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The Japanese government plans to release ALPS treated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant starting in the summer of 2023. This has appeared to be a controversial topic in Japan and amongst its neighbors in the regions. This paper focuses on the attitudes of Japanese people towards the government policy, placing it within the context of wider issues.

An online survey of 2,000 participants completed an online survey comprising of Likert type and multi-choice type questions. The results were analyzed using logit regression analysis.

We found that issues other than the ALPS discharge were seen as equally important, but that there was concern about the policy, the impact the discharge would have, and about produce from the area. We also found that the farther away the participants lived, the less concern they showed. Consultations with both local communities and neighboring countries were seen as important by many participants.

This research places the issue of ALPS treated water into a wider context of other global issues and examines the role distance from Fukushima plays in the public’s engagement with the issue. It serves to highlight the mixed results of government efforts to win support for its ALPS discharge policy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Japanese consumer perceptions of the benefits of consuming fresh leafy vegetables.

An online bulletin board survey was conducted in Japan to collect responses to an open-ended question about reasons for consuming fresh leafy vegetables. A total of 897 responses were analysed using word co-occurrence network analysis. A community detection method and centrality measures were used to interpret the resulting network map.

Using a community detection algorithm, the authors identify six major groups of words that represent respondents’ core motives for consuming leafy vegetables. While Japanese consumers view health benefits to be most important, sensory factors, such as texture, colour, and palatability, and convenience factors also influence attitudes. The authors find that centrality measures can be useful in identifying keywords that appear in various contexts of consumer responses.

This is the first paper to use a quantitative text analysis to examine consumer perceptions for fresh leafy vegetables. The analysis also provides pointers for creating visually interpretable co-occurrence network maps from textual data and discusses the role of community structure and centrality in interpreting such maps.

Discusses the 6th ITCRR, its breadth of textile and clothing research activity, plus the encouragement given to workers in this field and its related areas. States that, within the newer research areas under the microscope of the community involved, technical textiles focuses on new, ‘smart’ garments and the initiatives in this field in both the UK and the international community at large. Covers this subject at length.

Thick film superconductors have been produced by screen printing and annealing pastes made from oxide powders and pre‐annealed powders. These films have been analysed by X‐ray diffraction, microwave absorption, resistance vs. temperature measurements, and adhesion tests. Results show the correlation between structural and electrical properties.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a standing style transfer system, ABLE, designed to enable a person with disabled lower limbs to do daily‐life activities without special infrastructure. Actually, ABLE is mainly intended for use by people who have spinal cord injuries and who cannot move hip joints and lower extremities: the level of spinal cord injury is L1.

ABLE comprises three modules: a powered lower extremity orthosis, a pair of telescopic crutches, and a pair of mobile platforms. When traveling in a standing position, the user wears the powered lower extremity orthosis to fix his posture, and rides on the mobile platforms. The user uses crutches to keep his body stable. These telescopic crutches also play an important role of power assistance in standing‐up and sitting‐down motions, or going up/down a step. The user can enter narrow spaces, although stability is emphasized in wide spaces because it is possible to alter the contact points of the crutches freely.

Motions are discussed in a standing position: traveling and rotating, and the chair and step motions. Experimental results related to these motions confirm the design's effectiveness. The authors improve previously developed mobile platforms for better operationality and stability. An ultrasonic motor was used for steering the mobile platform instead of the prior DC motor. The benefits of the ultrasonic motor enable the new platform to reduce its backlash in steering. A supporting plate and an active ankle joint attached to each mobile platform contribute stability when traveling in the standing position. The authors show the experimental results using new mobile platforms.

The paper demonstrates novelty and originality of ABLE in its composition, which enables a person with disabled lower limbs to travel in a standing position on a pair of small mobile platforms. This system is regarded as a biped‐type leg‐wheeled robot system that has high energy efficiency and good mobility for steps because of its wheels and legs; moreover, it has a pair of crutches for stability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of environment policy through a review and application of policy literature, portraying a disjointed process worried with procedure over substance and too often removed from the reality of environment degradation and attainment of sustainability.

The paper involves literature review and application of policy literature to sustainability.

Government is responsible for protecting the environment in the face of rapid industrial growth, but ineffectiveness in and misunderstanding of the policy process, confounded by a multitude of actors and interests, and, often inadequate resourcing, threaten the possibility of sustainability.

Policy literature is voluminous. This paper seeks to apply public policy literature to the concept of sustainability, but a comprehensive review of all literature would be beyond the scope of a journal article.

There is a separation between academic approaches to public policy and complex policy processes in practice. More nuanced sophisticated understanding of the policy process in the literature may allow for greater application to difficult policy problems like sustainability.

Sustainability is critical and should be promoted by public policy; however, interactions within the policy process are difficult and textbook approaches to defining or delineating processes are insufficient to encourage greater understanding of sustainability and how it may actually be achieved through public policy.

Application of policy literature to sustainability in this manner is fairly unique in the literature.

The Asia‐Pacific Region is the fastest growing area of the world in economic terms. Unfortunately, it has also suffered from several environmental and occupational health problems largely as a result of this rapid growth without attendant safeguards. Highlights problems such as environmental pollution, those relating to sanitation, cigarette smoking, traffic accidents, poisoning from industrial and agricultural chemicals, noise, health of women workers and other psychosocial problems, and recent trends in the health education and environmental improvements. Concludes with a plea for more attention to and collaboration concerning a clean environment.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the application of low‐glitch current cell in a digital to analog converter (DAC) to reduce the clock‐feedthrough effect and achieve a low power consumption.

A low‐glitch current switch cell is applied in a ten‐bit two‐stage DAC which is composed of a unary cell matrix for six most significant bits and a binary weighted array for four least significant bits (LSBs). The current cell is composed of four transistors to neutralize the clock‐feedthrough effect and it enables DAC to operate in good linearity and low power consumption. The prototype DAC is being implemented in a 0.35μm complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor process. The reduction in glitch energy and power consumption has been realized by preliminary experiment and simulation.

Compared to conventional current cell, more than 15 per cent reduction of glitch energy has been obtained in this work. The DAC is estimated that differential nonlinearity is within 0.1 LSB and the maximum power consumption is 68 mW at the sampling frequency of 100 MHz.

Comparison with other conventional work indicates that the current cell proposed in this paper shows much better performance in terms of switching spike and glitch, which may come from the extra dummy transistor in cell and reduce the clock‐feedthrough effect.

Electric motor heating during biomass recovery and its handling on conveyor is a serious concern for the motor performance. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to design and develop a hardware prototype of master–slave electric motors based biomass conveyor system to use the motors under normal operating conditions without overheating.

The hardware prototype of the system used master–slave electric motors for embedded controller operated robotic arm to automatically replace conveyor motors by one another. A mixed signal based embedded controller (C8051F226DK), fully compliant with IEEE 1149.1 specifications, was used to operate the entire system. A precise temperature measurement of motor with the help of negative temperature coefficient sensor was possible due to the utilization of industry standard temperature controller (N76E003AT20). Also, a pulse width modulation based speed control was achieved for master–slave motors of biomass conveyor.

As compared to conventional energy based mains supply, the system is self-sufficient to extract more energy from solar supply with an energy increase of 11.38%. With respect to conventional energy based \ of 47.31%, solar energy based higher energy saving of 52.69% was reported. Also, the work achieved higher temperature reduction of 34.26% of the motor as compared to previous cooling options.

The proposed technique is free from air, liquid and phase-changing material based cooling materials. As a consequence, the work prevents the wastage of these materials and does not cause the risk of health hazards. Also, the motors are used with their original dimensions without facing any leakage problems.

The purpose of this paper consists in the optimization and understanding of the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) manufacturing process of biomaterials, such as T40 and CoCrMo, as scaffolds. Moreover, process optimization is also challenging, with regards to the huge number of parameters and their influence on the finished product.

The paper opted for an exploratory study using Taguchi analysis method to precisely identify the most relevant parameters and justify the energy estimation.

The study showed that SLM fits perfectly with the T40 and CoCrMo part manufacturing. This method allowed to have a complete overview of all the potential applications of SLM for implant manufacturing.

With this research approach, the results may be generalized to other material and showed a good theoretical approach.