SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY-BASED FARMING AND THEIR INTERRELATIONSHIP WITH SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN FARM FAMILIES AND RURAL COMMUNITIES

Japan has seen a significant development in community-based farming (CBF), particularly in part-time rice farming areas. CBF is a farming system that is performed by a cooperative organization composed of farm households within a traditional rural community aiming to secure efficient and economical management by pooling all the resources.  How and why could CBF have developed remarkably? What kind of successes and difficulties has CBF accomplished and faced? How do they interrelate with the changes in farm families and rural communities? To these questions, we offer plausible responses on the basis of our case study in Fukui prefecture. Our study shows that CBF has succeeded in reducing the financial difficulties and labor shortage in participant family farms, as well as sustaining the farmland and the milieu of the community as a whole. However, ironically, the successes have led to a weakening of individual family farms and to promote their dependence on CBF. And then, it has led to the fears about the long-term viability of CBF itself with generational change. At the beginning, CBF was a solution supposing the conventional ways of farm family and community. But its implementation accelerated the changes in such conventional ways and produced the need for rebuilding the original system of management and recruitment

On the substructures of metal single crystals

application/pdfBulletin of the Naniwa University. Series A, Engineering and natural science. 1955, 3, p.143-157departmental bulletin pape

SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY-BASED FARMING AND THEIR INTERRELATIONSHIP WITH SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN FARM FAMILIES AND RURAL COMMUNITIES

Japan has seen a significant development in community-based farming (CBF), particularly in part-time rice farming areas. CBF is a farming system that is performed by a cooperative organization composed of farm households within a traditional rural community aiming to secure efficient and economical management by pooling all the resources.  How and why could CBF have developed remarkably? What kind of successes and difficulties has CBF accomplished and faced? How do they interrelate with the changes in farm families and rural communities? To these questions, we offer plausible responses on the basis of our case study in Fukui prefecture. Our study shows that CBF has succeeded in reducing the financial difficulties and labor shortage in participant family farms, as well as sustaining the farmland and the milieu of the community as a whole. However, ironically, the successes have led to a weakening of individual family farms and to promote their dependence on CBF. And then, it has led to the fears about the long-term viability of CBF itself with generational change. At the beginning, CBF was a solution supposing the conventional ways of farm family and community. But its implementation accelerated the changes in such conventional ways and produced the need for rebuilding the original system of management and recruitment

An Optically Dark GRB Observed by HETE-2: GRB 051022

GRB 051022 was detected at 13:07:58 on 22 October 2005 by HETE-2. The location of GRB 051022 was determined immediately by the flight localization system. This burst contains multiple pulses and has a rather long duration of about 190 seconds. The detections of candidate X-ray and radio afterglows were reported, whereas no optical afterglow was found. The optical spectroscopic observations of the host galaxy revealed the redshift z = 0.8. Using the data derived by HETE-2 observation of the prompt emission, we found the absorption N_H = 8.8 -2.9/+3.1 x 10^22 cm^-2 and the visual extinction A_V = 49 -16/+17 mag in the host galaxy. If this is the case, no detection of any optical transient would be quite reasonable. The absorption derived by the Swift XRT observations of the afterglow is fully consistent with those obtained from the early HETE-2 observation of the prompt emission. Our analysis implies an interpretation that the absorbing medium could be outside external shock at R ~ 10^16 cm, which may be a dusty molecular cloud.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in PASJ lette

Contrast-Enhanced Three-Dimensional Computed Tomography of Brain Tumors

To evaluate the usefulness of contrast-enhanced spiral (helical) scanning computed tomography ( CT) in patients with various brain tumors, a non ionic contrast medium was injected intravenously in ten patients with meningioma, five with vestibular schwannoma, and five with pituitary adenoma. Images were taken by spiral scan at an X-ray beam width of 1 or 2 mm. The volume data obtained were combined at 0.5-1 mm intervals for the three-dimensional (3-D) image reconstruction, by the volume rendering method. Each image was separated by CT number into bone, blood vessel, contrast-enhanced tumor, and cerebral parenchyma. In some subjects, a pair of images was reconstructed to allow stereoscopic viewing at a parallax angle of 6 degrees. Three-dimensional relationship between tumors and other structures was easily understood, permitting pre-operative prediction of the operative field and also a view of the area after tumor excision. The present method surpassed conventional CT techniques in terms of clarity of the 3-D relationship, and surpassed MRI and MRA in terms of clarity of relationship between the tumor and skull. These results confirm that this method appears to be applicable in routine clinical situations with minimal invasiveness, high degree of safety, and short examination time.departmental bulletin pape

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