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 Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Mar 25, 2004

* Japanese name: Suzumushi * Scientific name:Homoeogryllus japonicus * Description: The bell cricket is a 2-cm-long insect in a family called Phalangopsidae. It's a small, not particularly attractive cricket, but it is very well known -- and loved -- in Japan for its song. It has a dark body and long,...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Mar 11, 2004

Liposuction fat turned into stem cells

In "Fight Club," Brad Pitt's character turns human fat into soap and with beautifully sick panache sells it back to the same rich women who'd paid to have it removed by liposuction. Now scientists at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., have shown greater ingenuity and made something rather...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Mar 11, 2004

* Japanese name: Nihon kawanezumi * Scientific name:Chimarrogale platycephala * Description: Shrews are small mammals and are thought to be similar to the first mammals that evolved. Fur is dark gray-brown with a white-gray underside; the hindquarters are fringed with silvery hairs. They have small...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Feb 29, 2004

Franz Ferdinand: "Franz Ferdinand"

You know something is probably afoot when the second single of a quartet of Glaswegian art students enters the U.K. charts at No. 3. But when that single, "Take Me Out," has critics competing to sing its praises, you know that it's time to listen up.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Feb 26, 2004

* Japanese name: Ishigame * Scientific name:Mauremys japonica * Description:Also known as the stone turtle, the pond turtle is semiaquatic and a strong swimmer. It has a yellowish-brown carapace (shell) and an olive-brown head. Females are bigger than males, growing up to 21 cm long (carapace length),...

Japan Times

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 26, 2004

Sex (selection) and the City

It's colloquially well known that women can feel competition from other women, as this scene from "Sex and the City" shows:

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Feb 12, 2004

* Japanese name: Ogasawara yamori * Scientific name: Lepidodactylus lugubris

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 12, 2004

To run, or not to run, the race issue

Last year, when Californians had to choose between Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger and incumbent Democrat Gray Davis to be their governor, they also had to vote on another divisive issue: Proposition 54. This law, the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative, sought to ban the state collection of information...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Jan 22, 2004

Out of thought, out of mind

Sigmund Freud was well aware that his theories were controversial. "What progress we are making," he commented in 1933. "In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Jan 22, 2004

* Japanese name: Nihon zaru * Scientific name: Macaca fuscata/cyclopis * Description: Macaques have thick fur everywhere apart from their characteristic bare red face. The Japanese macaque, Macaca fuscata, is the only native species of (nonhuman) primate in Japan. There is another primate species living...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Jan 15, 2004

* Japanese name: Oomari-kokemush * Scientific name:Pectinatella magnifica * Description:The common name says it all. This organism looks like nothing so much as a quivering lump of jelly. It is often mistaken for the egg mass of some animal, but in fact the blob is itself a colony of tiny animals....

Japan Times

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Jan 8, 2004

Shedding light on dark matter

These days, you never hear people complaining that science destroys the wonder of the world. They wouldn't dare. For a beautiful example, look at what was discovered last year. A satellite -- the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) -- confirmed one of the strangest, most wondrous proposals about...

Japan Times

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Dec 25, 2003

It's Christmas, so meet the family

Dec. 25 is one day when many people make an effort to be with their families, and some might even take time to remember those less fortunate than themselves. So in that spirit, in this week's column we're going to think about our closest relatives, ones who are far less fortunate than us and who face...

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Dec 25, 2003

* Japanese name: Ikarimushi * Scientific name: Lernaea cyprinacea * Description: The anchor worm is a small parasite (1-1.5 cm long) that lives in the muscles of freshwater fishes. The female anchor worm has a tubular body divided into a cephalothorax, thoracic region and abdomen. However, you're unlikely...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Dec 11, 2003

* Japanese name: Koganegumi * Scientific name:Argiope amoena * Description: Writing spiders, also known as yellow garden spiders, have an egg-shaped abdomen with yellow or orange markings on a black background. The legs have red or yellow sections. While insect bodies are generally comprised of three...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Dec 11, 2003

Lice of a feather grow together

Look at the history of modern global infections and you'll see a worrying pattern. For example, evidence of SARS, which killed 916 people worldwide this year, was discovered in civets and raccoon dogs sold live at Chinese food markets. Yuen Kwok-yung, head of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong,...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Nov 27, 2003

* Japanese name: Yagi * Scientific name:Capra hircus * Description: Feal goats are smaller and stockier than their domesticated relatives. Males (billies) weigh 30 to 45 kg, females (nannies) 25 to 35 kg; they are 60 to 70 cm high. The color varies from white to dark brown, black or gray, and while...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Nov 27, 2003

Sex matters -- for worms, at least

It is perhaps rare for readers of British tabloid newspapers to ponder the same questions as evolutionary biologists, but that may have been the case last week. The tabloids enjoyed themselves at the expense of women suffering from a rare and often debilitating condition: persistent sexual arousal syndrome....

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Nov 13, 2003

A black hole on our doorstep

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. It's 2,600 meters above sea level and receives almost no rainfall. Visitors, when they are not tending to dry skin and nosebleeds caused by the altitude, often compare the terrain to the barren red rocks that cover...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Nov 13, 2003

* Japanese name: Amakesaamefurashi * Scientific name: Aplysia juliana * Description: Sea slugs are marine mollusks, without gills or a shell -- just like most other mollusks. Often a dark olive-green color, at first glance a sea slug resembles nothing more than a stray piece of seaweed, but with a...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.

A boom for business tourism in Japan?

By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

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