The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced the launch of a new generation weather satellite ,Himawari-8 on Oct. 7 from the Tanegashima Space Center aboard an H-2A carrier rocket at 14:16 local time (05:16 UTC).

With news about a 3D printer winging its way to the International Space Station (ISS), now the next sci-fi mission is to construct a space elevator.

To solve the mystery behind what enables people to properly relate owners to their dogs, Sadahiko Nakajima, a psychologist from Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, conducted a study that involved 502 Japanese undergrads. This was not Nakajima's first attempt at it. In the previous research, he and his colleagues had shown that the participants could match photos of owners and their dogs by facial look alone.

In the latest study, all the participants were provided with two test sheets and every sheet had about 20 photo sets of dog-human pairs, showing their faces side-by-side.

Yoshiki Sasai, a prominent Japanese researcher, hanged himself to death at his research institute in Kobe.

Sasai held the position of Deputy Director at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology. His name was involved in two research studies that were withdrawn from journal Nature. He was one of the co-authors of two papers that suggested a quick way of coming up with versatile stem cells.