SciSchmoozing Around Japan

29 March 2026

Greetings again, friends of science,
科学を愛する皆さん、改めてご挨拶申し上げます。

Tidbit: The population of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area is about the same as California’s.

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“They lie.”

That was the Australian’s response when i mentioned that nearly all meteorologists concur that global warming is happening. Rather than dispute this, i merely pointed out that scientists are focussed mostly on understanding how things ‘work’, not on picking sides. Then i quickly changed the subject and we enjoyed a good long conversation.

This exchange occurred during our ongoing tour of Japan and South Korea. Besides drinking in art, history, customs, architecture, geography, and non-alcoholic Asahi, i notice the cars. Most of the cars in Japan are diminutive kei cars [from keijidōsha (軽自動車) which translates to “light automobile”] with their quirky model names: ‘Aqua’, ‘Roomy’, ‘Note’, ‘Every’, ‘Freed’, ‘Move’. Overwhelmingly they are gasoline- or hybrid-powered. Less than 2% of new car sales in Japan are EVs; compared to 50% in Finland & China, and 25% in Germany. In the United States, EV sales reached 10% of new car sales before the Trump Administration. That is now down to 5%.

As is true in Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., the fossil fuel industry is highly involved in politics and discourages the transition to EVs and renewable energy sources. But like our 50 States have different energy policies, Japan’s Akita Prefecture has invested massively in renewables: offshore wind, solar, biomass, recycling, Green Hydrogen.

South Korea is another interesting exception. 20% of new car sales in South Korea are EVs in spite of the enormous pressure from their fossil fuel industry. Also, South Korea is on schedule to shut down all of their coal-fired power plants by 2040. The Australian coal mining industry will lose 1.2 billion dollars per year because of South Korea’s shift.

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SPACE

I posted the above NASA photo on February 2nd because they were scheduled to blast off the following Sunday on a trip around the Moon. Problems with an oxygen valve delayed the launch. GOOD THING!  Engineers later discovered a faulty helium valve would have caused the second stage to fail. The crew is now back in quarantine and could rocket into space as early as April 1st.

¿When will astronauts again walk on the Moon? That is expected in 2028 – if all goes well.

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ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHAEOLOGY

“Naked” implies a natural state of being without clothing. ¿When did we stop being naked? This 9-minute video presents some of the difficulties in answering this question. 

“Nudity” refers to an intentional display of the body that is proscribed in public places.  In 1935, several men protested the laws against going barechested in public by exposing their chests on the beaches of Atlantic City. They were arrested. In early 1937 a New York judge ruled that men had the right to go topless. The American “Nipple Revolution” in the summer of 1937 normalized men baring their chests.

You are likely familiar with the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles. [While there, don’t miss the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Petersen Car Museum.] Over 600 species of animals have been recovered from the tar pits – including a human, the “La Brea Woman”. Here’s a 15-minute podcast about this person.

We humans transitioned from “hunter-gatherers” to an agricultural economy in numerous ways around this planet. One form of this transition included learning how to turn hunting into an industry. Rather than downing one antelope, humans killed dozens at a time and traded the excess meat to other communities. Here is a video about one hunting technique that was industrial in scale.  A deeper excursion into an example of our species’ transition is well-told in this PBS NOVA program: Stone Age Temple Mystery.

Recent findings suggest that people quickly adopted dogs as companions across Europe and northern Asia beginning 15,800 years ago, likely when ‘loyalty’ to humans was successfully selected for. And puppies are so cute!

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BIOLOGY / ETHOLOGY

Scientists used data from a synchrotron particle accelerator in Germany to make 3D images of over 2,000 ant species. You’ve never seen ants like this before.

South Korea just made it illegal to keep bears for extraction of their bile. ¿Bear bile? It has an ingredient that is helpful in treating some conditions such as gall stones. Pharmaceutical chemists have synthesized substances that work as well and better. Also, animal rights activists convinced the government to free the more than 10,000 “bile bears” kept in squalid conditions.

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ENVIRONMENT

Vaccinate corn? Apparently it works – sorta. Biologists inoculated corn seeds with TS201, a strain of pink-pigmented facultative methylotrophic bacteria. (There will NOT be a quiz at the end of this SciSchmooze.) As the plants grew, they withstood attacks by the corn rootworm better than plants that were not inoculated. This technology has the potential to save billions in pesticide use and lost crops.

Self-fertilizing crops? Except for legumes, that does not work – yet. But researchers have been learning how legumes protect themselves from destructive bacteria, yet form a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. U.S. farmers spend over $60 billion every year on nitrogen fertilizers which could be drastically reduced with self-fertilizing crops.
(p.s. The situation in the Mideast has substantially raised the price of nitrogen fertilizers.)

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Fun Nerdy VIDEOS

Avatar & Archer: Artemis II experiments – SETI – Caitlin Ahrens – 2 mins

UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab – 2 mins

Benjamin Franklin and Farts – Cup o’ Joe – Joe Schwarcz – 4.5 mins

Kessler Syndrome – Sabine Hossenfelder – 6 mins 202602

First Video in 3 years: Neutrinos – Physics Girl – Dianna Cowern – 8 mins
(Cowern has been severely disabled for three years by Long COVID.)

Vaccinating Vampire Vectors – SciShow – Madelyn Leembruggen – 8 mins

Iron-Air Battery Present & Future – Just Have a Think – David Borlace – 10.5 mins

¿Already Passed a Climate Tipping Point? – PBS Terra – Maiya May – 11 mins

Beavers, Power Grids, & Politics – BBC: The Climate Question – Graihagh Jackson – 16 mins

Insane Biology of the Octopus – Real Science – Stephanie Sammann – 18.5 mins

Fluorine – Tales from the Periodic Table – Ron Hipschman – 44 mins

Forest Ecology & Our Climate – PBS NOVA – 52 mins
(Planting trees is not enough!)

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You, your existence – as well as everyone’s – is amazing; a culmination of evolution over millions of millennia. The same can be said of every living thing from bacteria to beluga whales. Have a wonderful week; one that is worthy of you.
Dave Almandsmith, Bay Area Skeptics

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“Follow your curiosity, and have the courage to meet the challenge. That’s where science starts.”
Tasuku Honjo, (1942 – ) Japanese Nobel Laureate