Japan’s famed cherry trees are getting old, but a new AI tool that assesses photos of the delicate pink and white flowers could help preserve them for future generations.
The “sakura” season is feverishly anticipated by locals and visitors alike, with the profusion of the stunning blossoms marking the start of spring.
But many of the trees are reaching 70 to 80 years old, well beyond their prime blooming age.
Photo: AFP
This means increasing costs to tend to the trees and maintain popular flowering spots. To help authorities identify ailing specimens, brewing giant Kirin developed a tool called Sakura AI Camera.
It tells users the condition and the age of the trees based on photos they take with their smartphones and upload them to a Web site.
A five-point scale — only available in Japanese for now — ranges from “very healthy” to “worrying.”
Photo: AFP
A tree with healthy flowers blooming densely all the way to the tips of the branches gets top marks.
The artificial intelligence tool has been trained using 5,000 images of cherry trees with the help of experts.
The photos are then mapped on the Sakura AI Camera Web site with details such as tree condition and location.
Photo: AFP
“We heard that the preservation of sakura requires manpower and money and that it’s difficult to gather information,” said Risa Shioda from Kirin.
“I think we can contribute by making it easier to plan for conservation,” she said.
About 20,000 photos have been collected since the launch last month, with the data available online for free for local authorities.
Photo: Bloomberg
WORTH A MILLION
According to Tokyo’s Meguro Ward, famous for its riverbanks lined with cherry trees, replanting a new one costs around one million yen (US$6,800). Hiroyuki Wada of the Japan Tree Doctors Association, who inspects cherry trees in major spots in Tokyo, helped supervise the AI tool.
He said he hopes that it will help experts study the environmental reasons behind the degradation of some of the trees he sees.
In part, he blames climate change. “I’m very worried. Changes in the environment are usually gradual, but now it’s visible,” he said.
“There are impacts from the heat, and of course the lack of rainfall,” he said.
“The age of the trees naturally makes the situation more serious,” he added.
Japan’s weather agency said in January that last year was the hottest since records began, like other nations.
Kirin began donating some of its profits for the preservation of cherry trees last year, as a way to “pay back” to the communities.
Alcohol, especially beer, is one of the drinks enjoyed at hanami flower-viewing parties beneath the trees, Shioda said.
Cherry blossoms symbolise the fragility of life in Japanese culture as full blooms only last about a week before the petals start falling off trees.
The season is also considered one of change as it marks the start of the new business year, with many university graduates starting their first full-time jobs and older colleagues shifting to new positions.
On a harsh winter afternoon last month, 2,000 protesters marched and chanted slogans such as “CCP out” and “Korea for Koreans” in Seoul’s popular Gangnam District. Participants — mostly students — wore caps printed with the Chinese characters for “exterminate communism” (滅共) and held banners reading “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party” (天滅中共). During the march, Park Jun-young, the leader of the protest organizer “Free University,” a conservative youth movement, who was on a hunger strike, collapsed after delivering a speech in sub-zero temperatures and was later hospitalized. Several protesters shaved their heads at the end of the demonstration. A
Google unveiled an artificial intelligence tool Wednesday that its scientists said would help unravel the mysteries of the human genome — and could one day lead to new treatments for diseases. The deep learning model AlphaGenome was hailed by outside researchers as a “breakthrough” that would let scientists study and even simulate the roots of difficult-to-treat genetic diseases. While the first complete map of the human genome in 2003 “gave us the book of life, reading it remained a challenge,” Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind, told journalists. “We have the text,” he said, which is a sequence of
In August of 1949 American journalist Darrell Berrigan toured occupied Formosa and on Aug. 13 published “Should We Grab Formosa?” in the Saturday Evening Post. Berrigan, cataloguing the numerous horrors of corruption and looting the occupying Republic of China (ROC) was inflicting on the locals, advocated outright annexation of Taiwan by the US. He contended the islanders would welcome that. Berrigan also observed that the islanders were planning another revolt, and wrote of their “island nationalism.” The US position on Taiwan was well known there, and islanders, he said, had told him of US official statements that Taiwan had not
Britain’s Keir Starmer is the latest Western leader to thaw trade ties with China in a shift analysts say is driven by US tariff pressure and unease over US President Donald Trump’s volatile policy playbook. The prime minister’s Beijing visit this week to promote “pragmatic” co-operation comes on the heels of advances from the leaders of Canada, Ireland, France and Finland. Most were making the trip for the first time in years to refresh their partnership with the world’s second-largest economy. “There is a veritable race among European heads of government to meet with (Chinese leader) Xi Jinping (習近平),” said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director
RSS