This study reveals the operation of the triangular settlement system for Asia’s silver absorption over the 1850s–60s, which contributed to the stabilization of the pre-1870 global monetary system. First, we demonstrate that the triangular settlement system among Britain, India, and China was established based on exchange operations. Second, we validate the bullion point method for Asia’s settlement analysis and devise the triangular silver point mechanism. Third, through reconstructing silver points and comparing the arbitrage profits with the silver trade, we found that silver was imported into Asia from Britain through both the bilateral and triangular settlement systems.

The Japanese second deep ice coring project was carried out at Dome Fuji, Antarctica. Following the drilling of the pilot hole in 2001, deep ice core drilling led by the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE) was conducted over four austral summer seasons, beginning with the 2003/04 season and reached a depth of 3035.22 m near the bedrock in January 2007. The new drill was designed and developed with the goals of (1) solving the problems encountered during the first JARE deep coring drill and (2) achieving more efficient drilling. In particular, the maximum core length that can be drilled at one time was increased from 2.30 m to 3.84 m and the chip storage efficiency was enhanced by a special pipe with many small holes. This paper gives an outline of the improved drilling system, the progress of drilling and various drilling data.

An infinite mixture model is applied to model-based speaker clustering with sampling-based optimization to make it possible to estimate the number of speakers. For this purpose, a framework of non-parametric Bayesian modeling is implemented with the Markov chain Monte Carlo and incorporated in the utterance-oriented speaker model. The proposed model is called the utterance-oriented Dirichlet process mixture model (UO-DPMM). The present paper demonstrates that UO-DPMM is successfully applied on large-scale data and outperforms the conventional hierarchical agglomerative clustering, especially for large amounts of utterances.

The geographical distribution of protozoan parasite Cephaloidophora pacifica Avdeev (Order Eugregarininda) associated with Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, was examined in samples collected from the vicinity of the Antarctic Peninsula, near Syowa Station, and Pacific and Indian sectors of the Southern Ocean. Cephaloidophora pacifica was found at all stations around the Antarctic, with 96.4% of the euphausiids infected (n = 195). The numbers of C. pacifica per krill ranged from 0 to 8089 krill-1, and the average was 350.0 ± 787.8 (mean ± SD). The frequency distributions of C. pacifica showed an overdispersed parasite population (i.e. the variance was greater than the mean) at all locations. Statistical analysis showed that whilst the geographical location did not have a significant effect on intensity of C. pacifica the maturity stage of krill did, with an increasing intensity of infection as krill matures. The infestation of E. superba by eugregarinid protozoan is considered to be a circum-Antarctic phenomenon, and it occurs equally throughout the Southern Ocean.

The operation of nuclear fuel reprocessing plants generates a radioactive effluent containing nitrate salts as the major constituent. This waste must be disposed of safely and economically, and to achieve this aim the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) is developing a cement based encapsulation method to immobilise this waste. Non-radioactive development work has been performed at both small and large-scale (up to 200 litres) to investigate the optimum cement formulation. The results from these studies demonstrate that nitrate waste that has been concentrated by evaporation of the water to a predetermined level can be successfully encapsulated up to a waste loading corresponding to 50 wt% sodium nitrate. It has been identified that high concentrations of bicarbonate ions in the effluent can have a detrimental effect on the strength of the cement encapsulated waste; however, provided this concentration is controlled, successful encapsulation of the effluent is still achieved.

Our efforts to combine the combinatorial technology and microstructure analysis to develop catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technology have been described. This offers the realization of “materiomics” in comprehensive material research. Catalyst technologies are indispensable for wide use of PEMFC, which are regarded as the low emission and highly efficient energy conversion device for the next generation. We have applied the combinatorial method for the hydrogen production and/or purification of catalysts, and anode catalyst investigations. The catalyst library consisting of precious metals loaded on various metal oxides was tested for water gas shift reaction and steam reforming of methanol and/or DME. Various metal oxides added to platinum loaded on carbon were screened for anode catalysts. The microstructure of each catalyst was analyzed by employing scanning electron and/or transmission electron microscopy. This paper mainly describes the catalysis screening results of above reactions that form a part of “materiomics”.

Only eight cases of bilateral middle-ear squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) have been reported to date. We present the case of a 75-year-old male with bilateral middle-ear SCC and review the previously reported cases. The patient was diagnosed as having moderately-differentiated SCC in the left middle ear in February 1995 and well-differentiated SCC in the right middle ear in September 1997. He initially received radiation therapy with 60Co pendulum (64 Gy) in the left ear and was subsequently treated by Liniac irradiation (50 Gy) in the right ear. He has now been followed up at our ENT clinic for 29 months without vertigo or facial nerve palsy since the second radiation therapy. Although he has a residual tumour in the right middle ear invading the middle cranial fossa dura, no sign of recurrence has been detected in the left ear.

Recently, SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) and the other observation devices are coming to use a LAN (Local Area Network) to save the image in the database. We developed a remote control system in which SEM image and Control interface is indicated on the WEB Browser. in this system, SEM can be controlled by an external (client) PC installed in a general WEB Browser(Internet Explorer). Accordingly, operation interface can be indicated on the WEB browser.

A JSM-6700F is connected to a LAN, and so the microscope can be controlled by a client PC. Figure. 1 shows the block diagram of SEM remote control system. The JSM-6700F has two lines to the LAN for image transfer and communication with the SEM control. in order to transfer the image, the image size squeezes from 1280 × 1024-pixels (SEM image size) to 640 × 480-pixels for quick transfer. The image signal (640 × 480-pixels) is connected to the video server only, and then the image transfers to the client PC via LAN . The SEM control communicates with client PC for external command. On the other hand, the SEM control interface and the image are indicated on WEB Browser (Internet explorer) as shown Figure 2. The SEM control interface is composed of the SEM image area and the SEM control part. The SEM image indicates the 640×480-pixels live image. This pixel number was an image quality sufficient to adjust the focus. When a high quality image is necessary, the image of 1280 × 1024-pixels is saved on the the SEM(server) side by choosing the image save button.

Epitaxial Al(111) film was deposited on Si(lll) by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition with the use of tri-isobutyl aluminum (TIBA) at the substrate temperature of 400 °C with the deposition rate of 0.9 μm/min. It was necessary for epitaxy to preheat the TIBA gas just before the deposition on the substrate. The preheat was made by gas-temperature-controller provided in the chamber. The film surface was so smooth that reflectance was higher than 90 % of Si and 20 ppm of O, C, and H. No hillock appeared on the film after 430 °C annealing for 40 min. The interface of Al and Si was rather stable so that no alloy penetration occured. The possibility of epitaxial growth of Al(100) on Si(100) was also shown.