A Flood disaster struck the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in July 2010. It affected 3 million people and caused 1,400 deaths. Humanitarian Medical Assistance (HuMA) is a non-profit organization in Japan. The organization dispatched three personnel to Islamabad on 20 August in order to conduct an initial needs assessment. They discovered that medical assistance and supplies could not reach all of the victims, especially in the North. Their visits to the surrounding regions highlighted the Nowshera district of KPK province, which had not received enough assistance from the government or aid organizations despite the fact that there were thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) with health issues such as diarrhea, eye and skin disease, and upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). On 03 September, the HuMA Disaster Relief Mission began with the purpose of providing medical treatment and promoting public health for the flood victims in the Nowshera District. Eleven medical providers and coordinators from HuMA operated field mobile clinics in the district in collaboration with a local counterpart non-governmental organization, Nippa Welfare Association (NWA). This project was supported financially by the grant funding from Japan Platform. Humanitarian Medical Assistance served seven sites in Nowshera Districts as mobile field clinics, and consulted 2,216 patients. Total distribution of disease was: (1) URTI = 18.1%; (2) skin disease = 17.9%; (3) musculoskeletal = 15.2%; and (4) others = 19.7%. The team considered continuous medical consultation in the Nowshera District after 2010. The HuMa medical activities ended at the end of September, and the organization donated multi-vitamin tablets, syrups, FE tablets, and anti-biotic cream in order to assist NWA's continuing assistance for the affected communities. The medical providers also left lists of medicines for local doctors and medical staff. Humanitarian Medical Assistance also provided basic supplies needed to prevent victims from experiencing further sanitation problems.

Advanced nuclear energy systems, both fission- and fusion-based, aim to operate at higher temperatures and greater radiation exposure levels than experienced in current light water reactors. Additionally, they are envisioned to operate in coolants such as helium and sodium that allow for higher operating temperatures. Because of these unique environments, different requirements and challenges are presented for both structural materials and fuel cladding. For core and cladding applications in intermediate-temperature reactors (400–650°C), the primary candidates are 9–12Cr ferritic–martensitic steels (where the numbers represent the weight percentage of Cr in the material, i.e., 9–12 wt%) and advanced austenitic steels, adapted to maximize high-temperature strength without compromising lower temperature toughness. For very high temperature reactors (>650°C), strength and oxidation resistance are more critical. In such conditions, high-temperature metals as well as ceramics and ceramic composites are candidates. For all advanced systems operating at high pressures, performance of the pressure boundary materials (i.e., those components responsible for containing the high-pressure liquids or gases that cool the reactor) is critical to reactor safety. For some reactors, pressure vessels are anticipated to be significantly larger and thicker than those used in light water reactors. The properties through the entire thickness of these components, including the effects of radiation damage as a function of damage rate, are important. For all of these advanced systems, optimizing the microstructures of candidate materials will allow for improved radiation and high-temperature performance in nuclear applications, and advanced modeling tools provide a basis for developing optimized microstructures.

A ferritic steel T91 and an oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) martensitic steel 9Cr-ODS were irradiated with 5 MeV Ni ions at 500°C at a dose rate of 1.38×10-3 dpa/s to doses of 5, 50 and 150 dpa. Both alloys are iron-based with 9Cr and have been designed for use in higher temperature energy systems. However, the radiation effects on these two alloys are not well characterized. For T91, the irradiated microstructure was dominated by tangled dislocation and precipitates, similar to the unirradiated condition except the presence of large dislocation loops of type a<100>. The microstructure of alloy 9Cr-ODS for both the unirradiated and irradiated cases was dominated by dense dislocations, precipitates and yttrium oxides particles and no dislocation loops were observed. The average size of yttrium oxides particles slightly decreased with dose from 11.8 nm for the unirradiated to 9.1 nm at 150 dpa. No voids were detected for both alloys up to a dose of 150 dpa.

We investigated temperature dependence of the photoluminescence (PL) efficiency of GaN/Al0.08Ga0.92N multi-quantum wells (MQWs) with variations of Si-doping condition and threading dislocation density. Si-doping in the GaN/Al0.08Ga0.92N MQWs, especially in the barrier layer improves the PL efficiency. In addition, reduction of threading dislocation density also improves the PL intensity. The PL intensity of the GaN/Al0.08Ga0.92N MQW is drastically increased at least by a factor of 40, by a combination of the Si-doping and reduction of threading dislocation density. We fabricated a light emitting diode (LED) emitting at 357 nm using such a GaN/Al0.08Ga0.92N MQWs. Electro-luminescence intensity from the region with threading dislocation density of less than 108 cm−2 was much larger than that from the region with threading dislocation density of 6×109 cm−2.

Defects and stress are the most serious issues for growth of AlGaN. Low-temperature deposited (LT -) AlN interlayer between AlGaN and GaN is found to reduce tensile stress during growth, and at the same time suppress the propagation of dislocations having screw components, by which UV-photodetector showing very-low-dark current has been successfully fabricated. However, additional pure-edge dislocations are generated at the LT -interlayer, which resulted in the poor emission property. In addition to the LT -interlayer, lateral growth at the trenched structure was used, thereby achieving crack-free AlGaN and reduction of the density of all types of dislocations in the AlGaN layer. UV light emitting diodes having AlGaN/GaN multi-quantum well active layer was fabricated on the low dislocation density AlGaN. The LED shows strong and sharp UV-emission from GaN-wells.

We have performed molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film growth using realistic many-body semiclassical potentials developed to describe Si-H interactions. In our MD model, it was assumed that SiH3, SiH2 and the H radicals are main precursors for the thin-film growth. In MD simulations of a-Si:H thin-film growth by many significant precursor SiH3 radicals, we have evaluated average radical migration distances, defect ratios, hydrogen contents, and film growth rates as a function of different incident radical energies to know the effect of the radical energization on the properties. As a result of the comparison between the numerical and experimental results, it was observed that the agreement is fairly good, and that an increase of radical migration distance due to the radical energization is effective on a- Si:H thin-film growth with a low defect.