting schedules around, the farm was able to introduce a five-day workweek, and shifts are generally limited to eight hours.
"We didn't even know what we were putting in overtime for," said Yoshitaka Miyano, One's vice president, recalling the days when working extra hours was just part of the routine.
An important point in the process was shifting the goal to higher hourly wages, rather than more days off. Under the new goal, the farm sought to boost revenue by limiting working hours and expanding operations. Miyano and other staff came to enjoy identifying problems that had not been pointed out by the Toyota staff.
Many Japanese farms lack successors as aging farmers start to retire. Farms have traditionally been family businesses that relied on labor from family members. But with fewer people interested in agriculture, farmers now need to hire workers to keep operations going. That means taking some of the toil out of farming to make it a more attractive career option.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Agriculture/Toyota-brings-kaizen-production-philosophy-to-Japan-s-ailing-farms

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/5299545
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According to The Australian Financial Review, Sydney base start-up company, OpenSparkz, has built a loyalty platform that allows consumers to link their loyalty schemes to their credit card.
For the shopper, a purchase becomes a two-stage process, requiring them to fish around in their wallet for their loyalty card or find its digital equivalent on their phone.
For the retailer, it means added complexity. They usually have to install some kind of data capture system at the point of sale to recognise the card and capture the valuable customer data.
“Then they pay with that card and get the reward automatically. So it turns a two-step process that's high friction into a one-step process,” says McMullen. “They simply pay, get a real-time message to their phone to say, you are entitled to a discount or some frequent flyer points, whatever it might be.”
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https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/startup-links-loyalty-schemes-20190806-p52eic

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/5461539
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese research team has developed trailblazing technology that allows for direct visualization of nerve activity in parts of the body outside the brain, paving the way for more accurate diagnosis of neural disorders.
Ricoh Co., Tokyo Medical and Dental University and the Kanazawa Institute of Technology said that preparations have been completed to commercialize magnetospinography technology for use in the diagnosis of neuralgia and other nerve conditions.
The first-of-its-kind medical equipment is expected to be released within two years, the team announced.
"We expect treatment precision to drastically improve by directly monitoring nerve activity," said Shigenori Kawabata, a specially appointed professor of spine surgery at Tokyo Medical and Dental University.
Magnetospinography uses a sensor to observe slight magnetic fields generated by electric signals in nerves responsible for bodily movement and conveying sensory information from limbs to the brain, according to the announcement.
The measured strengths and routes of neural signals can be visualized through graphs and other means.
Magnetospinography can be used for diagnosis of not only a sore back, disk herniation and spinal cord disorders, but also conditions associated with limb nerves, according to the researchers.
Through conventional methods, patients believed to be suffering from neural problems typically undergo MRI analysis to confirm diagnosis. However, this only allows doctors to estimate nerve activity, the scientists said.
Tokyo Medical and Dental University and the Kanazawa Institute of Technology in 1999 started developing the dedicated sensor and carrying out clinical trials of magnetospinography. Ricoh joined the project in 2014.
Looking to make the technology commercially available within two years, they are planning to release the equipment in Japan and the United States as an initial step.
If sales of the new medical device start as planned, it will be the world’s first product to monitor neural activity outside the brain, according to the researchers.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201908090006.html

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/-28723084
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp. showed a "flying car," a large drone-like machine with four propellers that hovered steadily for about a minute.
The test flight reaching 3 meters high was held in a gigantic cage, as a safety precaution, at an NEC facility in a Tokyo suburb. The preparations such as the repeated checks on the machine and warnings to reporters to wear helmets took up more time than the two brief demonstrations.
The Japanese government is behind flying cars, with the goal of having people zipping around in them by the 2030s.
Among the government-backed endeavors is a huge test course for flying cars that's built in an area devastated by the 2011 tsunami, quake and nuclear disasters in Fukushima in northeastern Japan. Mie, a prefecture in central Japan that's frequently used as a resort area by Hollywood celebrities, also hopes to use flying cars to connect its various islands.
Similar projects are popping up around world, such as Uber Air of the United States.
A flying car by Japanese startup Cartivator crashed quickly in a 2017 demonstration. Cartivator Chief Executive Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who was at Monday's demonstration, said their machines were also flying longer lately.
NEC is among the more than 80 sponsor companies for Cartivator's flying car, which also include Toyota Motor Corp. group companies and video game company Bandai Namco Holdings.
The goal is to deliver a seamless transition from driving to flight like the world of "Back to the Future," although huge hurdles remain such as battery life, the need for regulations and safety concerns.
NEC officials said their flying car was designed for unmanned flights for deliveries but utilized the company's technology in its other operations such as space travel and cybersecurity.
Often called EVtol, for "electric vertical takeoff and landing" aircraft, a flying car is defined as an aircraft that's electric, or hybrid electric, with driverless capabilities, that can land and takeoff vertically.
All of the flying car concepts, which are like drones big enough to hold humans, promise to be better than helicopters. Helicopters are expensive to maintain, noisy to fly and require trained pilots. Flying cars also are being touted as useful for disaster relief.
U.S. ride-sharing and transportation network Uber is planning demonstrator flights in 2020 and commercial operations in 2023, and has chosen Dallas, Los Angeles and Melbourne as the first cities to offer what it calls Uber Air flights.
Dubai has also been aggressive about pursuing flying cars. Japanese officials say Japan has a good chance of emerging as a world leader because the government and the private sector will work closely together.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201908050037.html
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If you want to read this article in Japanese, please see the following link:
https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/nec
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According to The Australian Financial Review, electric vehicle fast charging station company Tritium is embarking on a $30 million capital raising to fuel robust growth in demand from Europe and the United States for a company now valued at $330 million.
Tritium, with headquarters in Brisbane, already has global giant Gilbarco Veeder-Root as one of its major shareholders after that group injected $58 million into the company last year for a 19.3 per cent stake.
Tritium chief executive David Finn said the growth rates in the sector were accelerating fast as electric vehicle take-up rose, particularly in Europe.
Vehicle owners wanted stations with the ability to charge their vehicles quickly. The Veefil fast-charger gave an extra 100km-plus of range from a 20-minute hook-up. The fund raising is timed to ensure production could keep up with demand, which had more than doubled in the past year.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/tritium-raises-30m-for-charging-stations-20190807-p52em3

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