Rowan Hooper - The Japan Times

November 22, 2024

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Rowan Hooper

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Rowan Hooper

Rowan Hooper has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Sheffield University, UK, and he worked as an insect biologist in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, for five years before spending a two-year period at The Japan Times in Tokyo. He is now news editor for New Scientist magazine, based in London.

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Apr 11, 2002

Queen of the underworld

One of the most unusual, bizarre-looking and fascinating animals known to science is found in the arid earth of sub-Saharan Africa. It lives in subterranean colonies, with a single breeding queen. It has a worker caste that takes care of the young animals and soldiers that defend the colony: It is "eusocial"...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Apr 5, 2002

* Japanese name: Shojobae * Scientific name: Drosophila melanogaster * Description: This is a tiny (3-mm) fly, with red eyes and one pair of wings. It is almost too small to notice, yet the fruit fly is one of the world's most important organisms. Study of the fruit fly led directly to the science...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Apr 4, 2002

Sea lampreys excited by eau de liver bile

The sea lamprey is a parasitic, eel-like fish with a fearsome, tooth-covered "oral disk" instead of a regular mouth. When attacking, the lamprey rears its head, and clamps its oral disk onto the skin of other fish. With its grasping tongue, it feeds on blood and body fluids for an average of 76 hours,...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Mar 29, 2002

* Japanese name: Aka mimizu * Scientific name: Lumricus rubellus * Description: An earthworm's body consists of a tube within a tube. The inner tube is a digestive tract, the outer is segmented and muscular. Between the two are reproductive organs, and running the length of the body is a simple nervous...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Mar 28, 2002

Kill your television

"I know murder is a bad thing to do to society, but it was something I needed to experience."

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Mar 22, 2002

* Japanese name: Nihon mitsubachi * Scientific name: Apis cerana * Description: Asian hive bees are social insects. Hairy and bullet-shaped, they have well-developed tongues and back legs with special hairs that mesh together to form a flexible basket for carrying pollen. Bees are very strong and are...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Mar 21, 2002

Fundamentals of good education

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been the most vocal of European leaders in his attacks on fundamentalism, but it seems that only Islamic forms of fundamentalism are worthy targets. Christian fundamentalism -- which teaches that the world is only a few thousand years old and was made in seven days...

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Mar 15, 2002

* Japanese name: Kayanezumi * Scientific name: Micromys minutus * Description: This is Japan's smallest mouse, growing 5-8 cm long and weighing only 5 grams. Harvest mice have long, prehensile tails which they use for gripping the stems of grass when climbing. They have stubby noses and hairy ears;...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Mar 14, 2002

Evolution of intelligence

Woody Allen once famously said that the brain was his second favorite organ. And it is well-established that having a big one, as with Allen's "first favorite" organ (I'm guessing he wasn't referring to his liver), confers high status on its owner.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Mar 8, 2002

Japanese name: Nihon-anaguma Scientific name: Meles meles anakuma * Description: Badgers are stout, bearlike animals. Body length of males is 56-68 cm, females 52-59 cm. They have short limbs and tails, but the characteristic feature of badgers are the black stripes on the face. These usually run from...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Mar 7, 2002

Humans emerged out of Africa again and again

Everyone knows that humans came out of Africa, but until recently nobody knew that they came in at least two major waves of migration, about 600,000 and 95,000 years ago. The finding comes from a major analysis of newly derived human genetic trees, published today in Nature.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Mar 1, 2002

* Japanese name: Sawagani * Scientific name: Geothelphusa dehaani * Description: Crabs are decapods, which means "10 legs." Marsh crabs are usually red-and-cream colored, but may be found in other colors -- perhaps caused by mutations -- in different parts of the country. Crabs have exoskeletons like...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 28, 2002

Tracing the evolutionary flight of the dodo

A strong contender for the title of most misunderstood animal must be the flightless dodo, the bird universally derided as fat, slow and stupid. To top it all, it's dead.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Feb 22, 2002

Silver water beetle

* Japanese name: Gamushi * Scientific name: Hydrophilus acuminatus * Description: Adapted for aquatic life, water beetles have streamlined bodies and heads. Despite this, they are not powerful swimmers, having normal legs that are not flattened like oars for swimming. Most of their lives are spent...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 21, 2002

Living under pressure

Life, as we knew it only a few decades ago, needed sunlight and warmth. No one imagined that anything could survive in extreme environments -- in intolerable places such as high-pressure, high-temperature deep-sea vents or under Antarctic ice sheets.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Feb 15, 2002

Greater horseshoe bat

* Japanese name: Kikugashira-koumori * Scientific name: Rhinolophus ferrumequinum * Description: Quite a large bat, the greater horseshoe bat is a buff-brown color, body length 60-80 cm, wing length 60-65 cm. Its distinguishing feature, however, is the complex and grotesque horseshoe-shaped nose that...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 14, 2002

Of arms races and sex battles

On Valentine's Day, what better subject to tackle than sex? Well, maybe love, but that's not what gets evolutionary biologists all hot and bothered. Sex is where it's at -- the battle between the sexes. Males and females interact like two superpowers engaged in an arms race -- each escalation in arms...

JAPAN

Feb 11, 2002

Scientists in Tokyo find that cloned mice have shorter lives

Scientists at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo have found that cloned mice have shorter life spans than mice conceived naturally.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Feb 8, 2002

* Japanese name: Nihon-nousagi * Scientific name: Lepus brachyurus * Description: Hares are like rabbits, only bigger and faster, with longer legs and ears. In winter, their fur is thick and white (with black tips to the ears), but as the weather gets warmer, hares molt and grow a lightweight brown...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 7, 2002

Hypersexual farming

Humans have practiced selective breeding for thousands of years to develop plants, animals and fungi better suited for human use than they are in their natural states. No genetic engineering is required, yet the genes of selected strains are different, "improved." Even people opposed to genetic modification...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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A boom for business tourism in Japan?

By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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