Yokohama National University professor emeritus Akira Miyawaki, who to date has planted over 40 million trees in 1,700 locations in Japan and overseas, is continuing his tree planting activities not only in Japan but also on twice monthly overseas trips. "After 60-plus years of local research, currently in areas inhabited by 92.8% of Japan's population of 128 million, the remaining evergreen forests consisting of deep and straight-rooted trees including shrine forests only make up 0.6% of Japanese land." Iwanumi City...

This camera system can track very fast moving objects, keeping them in the center of the screen at all times. Currently under development by the Ishikawa Oku Lab. at the University of Tokyo, this latest version captures Full HD video and can be used outdoors. "Ordinarily, to change the direction a camera faces, you move the camera mechanically. But in this system, it's not the camera that moves, it's the mirrors. This makes it possible to change where you're looking...

This multi-viewpoint robotic camera system, under development by NHK, links the motion of eight sub-cameras to that of an individual camera, so that all the cameras film the same moving object. "Using this system, you can create the effect of stopping time, and moving the viewpoint all around the subject." "Previous methods used a fixed camera, so they could only capture subjects moving in a narrow or limited space. But this multi-viewpoint robot camera system can film dynamically moving sports,...

With the aim of implementing a television service which allows viewers to touch virtual objects, NHK is developing a tactile system which applies stimuli to five points on one finger, making objects feel more real than when using previous systems. "This device assists people with a visual disability, through what's called the tactile or kinesthetic sense. It communicates a 3D shape or 2D graph of an object shown on a TV, such as a work of art, as a sensation...