The author recently noticed that noise not only contaminates signals, but also heats electronic circuits. This new viewpoint suggests a reason why lithium-ion batteries of a sophisticated new aircraft, a Boeing 787, encountered overheating, or caught fire, because conventional electronic circuits could produce enough noise to heat circuit elements. In order to overcome this issue concerning the DC-line system of the AC-DC converter, it has been practically and theoretically proven that a symmetric three-line (S3L) circuit with both common- and normal-mode filters is excellent for noise reduction. On the other hand, the author identified a common-mode noise in addition to the normal-mode noise at an AC line, several years ago. In order to overcome such problems of an AC-line system as those of a DC-line system, the author recommends the symmetrization and a common-mode filter for the AC-line system of an AC-DC converter. This paper describes how both common- and normal-mode noises could heat electronic circuits based on calculations of three-line circuit theory. Heating occurs along with the coupling of common- and normal-modes of a propagation wave type and the reflection of both waves at circuit elements, causing complicated phenomena beyond our understanding based on the conventional circuit theory.

As part of the Kanagawa “Challenge-10-year strategy to cancer” it was decided in March 2005 to establish a carbon-ion therapy system at the Kanagawa Cancer Center (KCC). From around 2009, the basic design and the foundational planning of the facility were considered and in January 2012 a contract was made with the Toshiba Corp. In December of the same year, construction of the main building for the acceleration and treatment devices has been started and completed in October 2014. Currently, the KCC is in a commissioning phase with the aim to start treatment in December this year. Various treatments for cancer, which include the present photon LINAC for the radiation therapy, will be provided to patients in cooperation with our cancer center hospital. In addition, we will combine a compact dissemination treatment system of carbon-ion therapy to the pencil beam 3D scanning technique designed by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS). The treatment experience with the carbon-ion scanning technique is expected to be the second in the country following NIRS.

The SuperKEKB project is an experiment with a positron-electron collider built to explore new phenomena at the particle physics. The target luminosity is 8×10³⁵ cm^-2s^-1, which is 40 times the KEKB accelerator that has been operated for 11 years up to 2010. The consideration of SuperKEKB has started since 2001 and the strategy of luminosity upgrade was “high-current” scheme in the early stage. However, difficulties such as bunch lengthening due to coherent synchrotron radiation and huge reinforcement of RF system arise. We have changed the strategy from the high-current scheme to a “nano-beam” scheme since 2009. The latest upgrade plan and a recent progress of the accelerator construction have been reported.

Aim of the KEK KISS project is to understand an astrophysical origin of the rapid neutron capture process through the decay studies of unknown nuclei having the mass number around 195 and the neutron number around 126 in so called blank spot region, where has been hard to access experimentally, so far. We have developed a new experimental method consisting of multi-nucleon transfer reactions of neutron-rich heavy-ion beams and a mass separator combined with an element selective laser resonance ionization. This device is named as KEK Isotope Separation System (KISS). After the success of the developments, KISS will be open for users in this year as one of experimental apparatuses in the RIBF facility of Riken Nishina Center. And a KEK new branch, Wako Nuclear Science Center (WNSC) has been launched at Riken Wako campus from this April for supporting the scientific activities of KISS users.