The large-scale FDTD computation as an computational electromagnetics became very important in various fields. In this paper, the FDTD parallel computation and high accuracy FDTD methods necessary for large-scale computation are described. These are applied to the large-scale problems of electromagnetic wave simulation, especially for ITS problems.

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Application of atmospheric-pressure non-thermal plasma tends to expand more widely into various fields. The recent trend of non-thermal plasma source is the scaling-up to large dimensions with dense concentrations of reactive particles. In dielectric barrier discharge the requirement for the dense plasma is the increase of the microdischarge occurrences. For the generation of large-scaled dense plasma, the capacity-coupled multidischarge (CCMD) is advantageous. The discharge gaps in the CCMD consist of a common electrode and a number of compact electrodes which are directly coupled with small capacitors for extinction of the discharge. This article introduces the recent trends on large-area, dense, atmospheric-pressure plasma source.

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ElectroMagnetic Compatibility (EMC) is invisible and vague problem, arising from natural phenomena and subsidiary to artifacts. However, it has significant impact on advanced information society and has become important issue in social system. This paper reviews recent crucial four topics in EMC research area, which is especially related to safety and security in social life.

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Recent progress of the industrial applications of pulsed power is reviewed in this paper. Repetitively operated pulsed power generators with a moderate peak power have been developed for industrial applications. These generators are reliable and low maintenance. Development of the pulsed power generators helps promote industrial applications of pulsed power for such things as food processing, medical treatment, water treatment, exhaust gas treatment, ozone generation, engine ignition, ion implantation and others. Here, industrial applications of pulsed power are classified by application for biological effects, for pulsed streamer discharges in gases, for pulsed discharges in liquid or liquid-mixture, and for bright radiation sources.

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Resent topics on electrical-discharge-related technologies along with the research activities of the technical committee on electrical discharges (TC-ED) of IEEJ are presented briefly. Following the introduction of the major research subjects that TC-ED is responsible to cover, a few examples of the investigating R&D committees' (IRDCs) activity are mentioned.

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Three topics in light application and visual science are introduced in this report: Terahertz wave radiation from intrinsic Josephson junctions, recent trends of lithography for semiconductor device fabrication, and compact microwave discharge lamp.

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Instrumentation and measurement play a vital role in research and development in the science and engineering fields. Recently, the goals of instrumentation and measurement have expanded to meet not only the industrial and science requirements but also the needs in all fields of social life, such as medicine and welfare, the environment, and disaster and security.
In this article, the state of TC-IM (Technical Committee of Instrumentation and Measurement of IEEJ) activities and technical topics in the instrumentation and measurement field are reported, mainly referring to over seventy papers presented at the IM Technical Meeting.

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This article reports the state-of-art of TC-DEI ( Technical Committee of Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation of IEEJ) activities. The activities are basically based on investigation committees under TC-DEI. Recent activities are categorized into four functions. Relating topics are described in the article.

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Major developments in the research field of superconductivity have been achieved in 2008. Since the discovery of high-T_c superconductors, their practical application has been studied by many researchers. Coated conductors consisting of an YBa₂Cu₃O_y superconducting layer deposited on metal tapes buffered oxide layers were developed in the NEDO project between FY2003 and FY2007. These technologies for coated conductors are expected to be applicable to electrical power equipment. A new NEDO project that started in FY2008 is focusing on the development of superconducting electric power equipment such as power cables, superconducting magnetic energy storage devices (SMES) and transformers. Furthermore, a new family of high-T_c superconductors, Fe-As-O-based superconductors, has been discovered. The highest reported critical temperature, T_c, has rapidly increased owing to the considerable effort of many researchers. A new social environment based on superconductivity technology might indeed be realized in the near future.

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The Magnetics Technical Committee, which is established under the Fundamentals and Materials Society of Electrical Engineers of Japan (IEEJ). The Magnetics Technical Committee has eight research committees for advance magnetic technology. This article introduces the some Research Committee topics on Micro-magnetic, High Frequency Micromagnetic Applications and Permanent Magnets.

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The IEEJ Committee on the History of Electrical Engineering has been conducting oral histories since the late 1990s. On the basis of this, seven electricity-related institutes (including the IEEJ) are now cooperating to promote oral histories. In this paper, the authors give an overview of pertinent activities. The paper includes ways of thinking about oral histories, interview procedures, and advantages and disadvantages of oral histories.

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Five electrical and information related institutes^* and the National Institute of Informatics (NII) have created a web database on the history of Japanese electrical technologies. The Database on Noteworthy Japanese Contributions to Electrical Technologies (DB-JET) is filled with content that should be of interest to professional engineers and the general public.
This article outlines DB-JET and gives a brief history of its development, especially the contribution of IEEJ.
(^*) The five are the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers (ITE), the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), the Illuminating Engineering Institute of Japan (IEIJ), the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan (IEEJ), and the Institute of Electronics, Information and communication Engineers (IEICE).

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In this paper, the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is used to simulate the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) waves emitted from partial discharge (PD) occurred on distribution line. The simulation model is composed of the distribution line, a building, the ground, and four antennas mounted on a vehicle. Three pairs of time difference of arrival (TDOA) among antennas are used to locate PD position in three dimensions. The TDOAs are obtained by using standard cross-correlation (SCC) method. The superimposed positioning optimization on the time delay of arrival (SPOT) method is used to improve the location result.

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Recently polymer nanocomposite has been attracting much attention as an emerging insulating material. In this paper, we measured thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) in low-density polyethylene (LDPE)/MgO nanocomposite by changing measuring parameters such as the temperature increasing rate and the intensity of electric field applied. As a result, a TSDC peak that spreads over a wide temperature range from 0°C to 60°C was observed in all the samples. As the amount of MgO nano-filler increases, the TSDC peak height decreases. Furthermore, by adopting a partial heating method, the wide TSDC peak was resolved into several component peaks. Among them, the peak at around 12°C was found not to appear in the base LDPE. By analyzing its initial rising portion, the 12-°C peak was assumed to have a fairly deep energy depth of about 2 eV. These results indicate that charge carriers tend to be captured more strongly by the addition of MgO nano-fillers. If these captured charge carriers induce homocharge layers in the vicinity of the electrodes, further formation of space charge would be suppressed. This seems to explain the fact that the amount of space charge is smaller in the nanocomposite with a proper addition of MgO than in the base LDPE.

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Plasma surface treatment posses many advantages comparing to the other wet techniques. In this work, we focused on the surface modification by introducing -COOH group into the polymer surface using surface-wave plasma. To introduce -COOH group into the surface, we added a small amount of the acetic acid (CH₃COOH) vapors into the argon plasma. The water contact angle on poly carbonate surface decreased from 70°to 0°after plasma treatment. According to Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) measurements, it was found that the surface roughness increased and oxygen molecule was introduced. These results may suggest that the functional groups on polymer surface were substituted for high hydrophilic groups by Ar+CH₃COOH plasma treatment.

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