Discussion topics

A new law will go into effect in June 2018 to regulate minpaku, private residences rented out by their owners as short-term lodgings. The new law will address changes that have occurred in recent years due to the rise of Airbnb, the worldwide online service that allows travelers to book rooms in private homes directly from the owners of those residences.

The government plans to promote a five-day workweek for construction workers involved in public works projects as part of its work-style reform initiative. Construction workers tend to work more than five days a week because many are under pressure to complete projects faster. Less than 10 percent of construction projects in the country see workers take eight days off over a four-week period.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group plans to establish an organization to look into the use of artificial intelligence in loan application screenings and market trend predictions.

In most American families led by couples, both parents are in the workforce. At the same time, nearly 1 in 4 U.S. children are being raised by single moms. Yet child care is generally unaffordable and paid leave is not available to most U.S. parents.

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act in the U.S. did mandate 12 weeks of unpaid job protected leave for some American workers. Yet most families can’t forgo the income that moms bring home.

Online shopping is skyrocketing. So what are cities going to do about it?

The rising numbers of deliveries are adding to concerns about traffic and pollution in rapidly growing cities around the world. In Europe and Asia, cities have barred deliveries during certain hours, built warehouses to centralise distribution and provided millions in funding to encourage firms to switch to quieter, greener equipment. In the U.S., discussions about how to handle the glut of online shipments were somewhat slower to start, but they're happening now.

Amazon's smart assistant Alexa can now be made to encourage children to say: "Please," and: "Thank you," when they ask it something. The new function addresses some parents' concerns that use of the technology was teaching their offspring to sound officious or even rude.

The move has been welcomed by one of Alexa's critics. In January, the research company ChildWise published a report warning that youngsters that grew up accustomed to giving orders to Alexa might become aggressive when they have to interact with humans.

The Trump administration has announced a position on protecting migratory birds that is a drastic pullback from policies in force for the past 100 years.

In 1916, the U.S.A. and Great Britain signed the Migratory Bird Treaty, which became U.S. law in 1918. The measures protected more than 1,100 migratory bird species by making it illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill or sell live or dead birds, feathers, eggs, and nests, except as allowed by permit or regulated hunting.

The standard classroom maps we all learned geography from are based on the Mercator projection, a 16th century rendering that preserved lines used for navigation while hideously distorting the true sizes of continents and oceans further from the equator. The result is a widespread misconception that Greenland is as big as Africa, Siberia and Canada are disproportionally massive, and that Antarctica apparently just goes on forever.

The Yomiuri Shimbun Paralympian Atsushi Yamamoto has returned to the athletics track after competing in snowboarding at the Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics in March 2018.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has taken out full-page adverts in several UK and US Sunday newspapers to apologise for the firm's recent data privacy scandal.

He said Facebook could have done more to stop millions of users having their data exploited by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica in 2014.

The number of children on nursery school waiting lists in Japan as of Oct. 1 last year grew 7,695 from a year before to 55,433, up for the third straight year, the welfare ministry has said.

In March 2017, the ministry expanded the scope of the waiting lists to include cases in which parents decided not to return to work and extended parental leave because they could not find nurseries with enough space to accept their children.

Future spacecraft could think for themselves using the same technology that powers Bitcoin.

A new $330,000 NASA grant supports work to develop autonomous spacecraft that could make more decisions without human intervention. One example could be enabling spacecraft to dodge space debris faster than a human on Earth could help out the far-away probe.

More and more elementary school teachers in Japan are turning to English language schools with native speakers, as they seek to gain confidence in teaching the language before it is formally added to their curricula in the academic year starting April 2020.

Many teachers admit to lacking confidence in their English, in areas from vocabulary to grammar, expressiveness and pronunciation. Elementary school teachers say they are afraid of teaching their students “the wrong thing.”

Every day, we use products that are built using “rare earths”—a group of 17 elements that are, as the name suggests, very rare. They’re used to make everyday items such as rechargeable batteries, LED lights and display panels, as well as larger products such as wind turbines.

Now, it turns out, Japan has an estimated 16 million tons of the stuff on its turf. Researchers claim the trove might be enough to supply the world with metals such as yttrium and europium on a “semi-infinite basis.”

When I mentioned to a friend that my baseline neurosis had evolved from daily stress into anxiety, her response was, "Go for a float!"

A float?

Yes — spend an hour in a dark, soundproof room floating in a salted, body-temperature warm pool. "You just lie there and meditate," my friend told me.

At just 30 years old, Yuki Kawauchi is in a distance running category of his own.

Constructing a home by hand can be both expensive and time-consuming, especially when the home features a custom design. Some homebuilders have chosen to automate part of the construction process instead.

A new architectural startup called Branch Technology uses 3D-printing robots that can construct parts for homes.

Well-heeled space tourists will have a new orbital destination four years from now, if one company's plans come to fruition. The California-based startup Orion Span aims to loft its "Aurora Station" in late 2021 and begin accommodating guests in 2022.

Many business leaders still believe that time on-task equates to productivity. However, studies have shown that shorter amounts of sleep lead to both lower efficiency and slower completion of basic tasks. That is, sleepy employees are unproductive employees, and they generate fewer and less accurate solutions to problems.

Many people don't understand that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work less productively and thus need to work longer hours to accomplish a goal, creating a negative feedback loop.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to repeal a Japanese law requiring broadcasters to show impartiality, a step critics fear will lead to sensational reporting and polarize views, just as a similar move has been blamed for doing in the United States.

Abe’s government has drafted changes to Japan’s broadcast law and plans to include them in reform proposals as early as May, laying the groundwork for future legislation, three government sources told Reuters.