Bangladesh is a tropical country in South East Asia. The country has a comparatively low natural resource base, but a high growth rate of population. Most people depend mainly on the natural resource base for their livelihood. The country's agriculture, fisheries and livestock along with a number of other sectors are heavily dependent, directly or indirectly on biological resources. Biological resources and biodiversity form the basis of both the ecology and economy of the country. The climate of Bangladesh is tropical and characterized by high temperatures, excessive humidity and fairly marked seasonal variations in precipitation. The tropical hot-humid climate with mild winters, abundance of monsoon rains, surface water in a delta region drained by mighty rivers and the alluvial rich soils makes Bangladesh an ideal place for supporting a high degree of biodiversity. The main environmental concerns of the country that have been identified are deforestation, land degradation, water pollution and scarcity, arsenic contamination in water, urban air pollution, loss of biodiversity, unplanned urbanization and industrialization, and impacts of natural disasters on economy and livelihood systems.

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Five hundreds years ago Sakai was a worldwide open and high sensibility city and especially famous for Japanese tea culture, incense stick, cutlery and so on. Nowadays ecological and healthy life styles are main stream in Japan. Institute for Future Technology (IFTECH) shows a grand design of Sakai as a Sensory City.

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More than 40 endangered plants listed in the national red list are growing in moist tall grasslands of Watarase wetland, the largest lowland wetland, in Japan. The dominant plants in grasslands are Miscanthus sacchariflorus and Phragmites australis, and each endangered species is associated with the habitats where either grass species is predominate, or both are mixed more evenly. Therefore, estimation of the relative dominance of M. sacchariflorus or P. australis may help in evaluation of the potential habitat area of the individual endangered species. In this study, matched filtering (MF), a specialized type of spectral mixture analysis, was used to estimate the abundance and distribution of M. sacchariflorus and P. australis from Airborne Imaging Spectrometer for Applications (AISA) data. Correlation analysis of the MF results and ground truth data was conducted to determine the accuracy of the estimates. Overall performance of MF for estimating amount of M. sacchariflorus was good with correlation coefficient of 0.89 for shoot density, and 0.78 for total stem volume. However, a poor estimate was obtained for P. australis with correlation coefficient of 0.43 for shoot density and 0.58 for total stem volume. Possible reasons for the difference in the accuracy estimates were discussed in this paper.

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The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (MIRAIKAN) held a symposium and a TV conference event concerning the Mini-Earth project for the general public. The project, being currently conducted in Rokkasho-Mura Aomori in Japan, aims to study propagation and accumulation of ¹⁴C to be released from a reprocessing site of spent nuclear fuel. For this purpose, it is necessary to establish a sustainable closed environment, similar to that required for human inhabitancy in space, and provides unique research opportunities. The main theme of the symposium was agriculture in space. After the symposium, a disscussion meeting was held between reserchers and mass media about the expectation from the project. The meeting also discussed the suggested role of science museums, to connect the general public with scientists/researchers. Based upon the results of those discussions, a TV conference event was held at MIRAIKAN on Sep. 10th 2005. In this study, the new approaches of the science museum which involves not only scientists/public but also mass media is examined.

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The purpose of this study was to confirm the existence of sundiversifolide, 4,15-dinor-3-hydroxy-1(5)-xanthene-12,8-olide, as an allelopathic substance in two species of plants. This substance could be used to control an ecosystem by its allelopathic function. Sundiversifolide has species-specific allelopathic properties in germinating seeds (achenes) of the sunflower, Helianthus annuus L.cv. Taiyo. However, its distribution among other species of plants has not yet been elucidated. The allelopathic properties and the identification of their substances were investigated in the exudates from the achenes of the Mexican sunflower (Tithonia diversifolia (Hemsl.) A. Gray) and Leucanthemum paludosum cv. North Pole. In the exudates from the Mexican sunflower achens, the existence of sundiversifolide was identified by LC-ESI⁺/MS. In the exudates from the L. paludosum, sundiversifolide was not detected. The low polar fraction of the exudates from the achenes of the Mexican sunflower has an allelopathic function as does the sunflower plant. Allelopathic properties of achenes of Mexican sunflower was also examined. The ethylacetate-soluble fraction of the exudates inhibited the growth of cat's-eyes (Veronica persica Poiret) seedlings and the conidial germination of useful fungi, i.e. Neurospora crassa. These allelopathic functions including sundiversifolide could be applied to regulate the growth in agricultural eco-systems.

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Either in the laboratory or in-situ, obtaining hydraulic characteristics of soil in a large area has been time consuming and tedious work. In this paper, we examine a potential of a rapid method to estimate the water characteristic curve of soil from the diffusivity of oxygen in soil measured. Measuring diffusivity of oxygen in soil is more prompt than measuring hydraulic properties. Laboratory experiments were conducted using quartz sand. In the dry region of soil, estimates of oxygen diffusivity agreed well with measurements whereas the measurements started deviating from the estimates as increases in water content. The deviation from estimates might be attributed to a unique water characteristic curve of quartz sand or column material interface (PVC; hydrophobic and packed sand; hydrophilic) at which more gas permeable layer or developed. The proposed method would be promising; however, more studies are needed for other textural classes to utilize this in-situ measurement method.

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