Latest news with #Tsukuba
Japan Times
19-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Ishiba to revamp strategy to industrialize quantum tech
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Sunday that his government will "drastically strengthen" its strategy to industrialize quantum technology, amid growing international competition in this field. Positioning this year as "the first year of quantum industrialization," Ishiba indicated that the government will promote support for related startups and human resource development. Quantum technology is "expected to become a new industrial pillar of our country, and also important for economic security," the prime minister told reporters in the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. While in the city, Ishiba visited the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI technology under the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, or AIST. He inspected quantum computing research and interacted with researchers there.
Japan Times
14-05-2025
- Science
- Japan Times
Japan's meter and kilogram prototypes shown ahead of 150th anniversary
The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) showed Japan's meter and kilogram prototypes to the press on Monday, ahead of the 150th anniversary later this month of the conclusion of the Meter Convention in 1875. Near the end of the 18th century, 1 meter was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along the Paris meridian, and 1 kilogram as the mass of one liter of water. After the convention that standardized units of measurement, international prototypes of the meter and kilogram were created using a platinum-iridium alloy. Copies were delivered to Japan in 1890. As technology advanced, it revealed an unacceptable margin of error due to the gradual deterioration of the metal prototype. In 1960, the meter standard was redefined using the wavelength of light. In 1983, it was updated again to define 1 meter as the distance light travels in a specific amount of time. The kilogram standard was updated to one using the Planck constant, a minimum unit of light energy, in 2019. The original kilogram prototype has been kept in a temperature- and humidity-controlled steel safe at AIST, in the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. It showed the smallest change in mass in the past 100 years among the prototypes provided to countries across the world.
