Growing nerve tissue and organs is a sci-fi dream. Moheb Costandi met the pioneering researcher who grew eyes and brain cells. The train line from mainland Kobe is a marvel of urban transportation. Opened in 1981, Japan’s first driverless, fully automated train pulls out of Sannomiya station, guided smoothly along elevated tracks that stand precariously over the bustling city streets below, across the bay to the Port Island. The island, and much of the city, was razed to the ground in the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 – which killed more than 5,000 people and destroyed more than 100,000 of Kobe’s buildings – and built anew in subsequent years. As the train proceeds, the landscape fills with skyscrapers. The Rokkō mountains come into view, looming menacingly over the city, peppered with smoke billowing from the dozens of narrow chimneys of the electronics, steel and shipbuilding factories.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:15:00 +0000