Impact of recycling policies on plastic waste aimed at municipalities: Evidence from Japan

This study investigates the impact of the central government's policy designed to encourage municipalities to recycle plastic waste in Japan. Using an instrumental variable approach, we examine whether the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law (CPRL), which includes policies such as subsidising recycling for municipalities and providing municipalities with recyclers, increases the volume of plastic waste recycling in these municipalities. The results show that CPRL increases the recycling volume of plastic packaging waste, post collection, by approximately 3.1–3.9 kg per capita and that of plastic bottles by 0.4–0.5 kg per capita. We also find evidence that these estimated impacts of CPRL are larger than those of recycling policies that target inhabitants such as unit-based pricing and door-to-door collection. In contrast to previous studies, our results suggest that, in addition to policies for promoting recycling behaviour among inhabitants, policies designed to encourage municipalities play an important role in increasing the volume of plastic recycling

Trends in global dependency on the Indonesian palm oil and resultant environmental impacts

Rapid growth in the international demand for palm oil has triggered considerable global concern because oil palm plantations deteriorate the environment where they are developed, resulting in complex environmental impacts in the producer nations. Here, we illustrate the historical trends in the structure of Indonesian palm oil supply chains and how these have been affected by the final demand of other nations since 2000 by using the most recent dataset of global material flows of palm oil and a global input?output database. In addition, the combination of spatial land-use change with palm oil consumption along the supply chains illustrates the linkages between ultimate consumption and land-use changes due to the palm oil plantations. As a result, the major contributors to palm oil production in Indonesia were mostly stable, being India, China, Western Europe, the United States,and Japan. However, the contribution of Indonesia declined by 6% during 2000?2013, illustrating a possible shift towards palm oil being used for non-food demands, such as apparel and medicines. Building on consumption-based accounting schemes as demonstrated by this study are considered necessary to protect local ecosystems and society

The ASTRO-H X-ray Observatory

The joint JAXA/NASA ASTRO-H mission is the sixth in a series of highly successful X-ray missions initiated by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). ASTRO-H will investigate the physics of the high-energy universe via a suite of four instruments, covering a very wide energy range, from 0.3 keV to 600 keV. These instruments include a high-resolution, high-throughput spectrometer sensitive over 0.3-2 keV with high spectral resolution of Delta E < 7 eV, enabled by a micro-calorimeter array located in the focal plane of thin-foil X-ray optics; hard X-ray imaging spectrometers covering 5-80 keV, located in the focal plane of multilayer-coated, focusing hard X-ray mirrors; a wide-field imaging spectrometer sensitive over 0.4-12 keV, with an X-ray CCD camera in the focal plane of a soft X-ray telescope; and a non-focusing Compton-camera type soft gamma-ray detector, sensitive in the 40-600 keV band. The simultaneous broad bandpass, coupled with high spectral resolution, will enable the pursuit of a wide variety of important science themes.Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, Proceedings of the SPIE Astronomical Instrumentation "Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray

Forest change and agricultural productivity: Evidence from Indonesia

We examine the effect of forest cover change on agricultural productivity using household panel data and remote sensing data on forest change. The focus of the study is rural Indonesia, where deforestation is causing intensive biodiversity loss while agriculture is the main industry. We estimate an agricultural production function and find that farmers in rural Indonesia experienced a reduction in agricultural productivity of 45% between 2001 and 2014 or US$2.63 billion in 2014. In addition, we explore the mechanisms underlying the productivity loss and find that biological pest control is the most plausible explanation

Development of Mine Detection Robot System

The Mine Detection Robot supports the mine removal work in countries where mines are buried, such as Afghanistan. The development started from September, 2003. Considering running on rough terrains, the robot has four crawlers, and hydraulic motors in front and rear were serially connected by piping so that they could rotate synchronously. Two work arms were mounted on the robot, one was a horizontal multi-joint SCARA type with motorized 2-link arm, while the other was a vertical multi-joint manipulator with 6 degrees of freedom. Also, domestic evaluation tests were carried out from February to March, 2005, followed by overseas validation tests in Croatia from February to March, 2006. These tests were conducted with a mine detecting senor mounted on the Robot, and the detection performance was evaluated by its mine detection rate