Education has become more and more important in Japanese institutes of higher education. Under such circumstances, societies of the study of frontiers in education have been held since the first society at September 20, 2002. The valuable 158 presentations have been carried out during 11 societies till March, 2006. These presentations are classified according to the topics of subjects. The topics are the improvement of education methods, IT aided education, cooperation with elementary school, junior high school, high school and companies, hands-on training (manufacturing), JABEE and others. Some distinct presentations are summarized.

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The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Toyota National College of Technology has put great emphasis on fundamental subjects, such as “electrical and electronic circuit" and “electromagnetism" more than 40 years. On the other hand, several issues of our college were clarified by the alumni's evaluation of the educational outcome in 2002. The most serious issue was low achievement of English and Social education. The alumni of all generation are dissatisfied with their low skill in English communication. As a part of the educational reforms, our department has constructed a new engineering education program focusing on fundamental ability. We introduced many problem-based-learning experiments and the compulsory subjects such as “English communication for electrical engineers" and “Engineering Ethics" into this program. Great educative results are obtained by these improvements. As a typical example, the scores of all 2nd grade students of advanced engineering course in TOEIC tests became 450 points or more. Our program has been authorized by JABEE since 2004.

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We are in the problematic world created by the modern science and technology. The general public are increasingly concerned about the risks rather than the benefits of technologies. Nevertheless, to cast a critical eye upon technological endeavor of industries is not popular in the engineering field. Engineering education tends to only emphasize the bright side of science and technology and does not necessarily aim to educate engineers who want be responsible for the real needs of the society.
This paper first reviews the problems of present engineering education from the viewpoint of fundamental concepts of engineers developed by Henry Dyer who initiated Japan's engineering education in the Meiji era. Then expectations of the society for modern engineers are noticed. Lastly, experiences of an experimental new class which encourages engineering students to look on the dark side of science and technology and to think of a new role of engineers in the technological world are summarized. Results show that engineering students are greatly interested in the new role.

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The students' communication skills in English have improved after introducing Extensive Reading courses into the curriculum of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department. The students' average TOEIC scores, which used to be far lower than the ones of students in other educational institutions, have increased in recent two years. The students who used to avoid learning English have welcomed extensive reading of graded readers for foreign learners and books for native children of English. This is because the extensive reading causes less stress and it is enjoyable. The students who have read more than 0.2 million words of English texts have faster reading speed and more confidence in reading. They seem to change their reading style from English-to-Japanese translation (and comprehension in Japanese) to direct comprehension in English. Their listening comprehension is also improved. Extensive reading is an effective educational method to improve English communication skills of engineering students, and it also becomes a useful method of continuous education for engineers in need of improving their skills.

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Recently, development of embedded software increases in the company. The need of the training embedded software engineers in the company rises, and expectation for a university is big. We carry out embedded software engineers education courses for working people in a university. The courses are short term type and are classified the type of job and the technological level. We carried out eight kinds of courses of the introductory course, the intermediate courses and the advanced courses.

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We have designed and implemented the “Virtual Laboratory" on the computer systems. Some of the systems are implemented Web-based learning environments where server/client model and Java technologies are adopted. In our conventional systems, students study the basic alternating circuit theory and they can only observe the steady state behaviors of waveforms on electric circuits using “Virtual Oscilloscope". In this paper, we will discribe the study support system for the electric circuits including transient phenomena using Java.

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The image proccessing has become a useful and important technology in various reserch and development fields. According to such demands for engineering problems, we have designed and implemented the educational support system for that using a Java Applet technology. However in the conventional system, it required the tedious procedure for the end user to code his own programs. Therefore, in this study, we have improved the defect in the previous system by using a Java Servlet technology. The new system will make it possible for novice user to experience a practical digital image proccessing and an advanced programming with ease. We will describe the architecture of the proposed system function, that has been introduced to facilitate the client-side programming.

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In this paper, a method is proposed to education of starting characteristics and stationary characteristics of three phase induction motors based on a direct numerical analysis. At first, a mathematical model is presented to three phase induction motors. Secondly, program codes in C language are shown to simulation studies with results obtained by the program codes. Finally, the results obtained in this paper are shown to the effectiveness of the proposed method to education of starting characteristics and stationary characteristics of various three phase induction motors.

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A new subject “creative engineering exercise" has started in the faculty of engineering, Toyama University in 2004. The purpose of the subject is to give the motivation to the students to study engineering science as well as to help them to get the spirit of cooperation, creativity, voluntary and presentation ability. The subject is opened to 1^st to 3^rd grade students in all courses in the faculty. The students are divided into each development groups and experience the processes to develop each engineering product by themselves under the guidance of advisory teachers. They are asked to make development plans, design and manufacture the products, and presentation of the feature and development process of the products. The subject has started on 2004 school year and 38 students and developed 10 products. The products were presented in the student's creative idea exhibitions held in Toyama University, Niigata University and Nagasaki University. In 2005 school year, 72 students have attended the subject and now they are developing 12 engineering products in each group. In this paper the outline of the subject is described as well as the results and the prospects of the subject.

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Design of electrical mathematics and evaluating results of the course are described in this paper. The design was carried out based on the analysis using questionnaires done to the third grade students in Iwate University. One of the analysis results with the questionnaires, many student feel the difficulty to understand in treatment of sinusoidal ac current and voltage with employment of complex numbers. Based on the analysis, the content of electrical mathematics was designed with focusing easy to use the mathematical technique to solve problems in electrical circuit and/or electromagnetic. The designed electrical mathematics was carried out in Iwate University and was evaluated by tests and questionnaires. The results showed the designed electrical mathematics contributed toward well-understanding the electrical circuits and/or the electromagnetics for students.

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New education programs for undergraduates and/or high school students have been tried in which teaching opportunities are effectively utilized.
First, a new style of education, “relay-teaching" from undergraduates to high school students further to elementary school students, was tried in the Science Experiments School. By providing the undergraduates and high school students with opportunities to teach and explain some knowledge to the others, it became possible to allow them to re-recognize and re-construct their own knowledge and improve their presentation-related skills. Thus, this style of teaching was found to be an effective education program.
Based on results of the above-mentioned program, a project for undergraduates has been in progress in which they develop science experiment programs to be used in elementary schools. The four programs for elementary schools were already developed and actually demonstrated by the undergraduates in general study classes of some elementary schools, which were successful in attracting interests of children. Moreover, the project was found to be effective in education for the undergraduates in which they can get opportunities to improve their various skills through experiences of teaching and preparation thereof.
This paper describes the above two new education programs and analyzes educational effects thereof.

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In this paper, “Introduction to Electrical Engineering" which is lecture and practical training subject with the aim of education for generating and motivating is described on the educational purpose, the detailed content of execution and effect after the execution. The results for 3 years of 2003, 2004 and 2005 are summarized. The future directivity of education for generating and motivating at Department of Electrical Engineering, Fukuoka Institute of Technology is discussed.

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We have developed a simple e-mail application named Seemit which is designed for being used in information literacy courses. It has necessary and sufficient functionality of an e-mail application, and it has been developed for the purpose of learning basic operations and mechanisms of e-mail transfer easily. It is equipped with the function to automatically set the configuration of user's SMTP/POP servers and e-mail address, etc. The process of transferring e-mail via SMTP and POP can be demonstrated step by step showing actual messages passed during the client-server interaction. We have utilized Seemit in a university-wide information literacy course which holds about 1800 students.

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The paper described the prototype-system and operation of an interactive game using a remote controlled robot system. The system can provide the international exchange type game. Players compete with other teams by moving their robots from remote locations. The system tested communicative operations in Japan with those of Australia and Singapore.

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The contents creation in e-Learning system becomes an important problem. The contents of e-Learning should include figure and voice media for a high-level educational effect. However, the use of figure and voice complicates the operation of authoring software considerably. A new authoring software, which can build e-Learning contents efficiently, has been developed to solve this problem. This paper reports development results of the authoring software.

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Most of breakdowns in electric power system are caused by lightning to the tower for high voltage transmission wires. To avoid accidents due to the lightning, it is desired to develop a measurement system for the spatial electric field distribution around the tower. We have developed a new system that can measure the electric field around the steel tower of electric power transmission by using an optical electric sensor. In conventional methods, the sensor is generally illuminated by the light transmitting by optical fibers. On the other hand, the new measurement system illuminates the pockels sensor directly by using a laser to measure the far electric field. Furthermore, our newly proposed feed back system makes it possible to measure the spatial electric field without concerning the change of pockels sensor's operation point influenced by temperature change. This system is applicable as a remote sensing system to moniter the spatial electric field around High Voltage Transmission Line.

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We had been researching improvement of NOx removal by superimposing sound wave on discharge plasma. The Sound wave influences not only the discharge but also the NOx removal. In this paper, we focused on gas flow change by sound wave and influence to NO removal of this gas flow. The experiment is carried out by using a reactor having four discharge gaps. The discharge space, the electrode position and inlet position were changed in this experiment. As a result, the effect of acoustic standing wave to NO removal prominently appeared with decreasing ratio of discharge space. It is because the gas stream in the reactor is changed by irradiating sound wave. With changing electrode position, it is clarified that NO removal depends on particle velocity in case of irradiating acoustic standing wave. With changing gas inlet position, the NO removal characteristics of 0mm and 100mm are almost the same. This result shows that sample gas has flowed to the distance of 100mm from the node of sound pressure distribution. Particle velocity, which NO removal begins to increase, was 0.6-0.8m/s in case of all electrode position. This shows that change of gas flow begins to take place more than particle velocity of 0.6-0.8m/s.

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We have been conducting computer simulations aiming to improve the luminous efficiency of plasma display panels (PDPs). This time, we made a comparative study to determine vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) efficiency by resonance radiation and molecular radiation of the opposed electrode structure in AC- and DC-type cells using the one-dimensional (1D) gas-discharge simulation. The results show that the luminous efficiency of the AC-type cell was approximately 30% higher than that of the DC-type cell under the conditions of a gas composition of He-Xe (10%) and a pressure of 40.0kPa. This is caused by the effect of the imprisonment of resonance radiation being small, because the VUV radiation of the AC-type cell is located near the phosphor. Therefore, because the effective lifetime of the resonance line is not extended, the decrease of the luminous efficiency by processes such as cumulative ionization and stepwise excitation is less than that of the DC-type. In addition, in the operation of the AC-type cell, the distributions of excited species related to VUV radiation and electron distribution are spatiotemporally difficult to overlap, the processes such as cumulative ionization and stepwise excitation are smaller, and the influence of decreasing the luminous efficiency is also less.

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Basic research that uses an experimental panel with the aim of improving its discharge characteristics such as the luminous efficiency of plasma display panels (PDPs) is performed. Similar experimental PDPs of AC- and DC-type cells with opposing electrodes were manufactured, and their luminous efficiencies were compared. Although both panels are of the same size and gas composition (He-Xe (10%) and 40.0kPa), etc., the cathode material is different; the cathode materials of the AC- and DC-type cells are MgO and Al, respectively. The luminous efficiency of the AC-type cell with a simple pulse drive (20kHz:40kpulses/sec) is higher than that of the DC-type cell with a pulse memory drive of approximately 40%. The relationship between discharge current and the intensity of near-infrared (IR) ray emitted from the upper energy levels 2p of Xe^*(1s₄) was examined for the AC-type cell, and the near-IR light, visible light and phosphor P47 (Y₂SiO₅:Ce) light from the discharge were also observed using a high-speed gate camera. On these grounds we have come to the conclusion that the distribution of Xe^*(1s₄), etc. is more localized than that of the DC-type cell on the AC-type cell near the phosphor, and luminous efficiency increases.

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Ion extraction from a magnetically driven shunting arc plasma and the plasma density at sheath boundary are described in this paper. The plasma density is obtained using current and voltage waveforms of a target which is immersed in the plasma to extract the carbon ions. A 40 mm length carbon rod which has 2 mm in diameter is employed as solid state plasma sources. A large current more than 1 kamps is supplied from charged-up 20 μF capacitor to heat up the carbon rod and to vaporize the rod matirials. The shunting arc plasma generated along the rod surface is driven with Lorenz force and is accelerated tward a muzzle of a plasma launcher which consists of pair of 100 mm-length carbon plates. The 64 mm diameter brass disc is placed at 100 mm apart from carbon rod and is used as the target. The 10 μs width negative pulse bias voltage is applied to the target for the extraction of the carbon ions from the shunting arc plasma. The ion density near the sheath boundary around the target is obtained using two procedures; utilization of the stationary target current to determine the ion current and/or utilization of the target bias voltage waveforms. The ion density is obtained to be 1.1 × 10¹⁵ m^-3 at 100 μs after the arc ignition using the target current. The density is larger than the density of 5.1 × 10¹⁴ m^-3 obtained using the waveform of the target voltage. The plasma density is also predicted using a Bohm equation and a momentum conservation equation. The plasma density is 1.6 × 10¹⁶ m^-3 at 100 μs after the arc ignition. The density decreases with increasing the time from arc ignition.

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Pulsed streamer discharges in water using a wire to cylinder electrode contained in 42 mm inner glass tube were investigated with respect to its spatial expanse associated with voltage waveforms. The discharge reactor with a continuous flow system was employed to sterilize E. coli suspended in saline water (10 mS/m). The discharge electrode consisted of a 0.1 mm diameter metal wire for the high voltage and a mesh cylinder for the ground electrode. Tens of disk-shape discharges emerged from the wire electrode and propagated toward the cylinder as long as the voltage lasts. The spatial expanse of the discharge was proportional to the cube of pulse duration and to the amplitude of the voltage. The sterilization experiment showed that the survival ratio of bacteria over discharges was proportional to the average number of the exposure to the discharges while in the reactor. The minimum ratio of survival bacteria was only 15% under 130 exposures, which corresponds to the energy expenditure of 35 J/ml.

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A high-speed switching assist equipment for suppression of arc discharge between contact electrodes was developed. It is consisted of arc detection circuit, semiconductor switch, and energy absorbing circuit. By adjusting the operation delay time to a short time less than 1 ms, electrode damage and optical emission was reduced.

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Effect of magnetic field on sustainment and dynamics of low current DC vacuum arcs, less than 20 A, were examined. Without magnetic field, the cathode spot moves at random on the cathode surface and the arc voltage is constant for increasing gap length up to 30 mm. In the axial magnetic field, the arc plasma was constricted and the arc voltage rose with increasing gap length. When a magnet was arranged behind the cathode, the cathode spot rotated in the opposite direction of the Lorentz force (J x B) on the edge of the cathode. On the other hand, when a magnet was arranged behind the anode, the arc column was constricted on the electrode axis and the lifetime of the arcs was extremely extended.

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The hydroponic culture solution contaminated by fungi is sterilised by a DC corona discharge, and the sterilisation characteristics are investigated in this work. A DC streamer corona discharge is generated at atmospheric pressure in air between needle clusters and a water bath containing contaminated solution by fungus such as Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. spinaciae or Fusarium sp.. It is found that the fungi are killed by the exposure of the corona discharge, and that the death rates of the fungi chiefly depend on the concentration of the hydroponic culture solutions. It is also found that the number densities of the fungi decrease exponentially with the energy expenditure of the corona discharge, and that damping coefficients of the fungi densities depend on the concentration of the hydroponic culture solutions. This suggests that the fungi are chiefly inactivated by electroporation.

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To improve the NO removal performance in silent discharge process, we investigated the influence of the physical parameters such as current density, channel radius and pulse duration of the one micro discharge under the constant reduced electric field strength. And influence of the micro discharges occurrence locations were also discussed. In order to analyze the NO removal process, we assumed that the pulse micro discharges occur repeatedly at the same location in static gas and that the chemical reactions induced by micro discharge forms many radicals, which react with pollutants and by-products. The conclusions we obtained are that lower current density, smaller discharge radius and shorter discharge duration improve NO removal efficiency. These results also mean that the lower discharge energy of the one micro discharge and the larger number of parallel micro discharges increase the NO removal performance. Therefore, to make the area of one micro discharge small is a desirable way to improve the NO removal performance. So we think that the glow like discharge might be more effective than the streamer like discharge mode. Next, using the two-dimensional model, which considered the influence of gas flow, we obtained a conclusion that the repeated micro discharges at different positions are very effective to increase the De-NOx performance. The reason is that the reaction of NO₂+O→NO+O₂ and ozone dissociation reactions are suppressed by the movement of the location of micro discharges.

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Pulsed power has been used to produce non-thermal plasmas in gases that generate a high electric field at the tip of streamer discharges, where high energy electrons, free radicals, and ozone are produced. Recently, all solid-state pulsed power generators, which are operated with high repetition rate, long lifetime and high reliability, have been developed for industrial applications, such as high repetition rate pulsed gas lasers, high energy density plasma (EUV sources) and water discharges. We have studied and developed repetitive all solid-state pulsed power system for discharge in water. The developed system consists of a photo-voltaic generator, a Pb battery, an inverter, a controller, a command charger, a high-speed thyristor, a magnetic pulse compression circuit and a pulse transformer, and has mobility. This system can generate an output peak voltage of over 100 kV with voltage rise time of 200 ns. In this work, large volume streamer like discharges in water were produced by the developed system and this discharge plasma used to treat algae (Microcystis) with point-to-plane simple electrodes.

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The reliability of bulk insulation is particularly important in multilayered or embedded printed circuit boards (PCBs). Moreover, PCBs are mounted in quite a lot of devices, which are often used at high temperatures and in high humidity. We observed internal space charge behavior in two typical types of epoxy composites for PCBs, namely those with aramid and with glass, under dc voltage to investigate the effect of water temperature. It was observed that the space charge profiles showed spatial oscillation with 3 or 5 iterative units in agreement with the number of composite layers in samples. In the case of the aramid/epoxy composite, homocharge is formed near the two electrodes in the sample at 40 °C, while hetrocharge is accumulated at 85 °C. The ion-chromatography analysis showed that the contents of several kinds of cations were much higher especially in the aramid/epoxy composite treated in water at 85 °C than in the one treated at 40 °C. This indicates that the water treatment enhances dissociation of ions. In the case of the glass/epoxy composite, homocharge is formed near the electrodes in the sample under dc voltage if it was treated in water at 85 °C. Water seems to enhance the charge accumulation in both samples.

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Non-polar polymers such as polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) are widely used as very important electrical insulating and dielectric materials. They are used in the increasingly high AC electric field strength region approaching to the limit of electrical breakdown strength of the materials. Therefore the study of high-field dielectric property is very important in terms of understanding the AC breakdown mechanism of materials. A three-terminals electrode system with a guard film (new type electrode system) was developed in our laboratory for the precise measurement of high-field tanδ, where the guard film was used to reduce the disturbance of electric field around the edge of a main electrode.
However, minute air sometimes steals between a sample film and the guard film. The air sometimes generates partial discharge in the high electric field region. Therefore, when the sample had minute air, the new type electrode system was limited under 100kV_rms/mm application that didn't reach to an intrinsic breakdown strength of the 30μm-thick sample. We tried to improve the new electrode system without minute air between a sample film and the guard film. We also tried to make very thin guard film to reduce the field disturbance at the edge of main electrode. In this paper a PP-guard film on a biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film was made by evaporation. This improvement of the electrode system using the evaporated PP-guard film was in success so that high-field dielectric properties of BOPP film could be measured up to near the intrinsic breakdown field of the sample.

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In high-speed digital processing circuits of these days, in order to match the timing between two or more signals, many meander lines have come to be seen. Increasing the length of the hairpin conductor causes to increase the coupling between the parallel conductors, and it leads to deteriorate the frequency characteristics of delay time. In this paper, a strip meander line with shielding conductors connected to the ground through the vias is proposed, and the improvement of the delay time characteristics is investigated.

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Analytical formula of induced electric field at arbitral position in a spherical conductor by an arbitral ELF dipole magnetic field source is mathematically derived in vector form. Its validity is confirmed by comparing the analitical solutions with numerical solutions by the equivalent multipole moment method.

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The pulsed electro-acoustic (PEA) method is widely used to measure the space charge distribution through the thickness of solid dielectric materials. One of the well-known phenomena obtained by space charge measurement is the `packet charge' that is injected from one electrode and travels as a bulk to the other electrode. It has been observed as a bulk charge that moves inside the specimen, using a normal PEA system. We have developed a two-dimensional PEA system that can measure space charge profiles in a section of the specimen. By using this new two-dimensional PEA system, it was revealed that the `packet charge' is not homogeneous, and internal space charge behavior is more complicated than those described for bulk charge.

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