The Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B was founded in 1912 as the Proceedings of the Imperial Academy by the Imperial Academy of Japan (now the Japan Academy). The Journal was split into the Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series A and Series B in 1977. PJA Series B publishes reviews and original articles in broad fields of natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, earth sciences, biology, engineering, agricultural sciences, medicine and pharmacy.*) Manuscripts are evaluated at least by two reviewers. Ten issues are published per year. The content is open access and available online through J-STAGE (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/pjab).