Insights into the challenges posed by climate change and land competition to Brazil’s Midwest pulpwood market

I investigated the effect of climate change in one of the few expanding markets in the world in Brazil. In the last decades the demand for pulpwood increased from zero to 11 million tons, leading to an expansion of 700 thousand hectares of Eucalyptus plantation. In 2024, a new mill will start operating increasing the consumption of wood fiber by 8.2 million tons (+49%). I used mathematical programming to investigate how different scenarios of productivity and land will affect the market. My results showed that around 946,000 hectares (+124%) of additional timberland will be necessary in the upcoming decades. The first impact will be an increase in the production cost of around US$550 million (+16.4%) in 25 years. If the rate of land cover change remains constant, the broad development of the local market would be constrained, discouraging future investments, and reducing potential positive externalities in the region

Development and verification of wall-flap-gate as tsunami inundation defence for nuclear plants

A wall-flap-gate is automatic watertight door, and it works by buoyancy without powered machineries and human operations. In the Tohoku Earthquake tsunamis, serious damages were caused by inundation from ventilators of outer walls in power plants. The wall-flap-gate is estimated to be effective in keeping sustainability of nuclear plants against extreme tsunamis. The present study examines the hydrodynamic characteristics of the wall-flap-gate by hydraulic model experiments and verifies its capability of flood prevention for nuclear plants through various prototype tests. The experimental results proved that the wall-flap-gate had sufficient strength, watertightness, and durability against tsunamis and that its motion was not disturbed by debris. The viability of the wall-flap-gate as an inundation defence structure for nuclear plants was confirmed through this study. As a result, practical wall-flap-gates are installing on Hamaoka nuclear power station in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan

Enhancement of T-g of Poly(l-lactide) by Incorporation of Biobased Mandelic-Acid-Derived Phenyl Groups by Polymerization and Polymer Blending

A high-molecular-weight polyester of poly(mandelate-co-lactate) (PML) is prepared by ring-opening polymerization of stereo-configuration controlled cyclic diester monomers of methyl-6-phenyl-1,4-dioxane-2,5-dione (MPDD) and lactide. The attained PML shows excellent glassy properties, although the original stereo-configuration of MPDD is not preserved. The intrinsic high glass transition temperature (Tg) of PML is promising, and it is able to be further enhanced by thermal treatment to as high as 90 °C. Interestingly, the enhanced high Tg is attained by only 15 mol% of mandelate content in the polymer chain which is far lower than the ones suggested by theoretical calculation. The enhancement in Tg is also attained by polymer blending of PML and poly(l-lactide) (PLLA). The Tg of the polymer blend also reaches 90 °C which is almost 20 °C higher than the ones suggested by theoretical calculations. These results indicate that the rigid mandelate unit consisting of phenyl groups in PML chain effectively interact with PLLA chains in amorphous domain to restrict their chain mobility. The thermal and glassy properties are sufficient to explore new applications in engineering fields

北極海氷中期予測の現状とこれから

第6回極域科学シンポジウム分野横断セッション：[IA] 急変する北極気候システム及びその全球的な影響の総合的解明―GRENE北極気候変動研究事業研究成果報告2015―11月19日（木）　国立極地研究所 2階 大会議

Unusual drift behaviour of multi-year sea ice in the Beaufort Sea during summer 2018

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Kimura, N., Tateyama, K., Sato, K., Krishfield, R. A., & Yamaguchi, H. Unusual drift behaviour of multi-year sea ice in the Beaufort Sea during summer 2018. Polar Research, 39, (2020): 3617, doi:10.33265/polar.v39.3617.In summer 2018, thick sea ice blocked the mouth of the Amundsen Gulf (AG), Canada, obstructing shipping through the North-west Passage. This study analysed multi-year ice motion to investigate the source of this thick ice and the reasons for its unusual movement. For this purpose, a daily multi-year ice distribution product was generated by ice tracking using gridded daily sea-ice velocities (2003–2018) derived from the AMSR-E and AMSR-2 data. From autumn 2017 to summer 2018, the area of multi-year ice extended westward to the Beaufort Sea and then migrated towards the AG mouth. The primary cause of the unusual ice cover was anomalous AG-ward wind in September 2018. It is known that multi-year ice has become increasingly moveable over the past decades, as indicated by the increasing wind factor (i.e., ratio of ice-drift speed and wind speed), but the unusual ice motion in the summer of 2018 cannot be explainable by the wind factor alone. Accurately, predicting monthly wind and monitoring old thick ice will reduce the risk posed by thick Arctic sea ice to shipping.This work was a part of the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability (ArCS, Program Grant Number JPMXD1300000000) and the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II (ArCS II, Program Grant Number JPMXD1420318865) projects

Antenna-assembling mechanism test on ETS-7

The Communications Research Laboratory plans to test an antenna-assembling mechanism on the Engineering Test Satellite 7. The test is one of the application missions for the space robotics experiments that will be conducted mainly by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). The purpose of the test is to verify the ability of the antenna assembling mechanism to function in space and to experiment on the teleoperation of a space robot to develop antenna-assembling technology. We present the test experiment plans and the outline of the onboard assembling mechanism

Design and performance of a F/#-conversion microlens for Prime Focus Spectrograph at Subaru Telescope

The PFS is a multi-object spectrograph fed by 2394 fibers at the prime focus of Subaru telescope. Since the F/# at the prime focus is too fast for the spectrograph, we designed a small concave-plano negative lens to be attached to the tip of each fiber that converts the telescope beam (F/2.2) to F/2.8. We optimized the lens to maximize the number of rays that can be confined inside F/2.8 while maintaining a 1.28 magnification. The microlenses are manufactured by glass molding, and an ultra-broadband AR coating (<1.5% for lambda=0.38-1.26 um) will be applied to the front surface.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, SPIE201