We have investigated microscale experiments on chemiluminescence for primary Schoolchildren. In this study, we have focused our interest on safety and simplicity. We are interested in a commercial chemical light and changing the quantity of the reagent to use.
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24915008.

View full abstract

The idiomatic expression "Dankin-no-chigiri (断金の契り)" means a firm friendship. As an early instance, we are able to find this expression in "Shui Jin Zhu (水經注)" which is a Chinese document written in the early 6th century. In Japan, some documents written in the first half of the Heian era confirmed that Buddhist priests had used this expression. Sometime during the Heian era, this expression came to mean not only the firm friendship but also the close relationship between brothers. In the end of the 12th century, a story narrating the reason why this expression came to mean the close relationship between brothers was created. The story was narrated by Buddhist priests when they were preaching Buddhism to common people. A brief outline of the story is as follows:
One day, two brothers visited their father. The father gave many nuggets of gold to each of them. On their way home from their father’s house, the younger brother threw away his gold. The elder brother asked him "why did you do so?" The younger brother broke into tears and said "An evil thought flashed through my mind. I was going to kill you and rob you of your gold. I realized that a desire for wealth made me to contrive this horrible evil design. That was why I threw away the gold." Then the elder brother said "I had the same thought as you had", and threw away his gold.
After that, the close relationship between brothers came to be expressed by "Dankin-no-chigiri".
Dan (断) means to cut or to stop, and Kin (金) means gold or metal. In the expression "Dankin-no-chigiri" there is a play on words, with Dankin meaning both "hardness that can cut off metal" and "strong willpower that can stop desire for wealth".
In this paper, I have made it clear that the story was created by Buddhist priests, and handed down by preachers.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Three species of yeasts were isolated from plants and soil samples collected at Gunma National College of Technology. Strains PT-2 and ID-1 were isolated as ethanol producers from flowers of Paulownia tomentosa and Ixeris debiris, respectively. Strain PT-2 was shown to be 98% identical to Starmerella bombicola and strain ID-1 was identified as Saccharomyces cerevisiae with DNA sequences of D2 and other regions of ribosomal DNA. Both strains produced ethanol with molecular yield of 80 % from glucose.
Specific assay method for lipid accumulation in microorganisms was developed using lipophilic fluorescent dye BODIPY 505/515. Screening for lipid producing microorganisms resulted in the isolation of strain PM-1 from Prunus mume. Strain PM-1 belonging to the genus Aureobasidium was found to accumulate triglyceride intracellularly and expected to produce lipid from biomass.

View full abstract

We measured induced electromotive force quantitatively using a galvanometer while a magnet pass through a coil. This measurement has errors usually because of a slow response of a galvanometer for induced electromotive force. Therefore it is necessary to improve the response and reduce the change rate of the force. Then we inserted an external registor (critical damping resistor) in a measurement circuit and moved a magnet slowly using a DC motor. As a result, we obtained the experimental conditions that the resistor was about 140 ohm and the velocity of the magnet was under 5cm/s. In these conditions, the induced electromotive force was proportional to the time derivative of magnetic flux.

View full abstract

We compose three extended versions of one of the models of Yamanotesen-Game we studied in the previous paper. One of them is a comnplete information game and the others are incomplete information games. We observe behaviors of these models in some simple cases.

View full abstract

The present paper has been written as a useful guide to new "English Comminication I" textbooks, which are going to be used at high schools and colleges of technology in Japan from April of 2013. These English readers, newly authorized by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, have attracted much attention from not only Japanese teachers of English, but also the general public who has been demanding more effective language education that will quickly and surely enable their children to acquire the ability of speaking English. Apparently, Japan’s Ministry of Education has felt a great deal of responsibility for this serious situation, and has irresponsibly tried thrusting it to the classroom. As a result, most of these new textbooks are filled with much more text and far more activities as well as still more grammar.
Despite the fact that most Japanese people and the Ministry of Education wish to imagine the future Japan where many can speak English fluently, the English Comminication I textbooks in question, strangely enough, have turend out to be little different from the former "English I" textbooks in that the main part is not for speaking, but for reading whose moral topics are familiar to experienced teachers: world peace, equality, environmental problems and so forth.
This paper provides a brief outline of 22 English Comminication I textbooks, showing their characteristics and the contents of every lesson, such as Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa, who made the most of the 1995 Rugby World Cup to unite his newly reborn country, and Tsutomu Yamaguchi (1916-2010), the only human being who was unfortunate enough to experience the atomic bombings both in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but fortunate enough to survive the disasters.

View full abstract

The present paper introduces Penguin Active Reading, a new series of English graded readers. These green-covered, beautiful books apparently stand out among various kinds of graded readers in that they are larger-sized and full-color with more exercises for comprehension.
It is true that the series consists mostly of some uninteresting, original works of fiction written with restricted vocabulary, and a number of abridged versions of already overly famous masterpieces from English and American literature, such as William Shakespeare’s great plays, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and so on, most of which are available from other publishers. Nevertheless, Penguin Active Reading has managed to include outstanding books from around the world, for example, the Chinese classic The Monkey King and the Greek counterpart The Odyssey, both of which are worthwhile and can be currently read as simplified graded readers only in this series. To the joy of Japanese readers, Penguin has rediscovered the value of Lafcadio Hearn’s book of Japanese ghost stories, Kwaidan, which is very popular in Japan but almost forgotten in Western countries. Penguin has also succeeded in finding curious materials from movies: E.T., Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Mr Bean, Sweeney Todd, The Full Monty, etc.
It is recommended that the students at Gunma National College of Technology use this paper as a guide and read as many books as possible in order to study English on their own.

View full abstract

The present paper has been made as an introduction to Cambridge English Readers, dealing with 84 books with CDs, all of which are divided into 7 grades from "starter/beginner" to "advanced" levels. In general, what we call graded readers tend to be mainly made up of well-known English and American masterpieces specially rewritten for foreign learners of English with easier, limited vocabularies. Cambridge University Press, however, has boldly decided to make the series consist of only original novels and stories, which is certainly the most outstanding characheristic of Cambridge English Readers. In fact, the publisher seems to have a lot of confidence in this feature, boasting on the back cover of each book: "Cambridge English Readers is an exciting series of original fiction, (…) the stories in this series provide easy and enjoyable reading on a wide range of contemporary topics and themes." Although it cannot be denied that some of the series might turn out to not be as enjoyable as advertised, Cambridge English Readers are on the whole worth reading as ideal books for those who want to read novels in English.
The paper provides a gereral introduction to Cambridge English Readers, and brief summaries of the 84 books. Richard MacAndrew, Sue Leather, Margaret Johnson, and Antoinette Moses are regular Cambridge novelists; Frank Brennan has written a variety of interesting short stories for the series. There are several books with Japanese as main characters, for example, Judith Wilson’s Staying Together and Michael Austen’s Berlin Express. The former is a love story and the latter a thriller, both of which can be fully appreciated especially among young Japanese students of English.

View full abstract

The authors report results on space does of radio activity after the great East Japan earthquake. In this paper, three results of radioactivity measurements are reported. The first result is the space dose of radioactivity at Gunma National College of Technology with a scintillation survey meter. While the space does in a room has been almost constant, the one in the outdoor decreses gradually. This suggests that radioactivity substances caused by Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster decreases. When the authors went to Ishinomaki city for volunteering, the space doses were measured. Moreover, students measured the space dose with a personal doesmeter.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give a K-theory on the supermanifolds. K-theory was introduced by Alexander Grothendieck in the 50’s in order to solve some difficult problems in Algebraic Geometry. This idea of K-theory has applied other parts of Mathematics, for example Number Theory, Topology, Noncommutative Geometry and Super String Theory. Among many successes of K-theory, one should mention the solution of supergeometric problems, its wide generalization to the new subject called Super Riemann-Roch Formula.

View full abstract

This article begin with an attempt to understand the work of Kontsevich and Fukaya on the Mirror Symmetry conjecture and homological string model. We define the super deformation quantizations of the super structure sheaf of a supermanifold. We study the super deformation quantizations of the tangent space of extended moduli on the homological superstring B-model. Our main conjecture is that the superdifferential graded Lie algebra will be deformation quantizable. This is a supergeometric generalization of Omori’s challenged result.

View full abstract

This paper is a report of language supprt in New York City. I had analyzed volunteers how they support for immgrants at universities, libraries and the City Hall in New York Cty. Volunteers works to improve the quality of life of immgrants by promoting adult education systems. Their systems would be helpful also in Japan.

View full abstract

In this paper, the project of developing a human riding biped locomotion robot called “G-RoBo50” is deiscribed for 50th anniversary at Gunma National College of Technology. The authors propse the robot equiped the functions of robot steering and stability mechanism to reduce the load causing for robot movement. Then to confirm the robot ability, the robot walking experiment on human riding or unmanned are exuecuted. At the result, the authors find now constructed robot is available as human riding biped locomotion robot.

View full abstract

We have developed a multi-robot system having a robot vision for education of robot technology. The system consists of two usb cameras, two six-degree-of-freedom manipulators, a single axis robot, an I/O interface unit, a system control PC, and a image processing PC.
In the study, we have also have developed software of the sysyem control and the robot vison. The system and the software have been utilized for engineering experiment of 4th year in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. A survey was conducted by the questionnaire to evaluate the experiment. More than ninety percents of the students evaluate the experiment very highly.

View full abstract

We have started a new educational program in research for graduation. The subjects, which are shown to students, are based on the problems in manugacturing companies. Those are determined through the discussion among professors, engineers working for companies and a coordinator. In 2011, two subjects were selected from 9 topics and planed for the research for graduation. These subjects are corrently conducted in collaboration with two laboratories and a company respectively. Additionally, we did a survey of 431 companies to acquire more information about the demand for the companies, from which 46 topics appeared. This program will be improved to develop into the next stage.

View full abstract

We developed dye-sensitized solar cell kit suitable for students in learning renewable energy in elementary school and junior high school. The kits were designed for students to put together in a regular school hour. We attempted to use the kits in a summer course for practices to manufacturing education. Forty one students took part in the course. Most students were fascinated with the assembly of the kits.

View full abstract