Tokyo, Jan 25 - Even though the Japanese have the world's highest life expectancy, smoking and high blood pressure (BP) still remain the biggest health hazards, reveals a study.

An analytical study, led by Nayu Ikeda from the University of Tokyo, found that in 2007, tobacco smoking and high BP among adults aged 30 years and above accounted for 129,000 and 104,000 deaths respectively in Japan.

Kyodo, Dec 11 : Japan’s Fukushima University researchers are considering proposal to measure forest radiation level in Fukushima Prefecture by fitting special monitoring collars on wild monkeys.

The project would be first implemented in Minamisoma city by spring of 2012, the Japan Times reports.

Tokyo, Dec 10: Former Japan's Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant chief is suffering from esophageal cancer, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has said.

TEPCO ruled out that Masao Yoshida's cancer was caused due to the nuclear crisis since he was exposed to 70 millisieverts of cumulative amount of radiation since the crisis.

Tokyo, Nov 10 - A fast and reliable new test under development could help people avoid a terrible type of food poisoning that comes from eating fish tainted with a difficult-to-detect toxin from marine algae growing in warm waters.

The researchers say the method out-does current detection methods. Besides helping diagnose patients, it will also help scientists study how the toxins move through the food chain from one animal to another.

Tokyo, Nov 9 - Researchers have hit upon a new way of tracking radiation faster and more efficiently at nuclear power plant accident sites.

Seiichi Yamamoto and Jun Hatazawa from Kobe City College of Technology and Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan, have combined three modes of detection into a single hybrid technology.

Tokyo, June 10: Japanese green tea, which is widely known across the world for its purity and health-enhancing properties, has reportedly been contaminated with radiation following the accident in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant caused by the March 11 earthquake-cum-tsunami.

Washington, March 19 : Faint traces of very low levels of radiation from the stricken Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan have been detected in Sacramento, California, the New York Times reported citing European officials.

Tokyo, Jan 31 : About 40,000 chickens were killed Monday at a poultry farm in southern Japan after dead chickens found there were confirmed as infected with the bird-flu virus, news reports said.

At the farm in Miyazaki prefecture on the island of Kyushu, 90 chickens were found dead Sunday in the winter's sixth outbreak of bird flu in the prefecture and the ninth in the country.

Tokyo - The death of a 36-year-old pregnant woman who died after she was refused admission by seven hospitals in Tokyo sparked heated debates over a shortage of doctors, newspapers said Thursday.

The woman's gynecologist had asked a Tokyo hospital earlier this month to urgently treat the expecting mother, who was suffering from unusually acute headaches, but the clinic rejected her, saying no obstetrician was on duty. Six other hospital also refused admission.

Washington, Dec 18: A team of Japanese astronomers has obtained images of galaxies dating 11 billion years, which indicates that a majority of galactic formation occurred earlier than previously estimated.

The images have been captured using innovative technology and instrumentation on the Subaru Telescope by astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).