Education

The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry announced a comprehensive plan to improve Japanese language education for foreign children, following the launch of a new system for accepting foreign workers in April.

In an unusual combination of disciplines, a basketball-shooting robot created by Japan’s leading automaker helped students at a Tokyo elementary school on Friday to learn math.

Many universities are establishing departments to help foster students in the age of artificial intelligence and big data, which refers to the collection of huge data sets that are often analyzed to reveal trends in human behavior. Amid calls from the government to accelerate efforts to train individuals in such fields, prestigious institutions are getting on board.

The education ministry will create a nationwide curriculum this autumn covering the basics of artificial intelligence, suitable for use at all the nation’s universities.

The whole body of a “cave lion,” a creature believed to have gone extinct about 10,000 years ago, was found in Siberian permafrost soil, Jikei University School of Medicine visiting Prof. Naoki Suzuki and a Russian research team announced Monday.

A Japanese team won second prize in an international race to accurately map the ocean floor using autonomous exploration robots, competition organizer XPrize Foundation announced at a ceremony in Monaco on Saturday.

Japanese high school senior Reo Okajima has won an award for a haiku in the Sustainable Development Goals category of a Haiku Festival at the United Nations International School in New York.

A panel of experts has called for all university and technical college students in Japan to be given beginner-level education on artificial intelligence.

The government plans to establish a national information center (NIC) to create a database of Japanese universities and students’ academic credentials in English for overseas universities and companies to access within 2019, it has been learned.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach on Monday hosted a group of students from the Tohoku region to discuss its recovery from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, as well as preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Games.