Search

Interest in climate engineering research has grown rapidly owing to the slow progress of international climate negotiations. As some scientists are proposing to expand research and conduct field tests, there is an emerging debate about whether and how it should proceed. It is widely accepted both by the supporters and critics that public engagement from the early stage of research is necessary. Nonetheless, most, if not all, of existing research projects of climate engineering were designed predominantly by experts. To produce socially relevant knowledge, and hence, pursue transdisciplinary research that integrates interdisciplinary research and public engagement, it is desirable for scientists to decide together with the public on what kind of research should be done. In this paper, we both as Japanese scientists and stakeholders collaboratively identify 40 socially relevant research questions on climate engineering with a particular emphasis on stratospheric aerosol injection, using a method designed to encourage science–policy collaboration. While we acknowledge some methodological problems and the difficulty in obtaining active participation from stakeholders, the list of identified questions covers broad interdisciplinary perspectives and diverse interests, and may provide an important foundation for future transdisciplinary research on climate engineering. Given the dynamic nature of climate change and policy responses, research agendas should be periodically and iteratively reviewed and updated through transdisciplinary processes.

We have successfully developed a low-power, low-noise silicon p-channel MOSFET working at 1.8 K. This MOSFET was produced by a standard 0.5μm BiCMOS process. From the typical current-voltage characteristics of this p-channel MOSFET at 1.8K, we obtained that the drain resistance rd is ∼2Mω, the transconductance gm is ∼35μS, and the input referred noise voltage is as low as ∼2μV/√Hz at 1Hz under low-drain current condition (∼1μA). No “kink”-like behavior was observed within the nominal operation range (−1.5V

The law of corresponding states of molten salt mixtures that include unsymmetrical salts was developed. The corresponding states equations for the thermodynamic and transport properties were obtained by expanding the Helmholtz free energy and the transport properties in terms of differences of the pair potential parameters, difference of the ionic size, and difference of the ionic mass. The effect of valences on the properties was accounted for by the products of cation and anion valences in the corresponding states equations. Equations for the mixing molar volume, surface tension, electrical conductivity, and viscosity were derived from the corresponding states equations. The estimated mixing properties satisfactorily agreed with the observed ones.

The Japanese infrared astronomical satellite, ASTRO-F, employs the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) for all sky survey. The FIS has two detector arrays; one covers from 50 to 110 μm wavelength, the other covers from 110 to 200 μm. Each of them uses Ge:Ga operating at 2K. We have developed and evaluated the preamplifiers for these detector arrays. The preamplifiers are required to work at 2K with low noise and low power dissipation. In this paper, we report on the development and evaluation of these cryogenic preamplifiers.

The Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) is one of the focal plane instruments of ASTRO-F (IRIS : Infrared Imaging Surveyor) which is a Japanese infrared astronomical satellite and is planned to launch in 2003. The FIS is designed primarily to perform an all-sky survey with 4 photometric bands in wavelength range of 50-200 μm by using unstressed and stressed Ge:Ga 2-D array detectors. The sensitivity of the FIS is 10-100 times higher than the IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite) because of the improvement in detector performance based on recent advances in the device technology. The FIS also has spectroscopic capability by a Fourier spectrometer covering 50-200 cm -1 in wavenumber with spectral resolution of 0.2 cm -1 . The same detector arrays for the all-sky survey are used, and these two functions are switched. The spectroscopic function is operated in the pointing mode. Spectral information can be used to estimate the redshifts of strange objects detected by the all-sky survey. Furthermore, many spectral lines in far-infrared wavelength can be detected from star forming region with its spectral resolving power. Hence the spectrometer is a powerful instrument to reveal the physical properties of galactic and proto-stellar sources. The ASTRO-F project is currently in its final stage of proto-model, which is constructed same as flight-model. Since instrumental goals of the FIS are unprecedented achivement of high sensitivity and high spatial resolution in far-infrared wavelength, the proto-model stage is important to prove the performance as the flight instrument. We mainly present here the latest optical, thermal, and mechanical properties of the proto-model of the FIS.