Yamagata University said Tuesday it has newly identified 303 Nazca Lines geoglyphs in southern Peru. The national university, which has a research institute focused on the World Heritage drawings, added that the Nazca Lines are highly likely to have been created for the purposes of rituals and information sharing. The findings were published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the same day. Yamagata University identified the geoglyphs using artificial intelligence technology in cooperation with IBM Research of the United States. Researchers found the drawings through field surveys conducted from September 2022 and February 2023 of sites selected with the AI technology from aerial photographs.

Hundreds of ancient drawings depicting decapitated human heads and domesticated llamas have been discovered in the Peruvian desert with the help of artificial intelligence. Archaeologists have previously linked these creations to the people of the Nazca culture, who started etching such images, called geoglyphs, into the ground around 2000 years ago. These geoglyphs are smaller and older than the Nazca lines and other figures found to date, which portray huge geometric shapes stretching several kilometres or wild animals about 90 metres long on average. The newly discovered images typically depict humanoid figures and domesticated animals around 9 metres long. Some even hint at human sacrifice, portraying decapitated heads and killer whales armed with blades.

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Based on the Mongol invasion of Tsushima island in the 13th century, Ghost follows the exploits of Jin Sakai, a samurai and nephew of the local lord, as he attempts to rally the island’s populace and drive back the invading horde after a crushing defeat at Komodahama beach. The mission structure is similar to FarCry or Assassin’s Creed, with a mix of quests that either advance the overall story, assist one of the game’s primary side characters, clears towns of their occupying forces, earn goodwill with the populace or gain new powers and weapons. Being a samurai game, you’re going to be slicing and dicing your way through enemy crowds using the Sakai family’s heirloom katana but your wakizashi won’t spend much time in its sheath either.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. plans to change its personnel policy to allow employees to hold side jobs by the end of next March, the first such move by a mega-bank. By helping employees seek new challenges and opportunities, Mizuho hopes they will use the experience and ideas they acquire outside of the group to create new financial services at Mizuho, President Tatsufumi Sakai said in a recent interview. "I want everyone to refine their skills through a diverse range of challenges so that they can all be specialists in their fields," he said. The 59-year-old chief executive hopes new job opportunities will encourage employees to make use of their experiences in startups, manufacturing companies and other industries to create new business ideas for Mizuho. The initiative is expected to be introduced in the second half of fiscal 2019, after rules on labor and information management are worked out.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. said Monday that President and CEO Yasuhiro Sato will be succeeded by Tatsufumi Sakai, head of the group's securities unit, effective April 1. Sato, 65, has headed Japan's third-largest banking group by assets since 2011. He will assume the vacant position of chairman. Sakai, who is Sato's junior by seven years, will be tasked with overhauling the group, including a reduction of 19,000 workers over the next nine years and ramping up the use of artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies. He sees "opportunity" in the changing financial landscape and will put his "heart and soul" into ensuring the group continues to thrive, he told a news conference in Tokyo.

Nary a soul is in sight in this picture-perfect image of automation. The machines do all the heavy lifting at this plant run by Asahi Breweries, Japan's top brewer. The human job is to make sure the machines do the work right, and to check on the quality the sensors are monitoring. The lines are up and running 96 percent," said Shinichi Uno, a manager at the plant. "Although machines make things, human beings oversee the machines." The debate over machines snatching jobs from people is muted in a country where birth rates have been sinking for decades, raising fears of a labor shortage. It would be hard to find a culture that celebrates robots more, evident in the popularity of companion robots for consumers, sold by the internet company SoftBank and Toyota Motor Corp. among others. Japan, which forged a big push toward robotics starting in the 1990s, leads the world in robots per 10,000 workers in the automobile sector -- 1,562, compared with 1,091 in the U.S. and 1,133 in Germany, ...