In recent years, attempts have been made to quantify human emotions and sensibilities. We have proposed a technique for acquiring emotions and sensibilities from EEG in real time, and have made various applications. In particular, a wide variety of measurement methods and evaluation methods that is important in handling the brain or its activity. We are studying emotional analysis using mice from studies such as differences due to gender and national differences. In particular, emotions and sensibilities are one of the higher-order functions of human beings, and sensibility is a research area that should continue to be important in the future because research has begun in Japan. This paper describes the background and method of doing this, and mentions future prospects.

From around 1960 to the 1980's, various biological phenomena attracted much attention and were intensively studied using nonlinear methematical models. Using several simplified neuron models, such as the Caianiello neuron and Nagumo-Sato models, and a model of a biological oscillator, as examples, we show that a common dynamics expressed by a one-dimensional discrete dynamical system (one-dimensional mapping) underlies such models arising in different biological contexts. In particular, exploration of the nonlinear dynamics of a piecewise linear mapping in detail shows that very complicated nonlinear phenomena can be generated by very simple nonlinear dynamics.

For real-time monitoring systems, the primary performance objective is that sufficiently fresh information is displayed on monitors. As a result, information with an old timestamp has little value in such systems. In other words, the value of information decreases as time passes, and displayed information can be useful only if it is updated frequently enough. Although the delay of packets with new information has conventionally been used as a representative performance metric for monitoring systems, it is an indirect measure of information freshness. The age of information (AoI) is a new metric that quantifies the freshness of information directly, and considerable research efforts on it have been expended recently. In this article, we first introduce the basic concept of the AoI. We then present a mathematical basis for the theoretical analysis of the AoI, and we demonstrate its usefulness by providing some insights obtainable from theoretical results into the control of the AoI performance.

In the case of high-power ultrasonic devices, the vibration waveform is generally a sinusoidal wave obtained with a resonant effect. On the other hand, in ultrasonic pumps, ultrasonic levitation and cavitation generation, sinusoidal ultrasonic vibration is not always optimal because these principles are based on the nonlinearity of the bulk modulus of water or air. In this study, we designed a transducer whose higher-order-mode resonant frequency is twice the fundamental one, and verified the waveform dependence on cavitation generation by examining a trapezoidal waveform obtained by superposing two sinusoidal waves. To a realize trapezoidal waveform, the ratio of the resonance frequencies between the fundamental mode and the higher order mode must be controlled to be precisely 1 : 2 ; however, this ratio shifts easily as a result of a temperature rise and nonlinear piezoelectric effects. In particular, for the high-power ultrasonic transducer with a high Q value, it is difficult to realize 1 : 2 the resonance frequency ratio because of the extremely narrow frequency band for the resonant effect. In this research, we developed a resonance frequency control system by separating the passive piezoelectric elements from the driving piezoelectric element. To control the resonance frequency ratio by utilizing the stiffness change depending on the electrical boundary condition of these passive piezoelectric elements. Finally, we verified that the nonsinusoidal waveform, namely, the trapezoidal waveform, is effective for cavitation generation compared with a single sinusoidal waveform.

Emerging technologies such as AI and autonomous robots and the consideration to increase their industrial use are rapidly progressing. Furthermore, research and development of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) are also advancing. As part of an international debate, regulations in the framework of the Convention on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) have been discussed and basic principles have been proposed. In this article, the international humanitarian law applicable to LAWS, the report of the United Nations Disarmament Institute (UNIDIR), the status of discussions from the level of informal LAWS experts meetings to the Government Expert Meeting (GGE) on the LAWS lethal autonomous weapon system, the contents of proposed guiding principles, and the status of consideration regarding legal and ethical aspects for regulating LAWS are described and confirmed.

The demand response, i.e., the changes in electricity usage of consumers in response to incentive payments, is expected to be a solution to supply-side anomalies, such as fluctuations in solar generation. Meanwhile, it is inevitable that some of the participants will default in providing the scheduled megawatt energy owing to demand-side fluctuations such as instrument faults. Thus, the detection of defaulting participants is required as a function of the aggregator. In this expository paper, we introduce a detection method based on sparse reconstruction.