Being a New Yorker, the year I spent living in Japan was a shock because the country is so spotlessly clean. It’s as clean as it is for three reasons, the first two being that average citizens pick up after themselves, and they also pick up after un-average citizens. You’ll probably recall that during last year’s World Cup, Tweeted photos of Japanese fans cleaning their side of the stadium in Brazil went viral. As per Japanese sporting venue tradition, they had arrived to the match armed with garbage bags. The third reason Japan is so clean is because when the first two reasons aren’t enough, they have crack cleaning squads operating with military precision. Consider the hundreds of Shinkansen (bullet trains) the country runs every day. They adhere to strict 12-minute turnaround times, with two minutes alloted for passengers to get off and another two minutes for new passengers to get on. That leaves the employees of Tessei, the company hired to clean the trains, just seven minutes to turn the trains around. Here’s how they do it: Asian news network Rocket News 24 provides a detailed breakdown of their timetable: “1.5 minutes spent picking up trash, 30 seconds rotating the seats, four minutes sweeping and cleaning, and a one-minute check.” Also interesting is that the efficacy of the Tessei cleaning crews, which are 50/50 men/women with an average age of 52, only recently attained their legendary status. TESSEI was reformed into the company it is today nine years ago. At the time the workers were treated as mere dispatch cleaners, and had low morale and dedication to their job. This led to the cleanliness of the shinkansen suffering and not living up to the expectations held by its millions of passengers. One of the main changes involved in the overhaul was redefining the work as ‘service’ rather than ‘cleaning’, and endeavoring to create a sense of pride in the job. Another major factor is the importance of teamwork, with input coming not just from the supervisors but from everyone in the team. Every day they will hold a team meeting to thoroughly discuss any issues no matter how trivial, and every member gets a say. Furthermore, the teams are not fixed, and will be shuffled around so that everyone gets a chance to work with and learn from lots of different people…. TESSEI’s incredible service has garnered admiration and praise around the world. Upon visiting TESSEI, the French national rail president commented that he wanted to import the idea to France. And last month a group of professors from Harvard University visited TESSEI and discussed including the company in teaching materials at the graduate school of business.
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How the Tessei, Japan’s Crack Cleaning Squads, Turn Bullet Trains Around in Seven Minutes
schwit1 writes A giant welding machine, built for NASA’s multi-billion dollar Space Launch System (SLS), has to be taken apart and rebuilt because the contractor failed to reinforce the floor, as required, prior to construction: “Sweden’s ESAB Welding & Cutting, which has its North American headquarters in Florence, South Carolina, built the the roughly 50-meter tall Vertical Assembly Center as a subcontractor to SLS contractor Boeing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. ESAB was supposed to reinforce Michoud’s floor before installing the welding tool, but did not, NASA SLS Program Manager Todd May told SpaceNews after an April 15 panel session during the 31st Space Symposium here. As a result, the enormous machine leaned ever so slightly, cocking the rails that guide massive rings used to lift parts of the 8.4-meter-diameter SLS stages The rings wound up 0.06 degrees out of alignment, which may not sound like much, “but when you’re talking about something that’s 217 feet [66.14 meters] tall, that adds up, ” May said. Asked why ESAB did not reinforce the foundation as it was supposed to, May said only it was a result of “a miscommunication between two [Boeing] subcontractors and ESAB.” It is baffling how everyone at NASA, Boeing, and ESAB could have forgotten to do the reinforcing, even though it was specified in the contract. It also suggests that the quality control in the SLS rocket program has some serious problems. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The Central Japan Railway Company’s maglev bullet train hit 366 miles per hour yesterday in a test, a record-setting clip that breaks the the 12-year-old landspeed record of 361 mph, the Wall Street Journal reports . Read more… 
Right now, India’s in the middle of launching a massive, $18 billion plan to finally bring the country’s shoddy internet up to speed. There’s just one little problem: Adorable monkeys just can’t stop eating its delicious, delicious data cables. Read more… 
Those of you with a penchant for coffee drinks might already know that it’s surprisingly easy to make your own lattes (even this year’s ubiquitous pumpkin spice latte ). And if you’re more of a tea drinker, it also happens to be incredibly easy to make your own green tea lattes, too. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes There’s great news coming out of Russia for epic road trip lovers. Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin has proposed building a highway that would reach from London to Alaska via Russia, a 13, 000-mile stretch of road. “This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project, ” the Siberian Times quoted Yakunin. “The project should be turned into a world ‘future zone, ‘ and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Human-made satellites have long been able to harness the sun’s energy as it washes over them outside the protection of our atmosphere. But what if we could beam all that solar power down to Earth? The science fictional idea may be a reality sooner than you think. Read more… 
sciencehabit writes Appear in a photo taken at a protest march, a gay bar, or an abortion clinic, and your friends might recognize you. But a machine probably won’t — at least for now. Unless a computer has been tasked to look for you, has trained on dozens of photos of your face, and has high-quality images to examine, your anonymity is safe. Nor is it yet possible for a computer to scour the Internet and find you in random, uncaptioned photos. But within the walled garden of Facebook, which contains by far the largest collection of personal photographs in the world, the technology for doing all that is beginning to blossom. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 