Developed by East Japan Railway Co, in partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation and Hitachi Ltd, Japan’s first hydrogen-fueled train is slated to begin trial testing next month—a plan that’s on track to assist the country in achieving its 2050 carbon-neutrality goal. The vehicle, a two-car “hybari” train (which combines the word hybrid with the Japanese word for a lark), can travel up to 140 kilometers …
Curbing climate change means finding a near-limitless, zero-carbon power source. To do that scientists have often turned to nuclear fusion—the process of fusing two or more atoms together, which releases massive amounts of energy (and is also the process that makes the sun and stars shine). But while scientists have been able to generate this energy before, they haven’t been able to sustain it for …
In its earliest stages, and developed by graduate students from Keio University in Tokyo, the “biological microgrid” Raiki will aim to harvest electricity from trees by drawing from the “triboelectric” effect in foliage. This is a phenomenon of movement, much like static electricity, generated when positively charged leaves come into contact with negatively charged materials (like a tree trunk). Industrial designer Catalina Lotero explained this …
