In recent years, the amount of carbon dioxide emission in the civilian sector has been increasing. In this experiment, the so-called Toms effect, i.e. the effect of flow drag reduction when surfactant is injected to circulating water, has been verified to reduce the transfer power of circulating water for air conditioning systems of buildings. Concerning this effect, much basic research and a few applications to buildings have been reported. There is no clear report, however, on how to add the surfactant to the circulating water in buildings constructed with complicated pipework, how the flow and heat transfer performance change after the injection of the surfactant, and how to maintain the effect for a long time. Consequently, the technology using this effect has not yet been put to practical use. This paper presents the findings of the demonstration test using the air conditioning system at the Sapporo City Office Building. Generalization of the results will hopefully lead to the spread of this technology.

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When technology development is conducted based only on a developer's idea, we face difficulties in realizing products and services that will be well accepted by people. This is because it is difficult for a developer to know precisely how various users think and feel while using products or receiving services under real life situations. In order to overcome these difficulties, we have developed Cognitive Chrono-Ethnography which is a new method to understand cognitive behavior under various situations. This method clarifies the cognitive behavior process by selecting “elite monitors” taking characteristics of target users into consideration, identifying “critical parameters” utilized in designing the products or services, recording the human behavior in real life situations under the control of the parameters, and retrospectively interviewing the participants. This method is applied in the early stages of synthesiological R&D processes oriented toward designing target products and services acceptable by people.

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Underground water has been used as a suitable drinking water source for a long time. In recent years, however, not a small number of wells have become out of use as a drinking water source owing to pollution with nitrate or nitrite. A mobile water purification system has been developed with advantages in portability and cost to utilize the polluted wells in emergencies. The system has been achieved by the combination of nitrate ion selective adsorbent developed in our group and contactless supporting and shaping technology developed by a company which enables formation of a material into easy-to-handle shapes without decreasing the performance of the functional material. This paper mainly describes the development of the nitrate ion selective adsorbent material, which is the important elemental technology in the mobile water purification system.

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The automotive navigation system has been realized and has become popular along with the rapid development of electronic technology. The needs of people to reach destinations efficiently have pushed its development along with the projects of automotive development. Many vehicle-mounted technologies and many technologies supporting the navigation system such as communication and road data have been realized through many years of collaboration of powerful and innovative people among government, academia and industry. The technologies are to meet Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) international standards. Since the navigation interface system is an onboard device observed and operated during driving, securing safety, especially that related to human factors is an important issue. In this paper, the history of the development of the navigation system, research on human factors and standardization to enable social acceptance are described.

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In order to meet the demand for techniques to directly visualize atomic-level structures of nano-materials and so-called soft matter (organic molecules, bio-materials, etc.), development of innovative electron microscopes are indispensable. These innovative microscopes are totally different from conventional transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning TEM (STEM) with ultra high acceleration voltage mainly pursuing high resolution. We recognized the usefulness of low acceleration voltage very early, and have started the development of totally new electron microscopes specified for observation of light-element materials. We aim to realize simultaneously significant decrease of acceleration voltage and increase of performance which cannot be attained with conventional apparatuses. Here we report the aims and results of our “Triple-C” project to develop low-voltage TEM/STEMs equipped with new Cs (spherical aberration) and Cc (chromatic aberration) correction systems for carbon (C)-based nano-materials, and present our view on future applications of electron microscopes with low acceleration voltage.

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[in Japanese]

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