According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Cyborg technology to restore bodily functions that have declined due to aging, technology to eliminate industrial waste from the Earth's environment, and artificial hibernation are among 25 areas the Japanese government aims to support, Nikkei has learned.
Tokyo will invite research proposals in these selected areas and choose which it will support for up to a decade, with a budget of 100 billion yen (US$921 million) for the first five years, a government source said.
The research and development program aims to attract researchers in both Japan and abroad by demonstrating Tokyo's enthusiasm in promoting ambitious scientific efforts to tackle major issues, including the declining birthrate and aging population, as well as to develop new industries around the technologies these efforts create.
The program, for instance, will seek to realize a cyborg technology that can replace human bodily functions using robotics or living organisms by 2050.
To address the country's growing labor shortage, the program will seek to develop technologies to completely automate work and eliminate the need for human intervention in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, as well as on construction sites, by 2040.
Japan plans to recycle all emissions and waste generated from industrial activities by 2050, in an effort to strike a balance between environmental restoration and humanity's development. The government aims to help eliminate pollution on the planet by 2050 by developing technology to automatically collect and recycle ocean plastic.
The draft of the program sets out 25 areas for candidate moonshot projects in the themes of declining birthrate and aging population, environmental conservation, and "frontier development" using science and technology.
The 25 project areas have been given individual deadlines for achieving their goals, from 2035 to 2060.
They will be ranked in order of priority and the government plans to start inviting submissions for research proposals as early as the end of this year.
It will tap into new industrial fields based on technical innovations, including the development of digitization and artificial intelligence. The country aims to develop AI robot systems that automatically detect Nobel Prize-worthy scientific discoveries by 2050.
The country also aims to establish artificial hibernation technology by 2050, with the aim of applying the mechanism of hibernation in animals to humans. It is believed that periodic hibernation will help humans achieve greater longevity, among other things.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Tokyo-readies-1bn-for-cyborg-and-waste-elimination-research

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/25-51000

According to The Australian Financial Review, Sydney and Melbourne have recorded positive house price growth for the second month in a row following almost two years of continuous falls, as a lack of stock prompts bursts of vigorous buyer competitiveness across the two cities.
Five of the eight capital cities recorded a subtle increase in property values over July, rising 0.2 per cent in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, 0.3 per cent in Hobart and 0.4 per cent in Darwin, according to CoreLogic's latest hedonic home value index.
Low stock levels followed by a catalyst for buyer demand to stimulate the market is what prompts a market recovery, CoreLogic's head of research Tim Lawless said.
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https://www.afr.com/property/residential/house-prices-rise-for-second-month-in-a-row-20190731-p52co7

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/26716658 
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According to The Nikkei Asian Review, a record number of women have joined Japan's workforce, which is good news for a country struggling with a labor shortage. But many women are taking part-time jobs, reflecting the difficulty of getting Japan's highly educated female workers into productive positions.
There were 30.03 million women working in June, the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced on Tuesday, the first time that figure has risen above the 30 million mark. Last month, 530,000 people joined the workforce, about 90% of which were women. The unemployment rate was 2.3%, down 0.1 of a percentage point from the previous month.
Japan's workforce totaled 67.47 million people, 44.5% of which were women. That is up 2.6 percentage points from 2009. The labor forces in most major Western countries were about 46% to 47% female in 2018, according to the World Bank. In South Korean and China, the numbers were 42.1% and 43.6% respectively.
Japan has been grappling with the so-called "M curve," in which graphics showing the female labor participation rate by age form an M as women around 30 leave work to get married or give birth before returning later on. But that dip in female participation looks to be disappearing, thanks in part to efforts to strengthen parental leave.
Breaking female workers down by age, the increase in employees aged 65 and older stands out. In June there were 3.59 million such workers, up from a monthly average of 1.45 million in 2009.
But as a percentage, only 17.7% of women 65 and older were working, compared with 34.3% of male seniors. As Japan's population continues to age and the labor shortage continues, more senior women are likely to enter the workforce.
Among women aged 15 to 64, 71.3% were employed, a record level and up 1.9 percentage points from June 2018. 50.5% of women 15 to 24 were working, a higher rate than men the same age. 78.1% of women 25 to 34 were working, and 77.8% of women 35 to 44 had jobs. Those figures are up more than 10 percentage points from a decade ago.
But while more women are joining the workforce, many of them are entering part-time or non-career jobs. Among female employees, 55% are in "irregular" positions, which are typically not career-track jobs. That figure is 23% for men.
Women also occupy a small share of executive positions compared with other countries. In Japan, women held 12.9% of management jobs in 2016, according to the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training, a government-affiliated research organization. That compares with 43.8% in the U.S. and 32.9% in France.
Lifelong employment and long working hours are still common in Japan. Women who need flexibility or shorter hours to give birth and raise children are still at a disadvantage when it comes to climbing the corporate ladder.
But as the population continues to shrink, more diverse ways of working will be necessary to deal with labor shortages and ensure stable economic growth. Promoting workers based upon ability rather than seniority will also help talented women compete with men.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-sees-record-number-of-women-working-but-challenges-remain

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/3000-6

According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Japanese developer Mitsubishi Estate and its partners are planning to set up phone booth-sized offices at airports and train stations to provide work space to the country's growing legions of remote workers.
The property developer will start a new company as early as next month with videoconferencing software maker V-Cube and office furniture maker Okamura, the co-developers of the so-called Telecube. The plan is to build 1,000 tiny offices, which are designed to be rented by the hour, throughout the country over the next four to five years.
Remote work is on the rise in Japan and is expected to continue to grow, spurred in part by hopes that it can help alleviate expected transit congestion when Tokyo hosts the Olympics next summer.
The booths are 2 meters tall with a floor space that measures just over 1 sq meter. They are wired for IT services and come equipped with a desk and chair.
The booths will be rolled out first in the lobbies of office buildings and commercial facilities operated by Mitsubishi Estate. The partners are also in talks to have them set up in buildings run by other developers, as well as at public transit stations and airports.
Having widespread micro-offices become would make it easier for people to work near home or while on business trips. The cubes also avoid the pitfalls of working in cafes or shared offices, such as a lack of privacy and noisy surroundings.
In November 2018, Mitsubishi Estate began renting out private offices by the hour on a trial basis in its buildings. It currently operates about 20 such offices across 10 locations in the Tokyo area.
Fellow developers Mitsui Fudosan and Tokyu Land are working to set up shared office spaces. But progress has been slow, in part because shared offices tend to rack up greater operational costs than regular office buildings. The work booths, by contrast, are simple to set up, letting Mitsubishi Estate and its partners keep costs down while seeking more locations.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Need-to-work-on-the-fly-Japan-has-a-phone-booth-office-for-that

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/1000 
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According to The Australian Financial Review, BHP has given a downbeat view on lithium as it pushes ahead with development of a new nickel sulphate plant aimed at meeting what it predicts will be a "profound" increase in demand from the battery sector.
The company's born-again nickel division was on the chopping block until recently, but in May, chief executive Andrew Mackenzie said it was back in favour because it afforded extra exposure to the battery boom.
BHP Nickel West asset president Eddy Haegel revealed on Friday that the boss's backing for nickel came after the company had considered cobalt and lithium options and opted to pass on them.
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https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/born-again-bhp-nickel-unit-eyes-battery-market-20190802-p52d62

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/bhp5018022
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According to The Nikkei Asian Review, Japanese engineering company IHI said Thursday it will soon conduct an extended pilot test on a turbine system that catches ocean currents and turn them into electricity, the first large-scale attempt to harness such ocean energy.
IHI unveiled a 30-ton prototype that will be capable of generating 100 kW of energy from rear propellers. The test will take place as soon as this fall and last for over a year.
The company will commercialize the technology as early as fiscal 2021. The aim is to set up a underwater current farm with a generation capacity of 200 MW, enough to power 3,000 households, by fiscal 2030, and keep building the farms at a pace of one a year.
The generator will be transported from a facility in Yokohama in early August and arrive at a location 10 km off the coast of Kuchinoshima, an island off Kagoshima Prefecture in southern Japan. The floating unit will be tethered 100 meters deep in the ocean, with the power generated to be transported through an underwater cable.
The generator will feed off the Kuroshio current, a Pacific current that goes up along the Japanese coast. "Kuroshio is one of the world's strongest currents and a promising energy source," said Shigeki Nagaya, IHI's development manager overseeing the project.
The operating efficiency of ocean-current power generation is said to be between 50% and 70%, higher than the 30-40% for offshore wind farms, or the 10-15% for solar-power generators.
IHI developed the generator with the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, or NEDO, a Japanese public-sector organization.
The cost to make a unit is estimated at 1 billion yen (US$9.25 million). It takes 40 yen to generate one kilowatt at a small operation, but that is expected to shrink to around 20 yen for a large-scale farm built in fiscal 2030 or later.
IHI has high hopes for a market it is trying to create. "We foresee an operation worth hundreds of billions of yen," said Nagaya. The company anticipates expansion into other areas like the U.S. East Coast or Taiwan.
NEDO estimates that Kuroshio packs about 200 GW of potential energy. The organization has pioneered the underwater floating generator, and generators powered by oceanic tides have been embedded in sea floors off the coast of Scotland, among other places. The makers of these devices could emerge as rivals.
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Electricity-from-ocean-currents-Japanese-company-to-begin-experiment

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/ihi
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According to The Australian Financial Review, Australia will need to develop a domestic hydrogen sector if it wants to capitalise on its huge potential as an exporter, amid competition from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Chile, which are also eagerly eyeing a potential $US2 trillion global market by 2050, said Pierre-Etienne Franc, secretary of the Hydrogen Council.
Mr Franc, who is also vice-president at Air Liquide, pointed to captive and back-to-base transport fleets, such as those used at mining sites, among the sectors that could be suitable for the early adoption of hydrogen fuel within Australia, while acknowledging the obvious major infrastructure hurdles in the way of a wider uptake of hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars.
Australia also needs to bring other countries alongside it in developing the hydrogen market, helping to foster use of the potential export markets of Japan and South Korea, and  to work with the industry internationally to develop and harmonise international standards for hydrogen products, he said during a visit this week to Australia.
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https://www.afr.com/business/energy/blessed-australia-needs-broader-effort-on-hydrogen-20190722-p529mj

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/4305830 
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, just 17 centimeters tall, a durable competitor on Aug. 7 will attempt to eclipse the Olympic record for the triathlon at the event’s venue for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games.
But he will receive some help, namely from a shortened course, two partners and two AA-size dry cell batteries.
Panasonic Corp.’s robot, named Mr. Evolta Neo, will take the challenge in Tokyo’s Odaiba district, the major electronic appliance maker said on June 28.
The triathlon is a grueling endurance race that consists of three components: swimming, cycling and running. The Olympic record is one hour, 45 minutes and one second.
Panasonic plans to prepare three different Mr. Evolta Neo robots, one for each leg of the course at the 2020 Olympic venue.
However, the same two AA-size dry cell batteries will be used in all three robots.
The height of the robots is about one-10th of that for an adult male, so the distances for the race components will be reduced by 90 percent to 150 meters for swimming, 4 kilometers for cycling and 1 km for running.
Since 2008, Panasonic has put its Evolta series of batteries to challenges every year to show their endurance and other qualities.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201907210012.html

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/24436038 
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According to The Asahi Shimbun, Visceral Fat Fighter (Naishi Support), a diet supplement targeted to both men and women, has proved to be a huge hit for natural beauty-care product company Fancl Corp., known for its additive-free cosmetics in Japan.
The Yokohama-based firm released the product in 2017, which Fancl says works to improve intestinal health by featuring two kinds of active bifidobacteria.
Bifidobacteria is sometimes used as probiotics, live bacteria in items such as yogurt that benefit health, particularly the digestive system.
The supplement was found to reduce obese people's visceral fat and subcutaneous fat in the company’s clinical trials.
The slimming supplement has been labeled a health food in the category “Foods with Function Claims,” a certification issued by the governmental Consumer Affairs Agency.
Taking preventive measures to fight obesity, which increases the risk to health is a global challenge.
Fancl won the hearts of middle-aged men looking to lose weight and 10,000 packs of the fat burner were sold within the first month it was available on the market. It was an unexpected boon for Fancl, founded as a cosmetics company, which had struggled to attract male customers.
Visceral Fat Fighter originally took in 400 million yen (US$3.7 million) in fiscal 2017 when Fancl released it.
But after Fancl ran ads for it featuring a male actor, sales soared to 4.3 billion yen in fiscal 2018, more than double the expected amount.
“Studies of bifidobacteria, which increases short-chain fatty acids that improves the intestinal environment and facilitates fat burning, have progressed further in recent years," said Kota Nakagawa, 45, a member of Fancl’s research center of Foods with Function Claims.
Bifidobacteria has a poor defense against heat and acid. Consuming a lot of it just causes it to mostly die in the stomach.
Based on the company's policy stressing “efficacy in the body,” Nakagawa researched how to allow live bifidobacteria to reach the bowels so it can work there.
“It's meaningless if bifidobacteria doesn’t function in the body,” Nakagawa said.
In a trial using enteric-coated capsules, which don’t melt in the stomach, stomach acid entered the capsules and killed the bifidobacteria. A prior technique where capsules were coated also risked raising the temperature and killing the bacteria.
Nakagawa's breakthrough in figuring out the process came after he was drenched in a downpour while out riding his bicycle. He noticed that the bike’s chain didn't get wet since it was coated with oil. Oil rejects water. A simple truth.
Fancl then patented a pharmaceutical technique to coat bifidobacteria with edible fat and oil, and neutralize stomach acid entering it with calcium.
The supplement costs 3,888 yen, including tax, which covers use for a period of 30 days.
Yoshimi Igarashi, 38, a Fancl marketing division official, said that since bifidobacteria is expensive, the firm considered selling it for close to 5,000 yen.
“But in the 4,000-yen range it would give the impression of being a luxury as we are aiming to keep it affordable,” said Igarashi.
The firm was able to lower the price to under 4,000 yen by squeezing the amount of the bifidobacteria in the supplement's capsules made possible because more of the bacteria reaches the intestines.
Fancl then pitched the product, emphasizing its ability to retain bifidobacteria in the stomach.
Supplements to prevent obesity usually feature images of slim women on the package. But the Visceral Fat Fighter package bears a unisex character colored green, a look that the company hopes will set it apart from cosmetics the firm usually sells aimed at women.
“We hope men won't hesitate to buy it,” said Igarashi.
Fancl, founded in 1980, has two business pillars--non-additive cosmetics and nutritional supplements focusing on “efficacy in the body.”
The firm with 1,018 employees develops products domestically and outside Japan. It had sales of 122.4 billion yen in fiscal 2018.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201907270005.html

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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/4262007

According to The Australian Financial Review, Anglo American has reiterated its faith in Australian coking coal with a commitment to spend $US226 million ($324 million) reviving a Queensland mine that was a victim of the global financial crisis.
More than 10 years after it was suspended because of concerns about the health of the global economy, Anglo's Aquila hard coking coal mine is finally set to return with a different mining method.
The project is expected to have a total capital cost of about $400 million, with Japanese giant Mitsui set to fund 30 per cent of the project that Anglo is not funding, in line with its minority ownership stake.
The decision highlights the strength of coking coal prices, with hard coking coal from Queensland fetching an average of $US205 per tonne in the first six months of 2019.
Macquarie expects the steelmaking ingredient to fetch higher than $US150 per tonne until 2024 at the earliest.

https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/anglo-and-mitsui-in-400m-australian-coal-boost-20190725-p52ar1
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https://www.j-abc.com/jp-blog/6172473