Japanese man sets record for paper plane flight

A Japanese engineer has set the world record for the longest flight for a paper airplane, keeping his design aloft for 27.9 seconds.

Takuo Toda ,head of Japan Origami Airplane Association, folds a space shuttle-shaped paper plane

After his record flight, Takuo Toda said that his achievement was merely the next step in his ambition of launching a paper plane from space.

Mr Toda, who is chairman of the Japan Origami Airplane Association, performed his feat at a competition in Hiroshima Prefecture in April and it has now been confirmed by Guinness World Records as the longest ever flight by a paper plane

"I had thought that the world record was impossible to break, but the key to breaking the record is how high you fly it," Mr Toda told The Daily Telegraph.

Made of a single sheet of folded paper with no cuts, his design measured 10 cm from tip to tail. He plans to use the same shape to try to break his own record at another event for paper plane enthusiasts in September.

His ultimate aim, however, remains having one of his aircraft launched from the space shuttle.

"Thirty years ago, I saw a space shuttle - with a similar shape to a paper airplane - returning to Earth," said Mr Toda, who traces his hobby back to the two years he spent convalescing after a climbing accident while at university. He claims to have had made a paper plane with an almost identical triangular configuration three or four years before NASA unveiled its shuttle.

"I thought it would be possible for a paper aircraft to do the same thing, but back then no-one would listen seriously to my ideas," he said.

Founder of the association in 1980, he has lobbied scientists and professors to take his proposal seriously and was finally rewarded last year when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced that it would fund a three-year, 90 million yen (£617,000) study into the feasibility of launching paper darts from the International Space Station and, hopefully, recovering them when they return to Earth about a week later.

"If it is proven that a paper plane can re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and glide back down safely then the scientific community could gain very valuable data about aerodynamics," said Mr Toda says. "That knowledge could even lead to improvements in the design of spacecraft in the future as it would prove that even ultra-light materials are able to withstand the demands of the upper atmosphere."

World's first cloned camel seen in Dubai

World's first cloned camel seen in Dubai

The world's first cloned camel Injaz is seen at the Camel Reproduction Centre in Dubai, April 15, 2009. The female one-humped camel was born on April 8, created from cells harvested from the ovary of an adult she-camel which were grown in culture before being frozen in liquid nitrogen.

Bookings for world's cheapest car Nano

The newly-released Nano -- the world's cheapest car -- pictured at the Tata auto-maker's plant at Pimpri near Mumbai. The Nano went on sale on Thursday, with dealers and the company behind it confident of strong demand despite a slump in global car sales amid the world economic downturn

The much-awaited bookings for the world's cheapest car Nano which worth 2,000 U.S. dollars starts Thursday across India for a limited period of 17 days, local media reported.

Tata Motors states to accept application forms of 300 rupees (6 U.S. dollars) each for the 624-cc jelly-bean shaped Nano and a booking amount ranges between 2,850 rupees (57 U.S. dollars) and 4,110 rupees (82.2 U.S. dollars) among different banks.

Online booking for the Nano, the first such option in India, are also available with cost of 200 rupees (4 U.S. dollars)

The newly-released Nano -- the world's cheapest car -- pictured at the Tata auto-maker's plant at Pimpri near Mumbai

Tata Motors itself has sold over 75,000 booking forms from its 218 outlets across the country so far while booking agent State Band of India has distributed hundreds of thousands of applications only a day after Nano's commercial launch on March 23.

Ravi Bhattacharya, sales manager of auto dealer Autolink Delhi said that ever since the car was commercially launched, his outlets received at least 100-200 unique inquiries daily. His firm has decided to deploy additional sales-people to handle the expected rush for the bookings.

Other dealers say almost half the customers visiting their showrooms to check out the Nano are buying forms, with most of the inquiries related to the top-end variant.

According to Tata Motors, waiting time for the high end with power windows and air conditioning priced at less than 3,000 U.S. dollars could be shorter, since the company will make more of these cars than the 2,000 U.S. dollar base version.

A total of 20 billion rupees (400 million U.S. dollar) has been invested into the Nano project with five years of research and development. But the company, which had to shift its upcoming Nano factory last October after some protests over farmland acquired for the project, has earmarked just 100,000 vehicles for the first phase.