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Oral communication skills are essential for engineers today and, as they are included in accreditation criteria of educational programmes, their teaching and evaluation deserve attention. However, concrete aspects as to what should be taught and evaluated in relation to oral communication skills have not been sufficiently established. In this paper, a method to aid the efficient teaching of oral presentation skills is proposed, from the presentation structure level to word and sentence level choices, through the use of JECPRESE, The Japanese-English Corpus of Presentations in Science and Engineering. As of June 2012, the corpus is composed of transcriptions of 74 presentations delivered in Japanese by students graduating from the Master's programme of various engineering departments and 31 presentations delivered in English, 16 by experienced researchers at an international conference on chemistry, and 15 by undergraduate engineering students of a mid-sized American university. The utterances were classified according to the specific moves (sections of the speech that express specific speaker intent) appearing in the presentations and frequently used words/expressions to express these moves were identified. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

This paper explores Malaysian students' problems within their science and engineering tertiary courses in Japanese through their diary entries and semi-structured interviews. The study analyses how students implement management strategies to overcome their problems. Although many studies are available regarding students' academic activities in a foreign language, few of those have reported upon foreign students' academic experiences in Japanese science and engineering courses within their in-country program. The students predominantly had difficulties in writing experiment reports, understanding scientific concepts, and reading Chinese characters (kanji). Management strategies that they significantly employed to overcome their problems were peer cooperation and the use of internet resources. The paper discusses potential support that the program and the language course can provide for these students. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Ethics education for professionals has become popular in Japan over the last two decades. Many professional schools now require students to take an applied ethics or professional ethics course. In contrast, very few courses of professional ethics for teaching exist or have been taught in Japan. In order to obtain suggestions for teacher education, this paper reviews and examines practices of ethics education for engineers and nurses in Japan that have been successfully implemented. The paper concludes that difficulties in professional ethics education in Japan are caused by the fact that both teachers and students lack experience in leading and participating in discussion-based classes and misunderstand the effectiveness of a case-based pedagogy. It also suggests that we need to offer teachers systematic opportunities to be trained to be proficient in enabling students to be active and critical in class.

This paper describes the achievements of an innovative eight-year research program first introduced in Mizoguchi and Bourdeau (2000), which was aimed at building a theory-aware authoring system by using ontological engineering. To date, we have proposed OMNIBUS, an ontology that comprehensively covers different learning/instructional theories and paradigms, and SMARTIES, a theory-aware and standards-compliant authoring system to create learning/instructional scenarios based on OMNIBUS. This approach was intended to bridge the gap between theory and practice in scientific and technological development, including learning/instruction support. The goals of this study included the following: that computers would (a) "understand" a variety of learning/instructional theories based on their organization, (b) "utilize" such understanding to help authors build learning/instructional scenarios, and (c) "make" such theoretically sound scenarios interoperable within the framework of technology standards. This paper suggests an ontological engineering solution to achieve these three goals and describes the implementation and feasibility demonstrations of the basic functions of SMARTIES, a solution that supports the design of learning/instructional scenarios based on multiple theories. Although the evaluation is far from complete in terms of practical use, we believe that the results of this study speak to high-level technical challenges of ITS authoring systems and the other areas of AIED, and therefore constitute a substantial contribution. (Contains 14 figures, 4 tables, and 15 footnotes.)

Background: Under the impact of globalization and the coming of the Information Age, there is a paradigm shift occurring in the engineering curriculum and academic structure. Apart from the creation of new programs for the emerging fields in engineering, the approach and orientation have also been shifted from objective-based/input-based education to outcome-based education. The criteria for the new generation of quality engineering graduates have been much broadened. Engineering program structures are being revised to facilitate student mobility, and set to meet global recruitment needs. Focus of discussion: This paper is divided into two parts: The first concerned with the general engineering education development and the second describes the developments in the European Union, the United States, and Japan. Suggestions: To meet the new learning outcomes, approaches to learning, teaching, and assessments are revised and realigned. Not only have the graduates to update their professional knowledge, they should also have acquired various generic thinking and communication skills, the ethical sense of social responsibility, learning how to learn and life-long learning, knowledge of foreign language and other culture as well as authentic experience in doing research. Conclusion: As engineering education is being internationalized, the government can keep in step with the international community by joining regional and international cooperation initiatives in engineering education. Students should be encouraged to participate in international research exchange programs. Institutions of higher learning must design new program structures, identify desired learning outcomes, determine ways to align and attain their outcomes through revising course content, provide pedagogical training for faculties, adopt a variety of teaching and learning methods, and devise appropriate assessment criteria and methods. (Contains 1 note.)

Lists several titles of original research papers published in the Japanese journals "Journal of the Society of Powder Technology, Japan" and "Powder Science & Engineering."

The phenomenon of women's underrepresentation in engineering is well known. However, the slow progress in achieving better gender equality here compared with other domains has accentuated the "numbers" issue, while the quality aspects have been largely ignored. This study aims to shed light on both these aspects via the lens of mentors, who are at the coalface of guiding female engineers through their education and subsequent careers. Based on data collected from 25 mentors (8 men and 17 women from 8 countries), the paper explores their experiences of being mentors, as well as their views on recommended actions for nurturing female engineers. The findings reveal that the primary motivation for becoming a mentor was personal for men and women. Many mentors from countries with relatively lower female labour participation rates perceive their roles as guarantors of their mentees' successful future career paths, and a similar trend can be found in mentors in academia. The study underscores the need for invigorating mentors' roles in order to secure a more equitable future for engineering education.

As an ancient paper craft originating from Japan, origami has been naturally embedded and contextualized in a variety of applications in the fields of mathematics, engineering, food packaging, and biological design. The computational and manufacturing capabilities today urge us to develop significantly new forms of folding as well as different materials for folding. In this paper, by allowing line cuts with crease patterns and creating folded hinges across basic structural units (BSU), typically not done in origami, we achieve a new multiprimitive folding framework such as using tetrahedral, cuboidal, prismatic, and pyramidal components, called “Kinetogami.” “Kinetogami” enables one to fold up closed-loop(s) polyhedral mechanisms (linkages) with multi-degree-of-freedom and self-deployable characteristics in a single build. This paper discusses a set of mathematical and design theories to enable design of 3D structures and mechanisms all folded from preplanned printed sheet materials. We present prototypical exploration of folding polyhedral mechanisms in a hierarchical manner as well as their transformations through reconfiguration that reorients the material and structure. The explicit 2D fabrication layout and construction rules are visually parameterized for geometric properties to ensure a continuous folding motion free of intersection. As a demonstration artifact, a multimaterial sheet is 3D printed with elastomeric flexure hinges connecting the rigid plastic facets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is the extended version of a paper presented at the conference HMM2021, about the history of mechanical engineering. First, the initial cultural and industrial steps in the robotic field in Japan are introduced, to display the beginning of this interlaced path, before WW2; then, in the context of the aftermaths of the war, some famous anime heroes are presented as ancestors of the coming mecha anime series. The rising research in the field of robotics and more generally the developments of contemporary Japanese automation industry are then drawn, as a technological substrate for mecha conception. In particular, Masahiro Mori studies are taken into consideration to identify an actual robot design pattern to apply to the following comparative description and examination of the different mecha; finally, thanks to this analysis, the common breeding ground whence robotics and mecha (and their reciprocal influences) arise, is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper puts forward a new Chinese concept of ‘Wu Liu’ (material flow) which is different from the concepts of logistics and physical distribution popular in the West and Japan in four aspects: characteristics, contents, properties and applications. The paper points out that the research on material flow science and technology in China has lagged far behind, especially in the application aspect of material flows which is not in line with the position that material flow holds as the third biggest backbone industry group of the national economy. The paper also discusses issues in researching material flow in economic development, social development, as well as natural sciences. At the end, a framework of material flow science and technology is proposed which includes four components: disciplines supporting material flow science and technology, engineering and technological disciplines supporting material flow science and technology, theoretical disciplines supporting material flow science and technology, and other disciplines supporting material flow science and technology. About forty disciplines are related to material flow science and technology which need to be either built or enhanced. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze and compare two didactical designs for introducing primary school pupils to proportional reasoning in the context of plane polygons. One of them is well-documented in the literature; the other one is based on our own data and is accordingly presented and discussed in more detail in this paper. The two designs come from different cultural and intellectual environments: lesson study in Japan (implicitly based on the “open approach method”) and “didactical engineering” in France (based on the theory of didactical situations). The general aim of our paper is to compare these two environments and their approaches to didactical design, basing our discussion on the concrete designs mentioned above. Clear differences among them are presented, while we also identify links which hold potential for integrating research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After eminent thinkers in the 1960s submitted critical views on technology, some philosophers of technology extended their macro perspectives. Since then, many historians and sociologists of technology steadily marginalized their general claims through richly empirical, constructivist case studies of concrete engineering processes. Some recent efforts have begun to bridge these two diverging orientations. This paper participates in such efforts with a case study of relationships between macro cultures and engineering processes. It shows that behind the adoption of systems engineering by engineers and managers who led the Apollo programme was a macro current of social values in the USA. Post-war American society saw the rise of highly individualistic social norms that valued mobility, meritocracy and clear-cut contractual working relationships. Such norms triumphed most conspicuously in the federal government during the 1960s. Engineers and managers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headquarters, who tended to share such values, refined the formalized, depersonalized methods of systems engineering, which enabled them to perfect space technology. In order to show such a correlation between macro values and micro practices, this paper draws a comparison between engineering communities in different cultural settings in the USA and Japan. This paper thus explores the macro social environment that gave rise to systems engineering, which, in turn, continues to function as a skeletal structure for our technological society today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID 19 pandemic, the importance of global academia-industrial alliances has increased. It is hoped that the alliances will help us to solve the current problems caused by the pandemic. In this paper, we introduce the application of IT tools and communication skills utilized in a special educational project for an academia-industrial collaboration. Some concrete examples from 2020 are provided from the viewpoint of the national alliance project in Japan. A discussion is included that describes the plans available to increase and strengthen the national project in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an account of Prof. Dr. Kinji Shimizu, the first president of Nagoya Institute of Technology, and his establishment of Nagoya Municipal Science Museum. After graduating from the Electrical Engineering Department of Kyoto Imperial University in 1923, Shimizu was impressed by the German Museum in Munich during his stay there as a student in 1932. It's the first time that he learned the education in cooperation with industries. Just after the Second World War, he became director general of the Ministry of Education. However, new education system given by the United States focused not on developing practical ability but on gaining the basic knowledge, which is contrary to what he expected. Then, he contributed to the establishment of the Japanese Society for Engineering Education, besides working as the president of Nagoya Institute of Technology in the earlier 1950s. His idea was supported by industries for the economic growth. Throughout his career, Prof. Dr. Shimizu was convinced that practical engineering education would benefit Japan, and wanted to introduce cooperative education between universities and industries, along the lines of the same system in Germany and the United States. With this vision he founded Nagoya Municipal Science Museum in cooperation with local industries and local government as his final achievement. The museum was completed in 1964.

The Imperial College of Engineering (ICE or Kobu-Daigakko) in Tokyo, founded in 1873 under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Works, was one of the most prominent modern institutions of engineering education in early Meiji Japan. Previous studies have revealed that the ICE offered large scale practical training programs at enterprises of the Ministry, which sometimes lasted several months, and praised their ideal combination of theory and practice. In reality, it has been difficult to evaluate the quality of education at the ICE mainly because of scarcity of sources. ICE students published a collection of memoirs for alumni members, commemorating the fiftieth-year of the history of the Tokyo Imperial University. Drawing on the previously neglected collection of students' memoires, this paper appraises the education of civil engineering offered by the ICE. The paper also compares this collection with other official records of the college, and confirms it as a reliable source, even though it contains some minor errors. The author particularly uses the memoirs by Ayahiko Ishibashi, one of the first graduates from its civil engineering course, who left sufficient reminiscences on education that he received. This paper, as a result, illustrates that the main practical training for the students of civil engineering was limited to designing process, including surveying. Furthermore, practical training that Ishibashi received at those enterprises often lacked a plan, and its effectiveness was questionable.

The qualitative description of rock masses by means of classification systems and subsequent correlation to establish engineering quantities or design parameters has become one of the most challenging topics in rock engineering. Many rock mass classification systems have been proposed for rock masses with the consideration of a particular rock structure and/or specific purposes. Therefore, direct utilization of these systems, in their original form, for the characterization of complex rock mass conditions is not always possible. This is probably one of the reasons why rock engineers continue to develop new systems or modify and extend current ones. The recent tendency is to obtain rock mass properties from the utilization of properties of intact rock and rock classification indexes, which have some drawbacks. In this study, it is aimed to propose a new rock mass quality rating system designated as Rock Mass Quality Rating (RMQR). This new rock mass rating system is used to estimate the geomechanical properties of rock masses. In the first part of this paper, the input parameters of RMQR and their ratings are given and discussed. In the second part, the unified formula proposed by the first author is adopted for the new rock mass rating system for estimating the rock mass properties and compared with the results of the in situ tests carried out in Japan and those estimated from some empirical relationships developed by other investigators, and the outcomes of these studies are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over three decades, kansei engineering has expanded greatly and has become a significant discipline both in the industrial and the academic worlds. In this paper, I present the current situation of kansei engineering, and plead for the emancipation of other disciplines, as part of kansei research as well. By reconstructing the historical path of kansei research and exploring the variety of disciplines within kansei research, I point out the opportunities for kansei design to emerge. Whereas kansei engineering and kansei science have found their roots in scientifically established approaches (respectively engineering and brain science), kansei design intends to return to earlier Japanese philosophical or cultural works to rediscover the essence of kansei, and to use them as inspirational means for design. This new discipline certainly needs to be elaborated further. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the elaboration of a more expansive pointof- view in design research regarding the relationship between human beings and their immediate environment. Relevance to Design Practice - Next to kansei engineering, kansei design appears as a new design approach, finding inspirational means in Japanese philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes an adaptive sliding‐mode control strategy based on trajectory re‐planning for a permanent magnet spherical actuator (PMSA) to address the large overshoot caused by substantial initial error while maintaining tracking precision. The proposed re‐planning technique reconstructs a local trajectory without the preceding knowledge of the desired position in the future, which makes this technique more suitable for reconstructing trajectory given online. First, a re‐planning cool‐down term is added to maximize the capability of controller to improve the precision and speed of tracking. Moreover, a smooth switching technique is also applied to further improve the precision of trajectory tracking and stop redundant re‐planning when the system enters satisfactory state. Finally, the proposed trajectory re‐planning strategy is combined with a robust adaptive sliding‐mode controller (RASC), which effectively reduces friction, delay, and external uncertainty disturbances. The effectiveness of the proposed control design is verified by both simulation and experiment on PMSA, which can provide reference for the further engineering application of multi‐degree‐of‐freedom system. © 2023 Institute of Electrical Engineer of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underground pipeline infrastructures, such as water supply and industrial water pipes, were rapidly constructed in Japan during the 1970–1980s economic boom and have been ageing quickly. In general, corrosion of buried metal water pipes depends on the physicochemical properties of the soil around them. Conventionally, when conducting such investigations, the soil is excavated and sampled to analyse these properties in laboratories. As this damages the paved road surface, an alternative method is required. Resistivity is a significant physical property measured when investigating the corrosion risk of underground pipelines. Therefore, if geophysical exploration can facilitate the investigation of soil resistivity from the ground surface, it will play a key role in the renewal planning of water pipes. Traditionally, geophysical methods such as electrical and electromagnetic exploration have been used for measuring subsurface resistivity. Electrical exploration is a robust and noise‐tolerant method; however, it requires electrode installation. Most roads over the pipelines are paved, making conventional electrical exploration using metal electrodes a challenging task. Therefore, the Geological Survey of Japan, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, has developed a very‐low‐frequency band alternating current electrical surveying technique that uses water‐saturated polyvinyl alcohol sponge electrodes. In this technique, electrodes are placed on an asphalt or concrete paved surface and the electrode measures the soil resistivity profile and detects the corrosive soil distribution without damaging the paved surface. Moreover, we improved this equipment to enable vertical electrical survey of numerous points and acquired data for 740 m of the survey line in 1 day at Maborikaigan coast in Yokosuka City. We found that the resistivity values varied with the depths and locations of the buried water pipes. These variations indicated that surveys and evaluations on long survey lines along water pipe burial routes are essential for risk management in water pipelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ground response mechanism under different geometrical configurations of jacked rectangular pipe was investigated. • Higher jacking force is needed with increasing aspect ratio of the jacked rectangular pipe. • Square shaped cross-section design is conductive for deep and long-distance jacking construction. For rectangular pipe-jacking construction, the primary priorities of smooth construction include minimizing the ground response and designating the appropriate jacking force to achieve the best results in environmental protection and energy conservation. The geometric cross-section design of the jacking rectangular pipe and its engineering performances such as the ground surface displacement, the jacking force consumption, and the stress-bearing state are easy to be ignored in the field construction. In this paper, the ground response characteristics under four kinds of rectangular pipe aspect ratio (H/W) with the same utilization cross-section area were investigated by using the calibrated finite element method (FEM) based on a case study conducted in Japan. The theoretical jacking force of each pipe section design was calculated and compared to provide a reference for long-distance or large-section jacking conditions. The stress-bearing state of each pipe was considered under different buried depths. The results show that the ground surface response decreases while the jacking force increases with increasing the aspect ratios. Thus, a reasonable design of the rectangular pipe section should comprehensively consider the influence of geometric effects on the ground and its stress-bearing state during the jacking construction. The findings of this study provide a practical reference for the safe and economic design of the jacking rectangular pipe and engineering management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents activities of the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) on computational wind engineering, focusing on numerical prediction of wind loads on buildings. It discusses and evaluates current CFD techniques, including LES and modified RANS, for wind-resistant design of actual buildings. It also provides a guide for constructing a numerical model, including selection of a turbulence model, size of computational domain, required numerical discretization, etc. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

It is well known that one drawback for stress-ribbon bridges can be that significant horizontal reactions at the abutment can be generated and that they have low flexural stiffness. The latter prevents them from being used as roadway bridges. A new hybrid structure of stress-ribbon deck and truss has been proposed and was adopted in the construction of Nozomi Bridge in Japan, a roadway bridge opened to traffic in 2003. Static and dynamic behaviours of the hybrid structure have been studied analytically and experimentally. The results show that the hybrid bridge has advantages over the stress-ribbon deck bridge as it generates much less horizontal force in suspension cables and has higher flexural stiffness, suitable for use as a roadway bridge, and that the hybrid bridge has advantages over the truss bridge since it can be constructed without extensive falsework and without large erection equipment. In this paper, at first, the hybrid structure is described, then analytical and test results are used to show its static and dynamic characteristics, and finally the construction of Nozomi Bridge is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The ITER transitional arrangements (ITA) is conducted by the International Team (IT) with supports from participant teams (PTs). The Japanese Participant Team (JA-PT) has contributed to the ITA by sharing a lot of technical tasks to verify feasibilities of fabrication and quality control method in procuring ITER equipments and facilities. For examples, trial fabrications of Nb3Sn strands have been performed by the JA-PT with four potential suppliers, and it has already been confirmed that one of the strands produced by a certain supplier meet the ITER requirements. All strands produced by other suppliers will be fully qualified by the end of 2005. The trial fabrications of jackets for the central solenoid (CS), structural material for toroidal field coil, the partial mock-ups of the vacuum vessel (VV) and the shield blanket module are also ongoing to verify the feasibility of fabrications and quality inspections. Furthermore, the JA-PT has made several technical developments on neutral beam (NB) system to improve reliability in high voltage (1MV) insulation and in stable high current density operations over a long period. Design of equatorial EC launcher and some techniques towards reliable steady-state EC operation have been developed. The paper also describes other activities to confirm validity of the present design. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose: This study aims to examine the impacts of education for sustainable development subject(s) offered at University A, Japan and University B, Malaysia on the attitude and perception toward environment, social and economic issues of sustainability among the engineering undergraduates of the institutions from different countries. Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey was administered to 108 engineering students at University A, Japan and 117 engineering students at University B, Malaysia to measure their attitudes and perceptions toward sustainability. Findings: The findings suggested that the sustainable development courses offered at University A, Japan, have developed positive attitudes and perceptions on environmental and social sustainability issues. The subjects on sustainable development offered at University B, Malaysia have developed positive attitudes and perceptions on the environmental issues of sustainability. Respondents from both universities, Japan and Malaysia, have not properly developed positive attitudes and perceptions toward economic sustainability issues. The findings also revealed that geographical boundaries have no influence toward the development of the attitude and perception toward sustainability issues. Originality/value: This study provides insight into the attitude and perception toward the three pillars – environment, social and economic – of sustainability among engineering undergraduates from two different institutions of two different countries that apply different pedagogic strategies in education for sustainable development in educating undergraduates on sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International comparisons of engineering graduate numbers are frequently used as indices of industrial development and measures of the responsiveness of the educational system to industrial requirements. Such comparisons make implicit assumptions about quality by assuming that like institutions or like qualifications are being compared. In this paper the concept of 'best practice' engineering education is derived from engineering manpower reports of German engineering education in order to address issues of both quantity and quality in comparing engineering education in Britain and Japan. Japan is found to have associated engineering education with relatively more prestigious institutions and to have attracted a higher proportion of more able male pupils to broad based engineering education compared to Britain. Yet there are some interesting differences between the model of 'best practice' engineering education based on Germany and Japanese practice, particularly in curricula, which underline the importance of the division of labour between education and employment in the education and training of engineers. Examining the responsiveness of educational systems through propositions derived from a model of 'best practice' rather than through simple output statistics underlines the importance of different patterns of institutional development, the role of the state, educational and occupational selection, and status within the curriculum for understanding the variety of contemporary engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past ten years the Soviet Bloc has designed, developed, and put into production a series of upward-compatible third-generation computers known as the Unified System or Ryad. This family is effectively a reverse engineering of the IBM S/360 system. Although backward by current Western and Japanese standards, the Unified System is of considerable technological, political, and economic importance. This paper is an attempt to present a comprehensive survey and analysis of the Ryad project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the 10th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP), held at the University of Tokyo from August 1 to 3, 2007 in Japan. He feels that the event was successful in showcasing current research on geotechnical reliability analysis and design code development. He mentions the creation of a special issue based on the works submitted in the conference. He commends the contributors and reviewers of the article published in the special issue.

Purpose – This study aims to identify and compare the knowledge and information retrieval needs from past projects and for future work among Italian and Japanese engineers. Engineering work, which is knowledge-intensive, is all the more critical as it both uses and generates knowledge for product and process innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This research uses data collected from engineers in Italy and Japan from an online survey using open-ended questions in their native language. Answers were then translated into English and coded into pre-determined categories; statistical analyses including factor analysis were conducted. Findings – For knowledge to be retrieved from past work, both Italian and Japanese engineers identified mainly experiential and systemic knowledge assets. For knowledge to be captured for future work, both groups picked experiential as well as conceptual knowledge related to the competitive environment of the firm absent from knowledge needs from past work. Finally, this research uncovered almost twice as fewer meta-categories for knowledge needs to be captured for future work compared to knowledge to be retrieved from past projects, as the former are by nature speculative and, therefore, difficult to foresee. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to the engineering domain and to two countries. Further research should extend the scope beyond these two countries. Practical implications – The study identified information and knowledge needs that could help inform the design of procedures to capture and document engineering work and the development of supporting information systems. Originality/value – This research contributes to an increased understanding of the substance of information and knowledge needs in a knowledge-intensive environment such as engineering work and product/service development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the development and reception processes for the pet-type robots known as AIBO in order to explore the multiple ways in which technoscientific practices make realities of the world. I investigate how practices of comparison work in the emergence of a new technological artifact. Specifically, this article focuses on a singular form of comparison, plastic comparison: comparison both shaping things and shaped by things. AIBO had been designed and understood by comparing the device with various existing entities: a technologically sophisticated machine, a pet animal, a computer game, and a family member. I analyze the way these comparisons gave this robot multiple shapes when it was developed in the laboratory, made it famous through media attention, and then created acceptance by its owners. I show that focusing on plastic comparisons is a useful way of exploring the multiplicity of technological practices that overcomes the limits of existing approaches in STS, such as the social construction of technology and actor-network theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Few studies are available on the clinical characteristics of patients using emergency medical transports in Japan. In this study, we aimed to investigate reasons for emergency medical transports and their relation to clinical severity. Methods: We conducted a 3-year population-based observational study of patients transported by ambulance to emergency departments (ED) in the capital of Japan, Tokyo, which has a population of about 13 million. Demographic data, reasons for transport, and the severity of initial assessment at ED were recorded. Logistic regression was used to determine the odds of the clinical severity of each reason for transport. Results: The number of emergency medical transports in the three-year study period was 1,832,637. Mean age was 53±26. Males were 976,142 (53%). Overall, 92% of all transported patients were in a mild or moderate medical state and patients with the 17 most frequent reasons for transport occupied 82% (1,506,017) of all transports. Pain was the most frequent reason for transport, followed by traffic accident. Considering all the patients and their reasons for transport, patients whose reason was pain or a traffic accident (29% of all patients) were in a relatively mild state compared with patients with other reasons for transport. Patients in an altered mental state in the prehospital setting (6.8% of all patients) were in a more severe medical state than other patients. Conclusions: In Tokyo, Japan, 92% of transported patients were in a mild or moderate medical state. In particular, most patients from traffic accidents were in a mild state, even though traffic accidents were the second most frequent reason for transport. Patients in an altered mental state were most likely to be in a severe medical state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to accommodate the desired percentage of the target users of a product, decisions must be made to ensure that the design satisfies performance requirements such as user safety, comfort, and ease of use. The marketing concept of “utility theory” is one approach to quantifying the effects of design decisions. It is leveraged in this study to develop a design evaluation approach that considers: a) factors that may be either design-related (design specifications) or user-related (relevant body dimensions) and b) the raw material investment in the design. Based on data collected during a usage behavior study involving doorways of numerous sizes, a conditional logit model was developed to predict the utility of a doorway as a function of its size and the user’s stature and shoulder breadth. Next, an eco-design parameter was incorporated into the model as a penalty based on raw material usage. This approach was found to be useful in studying frequently encountered tradeoffs in decisions that could potentially increase product sustainability but could also reduce the utility of the product to the user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacturing engineering work in nine Japanese firms is structured by a horizontal division of labor between manufacturing design engineers and production process engineers, in contrast to a vertical division of labor between manufacturing engineers and technicians in three American firms. The production process engineers in the Japanese firms link manufacturing engineering processes closely with production processes, whereas less coordination between the two processes occurs in the American firms. Regarding product design, manufacturing engineering, and production processes in the Japanese firms, employees engaged in downstream processes are more heavily involved with work concerned with upstream processes than in the American firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fiber-based frequency comb has been developed to measure the frequency of a 633-nm iodine-stabilized laser at the National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ). The measured frequency was consistent with the previous results measured with a Ti:sapphire-based comb. The NMLJ comb was shipped to Australia for the validation of the measurement capability of the National Measurement Institute, Australia (NMIA) and NMIJ combs using a common microwave reference and a common optical frequency. Consequently, the frequency consistency of the two combs was approximately 8 × 10-17. Furthermore, we demonstrate that an absolute mode number of the comb can easily and clearly be determined by using the two combs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1990s, Japan has instituted a series of policy reforms in order to encourage greater university participation in commercial activity. Using data from a survey of scientists in engineering and biomedical fields in Japanese universities, we find that there has been a significant increase in commercial activity during this period, in particular, links to small- and medium-sized enterprises. We also find that scientists are increasingly considering business potential when choosing projects. However, we find little evidence of the increasing commercialization leading to barriers to access to research tools. We also find that, despite the growing importance of formalized university-industry ties, university-industry linkages continue to be dominated by informal ties and gift-exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan Standard Time is an average atomic time generated by a group of Cs clocks at NICT. Several years ago, a problem was found in the timescale, that is, the frequency change by the removal of a clock from the group. The reason turned out to be improper clock-rate estimation of each Cs clock. We fixed the problem by revising the clock-rate estimation method. After this revision, the frequency change on clock removal became small. We also derived a formula to express the frequency change of the timescale by using the data of the removed clock. In some simulations and actual Japan Standard Time, this formula demonstrated its validity for estimating the frequency change. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 157(1): 29–37, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (http://www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20384 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifies the differences between engineers and the practice of engineering in the U.S. and Japan. Quality of Japanese technology and engineering management; Number and utilization of engineers; Impact of culture on engineering.