In another beautiful display of reducing the packaging of a product in an innovated way Kamakura-komachi is now storing tofu in balloons. A simple poke of a toothpick and the packaging ‘pops’. The world can take a lesson from Japanese companies on these notes.
The Sayama Forest was the inspiration for Totoro. The bad news is that it is under thread for development.The good news is that over 200 of the top international artists from print to animation are donating artwork for the cause. You, too, can help by donating. Besides, the site contains a wonderful gallery of works that have already been donated.
If it was naturally occurring there wouldn’t be a gray area around here about whether cross-breeding should break the rules.
A 21-leaf clover discovered on June 3 by Iwate prefecture farmer Shigeo Obara has shattered the Guinness world record for most leaves on a clover stem (Trifolium repens L.). The current official record is held by an 18-leaf clover that Obara found in his garden in May 2002.
The record-breaking clover’s 21 leaves each measure about 1 centimeter long and overlap each other like rose petals on a 3-centimeter stem.
Obara, a former food crop researcher, has been conducting independent research on clovers in his garden for over 50 years. He first became interested in clover mutations after discovering an unusual patch of 4-leaf clovers in 1951. Since then, Obara has been crossbreeding the plants in his garden to research the genes associated with leaf count, color, pattern and size.
In another example of how science is awesome scientists made the worlds smallest noodle bowl.
Japanese scientists have made it more difficult to watch what you eat. They created a ramen bowl so small, it can only be seen with a microscope. The engineers carved the bowl out of microscopic nanotubes, and put a microscopic serving of noodles inside.
Link (there is an audio link of you follow it over)