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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 18, 2016)
ASIA / PACIFIC January 18, 2016 THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3 Japanese research institute earns right to name element 113 ELEMENTAL RIGHTS. Kosuke Morita of the Riken Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science points at the periodic table of the elements during a press conference in Wako, Saitama prefecture, near Tokyo. A team of Japanese scientists has met the criteria for naming a new element, the synthetic highly radioactive element 113, more than a dozen years after they began working to create it. Morita was notified of the decision by the U.S.-based International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. (Kyodo News via AP) By Elaine Kurtenbach The Associated Press OKYO — A team of Japanese scientists has met the criteria for naming a new element, the synthetic highly radioactive element 113, more than a dozen years after they began working to create it. Kosuke Morita, who led the research at the government-affiliated Riken Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, was notified of the decision by the U.S.-based International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). “Now that we have conclusively demonstrated the existence of element 113, we plan to look to the unchartered territory of element 119 and beyond,” Morita said in a statement. A joint working group of the IUPAC and International Union of Pure and Applied Physics also announced decisions on recognition of discoveries of elements 115, 117, and 118. Discoveries of atomic elements have often involved competition between scien- tists. The news is a morale booster for Riken, which has undergone a reorgani- zation of some of its research following a scandal over stem-cell research. “To scientists, this is of greater value T than an Olympic gold medal,” Ryoji Noyori, former Riken president and Nobel laureate in chemistry, told reporters. Riken had earlier said japonium might be proposed as a name for element 113, which provisionally had been named ununtrium. However, Morita has no specific candidates under consideration. He said he planned to spend part of this year considering a name for the element. The IUPAC group gave collaborating teams from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee the right to name elements 115 and 117. Separately, scientists from the Dubna laboratory and Lawrence Livermore were invited to name element 118. Element 113 sits between copernicium THE 20TH ANNUAL JAPANESE NEW YEAR CELEBRATION and flerovium on the periodic table. A joint team of scientists in Russia and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the U.S. also were vying for naming rights for 113 after announcing its discovery in 2004. Morita and his group used Riken’s linear accelerator and ion separator to search for new synthetic superheavy elements, beginning in the late 1980s. In 2003, his team began working to create element 113 by bombarding a thin layer of bismuth with zinc ions travelling at about 10 percent the speed of light, Riken said. Isotopes of element 113 have a very short half-life, lasting for less than a thousandth of a second, making its discovery very difficult. After twice succeeding to create it, the group tried for seven years before achieving further success, in August 2012. USHER IN THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY WITH MOCHITSUKI SUNDAY • JANUARY 31 • 11 AM – 4 PM Enjoy taiko drumming, mochi-pounding, and delicious Japanese food! Fun for the whole family! ADVANCED TICKETS: $4-$10 NETTING A NEW LOCATION. A man walks on a bridge by a construction site in Toyosu, in Tokyo, where a new market will open in 2016. In November, the 80-year-old Tsukiji market, the world’s biggest and most famous fish and seafood market, is due to move to the massive new complex further south in Tokyo Bay. (AP Photo/Elaine Kurtenbach) 80-year-old Tokyo fish market holds final New Year auction Continued from page 2 management has gradually limited access for safety’s sake. Planning for the move began nearly 20 years ago, but the shift was delayed for years due to toxins found in the soil at the new location, the former site of a coal gasification plant run by Tokyo Gas. The city announced in 2001 that the market would be moved by 2012. But cleanup work dragged on, and in 2013, Tokyo Gas disclosed it had found more toxins at the site. Critics of the move said city authorities were swapping worries over cramped and some say unhygienic conditions in Tsukiji for a new set of health problems: unsafe levels of lead, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, and other toxins. 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