Mutual support is sought after because the increasing number of elderly residents living in apartment complexes has become a problem in recent years. This study focused on mutual support interchanges for the elderly through “salon activities” and conducted a survey in order to understand the requirements for encouraging participation.
 An internet survey of residents of apartment complexes in suburban Tokyo was conducted in June 2015, and 1087 valid responses were obtained. The target age was 50 years or older, which is assumed to be the age of those who will receive mutual support through salon activities.
 In order to represent these activities, the survey form contained illustrations of four different types of salon activities. The items were arranged as follows: based on the “scale of the apartment complex, ” “awareness of aging” of the residents affects the “expectation of activities” and “activity needs (necessary/participation).”
 Results were analyzed by organizing the constructs based on methods such as factor analysis. The causal order of the below items was estimated, and the causal relationship between the variables was examined through graphical modeling. Next, responses on self-report measures by “ experienced persons of salon activities” and “inexperienced persons ”were utilized in SEM analyses. The results supported the model, and subsequent multiple-group analysis showed that the relationships and degrees of association among factors were almost comparable between the two cohorts. It should be noted that the causal arrangement of “activity needs” was based on the additive model in MTMM.
 【 “scale of the apartment complex, ”→“awareness of aging”→“expectation of activities”→“activity needs (necessary/participation).” 】

 Discussion of the causal model
 1) “Scale of the apartment complex, ”
 The overall effect of each variable of the “number of households” regarding “aging and expectation of activities” were positive for “experienced persons” and “inexperienced persons”. That is, when there are many households in an apartment complex, salon activities increase mutual awareness on safety issues such as crime prevention and disaster prevention. "The activity that everyone tends to participate casually" is important to advance participation.
 2) “Awareness of aging”
 When there is awareness on the existence of low-income elderly residents with no one to depend on, the necessity for salon activities is apparent. However, awareness on the existence of bigoted and impolite elderly residents prevents others from participating. Thus, before aging progresses, it's important to suggest participation.
 3) “Activity needs (necessary/participation).”
 With regard to activity needs, an analysis of the additive model found that awareness on the necessity of the salon leads to participation. Necessity was affected the most by expectations from “preparation for disasters and old age.” Items related to expectations in daily life appeared to directly affect participation.
 Thus, in determining salon activities, such as in meetings, it is effective to appeal to the necessity of “preparation for disasters and old age.” In subsequent efforts, it was effective to examine policies that foster participation in “activities that encourage household exchanges and give purpose of life” related to daily life as raising awareness on the need for salon activities.

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 1. Background and objective
 This study examines the methodology of Causality analysis on environmental evaluation. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new method to grasp causes and effects of "attractiveness(subjective satisfaction)" and "dissatisfaction" based on environmental evaluation data.
 2. Basic idea
 First, it is necessary to conduct a survey that respondents evaluate the environment using the following three kinds of evaluation items: i) Evaluation items of each viewpoint (several to dozen), ii) Evaluation of "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction" (2 items), iii) Comprehensive evaluations (1 or more items).
 Then, the following causal model is applied to the obtained evaluation data:
 {Cause variables: evaluation items of each viewpoint} → {Intermediate variables: "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction"} → {Result variables: comprehensive evaluations}
 Based on the obtained causal model, causal effects from "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction" to comprehensive evaluations are grasped. And cause variables are classified using Kano model as follows.
 “Attractive Quality”: Items that have effect to "attractiveness" and no effect to "dissatisfaction".
 “One-dimensional Quality”: Items that have effect to both "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction".
 “Must-be Quality”: Items that have effect to "dissatisfaction" and no effect to "attractiveness".
 3. Case study
 In order to examine more concrete survey and analysis methods, analysis based on the proposed method was applied to the following three survey cases. Case1: survey for regional environment, Case2: CS-survey for pablic facilities, Case3: survey for large-scale park.
 4. Findings
 The most important outcome of this research is that we were able to show that it is possible to grasp the cause and effect of "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction" based on evaluation data of case study survey.
 Furthermore, the following findings regarding methodology and evaluation mechanism were obtained.
 As the first step of analysis, how to apply multiple regression analysis to select variables used for analysis was proposed. As the next step, moodel building process in SEM was proposed.
 The effectiveness and significance of the technique using intermediate variables "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction" as latent variables was discussed. This technique has the significance of preventing deterioration of goodness of fit due to poor reliability of "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction", and the significance of relaxing the assumption required for the actual evaluation structure represented by the model.
 It was shown that causal model with hierarchical structure is sometimes useful, sometimes not useful. The latter case is when Must-be Quality items and Attractive Quality items coexist in lower level items affecting the same upper level items.
 As a visualization of the effects of "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction", factor loading plot of "attractiveness" and "dissatisfaction" was proposed. This graph is also useful for comparison between cases.
 5. Future tasks and prospects
 The future tasks are to apply the proposed method to many cases, and to reconsider relationship between the proposed method and the Kano model (The item classification by the Kano model is defined by function form of causal effect to result variable.).

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 Phase Change Materials (PCM) affect the temperature stability inside houses. PCM is developed and utilized as a mean of passive solar strategy in houses. However, the literature found to lack established experimental methods of PCM installation in buildings. This article aimed to study and propose experimental and calculation methods for a PCM material.
 Chapter 1 comprised previous studies and introduced the purpose of this research. In previous studies, it was seen that the Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) is a typical method to determine the specific heat of PCM. However, the amount of PCM used DSC is limited, and it is possible that PCM indicates different heat characteristic when used in real houses, in comparison to the DSC. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to propose experimental methods for the PCM intended to be installed in houses, and to propose a calculation method for reproducing the experiment.
 In Chapter 2, it was observed that the PCM is typically incorporated in the walls of the passive house, floors, and ceilings as a plane (2-dimentiaonl) material rather than small masses or bulk volumes.
 In Chapter 3, for the PCM as a plane material, the Peltier device is suggested for measuring its specific heat and thermal conductivity. The conductivity of the liquid phase of a Paraffin without gelatinizer can be four times higher compared to the solid phase because of the heat convection in the liquid phase. In terms of the representative temperature for specific heat and enthalpy of the paraffin, the temperature between two PCM packs measured on equal distance from the external plane surfaces is more appropriate than the PCM-surface temperature.
 The calculation method for reproducing the experiment is proposed in Chapter 4. In order to maintain the heat balanced, the PCM specific heat should be calculated from the temperature at the thermal node. When calculating the node-temperatures, the conductivity shall be considered alongside with the specific heat, because the paraffin's conductivity tends to vary significantly between the liquid phase and the solid phase.
 There are a number of issues to be considered when applying this calculation to PCM types other than paraffin. These issues are presented in Chapter 5. In next studies, the derived calculation method will be extended to PCM with super-cooling or multiple specific heat peaks.

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 Currently, most detached houses in Japan are airtight wooden structures that have a high risk of vapor condensation in the wall cavities. Vapor condensation in insulation material is a primary contributor to mold growth in wall cavities. Indoor mold concentrations depend not only on indoor mold sources, but also on infiltration from concealed spaces, such as beam space and crawl space. The air pollutants infiltrate houses from these spaces by indoor decompression via the ventilation system, and mold that infiltrates through the glass wool used for heat insulation may remain and grow on the material. In order to measure the mold concentrations in glass wool, a new method is required for air cavity sampling. A method using a Teflon tube inserted into thin spaces in wall cavities or crawl spaces is useful for accomplishing this task. The surface of Teflon is very smooth, but mold adheres to it because of friction or static electricity. The objectives of the present investigation were to develop a method to measure mold concentration using Teflon tubes and to characterize the movement of mold spores between heat insulators.
 The following conclusions were obtained from this study:
 (1) The mean rates of mold retention in 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 m Teflon tubes, which were washed three times with sterilized physiological salt solution, were 5%, 21%, and 37%, respectively. This indicated that retention rates increase with increases in Teflon tube length, and it was concluded that a useful sampling method for concealed spaces must use a Teflon tube that is about 0.3 m long, given the retention rate. Data from inter-laboratory testing indicated that a Teflon tube that is 1 m long is unsuitable for this sampling method.
 (2) The amount of mold spores in the glass wool heat insulator decreased the more it was washed using sterilized physiological salt solution to clarify the movement of mold spores. After the third wash, the desorption rate of mold spores in the glass wool was about 85%, showing that three rounds of washing were required to measure the mold movement.
 (3) Measurement of the movement of mold spores inside the heat insulator showed that the quantity of mold spores adhering to the heat insulator decreases exponentially with an increase in length of the Teflon tubes.
 (4) In this range of the wind velocity, the movement of mold spores between insulators through the heat insulator is not significantly influenced by wind in the small chamber.
 (5) The experimental results indicate that the quantity of mold spores displaced from the heat insulator by air transportation was not significant.

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 INTRODUCTION
 As the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of heat pump devices varies significantly according to the heating and cooling load and ambient temperature, when selecting a suitable device, it is very important to consider the thermal performance of the house and the local weather conditions. It is common to select a home-use air conditioners according to the room floorage in Japan. The heating and cooling load value per unit floorage from 1964 has not been revised, and is still used in the case of the present air-conditioner selection (maximum heating load per floorage: 275 W/m²). However, this is not the best method for highly insulated houses and leads to problems for energy conservation.
 In this study, we developed a calorie meter to carry out temperature adjustment, and used it in analysis of the relationships among COP, heating and cooling load and outside air temperature. COP Matrix is constructed by a database of the measurement results. Furthermore, heat load calculation was performed using the insulation efficiency and the local condition of detached housing as analysis variables. As a result of the heat load calculation, Annual Performance Factor (APF) in actual environmental conditions is computed through correlation with the created COP Matrix. The APF calculated from experiment results is compared with the catalogue APF in order to clarify the characteristics of home-use air-conditioners considering the local conditions and heat load conditions.

 RESEARCH METHODS
 The indoor chamber of the calorie meter is 3 m wide, 3 m deep, and 2.7 m high. The outdoor chamber is 2 m wide, 2 m deep, and 2 m high. One temperature and humidity sensor and one thermistor anemometer are installed in the inlet of the inside air conditioner unit. Two temperature-and-humidity sensors are installed in the outlet of the inside air conditioner unit. One temperature-and-humidity sensors are installed in the inlet of the outside air conditioner unit, the temperature at this point is the outside temperature. Furthermore, in order to examine experimental accuracy, two thermocouples are separately installed in the inlet and three thermocouples are separately installed in the outlet of the inside air conditioner unit.
 A COP matrix is created from the relationship of COP, heating and cooling load and outside air temperature. In order to consider the change of APF calculated from experiment results, analysis was performed by changing the insulation efficiency according to the Standard Model issued by the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ). We used the meteorological data of the AIJ extended AMeDAS meteorological data. Analysis was performed by heat load simulation software TRNSYS. COP was calculated by collation with the computed COP matrix.

 RESULTS
 The COP of cooling is lower when output is relatively low. The COP of heating is higher when the outdoor air temperature is relatively high. And there is a tendency for COP to rise as the flow rate of the inside unit increases. COP matrix in automatic flow rate is similar to COP matrix in relatively small flow rate.
 Although the APF of an air conditioner in the catalogue is 5.6, which computed from COP matrix in case1-1 (Tokyo) is 2.9, which is about 0.5 times rather than catalogue value. The year cumulative power consumption in the catalogue is about 2,000 kWh, which computed from COP by the COP matrix in case1-1 (Tokyo) is about 3,200kWh, which is about 1.6 times rather than catalogue value.
 The APF of heating and cooling become lower when insulation efficiency is relatively high. Because the heating load and cooling load is reduced, the frequency of the ON-OFF operation which COP is relatively low is increased.

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 Radiation air-conditioning system is one of the means to improve heat environment. Many researchers have not yet examined air-type radiation air-conditioning system. Therefore, researchers should accumulate evaluation results and should establish design methods about air-type radiation air-conditioning system. A purpose of this study is to clarify a thermal performance of the air-type radiation air-conditioning system based on the actual survey result for cooling air-conditioning period in the office.
 In Chapter 2, we examined thermal performances of the air conditioners in the air-type radiation air-conditioning system. As a result of having analyzed the quantity of heat-treatment of the air conditioners, as for FCU rate of operation average, July and August were approximately 50%, and June and September were approximately 15%. A designer should consider that environmental improvement effect becomes small at the time when apparatus rate of operation is small.
 In Chapter 3, we analyzed thermal performances of the membrane radiation unit. The membrane radiation unit is air-blow port. A cooling air is gushed in the room by the surface which is fiber material. Because the temperature at the surface nears air-conditioned air temperature, the membrane radiation unit improves mean radiation temperature.
 We analyzed the amount of radiation heat transmission and surface temperature of the membrane radiation unit by the measurement data. On the design rating condition of the target system, the radiation heat capacity of the membrane radiation unit was approximately 33W/square meter. As the membrane surface temperature lowered, the amount of radiation heat transmission that the membrane radiation unit absorbed increased. In addition, the amount of radiation heat transmission became big as the surface temperatures of the room aspects became high. The time responsiveness of the surface temperature was high from the air-blow temperature.
 We led heat balance equation about the membrane radiation unit and jetted air. And we analyzed the convective heat transmission ratio of the membrane radiation unit from measurement data. The convective heat transmission ratio of the membrane radiation unit was value of 4～20W/(m2·K). If a passage wind velocity became big, the convective transmission ratio became big. A radiation environment may not be improved when a passage wind velocity becomes small. When designers plan the blowing surfaces large in order to increase form factors, it is important to consider the average passing wind speed of the blowing surfaces.
 We showed that a value of convective transmission ratio possible calculated amount of radiation heat transmission. We analyzed the influence of design conditions on radiation heat transmission ratio and radiation heat ratio. If an all heat of treatment is the same, a radiation temperature environment improves as a radiation heat ratio increases. A Radiation thermal performance can be estimated by verifying the convective heat transmission ratio of air-type radiation air-conditioning system.

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In this study, the large-eddy simulation (LES) was conducted to investigate the validity of the Reynolds stress <_u1’_u3’> and turbulent heat flux <_u3’T’> modeling within and above the urban canyon under various conditions of thermal stratification. The standard k-ε model (k-ε model) failed to reproduce the spatial distribution of the mean wind velocity vector and temperature within the urban canyon as the thermal stratification became unstable. It underestimated the absolute value of the <_u1’_u3’> and <_u3’T’> compared with the LES. From the results of the LES, it was revealed that the production terms of the <_u3’T’> by the mean wind velocity gradient P_3T(2) and buoyancy effect G_3T increased within the urban canyon. The G_3T was also increased above the urban canyon, although the P_3T(2) was almost negligible. In the modeling of the <_u3’T’> of the k-ε model, these terms are neglected. It is necessary to incorporate the effects of the P_3T(2) and G_3T in the modeling of the <_u3’T’> for the urban canyon flow under thermal stratification.

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 In recent years, there has been a shortage of skill workers and engineers to serve in the construction industry. This has made it essential to train new tradesmen and engineers efficiently and in a short time. The most effective approach for new trainees in the construction industry is to use full-size construction models, in addition to their regular classroom education.
 Two-dimensional drawings have been the heart of the printed materials used in the practical curriculum, but new trainees have found them difficult to read. Most of the trainees are unable to visualize the completed structure in 3 dimensions in their minds by looking at the 2-dimensional drawings (floor plans, elevations, and sectional plans). This has, in turn, blocked them from gaining the capabilities and the skills that they need.
 As a solution to these issues, we have developed a software-based text that is easier for new trainees to understand. The students learn to correctly draw a rebar arrangement and a rebar bending schedule. Augmented reality technology has been implemented to extract 3-dimensional images from 2-dimensional drawings. These materials together are designated the “group of new educational materials” and are coded to be used on smartphones, and then build a 3-dimensional model showing the actual shape of a completed rebar cage. This is then disassembled, and assembly procedure diagrams and an assembly procedure video are created.
 An experiment in the assembly of rebar was performed using new trainees as subjects in order to validate the group of new educational materials. The time required to assemble the rebar by the subjects using the new educational materials was reduced by 35% in comparison to the group of students who did not use the materials. This confirmed that the new educational materials are effective for instruction of new trainees.

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