Japan’s ODA to Pakistan and Aid Coordination Beyond Aid Modalities

Before the Pakistan Development Forum (PDF) takes place in April this year, we decided to organise this seminar today. There are several reason for doing this. First, 9/11 in 2001, Pakistan as a partner for Japan’s ODA has changed in a substantial way. Second, in 2005 Japan resumed its new commitments on yen loans, and it would be appropriate to review our ODA policy to Pakistan before our yen loan operation is put back in full swing. Third, Japan’s ODA to Pakistan has mainly been delivered through projects. Facing the growing criticism against the project approach, it would be our responsibility as a major donor to review the effectiveness of our main aid modality. Fourth, aid coordination in Pakistan has entered into a new era after Pakistan and donors including Japan joined in the adoption of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in March 2005

Low Energy Excitations in Borate Glass

The boson peak in the terahertz range is the low-energy excitations in glasses and disordered crystals. It is related to the excess part of the vibrational density of states. Borate glass is one of the typical network oxide glasses with covalent bonds and belongs to the strong type of glass formers. Alkali metal ions are well-known modifiers of the borate glass network and control various properties. The alkali metal effects are reviewed on basic physical properties such as elastic constants, density, and vibration modes in relation to the variation of structural units in a modified borate glass network. The alkali effect on a boson peak is discussed on the basis of experimental results of neutron inelastic scattering, neutron diffraction, Raman scattering, and heat capacity at low temperatures. The correlation is discussed between the boson peak frequency, the peak temperature of excess heat capacity, and shear modulus. The static and dynamical correlation lengths are also discussed

Central peak and acoustic anomalies of the relaxor ferroelectric lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate single crystal studied by the micro-Brillouin scattering

Quasielastic central peak and acoustic anomalies in a [001] lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate single crystal have been investigated by the high-resolution micro-Brillouin scattering. Two acoustic anomalies were observed at temperatures, TC-T~415 K and TT-R~348 K. The damping showed a significant dispersion at T~550 K, associated with the enhanced dynamics of local strain fields created by the polar microregions. The temperature evolution of the quasielastic central peak exhibited anomalies in the overall intensity and relaxation time that were associated with the line shape interferences of the central peak and the acoustic mode

Static capacitance at the electrochemical liquid-liquid interface between ionic liquids and eutectic Ga-In alloy measured using the pendant drop method

Static differential capacitance (Cdc) at the liquid-liquid interface between ionic liquids (ILs) and eutectic Ga-In alloy (EGaIn) has been measured using the pendant drop method for two ILs: 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([C₂mim⁺]BF₄⁻) and 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(nonafluorobutanesulfonyl)amide ([C₈mim⁺][C₄C₄N⁻]). The potentials of zero charge for the IL|EGaIn interfaces are shifted compared with the IL|Hg interfaces with an amount that can be considered by the difference in the work functions of EGaIn and Hg. The measured Cdc at the [C₂mim⁺]BF₄⁻|EGaIn interface has well reproduced the camel-shape potential dependence of Cdc at the Hg interface of the same IL at the negatively charged potential region. This suggests that there are little specific interaction between the IL ions with EGaIn and Hg. The [C₈mim⁺][C₄C₄N⁻]|EGaIn has been compared with the [C₈mim⁺]BF₄⁻|Hg interface where IL-cation is the same but IL-anion is different. Also in that case, Cdc is similar to each other at the negatively charged potential region, which means that accumulated C₈mim⁺ ions at the interface mainly govern the Cdc behavior

Acoustic phonon mode anomalies in lanthanum doped lead zirconate-titanate relaxor ferroelectric ceramics

Lanthanum-doped lead zirconate titanate, PLZT-x/65/35 (x=8.0, 9.0, and 9.4), relaxor ferroelectric ceramics were investigated by the high resolution Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy in the temperature range from ~870 down to ~170 K. Broad anomalies were observed in the acoustic phonon mode velocity and related elastic stiffness coefficient showing minimum between ~320–~240 K. The deviation in the acoustic mode velocity from the high temperature linearity at the Burns temperature (TB~720 K) and presence of a broad central peak in the temperature range 200T540 K were attributed to the dynamics of polar nanoregions with randomly oriented local polarization appearing due to site and/or charge disorder at both A- and B-sites of the ABO3 perovskite lattice. The presence of a new temperature point Td (~575 K) was conclusively established in PLZT-x/65/35 relaxor ceramics

Broadband dielectric spectroscopy of Pb-based relaxor ferroelectric (1-x)Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-xPbTiO3 with intermediate random fields

This work is devoted to the investigation of the broad band dielectric spectra of 0.83PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3-0.17PbTiO3 (PMN-17PT) single crystals which have intermediate random fields. The necessity to understand the impact of random fields for the phase transition in heterogeneous perovskite oxides is of central importance. The thorough studies of dielectric properties revealed that the structural phase transition in PMN-17PT has a very complex dynamics. The temperature dependences of dielectric permittivity show that this material has features characteristic of polar nano regions and order-disorder phase transition dynamics. We speculate that this is the fingerprint of the phase transition in such heterogeneous perovskite oxides

Classification of Smartphone Application Reviews Using Small Corpus Based on Bidirectional LSTM Transformer

This paper provides the classification of the review texts on a smartphone application posted on social media. We propose a high performance binary classification method (positive/negative) of review texts, which uses the bidirectional long short-term memory (biLSTM) self-attentional Transformer and is based on the distributed representations created by unsupervised learning of a manually labelled small review corpus, dictionary, and an unlabeled large review corpus. The proposed method obtained higher accuracy as compared to the existing methods, such as StarSpace or the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer (BERT)

Recent Research Progress in the Applied Microbiology Laboratory : Enzymes, Toxins and Cell-Envelope Structure of Environmental and Pathogenic Bacteria(Recent Topics of the Agricultunal Biological Science in Tohoku University)

Here we describe the current status of our studies of xylanases of Paenibacillus sp. W-61, poly (D-lactic acid) hydrolases of Amycolatopsis sp. K104-1 and Brevibacterium sp. 93, pectin lyase of plant pathogenic Pectobacterium carotovora and bi-component toxins of Staphylococcus aureus. Paenibacillus sp. W-61 utilizes xylan as a carbon source via three enzymes, of which Xyn5 plays a crucial role both in xylan utilization and in the synthesis of the other two xylanases. Understanding the roles of each xylanase in xylan degradation will help to develop an enzymatic preparation of xylose from xylan. The poly (D-lactic acid) [PLA] hydrolases of Amycolatopsis sp. K104-1 and Brevibacterium sp. 93 appear to be novel enzymes with potential for PLA recycling. We recently purified and characterized the PLA hydrolases produced by these bacteria. The plant-soft rotting bacterium P. carotovora produces pectin lyase, a potential pathogenic factor, and a bacteriocin when exposed to DNA-damaging agents. We recently determined the cis-acting regulatory sequences responsible for the DNA-damage-inducible synthesis of the enzyme and bacteriocin. Leukocidin and γ-hemolysin are bi-component toxins that lyse leukocytes and erythrocytes respectively. We describe the molecular structure and pore-forming mechanism of the toxin components encoded by the chromosome and by a phage genome. Finally, we briefly describe the cell-envelope structure of the rumen bacterium Selenomonas ruminantium and its outer membrane protein Mep45 that possibly bridges the outer membrane and the peptidoglycan. The objects of our studies include environmental bacteria (xylanolytic Paenibacillus sp. W-61 and poly (D-lactic acid)-hydrolyzing bacteria Amycolatopsis sp. K104-1 and Brevibacterium sp. 93), as well as the plant and animal pathogens, Pectobacterium carotovora and Staphylococcus aureus, respectively. Here we briefly describe the current status of our investigations into these bacteria, their extracellular enzymes (or toxins), and an outer membrane protein in the rumen bacterium Selenomonas ruminantium subsp. lactilytica. Our research also includes polyglutamate biosynthesis and the degradation enzymes of a Bacillus subtilis Natto starter, acetan (a polysaccharide produced by Acetobacter and Gluconobacter)-degrading enzymes of Paenibacillus sp. and catabolic enzymes of amino acid and polyamine in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAOl. The topics of these projects are available on our Web site