Falcon passengers can enjoy journeys along straight stretches and tunnels cut through Japan’s mountainous countryside. But those keen on spoiling themselves can pay £200 for a one-way trip in the comfort of a ‘GranClass’ car. They will enjoy deep recliner leather seats and a cabin attendant at their disposal for serving food and drinks.

A network of cutting-edge Shinkansen train lines has been built across Japan since the 1960s. But as the island nation struggles with a shrinking population and falling domestic demand, the government and industry are seeking to promote the train abroad. Japan has sold Shinkansen technology to Taiwan and hopes to capture other overseas markets, including Brazil and Vietnam. The biggest prize is a future high-speed U.S. rail network that President Barack Obama has promoted, set to be backed by $13 billion in public funding.

Another research project has shown that for 84% of users the mean number of friends of friends is always greater than ones own number of friends. Why? Scott Feld wrote about this phenomenon in his 1991 paper Why Your Friends Have More Friends than You Do. This is a classic paradox regarding social networks. The same phenomenon dictates that college students typically find that their classes are larger than the average class size and that an airplane will be more crowded than the average occupancy. The explanation is that if people, classes and flights are popular, you are much more likely to choose them.

The researchers also found that while Facebook makes it easier to connect with people anywhere on the planet, a user’s friends are most likely to be of a similar age and origin. Looking only at links between people within the same country, the researchers concluded that folk are separated from one another by an average of just three connections. We can say that it is still a very small world and becoming smaller all the time!