bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
County Government Fleet Purchasing Practices: Financial Efficiency vs. Need Assertion
Authors: Modlin Steve
Published: April 2016

An abundant amount of local government services are implemented through the use of automobiles each year. These costs include initial purchase, use, repair, and replacement. Traditional budgeting research is broad and does not isolate fleet costs or the influential actors in the process. This study examines the finance practices and need assertion associated with vehicle purchases and acquisition. Findings indicate most county governments in North and South Carolina choose to purchase vehicles on a cash basis, especially if there is a low resale value for surplus automobiles. In addition, county staff are very influential in additional vehicle purchases, especially if the sheriff can convince the county manager that additional automobiles of a particular make can enhance service delivery.
Sexual Minority and Employee Engagement: Implications for Job Satisfaction
Authors: Jin Myung H. , Park Jaehee
Published: April 2016

Despite the increasing attention given to the construct of work engagement in the workplace, it remains under-researched in the academic literature. Using Kahn’s conceptual foundation of work engagement, this study examines whether high levels of work engagement lead to equally satisfying work experiences for members of the workforce regardless of their sexual orientation. Using the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), authors find that while active engagement at work had positive influence on employee job satisfaction regardless of one’s sexual orientation, high level of engagement at work among LGBT employees was less strongly associated with job satisfaction than it was for those non-LGBT employees. Implications are discussed.
Front Matter
Authors: Editors The
Published: April 2016

Front Cover and Editorial Board
Challenges in Performance Management System (PMS) in Indian Power Companies using Interpretive Structural Modelling(ISM) approach
Authors: Akhauri Prem Prakash
Published: April 2016

Competition in the Power sector has heightened the business challenges primarily need for developing and operating power project with focus on organizational and individual performance. Post 2003 Electricity Act, power sector witnessed growing competition with entry of many private players. Today the share of private power companies in the overall power generation capacity is more than the generation of government controlled companies. However, the sector is experiencing difficulties due to slow pace of reforms and implementation bottlenecks. The balance sheet of most of the power companies is stressed with huge debt pileup and dwindling profitability and very few being able to remain EBIDTA positive leave aside posting PAT. Organizational level performance goals can be met with robust performance management system (PMS) in place. The reality is that though most of the companies in the power sector have PMS, but the rigour and serious implementation for driving their business is surely a challenge. The paper attempts to identify the key challenges and examine the relationship between them .The data has been collected through structured questionnaire and interview with Business and HR Heads of Indian Power Companies and key challenges which are identified are analysed using the Interpretive Structured Modelling (ISM) resulting in a model for explaining the relationship between them. The result reveals the challenges faced by PMS in Indian power companies and the relationship between them. The model will assist the companies to decide the priority of the identified challenges for suitable remedial measures.
Performance of Bank Units : A synthetic review
Authors: Dave Dr. Krishna Kant , Shakdwipee Pallavi
Published: April 2016

Banking is now become a part of every individual's daily routine activity. Every individual is now exposed with banks and its services. Now a days, Pradhan mantry Jan Dhan Yojna i.e. PMJDY is forcing every citizens of India to have an account with banks. Hence role of banking industry in India became very crucial and challenging. Banks are attracting the customers with new products and ideas.Targets are assigned to every branch for the better performance. An impact of this, role of bank has become more responsible towards society. “Survival of the fittest” is now applicable to banks also. They have to perform continuously for survival. There are various techniques used for measuring the performance of banking units. In this particular paper we reviewed about the study already done on interbank & intra bank performance. This paper reviewed about DEA i.e. Data Envelopment Analysis and CAMEL approaches.
Special Issue on Microfactory
Authors: Okazaki Yuichi
Published: April 2016

In the last decade, the miniaturization and integration of mechanical, electronic, and optical components has seen intensive development, both for industrial and consumer products. The technology involved in micromanufacturing can be now seen as moving from the academic study phase to that of industrial application. At the same time, the manufacturing industry is being forced to accommodate these changes in products in order to survive in a borderless international market, not only due to technical considerations but in the interest of cost-effectiveness and agility as well. The environment is also a consideration.

To accommodate these demands, further scientific and technological advancements will be required. On the other hand, industrial applications should be developed in order to make the output of the manufacturing industries more economically advantageous and sustainable.

“Microfactory” is the philosophy of reducing the size of manufacturing machinery and systems to make them appropriate to the size of the products. It is important that there be advances in micromanufacturing to open this potential new stage for cutting edge manufacturing. The microfactory concept was born almost twenty years ago in Japan, but is just now commonly understood and studied worldwide.

For this special issue, we called for both academic and practical papers related to the microfactory concept. As the latter category of papers usually tend to be published outside the world of academic journals, it has been difficult for researchers to become familiar with them. However, since practical applications are very important for the prospects of micromanufacturing technologies, we also invited papers that may fall outside our conventional criteria. Unfortunately, a number of important trials and developments could not be included in this issue, but it is our hope that this special issue may provide our readers with some aspects of the micromanufacturing of the near future.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all authors, reviewers, and editors for their contributions and efforts in realizing this special issue.
Special Issue on Parallel Structures in Manufacturing and Robotics
Authors: Tuan Pham Anh
Published: April 2016

The first parallel robot – a hexapod – although invented and built in 1947 by Dunlop Tyres’ Dr. Eric Gough, is still commonly known as the Steward Platform after Dr. D. Steward, who published the first research paper on the parallel structure. This opened a new era in parallel structures, which find applications in numerous industries thanks to their many advantages over their serial counterparts, including high-speed, high-accuracy operations, high rigidity, and use in limited workspace. The most noticeable of these are flight and vehicle simulators and high-speed, high-precision machining applications.

After decades of use limited due to the structure’s close-loop nature, however, challenges remain, including optimizing layouts, finding optimal workspace, determining structural manipulability, ascertaining structural validation, and developing robust control. This special issue of Automation Technology addresses these vital issues.

The seven articles present here deal with research on parallel structures including proposals of mechanisms for extending workspace for existing structures and their new applications, proposals, and kinematic analyses of new structures with enlarged workspace and calibration proposals for parallel machine tool mechanisms. The control of redundant mechanisms, which provide ways to increase mechanism workspace and flexibility, is also explored.

These articles are sure to provide researchers in parallel structures with stateof- the-art information useful in their own work. They are also certain to prove both interesting and informative to general readers and specialists in other fields.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to the authors, reviewers, and editors for their invaluable contributions for this issue.
Development of Oil Hydraulic Components Using a Flow Visualization Technique
Authors: Tsukiji Tetsuhiro ,   Sophia University, 7-1 Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, Japan, Noguchi Eishin , Yoshida Futoshi ,   KYB Corporation, 1-12-1 Asamizodai, Minami-ku, Sagamihara-shi, Kanagawa-ken 252-0328, Japan
Published: April 2016

In the present study, we succeed in observing cavitating flow near a notch (V-shaped groove) in a valve plate in an axial piston pump, and we improve an oil hydraulic ball valve, using the visualization technique. Our model of the axial piston pump, is designed to allow the jet flow near the notch and the cavitation cloud to be observed clearly from two directions using a high-speed video camera. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is employed to estimate the occurrence and the region of the cavitation cloud. It is found that our CFD method is very useful for estimating the region of the cavitation cloud. It is further found that adding notches serves to greatly reduce the cavitation region. Using a commercially available digital video camera, a high-speed video camera, and X-rays source, we also succeed in improving an oil hydraulic ball valve by preventing vibration, cavitation, and the noise.
Special Issue on Rapid Prototyping
Authors: Morishige Koichi , Anzai Masahiro , Narahara Hiroyuki
Published: April 2016

Layered manufacturing is the generic name for a processing method used to obtain an actual model by calculating cross-sectional shapes from 3D CAD data and stacking these shapes. Because it can realize any shape without needing skills for devising a processing method and fabricating fixtures, layered machining is expected to realize 3D printing that enables even inexperienced or amateur operators to obtain actual 3D shapes. Since the model such as injection molding can be fabricated without using dies and molds, layered manufacturing is now called rapid prototyping (RP). Since ever manufacturing of high-strength materials has become available, RP applications have been deployed in areas from models for more confirmation of shape to functional models attached to prototypes such as engines and used for test runs. In addition, the new concepts called rapid manufacturing (RM) and rapid tooling (RT), which are used in the manufacture of low-volume products and production equipment, have been proposed and implemented. This special issue focuses on RP technology. Among its many interesting papers are those that focus on new fabrication techniques, material development for RP, CAD/CAM systems for RP, new RP systems, and applications for RP. We are certain that you will find this issue both interesting and informative. We thank the authors for their generous cooperation and the editing staff for its many contributions.
Laser-Generated Surface Acoustic Wave Technique for Crack Monitoring – A Review
Authors: Chen Kun ,   State Key Laboratory of Precision Measuring Technology and Instruments, Tianjin University, No.92, Weijin Road, Tianjin 300072, P.R. China, Fu Xing , Dorantes-Gonzalez Dante J. , Li Yanning , Wu Sen , Hu Xiaotang
Published: April 2016

In this paper, the principle of surface acoustic wave techniques and their application to the monitoring of cracks are presented and compared to other classic non-destructive techniques. A practical classification of methods regarding the excitation and detection of surface acoustic waves is enumerated, among them, laser-generated surface acoustic wave technique is carefully analyzed as a prospective technique, and two important detection methods using piezoelectric and light deflection are described. Then, the strategies and variables used in crack monitoring based on laser-generated surface acoustic wave technique are reviewed. To achieve the goal of quantitative detection of cracks, most researchers use numerical models and experiments to characterize main crack features. Discussions and prospective approaches for further quantitative monitoring of cracks are provided.
Thermally Caused Location Errors of Rotary Axes of 5-Axis Machine Tools
Authors: Gebhardt Michael ,   Institute of Machine Tools and Manufacturing (IWF), ETH Zurich, CLA G6, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland, Schneeberger Alexander , Weikert Sascha , Knapp Wolfgang , Wegener Konrad ,   Inspire, Transfer Institute for Mechatronic Systems and Manufacturing Technology, Zurich, Switzerland
Published: April 2016

This paper presents the results of detailed thermal analysis of a 5-axis machine tool with focus on the rotary axes. The rotary axes are characterized regarding their position and orientation errors as a function of the underlying thermal load, contributing significantly to the overall accuracy. A physical model is presented, which allows the simulation of the thermal behavior of the rotary axes based on the power input to the drives of the rotary axes and the heat conduction in a swiveling rotary table unit and convection into environment. This enables an external online-compensation of thermal errors. The compensation model is verified and validated.
Special Issue on Modeling Decisions for Artificial Intelligence
Authors: Torra Vicenç , Narukawa Yasuo , Inuiguchi Masahiro
Published: April 2016

The 6th International Conference on Modeling Decisions for Artificial Intelligence (MDAI) was held at Awaji Island, Japan, from November 30 to December 2, 2009 and was the inspiration for this special issue. The nine selected papers concern soft computing tool applications. The first, by Yoshida, studies the risk analysis of portfolios under uncertainty and gives expressions showing explicit relationships among parameters in a portfolio. The second, by Entani, proposes an efficiency-interval-based measure based on interval data envelopment analysis. The third, by Hamasuna, Endo, and Miyamoto, concerns clustering for data with tolerance and proposes algorithms for this type of data. The fourth, by Endo, Hasegawa, Hamasuna, and Kanzawa, focuses on fuzzy c-means clustering for uncertain data using quadratic regularization. The fifth, by Honda, Notsu, and Ichihashi, also involves clustering, focusing on variable selection/weighting in PCA-guided k-means. The sixth, by Hwang and Miyamoto, covers clustering focusing on kernel fuzzy c-means and some interesting new results. The seventh, by Kanzawa, Endo, and Miyamoto, uses fuzzy c-means in semisupervised fuzzy c-means. The eighth, by Kudo and Murai, is devoted to rough sets, proposing a heuristic algorithm for calculating a relative reduct candidate. The closing contribution, by Kusunoki and Inuiguchi, is also devoted to rough sets, with the authors studying rough set models in information tables with missing values. We thank the referees for their review work, and the Fuji Technology Press Ltd. staff for its encouragement and advice.
Selected Papers from iFAN 2010
Authors: Fukuda Toshio , Takama Yasufumi
Published: April 2016

The 2010 International Symposium on Intelligent Systems (iFAN2010) was held at Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan, in September 2010, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the 2010 Intelligent System Symposium (FAN2010). These two symposiums provided a fine opportunity for researchers to exchange ideas on basic theories and applications on intelligent systems and iFAN2010 was the first international symposium in the history of the FAN symposium. From more than 200 papers of FAN2010 and iFAN2010, papers of top quality were invited to this special issue. From 17 papers submitted, 13 outstanding papers have been selected for this special issue after fair and peer review process. As these two symposiums covered a wide variety of intelligence-related issues, this special issue also consists of various topics from basic theories such as machine learning, adaptive control, and optimization, to application-oriented studies such as medical image processing, human support systems, and land mine detection. This issue is expected to contribute much to research on intelligent systems. As the Editors of this special issue, we thank the contributors and reviewers for their time and cooperation. We look forward to actively participating to the next FAN2011, to be held at Kobe University, Hyogo, Japan, in September 2011, which we hope will be as successful and fruitful as the 2010 symposium.
Selected Papers from i-SAIRAS 2010
Authors: Takadama Keiki
Published: April 2016

This special issue features the selected papers from i-SAIRAS 2010 (The 10th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space) at Sapporo, Japan on August 29 - September 1, 2010), which explores the technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Automation and Robotics, and its application in space. In the AI domain, in particular, i-SAIRAS focuses on the following issues: (1) spacecraft autonomy (e.g., inboard software for mission planning and execution, resource management, fault protection, science data analysis, guidance, navigation and control, smart sensors, testing and validation, architectures); (2) mission operations automation (e.g., decision support tools for mission planning and scheduling, anomaly detection and fault analysis, innovative operations concepts, data visualization, secure commanding and networking); (3) design tools and optimization methods, electronic documentation; and (4) AI methods (e.g., automated planning and scheduling, agents model-based reasoning, machine learning and data mining). In the selection process for JACIII (Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics), 13 papers were firstly nominated from 133 oral presentation papers as outstanding AI-related papers by i-SAIRAS International Committee, and 6 papers were finally accepted through the two-stages of pear-reviews. All papers were reviewed by three reviewers. As the brief introduction of these papers, the paper by Mark Johnston and Mark Giuliano presents an architecture called MUSE (Multi-User Scheduling Environment) to integrate multi-objective evolutionary algorithms with existing domain planning and scheduling tools. The second paper by Amdeo Cesta et al. discusses general lessons learned from a series of deployed planning and scheduling systems. The third paper by Alessandro Donati et al. spotlights specific achievements and trends in the area of spacecraft diagnosis and mission planning and scheduling. The fourth paper by Cedric Cocaud and Takashi Kubota proposes the system that provides position and attitude information to a spacecraft during its approach descent and landing phase toward the surface of an asteroid. The firth paper by Tomohiro Harada et al. studies On-Board Computer which evolves computer programs through the bit inversion and analyzes its robustness to the bit inversion. Finally, the last paper by Masayuki Otani et al. explores the distributed control of the multiple robots which may be broken in the assembly of space solar power satellite. The editor hopes that these papers would help for readers to capture the state-of-art of AI technology in space.
Special Issue on Aggregation Operators and Clustering
Authors: Torra Vicenç , Narukawa Yasuo , Daumas Mark
Published: April 2016

This issue features decision making and other tools used in artificial intelligence applications. More specifically, the issue includes five papers focused on aggregation operators and clustering. The series starts with a paper by Yoshida on weighted quasiarithmetic means that focuses on their monotonicity viewed from utility and weighting functions. In the second paper, Nohmi, Honda and Okazaki focus on trust evaluation for networks, studying matrix operations based on t-norms and t-conorms. The authors also propose fuzzy graphs using adjacent matrices. These works are followed by three on fuzzy clustering. Kanzawa, Endo and Miyamoto present a variation of fuzzy c-means based on kernel functions in an approach developed for data with tolerance. Endo covers clustering using kernel functions. The paper is based on a fuzzy nonmetric model including pairwise constraints in the clustering process. The concluding paper also uses pairwise constraints, but within agglomerative hierarchical clustering. Hamasuna, Endo and Miyamoto include clusterwise tolerance in their mode. As the editors of this issue, we would like to thank the referees for their work in the reviews and journal editors-in-chief Profs. Toshio Fukuda and Kaoru Hirota and the journal staff for their support.
Special Issue on Climate Change (Part 1)
Authors: Sumi Akimasa
Published: April 2016

Climate change due to global warming is one of the most urgent issues for the society in the 21st century. It is anticipated that the climate change causes various impacts to our society such as natural disasters, food and water shortage, new diseases, and so on. Especially, natural disasters will give strong damage to the infrastructure of our society. When we think natural disaster, we tend to think the earthquake causes severe damage to the society, however, in reality, disaster associated with heavy rainfall is more severe. In short, changes of patterns and intensity of the precipitation is considered to cause severe impacts to the society.

Precipitation is realized in a cloud system, which is 10 km scale. This cannot be resolved in the large-scale atmospheric model, which is used to the present numerical weather prediction (NWP) and global warming simulation. Therefore, we have to interpret information given by the large-scale NWP model and climate model. For that purpose, we need knowledge about the convection system and its interaction with the large-scale circulation.

In this volume, papers relating to the understanding of convection in the present climate and the change in the future climate will be presented. A new possibility of simulating a convective system is also presented. I hope that these papers may help you to take an action to mitigate and adapt the disaster.
International and National Problems in Fisheries Seabird By-Catch
Authors: Ogi Haruo ,   Yamashina Institute for Ornithology
Published: April 2016

Large-scale international fisheries have seen many developments, including the adoption of 200-mile fishing limits by many countries, including Japan, between 1976 and 1977. On the North Pacific high seas, the use of neon flying squid and large-mesh driftnets is expanding rapidly. The many kinds and large numbers of nontargeted species caught in such driftnets, however, influenced world public opinion and the United Nations to prohibit driftnet fishing on the high seas in 1991. The investigation on the consequences of such driftnets have been often failed to be conducted in Japan, because Japan’s fisheries have been downsized. Japan’s fishing industry has not addressed this problem appropriately, even though the authorities have recommended that fishing fleets minimize by-catch. Japan has no legislation designating sea surface conservation for sealife, and fisheries by-catch have dramatically reduced the number of breeding seabirds in isolated habitats. The Japanese murrelet (Synthliboramphus wumizusume) of Miyazaki Prefecture and the common murre (Uria aalge) and the tufted puffin (Lunda cirrhata) of Hokkaido face a serious situation. The number of the spectacled guillemot (Cepphus carbo) living along Tohoku-Hokkaido coast has rapidly decreased due to by-catch fishing. Russia has legislation designating breeding places for seabirds and animals and designating surroundings as conservation areas. The Northern Territory adjoining Hokkaido thus has extremely diverse sea species. Japan has no corresponding legislation to succeed the Russian conservation legislation if Russia should return the Northern Territories to Japan.
Soft Missile Impact on Shear Reinforced Concrete Wall
Authors: Saarenheimo Arja ,   VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Kemistintie 3, Espoo, P.O.Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT, Finland, Calonius Kim , Tuomala Markku , Hakola Ilkka ,   Technical University of Tampere (TUT), Tekniikankatu 12, P.O.Box 600, FIN-33101, Tampere, Finland
Published: April 2016

In developing numerical approaches for predicting the response of reinforced concrete structures impacted on by deformable projectiles, we predict structural behavior collapse and damage using simple analysis and extensive nonlinear finite element (FE)models. To verify their accuracy, we compared numerical results to experimental data and observations on impact-loaded concrete walls with bending and transverse shear reinforcement. Different models prove adequate for different cases and are sensitive to different variables, making it important to rely on more than a single model alone. For wall deformation in bending mode, deflection is predicted reasonably well by simple four-node shell elements. Where punching dominates, transverse shear behavior must be considered. Formation of a shear failure cone is modeled using three-dimensional solid elements.
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
Authors: Watanabe Kenji
Published: April 2016

Among the lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake, there were a large number of new findings, including which preparations functioned as planned and which did not. Now that a year has elapsed since the earthquake disaster, the parties concerned need to reexamine those measures which are yet to be implemented since we should not see the same results after a large scale disaster in the future as those we saw in the past.

In this JDR Special Issue on Business Continuity Plan (BCP), I tried to ask for papers not only from academia but also from business fields to make this issue practical and useful to be leveraged for our next steps in preparing for incoming disasters. As a result, this issue obtains papers from various fields from academia to financial businesses and also with several different approaches which includes actual real case studies.

Many of papers in this issue focus on intangible part of business continuity activities that is different from the traditional disaster management approaches which have mainly focused on tangibles or hardware reinforcement against natural disasters.

Recent wide-area disasters taught us the importance of intangibles and we should start discussions more in details with aspects such as corporate value, emergency transportation & logistics, training & exercises, funding arrangement, and management systems. I hope that discussions and insights in this issue will help our discussions and actions to move forward.

Finally, I really thank the authors’ insightful contributions and the referees’ intensive professional advices to make this JDR Special Issue valuable to our society in preparing for incoming disasters.
Extraction of Urban Information for Seismic Hazard and Risk Assessment in Lima, Peru Using Satellite Imagery
Authors: Matsuoka Masashi ,   Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Nagatsuta 4259-G3, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8502, Japan, Miura Hiroyuki , Midorikawa Saburoh , Estrada Miguel ,   Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8527, Japan,   Japan-Peru Center for Earthquake Engineering and Disaster Mitigation (CISMID), National University of Engineering, Av. Túpac Amaru 1150, Lima 25, Peru
Published: April 2016

Lima City, Peru, is, like Japan, on the verge of a strike by a massive earthquake. Building inventory data for the city need to be created for earthquake damage estimation, so the city was subjected to the extraction of spatial distribution of building age from Landsat satellite time-series images and an assessing building height from ALOS/PRISM images. Interband calculation of Landsat time-series images gives various indices relevant to land covering. The transition of indices was evaluated to clarify urban sprawl taking place in the northern, southern, and eastern parts of Lima City. Built-up area data were created for buildings by age. The height of large-scale mid-to-highrise buildings was extracted by applying spatial filtering for a DSM (Digital Surface Model) generated from stereovision PRISM images. As a result, buildings with a small square measure, color similar to that of their surroundings, or complicated shapes turned out to be difficult to detect.
Special Issue on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster: Part II
Authors: Hayashi Haruo
Published: April 2016

The Journal of Disaster Research (JDR), published bimonthly in English since 2006 as a Japan-based academic journal, promotes multidisciplinary research on disaster reduction due to all hazards – natural, unintended and intended.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster on March 11, 2011, we have worked as our duty to provide a forum for all stakeholders and researchers in the world to describe what happened scientifically in terms of human and property damage and in subsequent social and economic damage by this unprecedented occurrence, including the incident involving Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

As one contribution, JDR is publishing special annual issues for the next five years on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster – with NO PAGE CHARGES TO CONTRIBUTORS. This effort began in 2012.

The purpose of these special issues is to record, communicate and share the lessons learned from this disaster.

In our second special issue, 16 papers were submitted and we are proud to introduce 11 papers touching on different aspects of the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster. We are sure you will find these papers interesting and informative.

We also look forward to receiving contributions for the third special issue, which will be published in the summer of 2014.
Special Issue on Strong Ground Motion Prediction and Seismic Hazard Assessment
Authors: Fujiwara Hiroyuki
Published: April 2016

We have been conducting seismic hazard assessment for Japan under the guidance of the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion of Japan since the 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu Earthquake, and have made National Seismic Hazard Maps for Japan for use in estimating strong ground motion caused by future earthquakes.

This special issue reviews the results of these efforts. Such work includes the development of seismic hazard assessment methodology for Japan, highly accurate prediction techniques for strong seismic ground motion and modeling underground structures for evaluating strong ground motion. Related research on utilization initiatives and risk assessment based on hazard information has also been conducted. An open Web system – the Japan Seismic Hazard Information Station (J-SHIS) – has even been developed to provide information interactively.

The 2011 Mw9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake was the largest such event recorded in the history of Japan. This megathrust earthquake was not considered in National Seismic Hazard Maps for Japan. But efforts toward revising seismic hazard assessment in Japan are progressing based on lessons learned from this earthquake.

Hazard assessment is currently being reviewed in relation to the large earthquakes anticipated to occur in the near future based in the Sagami Trough and the Nankai Trough in the waters of offshore Japan. This assessment, which considers earthquakes larger than those assumed to have occurred in the past, is being reviewed as of this writing.

In light of these pressing circumstances, studies are now being implemented to evaluate the long-period ground motion accompanying these large earthquakes.

The knowledge that has been cultivated in Japan in terms of seismic hazard assessment has reached a high level, and it is important to expand such knowledge both internationally and domestically. This is just one of the reasons that efforts here in Japan are being made to help improve the level of seismic hazard assessment in the Asian region and throughout the entire world.

It is expected that this special issue will help contribute to the further development of strong ground motion prediction and seismic hazard assessment now and in the future.

Finally, I extend our sincere thanks to all of the contributors and reviewers involved with these articles.
Precursory Phenomena Possibly Related to the 2011M9.0 Off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake
Authors: Nagao Toshiyasu ,   Earthquake Prediction Research Center (EPRC), Tokai University, Orido, Shimizu, Shizuoka 424-0902, Japan, Orihara Yoshiaki , Kamogawa Masashi ,   Department of Physics, Tokyo Gakugei University, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184-8501, Japan
Published: April 2016

In this article, we review papers on precursors for the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake. We discuss phenomena such as seismic, geodetic, electromagnetic, ionospheric, and macroscopic anomalies for which time scales range from a few decades to a few hours, from long-, mid- to short-term precursors. Of these, we treat ionospheric anomalies in the greatest detail. Through our review, we found that many “signals” preceded the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake.
Special Issue on Adaptation Measures for Disasters due to Climate Change
Authors: Komatsu Toshimitsu
Published: April 2016

An increase in natural hazards due to global warming has broadened the gap between natural hazards and disaster prevention. This gap has raised the possibility that unexpected major disasters occur. As chances of a natural hazard grow, appropriate and efficient adaptation is considered as a last resort for lessening disaster. In water-related disasters such as floods and debris flows, individual disaster sites have specific thresholds (limits). When a natural hazard exceeds this threshold, a serious disaster strikes us. On the contrary when it is under the limit, disaster damage is kept to be small. Flood disasters and landslides have the side of gall or nothing.h This is a characteristic of water-related disasters. Climate change is causing natural hazards to exceed this threshold easily. This makes resilient proactive adaptation very important in disaster prevention. Specific adaptation measures developed hereafter must cope with serious water and sediment disasters throughout mountainous regions, rivers, urban areas, and coastal areas that are assumed to be influenced by global warming. The Journal of Disaster Research has planned a special issue on the adaptation measures for disasters due to climate change. Having taken part in field surveys, computer simulations, and laboratory experiments and finding adaptation measures worth studying more deeply, I decided to contribute to this special issue as a Guest Editor. All of its 11 papers have been peer-reviewed. The broad topics covered range from floods, landslides, and storm surges to adaptation to the human being society. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the contributors and reviewers involved in producing these articles, especially to Dr. Hideo Oshikawa, Assistant Professor of the Department of Urban and Environment Engineering, Kyushu University, Japan, for his great support. I look forward with great anticipation to feedback from readers regarding these articles.
Special Issue on Fire and Disaster Prevention Technologies
Authors: Kawano Tomonori , Uezu Kazuya , Kato Takaaki
Published: April 2016

Itfs a great pleasure and honor to publish the special issue on gFire and Disaster Prevention Technologiesh in the Journal of Disaster Research. All of its 7 papers have been peerreviewed. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to the contributors and reviewers involved in producing these articles, especially to Dr. Masafumi Hosokawa, Chief, Planning for Community-Based Cooperation National Research Institute of Fire and Disaster, Fire and Disaster Management Agency Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for his great support. The Research and Development center of Fire and Environmental Safety (RDFES) was established in April 2008 as a research institute within the Faculty of Environmental Engineering, the University of Kitakyushu. The RDFES is the first academic institute in Japan to contribute to environmental engineering and firefighting technology for social safety, and focuses on the environmental researches to overcome the worldwide serious firefighting problem, for example huge forest fires, and consequently contributes to create the epoch-making products for the environmental conservation and the safety of citizens. RDFES has become well known among firefighting professionals for its development of an gEnvironmentally friendly soap-based firefighting agent,h as well as new equipment that maximizes the effectiveness of the agent. This is just one example of successful collaboration between RDFES, the Kitakyushu City Fire and Disaster Management Department, a local soap company, and major firefighting enterprises in Japan. Today, RDFES is entering a new research area involving local communities and governments, which aims tomitigate and minimize the risk of fire and natural disasters. Researchers are engaged not only in the development of hardware but also in the creation of an organized social movement that could ensure more effective use of the hardware. We hope that the collaboration among industry, academia, and government will be more useful and powerful towards solving serious problems on gfire and environmental safetyh through the mediation of this special issue. And reaching out to local communities reflects the centerfs position to always welcome new partners to join our important and exciting research activities.
Genetic-Algorithm-Based Fixed-Structure Robust H∞Loop-Shaping Control of a Pneumatic Servosystem
Authors: Kaitwanidvilai Somyot ,   Asian Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthanee, 12120, Thailand, Parnichkun Manukid
Published: April 2016

The robust controller designed by conventional H∞optimal control is complicated, high-order, and difficult to implement practically. In industrial applications, structures such as lead-lag compensators and PID are widely used because their structure is simple, tuning parameters are fewer, and they are lower-order. Their disadvantages are that control parameters are difficult to tune for good performance and they lack robustness. To solve these problems, we propose an algorithma genetic-algorithm-based fixed-structure robust H∞loop-shaping controlfor designing the robust controller. Conventional H∞loop shaping is a sensible procedure for designing the robust controller. To obtain parameters in the proposed controller, we proposed a genetic algorithm to optimize specified-structure H∞loop shaping problem. The infinity norm of transfer function from disturbances to states is minimized via searching and evolutionary computation. The resulting optimal parameters stabilize the system and guarantee robust performance. We applied the evolutionary robust controller to a pneumatic servosystem. To compare performance, we studied three types of controller PID with a derivative first-order filter controller, a PI controller, and an H∞loop-shaping controller. Results of experiments demonstrate the advantages of a simple structure and robustness against parameters changing. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed technique.
Special Issue on ROBOMEC’09 (Part 1)
Authors: Umeda Kazunori , Kiguchi Kazuo
Published: April 2016

Robotics and Mechatronics Conference 2009 (ROBOMEC’09) was held at the Fukuoka International Congress Center in Fukuoka, Japan, on May 24-26, 2009, sponsored by the Robotics and Mechatronics Division of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME). Prof. Tsutomu Hasegawa of Kyushu University served as general chair and Prof. Kazuo Kiguchi of Saga University as program chair. The conference theme was “Robotics and Mechatronics for creating an affluent society.” Over 1,000 presentations were made in some 70 sessions, and participants numbered 1,500 including those from abroad, making it a great success. We asked the ROBOMEC’09 program committee to select outstanding presentations, among which they presented 115. We recommended that authors submit their original work to the special issue on ROBOMEC’09, and received 36. This special issue, Part 1, presents 13 papers strictly reviewed and accepted from among the 36. The remaining accepted papers will appear in the next issue, Part 2. We are pleased with the very high quality of these papers, and are confident that readers will find them both interesting and instructive in the fields of robotics and mechatronics. We thank the authors for their invaluable contributions and the reviewers for their time and effort. We also thank Editor-in-Chief Prof. Tatsuo Arai of Osaka University for organizing this special issue.
Finger-Mounted Tactile Sensor for Evaluating Surfaces
Authors: Kikuuwe Ryo ,   Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan, Nakamura Kenta , Yamamoto Motoji
Published: April 2016

This paper presents a finger-mounted tactile sensor for extracting information on fine surface properties of objects such as textile fabrics. The prototype sensor has a thin structure composed of a sheet of PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) film sensor and some metal parts for converting compressive forces into area expansion of the PVDF film. By using a signal processing program based on the FFT (fast Fourier transform), voltage signal sequences from nine different fabrics were distinguished, even in the presence of variations in the pressing force and the speed of rubbing motion induced by the fluctuations in the user’s hand motion. In addition, the signal sequences from abraded fabrics were sorted by their levels of abrasion by extracting a signal component correlated with the abrasion level.1

1. This paper is the full translation from the transactions of JSME, Series C, Vol.77, No.784, 2011.
Design and Application of an Intelligent Robotic Gripper for Accurate and Tolerant Electronic Connector Mating
Authors: Chen Fei ,   Department of Micro-Nano Systems Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan, Sekiyama Kosuke , Sun Baiqing , Di Pei , Huang Jian , Sasaki Hironobu , Fukuda Toshio ,   School of Electrical Engineering, Shenyang University of Technology, Shenyang, Liaoning 110870, China,   Department of Control Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China,   Factory Automation Technology Development, Canon Inc., 70-1 Yanagi-cho, Saiwai-ku, Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa 212-8602, Japan
Published: April 2016

In electronic manufacturing systems, the design of the robotic hand is important for successful accomplishment of the assembly task, and also for human and robot coworker coordinated assembly. Due to the restrictions on the architecture of traditional robotic hands, the status of assembly parts, such as position and rotation during the assembly process cannot be detected effectively. In this research, an intelligent robotic hand – i-Hand, equipped with multiple small sensors – is designed and built for this purpose. Mating connectors by robot, as an experimental case in this paper, is studied to evaluate i-Hand performance. A new model that converts the traditional time-zone-driven model to an event-driven model is proposed to describe the process ofmating connectors, within which, most importantly, the distance between the connector and deformable Printed Circuit Board (PCB) is detected by i-Hand. The generated curve has provided more robust parameters than our previously studied Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) classifier. Various possible situations during assembly are considered and handled based on this event-driven work flow. The effectiveness of our proposed model and algorithm is proven in experiments.
An In-Pipe Mobile Robot for Use as an Industrial Endoscope Based on an Earthworm’s Peristaltic Crawling
Authors: Horii Shota ,   Chuo University, 1-13-27 Kasuga, Bunkyou-ku, Tokyo 112-8551, Japan, Nakamura Taro
Published: April 2016

Many pipe accidents caused by corrosion or deterioration have been reported recently; hence, in-pipe inspection is needed to prevent such problems. Fiberscopes are currently used as industrial endoscopes to inspect defects in pipes. Because of friction, however, they cannot be inserted into pipes that are more than 15 m long or into complex pipes such as elbows. Therefore in-pipe inspection robots need to be selfpropelled in order to be inserted into these environments. We are developing a robot capable of propelling itself through various pipes, such as long pipes and elbow pipes, specifically, a peristaltic crawling robot using DC brushless motors for in-pipe inspection. In this study, the robot we developed was used in straight and elbow pipes with an inner diameter of 27 mm. In this paper, we derive theoretical formulas for robot locomotion speed and propulsion force and propose a special motion pattern, known as the middle motion pattern, for the robot’s peristaltic crawling pattern. We performed several experiments in a 27-mm-diameter acrylic pipe to examine the locomotion speed and propulsion force. We also developed a robot that can pass through an elbow and conducted several experiments to confirm this.
Special Issue on Bio Assembler
Authors: Arai Tatsuo , Arai Fumihito , Yamato Masayuki , Mae Yasushi
Published: April 2016

Research in a new field, the Hyper Bio Assembler for 3D Cellular Innovation, or Bio Assembler for short, started in July 2011 thanks to support from grants-in-aid for scientific research on innovative areas from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The Bio Assembler’s eventual objectives include creating innovative methodologies for building cellular 3D systems that function in vitro – an entirely new area not yet explored. The Bio Assembler is expected to measure and separate target cells at high speed to help in making possible the construction of cellular 3D systems in vitro and the clarification of the principles of ultrahigh-speed measurement and manipulation together with tissue function expression. Understanding the different aspects of cellular 3D systems and establishing technologies and techniques will enable these systems to be constructed, which will, in turn, enable breakthroughs in tissue engineering and biology, thereby establishing new technical areas in high-speed micro-nano robotics. This special issue on Bio Assembler reports the latest achievements in new research through 15 exciting papers and a letter selected based on a thorough-going peer review. We thank the authors for their invaluable perseverance and expertise and the reviewers for their insightful and timely comments. We also thank the Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics editorial board for providing this opportunity to take part in making this special issue possible.