People with visual impairments require training to perceive their surroundings from ambient sounds. The author developed a system, introduced to rehabilitation facilities, that allows training to be conducted in a safe virtual environment. To realize this system, the author carried out fundamental research on the mechanism of auditory orientation; developed basic technologies to simulate 3-D sound; and designed hardware and software to calculate 3-D sound, as well as head position and direction. A training curriculum was also developed. The effectiveness of the training system was evaluated, and certified as being more effective than the existing real-environmental training system. However, some problems with calculating head position and direction must be addressed before this system can be completely introduced to rehabilitation facilities. While we are currently working to resolve this problem, the training system in its present state is being distributed as a simplified version to the people concerned since September, 2010, and is being actively used.

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There are two types of carbon nanotubes (CNTs): metallic and semiconducting. To exploit their superior electric properties, mixtures of these two types of CNTs should be separated. For industrial applications, a large-scale, low-cost separation method is required. We successfully developed novel separation methods for CNTs by applying separation methods for biomolecules. We first applied agarose gel electrophoresis, and finally achieved large-scale, low-cost separation by the column method. Using this method, we provided separated CNT samples. A separation method for single structure semiconducting CNTs was also developed by overloading CNTs into tandemly arranged multi-columns. The point of timing of patent application, publication of research results, and budget application to carry out this research effectively is also presented in this paper.

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AIST has more than 300,000 glaze test pieces, from over 80 years of ceramic studies by the Imperial Ceramic Experimental Institute and the Government Industrial Research Institute of Nagoya. These pieces are the physical evidence of the processes and the results of glaze test experiments. As such, they provide valuable information for glaze and ceramic research. The Ceramic Color Database has been constructed to make this fundamentally important information widely accessible in support of R&D in the ceramics industry. The database includes: glaze name, firing temperature, firing atmosphere, coloring, chemical composition, recipe, physical state, and other information, as well as images of the glaze pieces. The database has been used in recent ceramics research, and its effectiveness has been verified.

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Since the rise of the market in the 1970s, arcade video games have evolved via the adoption of various display technologies. Initially transistor-to-transistor logic (TTL) was used, then bitmapped display—as seen in the smash hit Space Invaders—was adopted. Later display technologies include sprite display technology, an arcade industry innovation that played an important role in expanding the market, and real time polygon displays incorporating very fast numerical operations such as DSP. The arcade business has been an early adopter, introducing, developing, and utilizing new display technologies years before they appear in other industries. These arcade game technologies led to the development of many other new entertainment systems, such as home console games, mobile phone contents, and even network (downloadable) karaoke. This paper describes the evolution of arcade game display hardware technologies and its background.

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The national project of the Delineation of the Extended Continental Shelf was conducted by ministries of the government of Japan as one. The intention of the project was to summarize the information containing scientific basis on the outer limits of the extended continental shelf and to submit the application to the United Nations. The researchers of AIST in the field of marine geology carried out the marine survey, analyzed the collected rock samples and interpreted the results, and participated in the Task Force for the preparation of Japan's Submission. In this way, AIST contributed to the delineation of Japan's continental shelf by utilizing all the required resources as a professional marine geologist group. The information on Japan's extended continental shelf made up through the cooperation of concerned government ministries and agencies became the basis of the application which was finalized and submitted to the "Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf" of the United Nations by the government of Japan on November 12, 2008. And the government of Japan has received "the recommendations" as a result of the review by the commission on April 26, 2012. In this manuscript, the authors first explain the "continental shelf" and the "continental shelf of Japan." Then, they describe the background and the results of the participation of AIST researchers in the Task Force, which was really a rare opportunity in the sense that the utilization of scientific information contributed to the expansion of the legal rights over marine areas of Japan. Finally, they discuss the issues encountered in the operation of such a project.

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This article introduces the Research Excellence Framework (REF): a new research evaluation framework developed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to evaluate the research activities of higher education institutions in the UK. To promote excellent research so that its potential effect can be maximized, the REF has three criteria for evaluating institutions: output quality, impact, and research environment. Remarkably, although the purpose of the REF is university evaluation, social impact is explicitly included within the evaluation framework. It is proposed that output quality be evaluated by conventional review with the aid of quantitative bibliometric indicators, such as the number of paper citations. In this article, we introduce the REF, from output to impact, and make recommendations for the evaluation of research for universities in Japan.

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This is a report of a lecture and discussion session at the 27th Conference of the Japan Society for Science Policy and Research Management, held at the Hitotsubashi University on October, 2012.

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