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Earthquakes with magnitudes of 6–7 have been reported even in various active tectonic settings where fault deformation topography have not been detected. Therefore, delineating concealed active faults generating such earthquakes is necessary to reduce earthquake damage; however, few studies exist to provide its clues regarding such faults. The 1984 Western Nagano Earthquake in Japan was a main shock with a magnitude of Mj 6.8 and a depth of 2 km at the source. Solid bedrocks are well‐exposed in the earthquake source region; however, no surface rupture have been identified, and the active fault is known to be concealed. In this study, we collected data on striations observed in fractures by geological survey around the source area of the 1984 Western Nagano Earthquake. Using the collected data, the multiple inverse method was used to estimate the stresses that affected the striation formation. Consequently, stresses similar to acting faults in this area were detected in minor faults around the known concealed active fault. This suggests that the minor faults might be part of the damage zone that has been developed around the concealed active fault. Some minor faults were recognized in Quaternary volcanic rocks, confirming that they experienced displacements recently. This study indicates the possibility of detecting concealed active faults in the bedrock by geological survey. Plain Language Summary: The activity of active faults causes earthquakes. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the distribution of active faults to prepare for earthquakes in advance. However, earthquakes can also occur where active faults have not been recognized. In this case, the active fault cannot be recognized on the surface but might be concealed. In this study, we collected data on many slip marks on fractures in the bedrock where a concealed active fault has been inferred and estimated the stress required to form the slip marks to examine whether a clue to the existence of a concealed active fault can be obtained from a surface approach. Consequently, similar stresses to currently acting faults in this area were obtained in the area directly above the concealed active fault. This discovery shows that there are many recently moved slip marks directly above the concealed active fault, which might be related to the activity of the fault. This result indicates the possibility of recognizing the concealed active fault from surface approaches. Key Points: We collected minor faults‐slip data around the 1984 Western Nagano Earthquake region, and conducted a multiple inverse methodAs results, the minor faults were active in the recent stress are concentrated just above the concealed active faultIt shows the possibility of understanding the existence of the concealed active fault by using our method even in no active fault areas [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to use short-form visual analogue scale cochlear implantation questionnaires to evaluate subjective aspects at each out-patient visit. The correlation between subjective hearing tests using the short-form visual analogue scale and objective hearing outcomes was evaluated. Method: This study was conducted in a single centre. Cochlear implant users (n = 199) evaluated their hearing on a scale of 0 to 100 for the right, left and both ears. The Japanese speech perception test (CI-2004) Japanese monosyllable speech perception test (67-S) and cochlear implantation threshold were used for the objective cochlear implantation evaluation. Results: A significant correlation was found between the short-form visual analogue scale questionnaire and objective hearing outcome, for words (r = 0.64) and sentences (r = 0.62) in CI-2004 and 67-S (r = 0.56) tests. No significant correlation was found between the short-form visual analogue scale score and cochlear implantation threshold (r = −0.18). Conclusion: Short-form visual analogue scale cochlear implantation questionnaires mean cochlear implant users spend less time answering subjective visual analogue scale questionnaires, and clinicians estimate a patient's cochlear implantation hearing and abnormality by chronological evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detailed demographics play an important role in the development of smart cities. However, especially in developing countries, the maintenance and management of this data is incomplete, which hinders the promotion of smart cities. The objective of this study is to develop a method to create detailed building distribution maps from satellite images, which will serve as a basis for developing detailed demographic data to support the promotion of smart cities around the world. The target area is several areas of Tokyo where validation data is available. We first developed a method for extracting buildings from satellite images and then estimating the building use to determine the buildings where residents are distributed. Both methods use deep learning. As a result, it was possible to extract buildings with an extraction rate (the number of buildings in the automatically extracted building data divided by the number of buildings in the data for verification) of up to 60.3% for the entire target area. In addition, in the estimation of building use, our method was able to classify detached and non-detached buildings with an average accuracy of 78.7% for the entire target area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the growth and optical characteristics of Eu-doped ZnO (ZnO:Eu) films on ZnO nanowires (NWs) by sputtering-assisted metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. ZnO:Eu films are grown by sputtering Eu2O3 targets during the growth of ZnO NWs. The crystal quality of ZnO host materials is improved by using the NW configuration due to a strain relaxation effect, which is elucidated by optical characterization. An enhancement of Eu3+ luminescence at 613 nm is observed at room temperature for the ZnO:Eu/ZnO NWs as compared to a conventional film. Site-selective spectroscopy by direct excitation of Eu3+ ions by a tunable dye laser reveals that the most intense emission peak is located at a wavelength of ∼613.5 nm, which coincides with the main peak under indirect excitation. This result indicates that the observed enhanced Eu luminescence is due to a relative increase in the number of Eu centers which can effectively be excited via the host material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been reported that the structural stability is significantly deteriorated under radio-frequency-ultrasonic perturbation at relatively low temperatures, e.g., near/below the glass transition temperature Tg, even for thermally stable metallic glasses. Here, we consider an underlying mechanism of the ultrasound-induced instability, i.e., crystallization, of a glass structure to grasp the nature of the glass-to-liquid transition of metallic glasses. Mechanical spectroscopy analysis indicates that the instability is caused by atomic motions resonant with the dynamic ultrasonic-strain field, i.e., atomic jumps associated with the β relaxation that is usually observed for low frequencies of the order of 1 Hz at temperatures far below Tg. Such atomic motions at temperatures lower than the so-called kinetic freezing temperature Tg originate from relatively weakly bonded (and/or low-density) regions in a nanoscale inhomogeneous microstructure of glass, which can be straightforwardly inferred from a partially crystallized microstructure obtained by annealing of a Pd-based metallic glass just below Tg under ultrasonic perturbation. According to this nanoscale inhomogeneity concept, we can reasonably understand an intriguing characteristic feature of less-stable metallic glasses (fabricated only by rapid melt quenching) that the crystallization precedes the glass transition upon standard heating but the glass transition is observable at extremely high rates. Namely, in such less-stable metallic glasses, atomic motions are considerably active at some local regions even below the kinetic freezing temperature. Thus, the glass-to-crystal transition of less-stable metallic glasses is, in part, explained with the present nanoscale inhomogeneity concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase segregation and the effect of pressure on crystallization of bulk and ribbon Pd[sub 40]Ni[sub 40]P[sub 20] glasses have been studied by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and x-ray diffraction. The DSC measurements show only one glass transition event in the samples annealed at different temperatures in the supercooled liquid region. Phase analyses reveal at least five crystalline phases crystallized from the glass: monoclinic; body-centered tetragonal; orthorhombic; Ni[sub 2]Pd[sub 2]P and fcc-(Ni,Pd) solid solution phases. In the pressure range from 0 to 4.2 GPa, the crystallization temperature increases with pressure having a slope of 11 K/GPa. The eutectic crystallization reaction mode and crystalline phases formed are unchanged in the pressure range used. The enhancement of the crystallization temperature with increasing pressure in the glass can be explained by the suppression of atomic mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 'decomposition scheduling method' is proposed for operating a flexible manufacturing system with small buffer capacity. It is made clear that the optimum schedule obtained by using an optimum scheduling algorithm, i.e. the Johnson or Jackson rule to minimize makespan for a 2-machine FMS, requires too large an amount of buffer capacity to realize. In the decomposition scheduling method, a set of unscheduled jobs are decomposed into several sets of jobs and the optimum subschedules are derived independently for each set of jobs. A near-optimum schedule is obtained by connecting these sub-schedules arbitrarily. The schedule obtained through the decomposition scheduling method gives a high degree of approximation in the system utilization and dramatically reduces the buffer capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costs of flowtime, earliness and tardiness should be incorporated in real production scheduling. This paper constructs a single-machine scheduling model with a common due date to minimize the total cost including an identical, asymmetric earliness-tardiness cost. Several dominance conditions necessary for an optimal schedule are derived. A branch and bound algorithm exploiting the conditions is proposed to find an optimal schedule for an unconstrained version of the scheduling problem. Numerical experiments are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate 10 Gbit/s operation of InAs/InGaAs quantum dot (QD) p-i-n photodiodes (PDs) grown on on-axis (001) GaP/Si substrates. A 3.0 × 50 μm2 QD PD shows a small dark current of 0.2 nA at a bias voltage of −3 V, which corresponds to a dark current density of 0.13 mA/cm2. This low-dark current characteristic obtained from a narrow-stripe device indicates that sidewall and threading dislocations have small effects on the dark current. The 3 dB bandwidth was 5.5 GHz at a bias voltage of −5 V. Large signal measurement with non-return-to-zero signals shows 10 Gbit/s eye opening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, nanocarriers that transport bioactive substances to a target site in the body have attracted considerable attention and undergone rapid progression in terms of the state of the art. However, few nanocarriers can enter the brain via a systemic route through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to efficiently reach neurons. Here we prepare a self-assembled supra-molecular nanocarrier with a surface featuring properly configured glucose. The BBB crossing and brain accumulation of this nanocarrier are boosted by the rapid glycaemic increase after fasting and by the putative phenomenon of the highly expressed glucose transporter-1 (GLUT1) in brain capillary endothelial cells migrating from the luminal to the abluminal plasma membrane. The precisely controlled glucose density on the surface of the nanocarrier enables the regulation of its distribution within the brain, and thus is successfully optimized to increase the number of nanocarriers accumulating in neurons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently updated nanocrystalline soft magnetic Fe-Co-Si-B-P-Cu alloys "NANOMET®" exhibit high saturation magnetic flux density (Bs > 1.8 T), low coercivity (Hc < 10 A/m) and low core loss (W1.7/50 ~ 0.4 W/kg) even in a ribbon form with a thickness of up to 40 µm. By utilize excellent magnetic softness, several products such as motors or transformers for electrical appliances are now under developing by industry-academia collaboration. In particular, it is found that a brushless DC motor using NANOMET® core exhibited remarkable improvement in energy consumption. The prototype motor with an outer core diameter of 70 mm and a core thickness of 50 mm was constructed using laminated nano-crystallized NANOMET® ribbons. Core-loss for the constructed motor was improved from 1.4 W to 0.4 W only by replacing the non-oriented Si-steel core with NANOMET® one. The overall motor efficiency is evaluated to be 3% improvement. In this work, the relation between processing and resulting magnetic properties will be presented. In addition, feasibility for commercialization will also be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have generated over 40 GPa pressures, namely, 43 and 44 GPa, at ambient temperature and 2000 K, respectively, using Kawai-type multi-anvil presses (KMAP) with tungsten carbide anvils for the first time. These high-pressure generations were achieved by combining the following pressure-generation techniques: (1) precisely aligned guide block systems, (2) high hardness of tungsten carbide, (3) tapering of second-stage anvil faces, (4) materials with high bulk modulus in a high-pressure cell, and (5) high heating efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liquid crystalline (LC) phases under nanoconfinement are known to exhibit exotic molecular orientational structures and phase transition behaviours. Here, we report the anisotropic ion conductivity and phase transition behaviours of ionic LC samples confined in aluminum oxide membranes with cylindrical pores. We found that these properties are different from those of the bulk ionic LC samples and depend on the molecular alignment on the pore walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]