In the critical 72 hours after an earthquake or explosion, a race against the clock begins to find survivors. When a powerful earthquake hit central Italy on 24 August 2016, killing 299 people, over 5 000 emergency workers were mobilised in search and rescue efforts that saved dozens from the rubble in the immediate aftermath. The pressure to move fast can create risks for first responders, who often face unstable environments with little information about the dangers ahead. But this type of rescue work could soon become safer and more efficient thanks to a joint effort by EU and Japanese researchers. Rescue organisations, research institutes and companies from both Europe and Japan worked together from 2019 to 2023 to develop a new generation of tools blending robotics, drone technology and chemical sensing to transform how emergency teams operate in disaster zones.

Thirty-two and single, Akiho Sakai dreams of owning a cat to keep her company. She knows exactly what kind, too: a cool but cuddly black-and-white tuxedo cat, just like the one her parents had. The problem is, she can't. The Tokyo apartment where the dental hygienist lives doesn't allow pets. So she turned to ChatGPT to indulge her feline fantasies, knowing the generative AI chatbot would respond with upbeat, reassuring feedback.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has sped up the process of detecting flooded buildings immediately after a large-scale flood, allowing emergency personnel to direct their efforts efficiently. Now, a research group from Tohoku University has created a machine learning (ML) model that uses news media photos to identify flooded buildings accurately within 24 hours of the disaster. Their research was published in the journal Remote Sensing on April 5, 2021. "Our model demonstrates how the rapid reporting of news media can speed up and increase the accuracy of damage mapping activities, accelerating disaster relief and response decisions, said Shunichi Koshimura of Tohoku University's International Research Institute of Disaster Science and co-author of the study. ML and deep learning algorithms are tailored to classify objects through image analysis.

Quantum issues may now be solvable without the use of a quantum computer. New research by engineers at Purdue University and Tohoku University in Japan, has unveiled the researchers' new hardware -- a probabilistic computer -- which can solve quantum problems without using any quantum computers. The probabilistic computer with its new hardware has fundamental units -- known as p-bits -- which can perform a calculation that usually only a quantum computer could solve. The study was published this week in Nature. The new device built by the engineers will be the basis for building probabilistic computers.

I've always desired to visit Japan since I was a child. I've always admired the culture, from their traditions to the cutting-edge technology. Moreover, right now one of my main interest is robotics. You can imagine how I reacted when I was accepted into the Tohoku Engineering Summer Program to study Robotics in Japan, at Tohoku University in Sendai. Some colleagues of mine and I, along other 50 students from all over the world, had the opportunity to attend morning classes from various professors on many different fields of robotics, from molecular to space robotics.

Researchers have developed a waltzing robot that can teach people how to dance. In contrast to previous dancing robot, this one can take the lead, allowing the robot to teach dance sequences. While the system has been developed for dancing, it could also have other applications including physical rehabilitation and sports training. According to the researchers, experiments with multiple volunteers showed safe interaction guided by the robot and improvement in the volunteers' dancing abilities The system adjusts its difficulty mode based on the user's number of previous practices and performance history. The bot, which stands 1.8 meters tall (5 feet 9 inches), was designed by researchers at Tohoku University in Japan. According to the authors of the study, the bot its designed for contact with adults with heights ranging from 1.5 meters (4 feet 9 inches) to 1.9 meters (6 feet two inches) meters tall.

Japan is spending more than 1 billion to resurrect the area around the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant as the country's "Innovation Coast." The region is trying to capitalize on technology developed in the five years spent cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, including Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. robots that slither like snakes or cruise through radioactive water like speed boats to investigate the flooded reactors. Fukushima Prefecture -- like Beirut or post-bankruptcy Detroit -- is ripe to develop a strong tech community, according to Samhir Vasdev, an innovation consultant at the World Bank. "To lead the future from Fukushima, we must overcome our failures," Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori said at the Foreign Press Center in Tokyo last month. "Creating new industries will attract new people, which will be vital to revitalizing the region."