This paper analyzes the professionalization of the business appraisal service in the United States. As the number of mergers and acquisitions increased in the United States, the need for business valuation increased. The business appraisal service is used to, for example, mitigate conflict in selling price between the acquirer and the acquiree.
The business appraisal service gradually grew after the 1950s and developed extensively in the 1980s. The growth of private company acquisitions and divestitures in the 1980s promoted its development. The main actors who provided business appraisal services were asset appraisers and accountants. They established the status as a profession after the Great Depression. Asset appraisers mainly appraised tangible property, especially machines, for insurance or tax purposes. Accountants reported and analyzed corporate financial data. Supplying business appraisal services and appraising expected corporate value, they changed their main technique from “retrospective” or “fact-finding” types to “prospective” or “forecasting.”
As the business appraisal industry grew, many problems occurred due to the lack of appraisal skills or fraud. Four professional associations set up new licenses for business appraisers in order to provide appropriate appraisal services. In 1978, Institute of Business Appraisers (IBA) issued a license, the first in the United States, for appraisers specializing in private companies. Recently, confronted with member-seeking competition from other professional associations, such as IBA and other organizations, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants also issued a license for business appraisers in 1997. These associations examine their members' appraisal abilities, impose a code of ethics on their members, and provide training programs for their members with the intention of improving the quality of the business appraisal service.

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 This study typifies the transformation of the profession of architect through interviews with professional cross-border architects, who have recently attracted attention in the United States. The social background referred to in this study refers to changes in laws and regulations due to inclusive changes in the financial industry, and the increasing importance of management theory with the spread of design build contracts. Further, since the profession of architect is not codified in Japan, this paper refers to all those who contribute in the form of brain labor to the social implementation process of space.

 Chapter 2 first summarizes the design-build research conducted in the United States. The architects interviewed two companies that are involved in the Architect-Led Design-Build business. In addition to confirming the merits of both the clients and business operators, the institutional barriers and operational issues are also clarified.

 In Chapter 3, the business model that helps develops both the design and development industries is defined as an Architect-Led-Developer ; further, and James Petty's discussions on the Architect-Led-Developer business are presented. In addition, we interviewed the companies and obtained data. Financing issues and development policies, amongst other issues that consider public interest were discussed.

 Chapter 4 summarizes the changes in financing methods and analyzes the case studies of companies that are conducting investment-type crowdfunding businesses in Portland. We analyzed four case studies, including a developmental and operational project ensure affordable housing and commercial stores in cooperation with Non-Profit-Organization. Through examples, we confirmed that architects contribute to the construction of a regional investment ecosystem.

 In Chapter 5, the business models of platform operators are organized into three types: centralized B2C type, centralized P2P type, and decentralized P2P type. By analyzing the limitations of the current laws and regulations and the government's response, we analyzed the global practices for a decentralized society.

 In conclusion, we categorized the analyzed cases and proposed the social significance of architects as subjects who comprehensively model designs.

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Natural gas hydrates in sediment are expected to be developed as a resource of natural gas and have been studied as a possible future energy resource. Gas permeability and water permeability in the methane-hydrate (MH)-bearing sediments are important factors for estimating the efficiency of producing methane gas from the natural gas hydrate sediment. Permeability of MH-bearing sediment is considerably affected by several properties of sediment, i.e., pore-size distribution, porosity, cementing, MH saturation, and MH-bearing features.
Glass beads sediment and sandy sediment with different grain sizes have been measured as fundamental research and for application to natural MH-bearing sediment. Sediment pore-size distribution and porosity have been measured by NMR and mercury porosimeter. In order to obtain pore-size distribution with higher spatial resolution, a technique of numerical conversion of NMR-T₂ distribution have been developed.
A semi-empirical (SE) equation of the permeability of glass beads and sandy sediment has been derived based on the Kozeny-Carman equation by pore-size distribution and porosity that had been measured by mercury porosimetry. This SE equation has been approximated by the relation of porosity, pore-size distribution, tortuosity, and specific surface area of the sediment.
The SE equation has been applied for converted NMR-T₂ distribution of MH-bearing sediment. The permeabilities of methane hydrate bearing sediment calculated by the SE equation correspond well to the permeability measured by water flow.

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