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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.)

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.)

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

Presents a historical analysis of the growth of total factor productivity in Japan in the post World War II period. Growth of Japanese factor productivity in the 20th century; Role of agriculture in the 1950s; Increase of the engineering industry in postwar Japan; Impact of factor productivity on changes in production structure and income distribution.