In recent years, “food safety” has become a major topic of conversation. I have taken up this issue previously and stated that, 1) in Japan, there has been a lack of scientific argued amongst the general public, and 2) responsibility for this state of affairs belongs to both scientists and the media- scientists for not explaining the issue and the mass media for not accurately delivering scientific knowledge. I maintain these opinions. However, regarding “food safety” itself, it may be most effective if we established an “Educational Center for Food Safety” that could offer educational campaigns regarding “food safety” to the general public, and moreover, “educate people to develop expert knowledge” and conduct appropriate research on “food safety”. The nation’s correct understanding and evaluation regarding scientific technology is fundamental to the healthy development of scientific technology in Japan. To that effect, I believe that establishment of an educational center related to “food safety”, an area in which the general public is very much interested, should be a high priority.

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In recent years, herbal medicines have come to be used globally. Herbal medicines are supplied by picking wild plants. Therefore, the increase in consumption of herbal medicines is inducing the destruction of nature. The commerce in various plants across the world has become possible because of progress in transportation. An international economic problem has resulted. Accordingly, two treaties “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora” and “Convention on Biological Diversity” were ratified. This activity is advancing internationally.
In Japan, health hazards due to food have recently emerged because food customs have changed so much. For that, “Food Safety Basic Law” was established and laws and notices were revised. Also, the new system of "Food with Health Claims System" was created.

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As the utilization of dietary supplements and medicinal herbs has suddenly increased, there have been more occurrences of health damage by herbal products. Some examples caused by medicinal plants include: over absorption of Ephedra; misapplication of Aristolochia; little experience with edible plants of Sauropus and Symphytum; interactions of Hypericum with conventional drugs and of warfarin with herbs; different uses of Glycyrrhiza from traditional Chinese medicines; and effects of the herbs on the digestive tract conditions of intestinal bacterial flora and acidity or alkalinity. It has been easy to obtain foreign herbs available in Japan. To avoid health damage with dietary supplements, accurate information on medicinal herbs is required.

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The edible canna, a robust perennial herb belonging to the family Cannaceae, is an under-exploited starch-producing plant native to the new world tropics. Its starch granules are the largest ever measured in any plant. Although canna plants are native to the new world, their cultivation has now spread throughout the tropics and subtropics of Asia. Thus far, we have studied edible canna in Asia from both economic botanical and taxonomic perspectives. This article gives a review of edible canna in terms of taxonomy, agronomy, economic botany and the chemistry of its starch based upon our own data and that available in the literature. The utilization of edible canna in various areas is summarized from our field studies and other reports in the literature. In addition, an analysis of edible canna starch collected from Vietnam, where the plant’s rhizomes are used to make noodles, was conducted. The edible canna starch was shown to have a larger granule size, slightly higher amylose content, longer amylopectin unit-chains, a lower gelatinization temperature, and higher viscosity and retrogradation in comparison with maize starch.

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“Small birthweight means subsequent rapid growth” is a proverb in Japan. Recent epidemiological studies, however, have indicated a relationship between low birthweight and adult diseases. Timing of adiposity at age of 5.5y, genomic imprinting or programming in uterus, and many hypotheses such as insulin desensitization at birth, accelerated catch-up growth after delivery, thrifty phenotype expression, and fetal salvage mechanisms have thus attracted discussion under controversial circumstances in medical and nutritional journals. I will summarize herein recent progress through prospective and retrospective studies performed after 1990, comparing “small” and “appropriate” for gestational age (SGA and AGA) groups of newborn infants. Finally, a definition of neonatal hypoglycemia and an operational threshold are proposed.

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Oblepikha is the Russian name of the plant Hippophae rhamnoides L. ssp. mongolica, which belongs to the Elaeagnaceae family and originated in the Altai region of the Russian Federation. This plant produces small fruits (berries) with orange-yellow colored skin and contain abundant unsaturated fatty acids, such as linoleic acid, α-linolenic acid, oleic acid, as well as vitamins A, C, and E. During the last ten years, improved cultivars developed at research stations in Siberia have been exported all over the world. Here, we report on unique characteristics of the oblepikha fruit as an edible medicinal plant material.

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Since 1957, the author has studied the chemistry and biochemistry of "so called green odor" by a multidisciplinary approach involving synthetic chemistry, natural product chemistry, flavor chemistry, plant biochemical physiology, and molecular biology^1～6). After 1985, the emphasis was on the relationships between the chemical structure and human characteristic response to this green odor^7～12). From 1994, this was ex- tended to the theme "Why people are refreshed by the fresh green odor emitted by green leaves in forest!" To demonstrate under corroboration some effects on stress and of schizophrenic tendencies, research commenced on the effects of green odor on human olfactory receptor neurons and mechanisms of activation of smell sense organs and the impact on immunity. Approaching the 21st century, to further this work, a research project was organized by myself with an interdisciplinary approach combining life science, medicine and aromacology^13～20). Under the auspices of this project, the 1^st symposium on "Why people are refreshed by the fresh green odor emitted by green leaves in the forest!" was held at the Department of Pharmacology, University of Tokyo on December 6th, 1997 under support by the NISSAN SCIENCE FOUNDATION²⁶⁾. Subsequently, the 2nd symposium was held in 1998²⁷⁾, the 3rd 1999²⁸⁾, the 4th in 2000²⁹⁾, 5th, 2001³⁰⁾, 6th, 2002³¹⁾, 7th, 2003³²⁾, 8th, 2004³³⁾ and then 9th, 2005 in the same place, on the first Saturday of December, every year.

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Understanding the biological relationships of modern man to other preceding members of hominidae now found in fossils and assaying his socio-cultural position in comparison with the latter is of great interest at present. Every anthropologist may recognize in a broad sense the evolutionary sequence that the ape-man, Homo habilis, H. erectus, and modern man (H. sapiens) followed. Although some had questioned if modern man stemmed from Neanderthal man, molecular-biological-techniques have revealed that both lineages branched from each other 500,000 years ago in Africa. H. erectus, then ancestral forms of Neanderthal and finally modern man migrated “Out-of-Africa” and dispersed over the Eurasia Continent. Among these only modern man reached Alaska after crossing the land bridge of “Beringia” now sunken below sea-level at the Bering-Strait, and they came through the corridor from Alaska to Montana or thereabouts, then continued the journey into the American Continent. In establishing clearly the scheme of modern human’s journey over the world, problems existed due to very sparse distribution of archaeological sites, lack of fossils found, and in problematic dating of the sites. Then, there were serious conflicts in estimated time of “Out-of-Africa” with many older sites recently dated. We attempted to establish the time of modern man’s “Out-of-Africa” at the beginning of the warm interglacial substage that began ca. 50,000 years ago. The lineage of modern man had diverged and branched into three races of Negroid (N), Caucasoid (C) and Mongoloid (M) 300-200 thousand years ago (Nei and Roychoudhury, 1982). Each of them would have weakly survived under heavy selective pressure at an obscure niche for the ancestral small population, then their fossils of AMHs (anatomically modern humans) would not be found until the population increased. The races C and M went out of Africa to Levant, leaving the race N in the home land. The C went north over the Caucasus Mountains chasing the Mammoth Animals toward the plains extending north and west to the Caspian Sea. In the journey towards the east, the unavoidably hypothetic scenario under which M migrates, is as follows: After following the steppe and deciduous forests along the Zagros Ranges, the southern foot of the Alborz Mts, the people with a hunter-gatherer’s life style might have appeared west of the Hindu Kush Mts. A group of them separately went eastward to India, Southeast Asia and Australia. Another group of M went way north, avoiding huge mire or bog plains occupying areas between the basins of the Ob-Irtysh and Yenisey rivers. Through steppe, mountain tundra and Taiga along the north sides of Altai, Tien Shan and Yablonovyy Mountains, M reached Lake Baikal. From Lake Baikal the only way to pass to the coastal lowlands of the Arctic Sea is to take a route through the Rena drainage-basin.

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