This study empirically shows the impact of laws and regulations on project management. We analyzed 161 data from a questionnaire survey of project managers in manufacturing companies.

The results show, first, the size of the project affected by regulations tends to expand. This trend is particularly strong when the regulation relates to environmental and energy technologies.

Second, the results showed that the information exchange within a company tends to decrease and the information exchange outside the company tends to increase for projects that are affected by laws and regulations. However, there was no impact on commercialization by information exchange outside the company. This means these projects tend to be outward-looking and may not be able to mobilize internal resources toward commercialization.

On the other hand, the results also showed that information exchange within and outside the company tended to increase as the project size expanded. In other words, even with the impact of laws and regulations, internal information exchange is facilitated as the project size expands. Therefore, the results suggest that more activities are needed to justify the mobilization of internal resources for commercialization in the case of projects that do not have increasing budgets.

The case of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s (BMA) cooperation with the City of Yokohama in Japan was used to examine how transnational city-to-city cooperation can contribute to the implementation of climate change adaptation measures that are tailored to individual circumstances. A questionnaire survey of BMA officials on their capacity to address climate change and the effectiveness of city-to-city cooperation revealed that the responses of officials involved in adaptation and mitigation tended to differ. A focus group discussion with the adaptation staff was conducted to explore the reasons for these differences. Adaptation staff raised issues, such as the need for context-based actions, and revealed that transnational cooperation with cities in different contexts is more difficult than domestic cooperation. In transnational city-to-city cooperation, it is important to understand each other’s unique situation, identify common needs and challenges, and clarify the goal of adaptation cooperation. In addition, the central government should be involved in promoting adaptation in city-to-city cooperation. It may also be useful to use local universities and experts who can serve as intermediaries to facilitate dialogue between cities, share each city’s knowledge and experience in the context of the other, and communicate the implications of scientific findings in each situation.

Boron isotopes are effective tracers for solving environmental problems such as the quantitative evaluation of contaminants in river water and groundwater. To ensure the accuracy of isotope analysis, well-characterized reference materials (RMs) are required. However, although there are guaranteed values for boron concentration, there are still few RMs with known isotopic compositions. We report for the first time the boron isotopic compositions of Japan-made certified reference materials (CRMs) for river water (NMIJ CRM 7202-c, JSAC 0301-4a) and tap water (NMIJ CRM 7203-a). We developed a simple boron separation method using only a 0.1 mL cation-exchange resin column. This method was simplified by cumbersome separation, confirming the recovery of boron yields of ＞97％ and a separation efficiency of ＞98％ for matrix elements. The δ¹¹B values of CRM 7202-c, 0301-4a, and 7203-a were −8.81±0.19‰, 14.33±0.49‰, and 17.86±0.28‰, respectively. In addition, we analyzed four types of bottled water from natural mineral waters (Fujisan, Rokko, Asosan, and Kumejima) for application to groundwater measurements, representing individual chemical characteristics. The developed method is simple and rapid; hence, it enhances the boron measurement efficiency.