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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]

The primary role of a teacher from a technical high school in Japan is to teach the students the specialized knowledge and skills for the target industry such as manufacturing. At the same time, it is nothing to say to enhance the humanity of the students. The society of teachers is aging same as the aging and the birth rate decline society as the whole environment of Japan. From those backgrounds, teachers in the technical high school with educational capability who can teach students appropriately are required. One of the methods to improve the educational capability of teachers more than ever, we propose a method to quantify the educational capability in this paper. The educational capability of each teacher can be confirmed objectively at the same time by our proposed method. From the result of analyses, the educational capability of teachers is obtained from the results of the questionnaire. Based on our proposed method, the optimal composition of teachers by each subject is generated. This is research in progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a vector error correction model to investigate the relationship between polluting emissions and GDP levels in Japan, in the period 1970-2014, and tests the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis driven by tourist arrivals. Our results validate the existence of two different causality channels among the selected variables. In particular, we find that a trade-off might exist between increasing the number of tourists, which drives economic growth, and the pattern of a sustainable development, due to the increase of polluting emissions. The analysis allows us to propose appropriate policy strategies to promote a robust and sustainable long run economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japan Academy of Midwifery provides an update to guidelines for midwifery care during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum in 2020 to guide the practice of evidence-based, comfortable care. With the goal of "midwifery care for all pregnant women", the guideline was first published in 2012 and first updated in 2017. The expected roles for these midwifery guidelines include: in clinical practice, as an information tool for midwives to use when making decisions with women; in education, as a tool to understand the evidence base for care and the level of quality of that evidence; and in research, as a tool to recognize the evidence gap. The second update for the evidence-based midwifery guidelines -- pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum 2020 has just been published. In this guideline, clinical questions (CQs) were collected from the public and the guideline committee members judged them for importance. A search for evidence about CQs was conducted by worldwide guidelines and using the three databases (MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, Ichushi-Web) in January 2018. Ten new CQs (five pregnancy CQs and five postpartum CQs) were added to the 2020 edition of the midwifery guidelines, and existing CQs were reviewed for additional evidence and reexamined for their importance in relation to the 2016 edition. As a result of this review, 14 CQs (one pregnancy CQ and 13 intrapartum CQs) had their wording changed and 11 CQs (five pregnancy CQs and six intrapartum CQs) had their recommendations added to or changed. "What is involved in medical treatments" is limited to "evidence and commentary" instead of recommendations. The purpose of this English-language publication is to introduce and disseminate Japan's midwifery care guidelines to the rest of the world, and to help researchers and others cite the content of the midwifery guidelines in English. This paper was translated from the originally published Japanese version of the 2020 evidence-based guidelines for midwifery care by the Guidelines Committee of The Japan Academy of Midwifery (Tokyo, 2020, 194p, https:// www.jyosan.jp/uploads/ files /journal /JAM_guigeline_2020_revised20200401.pdf ) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When judging a population's health to determine disability-adjusted life years, disability weight is a tool for measuring the severity of disability caused by a disease. However, previous studies have pointed out that surveys targeting ordinary citizens produce unclear disability weight values. Therefore, in an attempt to obtain clearer estimations, we conduct a paper-based questionnaire survey of medical professionals – nurses with over ten years of experience – believed to have extensive knowledge of diseases and experience in patient care. We find that disability weight estimations based on the survey of medical professionals presents higher values than those based on a survey of ordinary citizens using the same estimation approach, especially for non-terminal-stage diseases. This suggests that medical-professionals-based surveys may correct the underestimated disability weights of non-terminal diseases (e.g., early stage of cancers and mellitus) found through ordinary-citizens-based surveys. Moreover, we illustrate that depressive disorder and early-stage cancers have almost the same health loss since their disability weights are similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With climate change, many cultural landscapes will be lost or permanently altered. One approach to managing this is through international designation, through UNESCO, and the focus that it provides. National designations such as National Park status also offer a set of strategies for managing and adapting. This paper explores landscape designations in Japan and the UK focusing on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is suggested that the UK's dualistic governmental structures for landscapes prioritise some attributes over others. This is examined through the recent inscription of the Lake District as a World Heritage Property and counterpointed through looking at the recent Landscape Review also known as the Glover Report. A case study on a Japanese approach to landscape designation is explored to suggest alternative approaches. Both country's relationship with international designation is discussed. Methodologies and theoretical approaches are examined with the conclusion that landscape change and loss are dealt with in Japan differently and arguably more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the cost-cutting measure of Tokyo, Japan-based Chuetsu Pulp. The initiative, which will reduce costs mainly by lowering personnel costs, is slated to double the profit of the company by 2008.

Recently, many elderly people choose to live in nursing homes with the high-speed advancement of the aging society in Japan. In the aging society, the shortage of nurses in nursing homes is growing and the demand for medical staff is also increasing. Recording the daily distribution of medicines for the elderly in a nursing home is difficult, which is a time-consuming and labor-consuming task. With the development of artificial intelligence, researchers have tried to realize the automatic recognition of characters using deep learning and achieved exciting performance. This paper aims to realize the automatic medicine package character recognition by combining image processing and deep learning, which may help distribute medicines in nursing home. To be specific, we first detect character area on the image of medicine package, then use dilation and erosion to extract characters. Finally, we design a slight seven-layer deep learning model for character recognition. The experimental results show the deep learning based character recognition accuracy achieved at 97.16%. Furthermore, the tablets are also recognized correctly, which may help staff check the medicine information in the package. Insert here your abstract text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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An improved understanding of the cascading structure of recycling isimportant for increasing resource productivity. The cascading theory, developed to analyze resource cascading, has two major dimensions; resource quality and resource lifetime. The latter is the only dimension for which a quantitative evaluation has been carried out in the previous research. In this study, we propose new tools to quantify both dimensions. These tools enable statistical estimation of the times of utilization of the material cascaded. The pre-circulation index (pre-CI) counts how many times the material has been utilized before consumption. For material in which quality deterioration is measurable largely on the basis of the number of utilization times, pre-CI can be an index of resource quality. The post-circulation index (post-CI) counts how many times the material will be utilized after consumption. The higher the number of utilization times, the longer the lifetimeof the material. Thus, post-CI can be an index of resource lifetime.Total-circulation index (TCI) is the sum of pre- and post-CIs. This can be an overall index of resource productivity. We apply the methodpresented herein to an analysis of the paper recycling system in Japan. Some important features of the CIs are demonstrated by the results; certain potential remains for further improvements in paper recycling in Japan. In the case that two products have the same utilizationrates, their pre-CIs can still differ according to the positions they occupy in the cascade. In the case that two recycling policies achieve the same size of primary raw material reduction, they can still differ in their impact to the whole cascade. By the method described herein, the CIs can represent the structure of a material cascade quantitatively and offer important knowledge by which to increase resource productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents investigating the fraud transaction detection in the mail order industry. These kinds of detection made intensively but the outcome of the research was not shared among the industry. As the B2C industry expands their market size, the fraud transactions increase in number. As a matter of course, this phenomenon is not only continuing but cleverly. One of the conclusive factors for this phenomenon is payment method. That is, the deferred payment method is primarily employed in Japan. The conventional primary indicator for the fraud detection is the ordered time-based information. They are the shipping address, the recipient name, and the payment method. Since conventional detecting method for the fraud depends on some heuristic knowledge, their market size enlargement makes hard to detect fraud transaction. For this background, this paper is presented investigating for comparing algorithms with the actual transaction data gathered from the mail-order industry in Japan. The comparison of weaker learner algorithms is made. The analytical results suggest Random forest is more accurate than XGBoost not only AUC score but parameter tuning costs. This result will make it use for the decision support knowledge for screening customer at the order received phase in the mail order industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following increases in the frequency and magnitude of disasters over the past decades, continuous knowledge production and dissemination has become a crucial pathway for understanding disaster risks. The Sendai Framework provides guidance for various levels of governance and well lays emphasis on managing ‘disaster risks’. While a great deal of existing scholarship has contributed immensely to proactive participation of key players in the public and private sectors, the interpretation of knowledge produced by academia and professional organizations that aids in better understanding for ease of planning and implementation becomes a challenging and rigorous task. The aim of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that simplifies the interpretation of ‘knowledge creation’ and ‘knowledge dissemination’ connecting the Sendai priority one focus and requisite actions for disaster risk reduction at local, national, global and regional levels. The intended outcome is to better enhance understanding using ‘knowledge’ as a lens for key players and stakeholders involved in disaster risk reduction activities. This is achieved through the review of the role of knowledge and knowledge management literature for understanding disaster risks and utilizes an exploratory approach to further create a theoretical linkage with the focus of the Sendai Framework. The paper suggests that appropriate and continuous interpretation of knowledge created and disseminated has the propensity to stimulate and assist in achieving improved disaster risk reduction outcomes and judicious harnessing of resources required for achieving such tasks. The limitation of this paper is that it utilizes a knowledge lens to achieve its aim while acknowledging that other lenses can be used to provide better understanding and clarity of the subject matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International collaborations in the context of Disaster Resilience (DR) is pivotal due to several reasons. It helps to propose ways to create more coherent international approaches on disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and resilience strengthening; it helps to enhance risk management capabilities by bridging the gap between science and legal/policy issues; it helps to address the issue of efficient management of trans-boundary crises. The need to optimise international cooperation in relation to resourcing research, capacity building to undertake research and facilitating its uptake is mentioned throughout the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR). Given their different capacities, as well as the linkage between the level of support provided to them and the extent to which they will be able to implement the SFDRR, developing countries require an enhanced provision of means of implementation, including adequate, sustainable and timely resources, through international cooperation and global partnerships for development, and continued international support, so as to strengthen their efforts to reduce disaster risk. The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of engagement of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in developing countries in Asia in international collaborations to improve their Research and Innovation (R&I) capacities in DR. Based on a project entitled ASCENT (Advancing Skills Creation and Enhancement), the findings of the paper focuses on three Asian countries, i.e. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Other than an extant literature review, the paper findings are drawn from a questionnaire survey carried out in eight HEIs from the said countries. There are already several regional initiatives that promote collaboration among HEIs towards building resilience. These networks should be supported and encouraged to grow. These global networks should collaborate with existing bodies to ensure that the role of higher education is understood and can be made use of. Findings of this paper supports the need for an enhanced international partnership to improve the science-policy interface in DR and to achieve the objectives of the SFDRR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the decades of work undertaken by the international legal community to attain full and satisfactory reparation for the consequences of Japan's actions during World War II, the emotionally-charged bilateral dispute between Japan and South Korea over the issue of the so-called 'comfort women' continues to this day. This paper is focused on analysis of the discourses surrounding the issue through the lens of a psychoanalytic methodological framework. Based upon the therapeutic work of one of the world's leading sexual trauma specialists Judith Herman and her text Trauma and Recovery (1992), the paper examines the issues at stake in the comfort women issue through the themes inherent to Herman's three stages of recovery for survivors of violent trauma. The research concludes that, while there are limitations in applying psychoanalytic methodologies to diplomatic disputes, there is value in pursuing and campaigning for holistic and therapeutic approaches to historical trauma in the context of feminist legal activisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper discusses higher education policies in Japan, Malaysia and Mexico, and evaluates each country's achievements and efforts by using a comparative analysis based on a method that looks into similarities and differences in a regional perspective, as these three countries are encompassed in the University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP) Research Network. This paper certainly considers the measures each country has implemented pertaining to educational planning, and by conducting a survey, collects the assessments on higher education policy from different sectors of the society, including government officials, private sector managers and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Replicating prior work (Godkin, Endoh, & Cahill, 1995; Godkin, Doughty, & Hoosier, 2003), this paper juxtaposes Japan-focused organizational behavior (OB) research appearing between 2002 and 2015 with that appearing between 1981 and 2001. The purpose is to inform four questions; (1) Has there been a relative increase in the proportion of Japanese-focused papers published; (2) Has there been a relative increase in the proportion of Japanese-focused OB papers published (3) What is the nature of Japanese-focused OB papers; and (4) Are there "gaps" in the Japanese-focused OB literature? The intent is to place the 2002-2015 work into context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses challenges for social impact assessment (SIA) for coastal and offshore infrastructure projects, using the case study of the Tomakomai Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Demonstration Project in Hokkaido, Japan. Interest in SIA and linked concepts such as social licence to operate is growing, yet marine environments also have potential to raise additional complexity in project governance. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Tomakomai and Japan more widely across the project development and implementation phase, the paper argues that building an understanding of the social, cultural and historical relationship between the community, industry and the sea is crucial to understanding the neutral or cautiously supportive response of the citizens and stakeholders in Tomakomai to the project. Moreover, effective SIA in coastal regions needs to find a way to account for – or at least make visible – these complex relations between society and the sea. Based on the findings, it is suggested that developers or policymakers overseeing SIA in coastal regions ought to pay extra attention to the extent to which developments like CCS are viewed by communities as 'new' as opposed to a continuation of existing activities in the sea; to the importance of engagement on monitoring during the project operations phase; and to the non-economic values such as pride and identity which communities and stakeholders may derive from the sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper focuses on public-private collaboration for disaster risk management in coastal destinations, particularly between the hotel industry and local government. To guide its research, this paper applies collaborative planning theory in developing a research framework to discover gaps between stakeholders attitudes towards collaboration, its outcomes, and obstacles preventing the adoption of specific hotel-based disaster management actions. A case study is used on Matsushima, Japan, a popular coastal destination in the Tohoku Region, which was devastated by the 2011 tsunami. Through surveys and interviews, this study found that hotels can play a key role in working together with the local government towards disaster risk management of coastal destinations. However collaboration gaps between the stakeholders limited the extent of the adoption of hotel-based disaster risk management initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection in free-ranging cats on Tokunoshima Island was assessed by testing 125 serum samples using anti-T. gondii IgG indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The overall seropositivity rate was 47.2% (59/125). Seropositivity rates in cats with body weight >2.0 kg (57.4%) were significantly higher than in those with body weight =2.0 kg (12.5%, P<0.01). Analysis of the number of seropositive cats by settlement revealed the presence of possibly-infected cats in 17 of 23 settlements, indicating the widespread prevalence of T. gondii on the island. This is the first study to show the seroprevalence of T. gondii in free-ranging cats on Tokunoshima Island. The information revealed in this paper will help to prevent the transmission of T. gondii among cats and also in both wild and domestic animals and humans on the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a vortex-induced vibration (VIV) reliability analysis method based on the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) principle in which constraints are specified in terms of fractional moments involving uncertain wind characteristics, structural properties, and bluff-body aerodynamics. The multiplicative dimensional reduction method (M-DRM) is used to calculate the fractional moments. A new threshold is obtained based on the stopping sight distance in the highway engineering technique standard, which is less strict than the China–Japan standard and the British code and thus better-suited to VIV reliability evaluation. A long-span cable-stayed bridge model is used to illustrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method in comparison to Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) on three performance functions of VIV reliability. The results indicate that VIV maximum amplitude and wind speed failure probability are not sensitive to the selected performance function, but the effect of the wind attack angle on probability is significant. The M-DRM provides a workable alternative approach to analyzing the highly complex VIV reliability of long-span bridges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese government, in response to the many social, economic and environmental problems they face, have embraced and are developing, in collaboration with universities and transnational corporations, a concept they call Society 5.0. This is a plan to integrate new technologies such as Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence and robotics. The Internet of Things will gather data which will be processed by AI which will provide for and even anticipate each individual’s needs with minimal waste. This idea is not just Japan’s but is being replicated in many developed nations and is seen as our inevitable future path. In this paper, however, I argue that this is a plan to create a totalitarian Brave New World, as Aldous Huxley imagined it. A world in which humans are enslaved to the machines that provide for their every desire and lose their ability to develop cognitively and ethically. This will be a world full of comfortable idiots living in an illusion of certainty. I will provide a range of criticisms of Society 5.0 but more than that, I will propose an alternative being developed by the global process philosophy community; Ecological Civilization. While Society 5.0 seeks its solutions through further abstracting humanity from the natural world it is destroying, locking us in a deterministic bubble, Ecological Civilization seeks to re-embed us in nature, repair our dysfunctional relationships with it and promote freedom through transcendence to higher levels of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Understanding the trend toward later and less marriage is particularly important in lowfertility societies where alternatives to marriage are limited and childbearing outside of marriage remains rare. OBJECTIVE Our goal in this paper is to advance our understanding of the wide variety of explanations offered for later and less marriage in Japan by focusing explicitly on marriage intentions and desires. METHODS Using two sources of nationally representative data, we describe the prevalence of positive, negative, and passive marriage intentions and desires among men and women who have never been married. We also examine socioeconomic differences in intentions, patterns of marriage desires across young adulthood, and relationships between marriage desires and outcomes. By linking three pathways to later and less marriage (rejection of marriage, failure to realize marriage desires, and unplanned drifting into singlehood) to specific theoretical frameworks, we generate indirect insights into explanations for later and less marriage. CONCLUSIONS Although the large majority of unmarried men and women want to marry, less than half of respondents married across nine waves of the Japanese Life Course Panel Survey. Among those who remained unmarried, roughly two-thirds can be classified as 'drifting' into singlehood, about 30% as 'failing to realize marriage desires,' and no more than 5% as 'rejecting marriage'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residual next-day effects of sleep-promoting drugs are common and an important safety issue. Lemborexant is a dual orexin receptor antagonist approved in the United States and Japan for treatment of insomnia in adults. We evaluated the potential of lemborexant for residual morning and next-day effects, including somnolence, based on lemborexant clinical study findings. This paper reports findings from 9 lemborexant clinical studies that incorporated next-day assessments of residual drug effects, based on published findings and data on file. Results are reported for healthy subjects or subjects with insomnia disorder treated with lemborexant 5 mg/day or 10 mg/day, placebo, or active comparator before bedtime. Outcomes assessed included next-morning postural stability (body sway measured by ataxiameter), cognitive performance (Cognitive Performance Assessment Battery), impact on driving (standard deviation of lateral position during highway driving test), subjective sleepiness (sleep diary entries), and adverse events of somnolence. Change from baseline in postural stability the morning after lemborexant administration did not differ from placebo. Among 4 Cognitive Performance Assessment Battery measures, only power of attention declined significantly more with lemborexant treatment compared with placebo in 1 of 2 studies, whereas zolpidem differed from placebo on multiple measures. On the highway-driving test, lemborexant did not significantly impair driving performance versus placebo, however, zopiclone did differ. In large phase 3 trials, next-morning sleep diary ratings showed significantly greater alertness with lemborexant compared with placebo after up to 6 months of treatment. As expected, somnolence was the most common adverse event reported with lemborexant treatment. Somnolence was typically mild to moderate in severity and rarely caused discontinuation of study drug. Across 9 clinical studies, lemborexant did not substantially impair next-day functioning among healthy subjects and subjects with insomnia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines comprehensive and foundational insight into the long-term relationship between a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related announcements, CSR visibility, and firm value in Japan. I employed an OLS regression analysis of Tobin's q as a proxy of firm value with the original news dataset I collected from newspapers for CSR-related news announcements and CSR visibility. The regression results suggest, firstly, the positive relationship between a positive news announcement and firm value in the long-term, whereas the impact was found to be explained by CSR visibility in the longer-term. Secondly, the study showed that annual CSR visibility has a positive impact on the firm's value, which supports the idea that firms can attract more long-term investors, financial capital, and political supports by strengthening CSR visibility. Managers and public relations officers may want to be aware that both a positive CSR-related news announcement and CSR visibility have a positive impact on firm value basically, whereas the impact is gradually occupied by CSR visibility, not the announcement. Accordingly, managers are also advised to emphasize not only on "what they do" but also "how to show" their CSR activities in their long-term strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a cursory glance, much of Japan's new economic security policy resonates with US-Biden policy language of building resilient supply chains and strengthening strategic partnerships. Mainstream scholarship has been quick to interpret this as a new form of economic statecraft and the strengthening of the US-Japan partnership. However, little has been discussed about how the adoption of economic security policy has entailed state restructuring and reconnected different social forces. There has been a shift in the functions of state institutions which are, to some extent, becoming fused. Security institutions are drawn into economic domains while economic institutions increasingly adapt to discourses on military issues. This fusion has been facilitating the reconnection of industrial capital, military capital, and state elites who attempt to leverage the interlocking components of US-led policies and economic security, that in turn reproduces the developmental form of the Japanese state. This paper offers a theoretically-informed way of understanding new geopolitical lines underpinning state transformation in Japan and sheds light on the constitutive elements we currently see as 'networked security architecture' such as the Quad or 'friendshoring' industrial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim migrants in Japan suffer from the lack of access to burial grounds when 99.9% of the nation is cremated. Muslims are usually met with opposition from the local community where cemetery construction is planned. Using ethnographic data, the study shows how Muslim associations inadvertently fail to respect the codes of Japanese rurality when seeking a cemetery in a community to which they do not have membership, leading to a conflict. This paper closes with policy prescriptions for the central government in ensuring the cultural rights of immigrant minorities in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I look into the lesser-known history of "comfort women" in the Philippines. I engage with the following questions: how did the trafficking and sexual exploitation of Filipino women emerge as part of state policy in the Japanese Empire? How was it dealt with in the aftermath of the war, especially in the face of shifting post-war alliances and the changing place of Japan in the geo-politics of the Cold War? How did events in the international arena, in turn, affect diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Japan, specifically with respect to aid and trade? Finally, how did the market forces at play affect state policy in the Philippines? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the problems of local industrial displacement by new apartment buildings in a high-density mixed residential and factory zone. Conceptually, we develop a model that underscores the contextual actors and variables shaping the governance of this type of land-use conflict. Empirically, we focus on the Takaida industrial district, Higashi Osaka, Japan. We argue that while there were similarities between our case study and the problems of industrial displacement and land-use and zoning conflicts found in major Western cities, the concerns and planning processes in Takaida reflected a particular Japanese situation. Most notably, decision rules to manage land-use conflicts between residential apartments and factories was overseen initially by a community planning group set up by the Higashi Osaka mayor. Based on field work, we record the twenty-year process to achieve consensus support for formal and informal rules designed to realize juko kyosei , the co-existence of residents and industrial businesses. The community planning group's proposals were eventually adopted, in large part, by Higashi Osaka city. They were then implemented through a new process of monozukuri planning that combined technological support for local factory upgrading as well as protecting industrial districts from displacement by residential incursion. • Industrial displacement of factories from traditional manufacturing districts due to land-use competition with residential apartments is an important policy issue in many cities. • An industrial policy mix framework helps understand the dynamics of this type of land-use conflict in particular jurisdictions. • Industrial displacement in Higashi Osaka, Japan, has been distinctive due to the problems of ambiguous zoning category (semi-industrial zone) and inflexible local land-use zoning for both factories and residential apartment buildings. • Management of this land-use conflict in the Takaida factory district involved machizukuri community planning. • Higashi Osaka municipality adopted monozukuri planning approaches to support factory operations together with policies that encouraged the co-existence of residents and industrial businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the politics of Asia-Pacific War memory and memorialization in Southeast Asia, evident in the production context and visual semiotic resources of Thailand's Victory Monument, a generic memorial to Thai war heroes, and the Philippines' Shrine of Valor, a historical shrine complex dedicated to Filipino and US soldiers of the Asia-Pacific War. These heritage structures represent two divergent memorialization practices that demonstrate how the commemoration or suppression of war memory is influenced by politics, agendas, and the benefits it brings to the state. In Thailand, the inward justification and outward restraint stem from the difficult choices the state had to make during the war. In the Philippines, while war memorialization was pronounced and served state aims, it was initially undermined by President Ferdinand Marcos, who wanted to bolster his fraudulent war heroism claims. The cases illustrate how diverging national memorial practices surrounding the war's contested past achieved similar aims and how memorial sites become repositories of meaning potentials through which we could make sense of the nation and its international entanglements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal social-ecological systems (SES) are essential for the wellbeing of coastal communities and the wider society. However, in many parts of the world coastal SES face rapid change, and ultimately degradation. In this paper we unravel the mechanisms and implications of change in coastal SESmobilising multiple sources of knowledge, including scientific, expert-based and traditional and local knowledge (TLK). We focus on the rapidly changing Nakatsu mudflat in Japan, and combine primary and secondary data elicited through a mixed-method participatory approach that mobilised local stakeholders with different types of engagement with (and knowledge of) the mudflat. Through 4 expert interviews and 40 questionnaire surveys we identified the main ecosystem services provided by the mudflat that are perceived to be essential to the wellbeing of the local community. Although practically all respondents identified food provision as an important mudflat ecosystem services, many also pointed to the importance of some cultural (e.g. aesthetic beauty, spirituality, education and knowledge) and supporting services (e.g. habitat provision, sediment formation/retention). Through 8 Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and concept mapping we identified and systematized the underlying direct and indirect drivers of ecosystem change in the Nakatsu mudflat. These include population ageing and shrinking, economic diversification, and technological change that have collectively eroded TLK practices associated with the sustainable use of the mudflat. We also identified the mechanisms mediating these drivers and how they unfold in reality. Our study demonstrates that participatory processes engaging multiple stakeholders with different types of knowledge can provide rich and useful information on coastal SES change, which might not be readily obvious from simple headline indicators such as the change in the extent of the SES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work aimed to investigate the biocompatibility and biological activity of the water-soluble fullerene adduct C 60 -Arg. It was found that the material is haemocompatible, is not cyto- and genotoxic, possesses pronounced antioxidant activity. Additionally, this paper outlines the direction of application of water-soluble fullerene adducts in the creation of neuroprotectors. It has been suggested that a putative mechanism of the protective action of the C 60 -Arg adduct is associated with its antioxidant properties, the ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, and release nitrogen monoxide as a result of the catabolism of L-arginine residues, which promote vascular relaxation. The action of the C 60 -Arg adduct was compared with the action of such an antioxidant as Edaravone, which is approved in Japan for the treatment of ischemic and haemorrhagic strokes. In this article, we performed synthesis and identification of C 60 fullerene adduct with L-arginine (C 60 -Arg). As a result of study of complex investigation of biocompatibility and bioactivity it was shown that the adduct has a protective effect shown in in vivo experiments in the model of acute focal cerebral ischemia. Moreover, using molecular dynamics, structural and dynamic characteristics of C 60 -Arg in water were obtained. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]