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As international students and English-medium Instruction (EMI) programs increase, Japanese universities need to adapt their programs to fulfill the needs of these students. One often overlooked area is academic writing in English. This paper discusses an action research study examining the challenges of providing formal academic writing support for English-speaking students in an EMI-program at one large private university in Tokyo. The study utilizes a participatory action research approach (Burns, 2009). The study attempted to examine what aspects of academic writing are these students most confident and most insecure about, and what aspects of the writing course did the students feel are most useful for them in preparing them for further academic writing, and how this EMI program can help students overcome these challenges. The data comes from a multiple choice and open answer questionnaire as well as focus group interviews. Suggestions on how to create and implement successful academic writing courses in an EMI context, based on the lessons learned from this course from the administrative point-of-view as well as both from faculty and students' perspectives will be provided to conclude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the improvement of fire prevention technology and legislation, the number of fires has been decreasing year by year in Japan. Nevertheless, nearly half of fire-related fatalities are caused by delayed evacuation. For rapid evacuation from hazardous areas to safety, it is important to improve the visual environment of evacuation routes. The current paper describes the scientific basis for establishing effective safety evacuation countermeasures and relevant behaviors regarding evacuees' vision during fires. First, the basics of visibility are explained. The role of luminance as a photometric quantity related to visibility is discussed, and a visibility evaluation method is presented. Regarding human behavior related to visibility, the legibility of characters and walking speed are explained based on previous research. Additionally, visibility in fire smoke is discussed, including smoke adhesion and luminance distribution, as well as walking speed and psychological state in smoke. On the basis of this analysis, evacuation route design is discussed in relation to visibility for reducing evacuation delays. • Basics of visual environment design. • Luminance as a photometric quantity related to visibility. • Evaluation structure of visual environment. • Human behavior on the basis of visibility. • Visibility in fire smoke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural communities throughout Japan, especially in the most peripheral regions, are experiencing rapid demographic, socio-economic, and environmental decline, with many facing the possibility of vanishing in the coming decades. To address these issues, the Japanese government has implemented various policy initiatives aimed at rural revitalisation, some of which focus on attracting newcomers to depopulating rural communities and encouraging counterurbanisation. The relocation of urban residents is therefore considered essential to the regeneration of rural and peripheral areas. This paper examines the characteristics and practical implementation of the chiiki okoshi kyouryoukutai (Local Revitalisation Cooperator, LRC) initiative, a well-established national level policy that supports rural revitalisation through counterurbanisation. The initiative offers aspiring urban in-migrants a salary and housing for up to three years, while also requiring them to engage in community-oriented and entrepreneurial activities. The study uses secondary and qualitative primary data to examine the socio-demographic characteristics of LRC members and the successes and challenges of the initiative in meeting its two key policy objectives, namely the settlement of newcomers and the development of local entrepreneurship. The results contribute to our understanding of contemporary urban-to-rural mobilities in Japan, particularly the way counterurbanisation is normatively framed as a process that should benefit both in-migrants and receiving communities. We conclude by delineating the broader potential of this kind of initiative as a rural revitalisation instrument that can be flexibly tailored to the needs of each community and that can facilitate newcomers' integration. Concurrently, we also raise questions about the degree of success of the policy, particularly regarding its effectiveness in stimulating entrepreneurship and retaining newcomers in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ground motion prediction is an important and complex research subject in earthquake engineering and traditional approaches based on statistical regression have much room for improvement in prediction accuracy. Utilizing the 67,164 ground motion records from KiK-net and K-Net for 777 shallow crustal earthquakes between 1997 and 2019 in Japan, this paper proposes a ground motion prediction model XGBoost-SC based on the machine learning algorithm of eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) for Japan. Magnitude, focal depth, hypo-central distance, V s30 , site altitude, and focal mechanism were used as the feature parameters, and XGBoost, Random Forest, and Deep Neural Networks (DNN) algorithms were selected for model training while Bayesian optimization was used to search for optimized hyperparameters to improve the prediction accuracy. XGBoost algorithm was selected for further study based on the comparison of results from the three algorithms. Residual change with magnitude and hypo-central distance, the probability distribution of residuals, residual standard deviation (σ), residual mean squared error (MSE), and Pearson correlation coefficient (R) were used as the evaluation parameters, and a comparison study was performed against the ground motion prediction equation based on traditional approaches. Actual earthquake events were selected to compare the prediction results against the observation records. To further validate and explain the proposed model, SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) analysis was performed to explain the impact of selected feature parameters on the proposed model. The results demonstrate that the proposed XGBoost-SC model has good prediction stability for all periods, and its residual errors are smaller than those of other models. Therefore, the proposed model can better reflect the ground motion attenuation for shallow crustal earthquakes in Japan and can serve as a better model for ground motion prediction in future aseismic design and earthquake disaster mitigation efforts. • A Ground Motion Prediction Model was proposed for shallow crustal earthquakes. • The proposed model was more precise than traditional approaches. • Explained the effect of feature parameters on the prediction results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

JT-60SA is a joint international fusion experiment being built and operated in Japan under the framework of the Broader Approach Agreement and Japanese National Fusion Programme, aiming at an early realization of fusion energy by conducting supportive and complementary work for the ITER project, all towards supporting the basis for DEMO. In this context, a collaboration has been established via EUROfusion between Fusion for Energy and CEA to develop actively cooled targets of the JT-60SA divertor. The first Actively Cooled Divertor (ACD) target, planned to be operated in 2029, has graphite as armour material and TZM as heat sink material. To be DEMO relevant, ACD target with tungsten armour is planned to be operated in 2033, with either CuCrZr or TZM as heat sink material. This paper focusses on the choice of the design (material, dimensions) of these targets. Results of thermal and structural analysis of these targets are presented. The calculations, carried out in the environment of Ansys 2021R2 code, have taken into account the heat loading under plasma operation (with a peak heat flux of 10 MW/m2) and the electromagnetic loads from a representative plasma disruption (VDE 30 ms). In order to check the compliance with nuclear requirements, RCC-MRx 2015 has been used for the mechanical assessment of metallic components, while for the graphite the comparison between the maximum stress and the yield stress has been considered. The performed analyses show that the thermal load on target during the plasma heat loading drives target designs due to differential expansion at the interface between the heat sink and the flat tiles. Additionally, on-going assessments on these divertor targets are presented, focussing on experimental High Heat Flux testing, as well as computational thermal-hydraulic studies on enhanced target configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the discourse and material manifestation of kankeijinkō , a phrase used in Japan to describe, primarily, highly mobile groups of urbanities who make regular visits to the countryside. Drawing on Japanese grey literature, secondary data analysis, national-level policy reports and exploratory fieldwork in the northwest of Japan, we argue that the concept of kankeijinkō offers a view of rural mobility quite different from more established views of counterurbanisation, at least in the way that it has been captured in the global north. As a concept, kankeijinkō invites us to move beyond simple and binary taxonomies of migration and settlement, and destabilizes the notion of rural vitality as being linked to rural populations that are spatially fixed and bounded. Further, the promotion of kankeijinkō in policy discourses in Japan has the potential to support new hybrid, fluid and place-based rural lifestyles that contribute to an interconnected global countryside. On the other hand, the discourse of kankeijinkō might privilege certain modes of rural mobility and being, circumscribing the potentialities of these mobile groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all sea pens inhabit soft bottoms, but only four species are known to live on rocky substrates. These are all deep-sea species with specialized sucker-like peduncles considered to attach to rocky substrates. Their known distribution is very sparse due to the limited number of reports. In this study, we describe a novel rock-inhabiting sea pen, Anthoptilum gnome sp. nov., from a deep-sea marine protected area in Japan, along with the first report of the mitochondrial genome of a rock-inhabiting species and a rock-inhabiting species from the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The mitogenomic information provides insight into their evolutionary aspect; A. gnome sp. nov. may have acquired the sucker-like peduncle within the phylogenetic constraints in the genus and the sucker-like peduncle may be the character obtained independently in Pennatuloidea. • Anthoptilum gnome sp. nov. described as a new species. • The first mitochondria genome reported from rock-inhabiting sea pen species. • First record of the rock-inhabiting sea pen species in the northwest Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]