Rowan Hooper - The Japan Times

August 15, 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 13, 2003

* Japanese name: Kajika gaeru * Scientific name: Buergeria buergeri * Scientific name: * Description: The Japanese singing frog, known for its "fififi" call, is brown or gray-black. Other frogs merely croak or call, but this frog sings. In Japan it was once common to keep the singing frog in a special...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Mar 6, 2003

Do you want to live forever? We might do soon

The Anglo-Irish poet Jonathan Swift said "Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old."

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 27, 2003

How much pain can your brain take?

Japanese TV became famous abroad in the 1980s and created an image of Japan for outsiders that still lingers. The shows were the gaman taikai (endurance contests), where members of the public carried out tasks in which they suffered pain: The winners were the ones who endured the most.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Feb 24, 2003

* Japanese name: Yamatomon shidemushi * Scientific name: Nicrophorus japonicus * Description: Burying beetles are large insects, growing up to 20 mm long. They have large eyes, strong legs, powerful biting jaws and club-shaped antennae. These beetles are black, with distinctive orange markings on the...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 20, 2003

No taste for obesity

In the British cult comic 2000AD, future lawman Judge Dredd patrols the streets of Mega City One, a vast metropolis on the eastern seaboard of what was once the United States. Mega City One makes Tokyo seem spacious, and its residents make Harajuku's weirdest seem tame: One group of future misfits are...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 13, 2003

Ensuring age is the crown of life

The English scholar John Bailey said his wife Iris Murdoch, a prolific, perfectionist novelist and lecturer, became like "a very nice 3-year-old" as her Alzheimer's disease progressed. The disease made the proteins in her brain "misfold" and collapse, forming clots called amyloids that disrupt normal...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Feb 11, 2003

* Japanese name: Nanafushi * Scientific name: Phraortes elongatus * Description: Stick insects belong to the order of insects called Phasmida, which derives from phasma, the Latin word for phantom. It's easy to identify a stick insect, but it is seeing it in the first place that is difficult, because...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Feb 6, 2003

Freaks that are something to quack about

In 1832 the young Charles Darwin embarked on one of the most epic journeys in the history of biology, if not of all science. As a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin saw things that challenged the prevailing view of how life arose. On returning to England five years later, he began work on what he...

Japan Times

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Jan 30, 2003

Insects simply a breath apart

Insects are the most numerous, diverse and successful group of animals in the history of the planet. They are found in almost every environment, and range from the minute (less than a millimeter long for the feather-winged beetle) to the large (more than 15 cm for the South American longhorn beetle)....

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Jan 27, 2003

* Japanese name: Nutoria * Scientific name: Myocastor coypus * Description: The nutria, also called coypu, is a ratlike mammal with a long tail and broad, orange teeth. It has small eyes and ears, short legs and webbed hind feet that are much longer than the fore feet. The hind feet have five digits...

Japan Times

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Jan 23, 2003

Casting light on the aurora

"The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Jan 16, 2003

When two hemispheres of the brain work as one

The French surgeon Paul Broca had a patient in his care in 1861 who had fallen and broken his hip. Eighteen months earlier the man, called Lelong, had collapsed with a stroke that left him unable to speak. When Lelong died on Broca's ward, a hip fracture being a fatal condition in those days, an autopsy...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Jan 13, 2003

* Japanese name: Sukibahoujyaku * Scientific name: Hemaris radians * Description: Bee hawkmoths belong to the moth family Sphingidae. They are large moths (wingspan 37-40 mm) able to fly at high speeds (hence the name hawkmoth). Caterpillars are bright green and recognizable by the black spine on the...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Jan 9, 2003

Cultured 'man of forest' in peril

Culture, from a biological point of view, is behavior that is passed on through social contact. But what are the origins of culture? And what is it about humans that has allowed us to develop such rich and diverse cultures?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jan 8, 2003

Ladytron: "Light & Magic"

'They only want you when you're 17. When you're 21 you're no fun." This song, "Seventeen," the first single from their new album "Light & Magic," sums up what Ladytron are all about. Their lyrics can be cruel and direct ("Seventeen" is an indictment of the Lolita values of modeling agencies), but they...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Jan 3, 2003

The mice with the windows in their skulls

The British entertainer Derren Brown has caused a stir by apparently demonstrating mind control. He's not psychic, he says, but he can see into other people's brains.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Dec 30, 2002

* Japanese name: Yotsu boshi hiratashide mushi * Scientific name: Dendroxena sexcarinat * Description: The full name of this insect is the Japanese four-spotted carrion beetle. It is 15 mm long, with a flat, orange body with four black spots. The body is unusually flexible for a beetle. Carrion beetles...

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Dec 26, 2002

It came from the alphabet soup

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters."

JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS

Dec 19, 2002

Autoimmune disorder may kickstart anorexia in some

At the beginning of the Manic Street Preachers song "4st 7lbs," a girl is heard saying: "I eat too much to die. And not enough to stay alive. I'm sitting in the middle waiting."

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Dec 16, 2002

* Japanese name: Hishibatta * Scientific name: Formosatettix japonica * Description: Groundhoppers (also known as pygmy grasshoppers) are in the same order (Orthoptera) as crickets and "regular" grasshoppers, but they are smaller (less than 20 mm long) and sturdier. Like their orthopteran relatives,...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.

In search of the ‘Japanese dream’

By Thu-Huong Ha

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

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

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

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