In order to meet the global grand challenges and to cope with the current complex economical, societal and technical challenges in the new era, it is vital to be open-minded and innovative. Perception is the soul of innovation. Creativity is the source of innovation. Talent is basis of innovation. To pursue innovation, this paper discuss the philosophy of engineering, the roles of engineering and sciences for the betterment of society.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Japanese rice plants began in the Jomon period, passed through the Konden Einen Shizai Law and other's law, and passed down to the present age. The primary industry and agriculture are declining as the secondary industry develops by the Fukoku Militia that started from 1800's. Agriculture was subject to rapid change that include a Clearing up to escape from the post-war food shortage, introduction of policy of reducing acreage when rice remains, adjustment of rice price by deregulated rice and liberalization of rice. In particular, agricultural proceeds were reduced to about one-third in 2015 compared to 1975 when converted to the initial salary of high school graduates. In 2018, the agricultural policy in Japan will reach one endpoint with the termination of policy of reducing acreage under cultivation. Declining agriculture means a decrease in water resources and a decline in future food self-sufficiency rate, and it does not deny a drop in national strength. In order to solve this problem, we tried developing indoor hydroponic equipment and remote monitoring grain dryer using IoT technology. In indoor water cultivation under the LED light source, rice grew until seedlings and heading. In the remote monitoring grain dryer, we monitor the emergency stop of the dryer via the Internet by measuring the exhaust temperature using Kinoma create and a temperature sensor, and the load of agricultural work can be reduced.

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The lightweight technique for automobile is urgently needed to achieve the aim of CO2 emission control. In this paper, the mechanical properties and the interfacial shear strength (IFSS) of carbon fiber reinforced polypropylene (CFPP) were evaluated by using the micro - droplet method. As a result, it was found that the mechanical properties and IFSS were improved with increasing the interfacial adhesion of the CF and the PP from the observation of fracture surface after the mechanical testing and micro-droplets test. In addition, we have devised a novel mixing treatment method of silane coupling agent and an emulsion of Maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (MAPP) as one of the surface treatment techniques of the CF. A silane coupling agent was applied with a weak bond to the CF surface and emulsion of MAPP, and the IFSS of the CFPP indicated approximately 24 MPa. This result showed 12% higher than CFPP standard specimen. We have demonstrated the effect of interaction between MAPP and silane coupling agent by applying the novel mixing treatment method. It is expected that the reinforcing effect leads to the development of the CFPP injection moldings in the near future.

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Hanging scrolls are a traditional form of Japanese ornamental art used to display paintings and calligraphy. When displayed, scrolls are unrolled and hung straight, without rippling or warping, on a wall or in an alcove. When stored, they are rolled up smoothly and tightly from the bottom. To make possible the effective performance of these two functions, paintings and calligraphy depicted on pieces of silk fabric or paper have typically been backed with four layers of traditional Japanese paper affixed through the use of a paste made from wheat starch. In order to maintain the flexibility of scrolls, the wheat starch used for backing is fermented for ten years. This process reduces the molecular weight of the paste, as the starches break down allowing the paper to remain flexible after drying, but it also reduces the adhesiveness of the paste. Since its adhesive strength may therefore be insufficient, scroll makers came to use a technique of lightly beating the surface of each layer of lining paper with a special "beating brush," in order to provide better adhesion. There is an inherent risk of damaging the paper or the work underneath when beating the lining papers, if it is done too strongly. On the other hand, if it is done too weakly, it cannot enhance the strength of the adhesion. Accordingly, although this beating work appears to be a simple process of merely rapping the brush up and down, in fact it requires a high level of technical ability. Generally, while experts are able to remain steady when doing this beating work even over long periods of time, non-experts often indicate that they feel fatigue in the upper right arms by which they hold their brush. In this study, we designated an expert and a non-expert as test subjects and measured the muscle movements of nine muscles in their upper right arms as they maneuvered their brush. The purpose of this measurement was to separately elucidate each muscle movement made by the expert and the non-expert. Furthermore, this study also verifies the muscle fatigue of each subject by calculating the percentage of maximum voluntary contraction, %MVC. By supporting the assumption that compared to a non-expert an expert can carry out the work more efficiently through the measurement results - which showed clear differences in the subjects' muscle movements and muscle fatigue - we hope to contribute to developing technical skill acquisition guidelines for non-experts.

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With the arrival of big-data society, methods for classifying real-world problems have attracted much attention for researchers and developers in various fields. In recent years, much effort has been devoted for improving performances of classification algorithms by adding functions or modifying their weaknesses. However, since a large variety of classification algorithms has been available, it is difficult for non-experts to find classification algorithms that achieve good results on a given data set. Therefore, if there is a system which automatically selects the best classification algorithm for a given data set, non-experts would receive various benefits such as saving time and effort. This paper presents a system of predicting the best possible classification algorithm for a given data set with respect to the accuracy. The proposed system utilizes useful meta-features selected from existing meta-features to increase the performance of the prediction. The feature selection is conducted by a wrapper approach with the genetic search algorithm. In the proposed system, K-nearest neighbour algorithm is used to learn the selected meta-features and build a classification model for predicting future data. Experiments using 58 real-world data sets show that the proposed system predicted the best classification algorithm with 65.5% accuracy from the top five in 29 classification algorithms.

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By constructing traffic infrastructure like highway and high speed railway, much effect occurs, not only short terms follow effect but also various effects like increasing population, constructing office, in long terms near infrastructure areas. Especially, Shinkansenn (high speed railway in Japan) gives many effects and such effects our country's economic development. However current macro economic models cannot simulate effects each regional areas get. And simulate models for regional areas cannot simulate effects whole our country get. In this research, by improving previous macro economic simulation models we make the model system that can simulate the effect of constructing traffic infrastructure to national and regional areas. And by using this model, we check that we can use this model system for simulation by constructing traffic infrastructure.

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Bone plays a vital role in providing the structural framework of the human body and protecting internal organs. Porous scaffolds that promote cell proliferation is necessary to artificially create bone by tissue engineering approach. We previously developed chemical cross-linker-free chitosan-based scaffolds by freeze-thawing aqueous solutions of chitosan-gluconic acid conjugate (GC). In this study, we investigated whether or not the GC scaffolds could be coated with hydroxyapatite (HAp) that has osteoconductivity by immersing in simulated body fluids (SBF). HAp scarcely formed in GC scaffolds by the immersion. However, incorporation of silica nanoparticles into the scaffolds contributed to formation of HAp on the scaffolds. Human osteosarcoma cell line MG-63 proliferated in the HAp/GC scaffolds. These results indicate that the HAp/GC scaffolds are useful for bone tissue engineering.

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Orthodontic appliance increases dental decay risk due to a decrease in self-cleaning action of saliva. Fluoride ion is known to have anticaries effect. To decrease the decay risk, powders that could gradually release fluoride ion had been incorporated in the orthodontic appliance. However, the powderss were not uniformly distributed throughout the instrument because of the surface properties of the particles. In this study, we prepared acrylic microcapsules enclosing fluorine-containing powders with < 200 m in diameter. The acrylic microcapsules would be uniformly distributed throughout orthodontic appliance because the instrument is mainly made of acrylic polymer. In addition, we have achieved to improve the content of the powders in the microcapsules by increasing viscosity of acrylic monomer solution by pre-polymerization.

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This study aimed to develop a lead-free sealing glass applicable to sealing of the soda-lime glass. The sealing glass should ideally possess the following properties: (i) low melting point, (ii) low thermal expansion and (iii) high water durability. To obtain these essential properties, we prepared glasses with combinations of four different metal oxides (V2O5, ZnO, TeO2 and BaO) and evaluated their properties. Lead-free glasses (41.9 wt% V2O5-7.0 wt% ZnO-30.1 wt% TeO2-21.0 wt% BaO, V-8-Te30) containing 15wt% Zr2(WO4)(PO2)4 is a black-colered sealing glass with low melting point. Further, the glass had the most suitable properties as sealing glass. The glass was useful for sealing of sode-lime glass using laser. We report the result that hermetically sealed soda lime glasses at laser irradiation speed of 0.25 mm/s and output 4.83 W.

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Tsirlin et al. (2012) refer to perceptual transparency with clarity as glass-transparency, and that with cloudiness as translucency. The present study involving overlapping achromatic figures examined how glass-transparency and translucency are influenced by overlapping and non-overlapping areas on transparent surfaces and the level of luminance of the background. Experiments were conducted with three different backgrounds (white, black, and light gray) and varying levels of luminance in overlapping (Experiment 1) and non-overlapping (Experiment 2) areas. The subjects were asked about the clarity and cloudiness of the stimuli, and chose from response options including "very clear" and "very cloudy". The results suggested that the larger the difference in the level of luminance between overlapping and non-overlapping areas, and the smaller the difference in luminance between non-overlapping area and the background, the less the "cloudiness", or the greater the "clarity". The results were uniformly explained according to the ratio of differences in the level of luminance between two areas and the level of luminance of the background.

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It is well known that the lithium secondary battery (LiSB) is the most promising power source for electric vehicle (EV), the further development is still needed to assure the life and performance prediction of LiSB. In our former paper1), we reported that the overvoltage relaxation after the current interruption could be expressed by the linear relation to the square root of time for initial stage and the following exponential decay. However, this function was derived for only separator part, and the real battery showed some potential stationary for the initial stage after current interruption, there was no explanation for these phenomena. In this paper, we derived the theoretical functions for the potential relaxation process after the current interruption by applying the transmission line model for LiSB electrodes, and the attributions for these phenomena have been made.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract