In the 21st Century, geopolitical confrontation between the Eurasian continental powers and the sea powers works to divide Asia. The US-Japan alliance has transformed itself from Japan's asymmetrical security dependence of the Cold War period into a mutual and more integrated partnership today. Japan is doing more in collective security to ensure US commitment to the alliance through its own enhanced utilities to the United States. Japan leads emmeshing of the US-Japan bilateral alliance into the growing network of security partnerships, transforming the "hub-and-spoke" security architecture of East Asia at least partly into a NATO-like multilateral security arrangement. Yet Asian economic dependence on China and the uncertain prospects of the US commitment to Asian security and geopolitical realignment at the level of international system allow Japan to pursue hedging on its own and Asian behalf.

India–Japan relations have been elevated from a cultural and economic partnership to that of a cooperative relationship in the Indo-Pacific, as outlined by the India–Japan Vision 2025 statement signed in 2017. Since establishing a special strategic global partnership in 2014, India and Japan have sought to deepen their defence ties in response to their regional security challenges. At the same time, the said partnership has faced several challenges in the contexts of their respective relationships with China and the US. The questions this chapter raises are: How has India–Japan relation transformed over time into a resilient partnership? What are the strategic arrangements in the Indo-Japanese bilateral relationship that continue to thrive? and how have China and the United States (US) impacted the India–Japan relationship at the bilateral and multilateral levels? The chapter examines India–Japan relations considering their identities, norms and principles illustrated through their approach towards the Indo-Pacific as well as the intensifying US–China conflict. This chapter further seeks to analyse the Indo-Japanese relationship in their bilateral security partnership, as well as its potential in leading a multipolar order in the Indo-Pacific through Japan’s multilateralism and India’s multialignment.

This chapter describes the rhetoric and tangibles of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy. Despite the use of the word “strategy”, the US government lacks cohesion in its supposedly whole-of-government effort towards the region. The strategy largely remains one of the US Pacific Navy and relies on geopolitical principles and hence shows a great deal of continuity from the Cold War period despite the dynamic transformation of the region. Shifting of economic gravity from the Asia Pacific westward with the rise of India is anticipated based on demographic trends (India’s high birth rate, as opposed to the low birth rate in China), but India’s inward-looking economy has not fully embraced integration with the broader region and the US remains a limited player in the Indian economy unlike in China. The security-driven rationale for active US presence in the IOR in the context of the rising perceptions about the Chinese threats to regional and global security led to the resumption of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue among the US, Japan, Australia and India in 2017. However, as the strategic concept is being translated into more comprehensive policies, the prevailing overall framing has shed the simplistic anti-China cleverly sugarcoated the mercantilist and the off-shore balancing of the previous administration.

This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of the coupling of the center of pressure (COP) movement and toes in older adults during one-legged standing (OLS). Participants were community dwelling older and younger adults. Toe vertical force during the OLS was recorded using a plantar-pressure distribution system, and the vertical forces in the hallux, little toe, and the first and fifth metatarsophalangeal (MP) joints were analyzed. A cross-correlation function was performed to examine the coordination between toes and between COP movement and four regions of the foot. The cross-correlation functions showed no significant difference in coefficients between toes. The OLS duration in the older adults was significantly correlated with the coefficient between the medial-lateral component of the COP and the first MP region. This study suggests that it is important to press the first MP region appropriately relative to COP movement to maintain the OLS.

A wild rice (BKK) strain showing sterile spikelet and big leaves inhabited at the basin of the Chao Phraya river of Bangkok city, Thailand.The BKK strain was found as a natural triploid and thus its origin has been interested long time.Three different-sized fragments were amplified in RNA polymerase I largest subunit (PolA1) gene, which is a single-copy nuclear gene per haploid genome.Short type (0.14 kb) intron 20 sequence of BKK strain was identical to that of O. rufipogon and O. sativa.Phylogenetic analysis showed that long type (1.5 kb and 1.8 kb) intron 20 sequences of BKK strain were closely related to that of O. longistaminata and O. officinalis, respectively.We analyzed protein tag (Ptag) sequence encoded by exons 19 to 21 of PolA1 gene.Determined three Ptag sequences of BKK strain were identical to that of O. rufipogon, O. longistaminata, and O. officinalis, respectively.Relative DNA content of nuclei in O. officinalis and BKK strain was 1.5 and 1.75 times than that in O. sativa, respectively.And BKK strain contained CentO-C1 repeats, which were unique to O. officinalis.These results indicated that BKK strain comprised three genomes of O. rufipogon, O. longistaminata, and O. officinalis.

Oryza AA-genome complex comprises five wild species, O. rufipogon, O. barthii, O. longistaminata, O. glumaepatula, and O. meridionalis. Evolutionary relationships among these five wild species have remained contentious and inconclusive. We found that intron 20 of PolA1, a single-copy nuclear gene, was short (S-type: 141-142 bp) in O. rufipogon, O. barthii, and O. glumaepatula, while long (L-type: ca. 1.5 kb) introns were apparent in O. longistaminata and O. meridionalis. Because Oryza species containing BB, CC, EE, FF, and GG genome showed L-type introns, the S-type intron was probably derived from the L-type intron by the deletion of a 1.4 kb fragment through intramolecular homologous recombination between two tandem TTTTGC repeats. Excluding the large deletion sequence, intron 20 sequence of O. barthii was identical to that of O. longistaminata. As more than 3,470 accessions of O. rufipogon and O. sativa also contained the same intron 20 sequence with O. longistaminata except for single T-nucleotide deletion, which was shared with O. glumaepatuala, the deletion of the T-nucleotide probably occurred in the L-type intron 20 of O. logistaminata. Deletions of a large 1.4 kb fragment and single T-nucleotide within the intron 20 of PolA1 gene were considered as useful DNA markers to study the evolutionary relationships among Oryza AA-genome species.

remain unclear. Xi comes through as a patriot but not necessarily somebody driven by grand geostrategic or political ambition. Rather the focus of his career has mostly been on good governance, economic development and entrenching the position of the Party in Chinese politics. His hinterland is portrayed as that of the thorough, dedicated administrator rather than visionary statesman. Yet his imprint on contemporary China is significant. The author suggests that this reflects Xi’s tendency to identify core themes then communicate them relentlessly and consistently.

In face-to-face communication, talkers perceive various affects and emotions of other talkers as the eye-impressions such as highlight or dilated pupil. In the previous studies, focusing on the eye-impressions in social robots, various expression methods such as changing the LED color or blinking the LED were proposed and developed. However, it is difficult to generate the affective expressions with the highlight that has an optical reflection characteristic on the surface of the eyeball by using the LED. Therefore, in order to enhance the eye-impressions of social robots, it is expected to develop an expressible method with the affective highlight. In this study, we proposed an affective highlight to enhance the eye-impressions of social robots. This method introduces a virtual lighting in virtual space and can generate rich affective expressions by controlling various parameters of the virtual lighting such as brightness or colors. In addition, we developed a speech-driven pupil response system that applied the affective highlight to the pupil response interface which has been developed. This system can generate the affective expressions by the dilation of pupil response that is synchronized with the talker's speech as well as the highlight expression with talker's intentional input. The effectiveness of the developed system with the affective highlight was demonstrated by sensory evaluations.

In recent years, it is expected to use robots that support humans in medical care and living support. In places where robots and humans live together, there are situations where robots have to contact humans. In this cases, it is necessary to clarify how humans feel and what kind of movement characteristics they prefer due to the movement of robots, Therefore, in previous studies, it was shown that the movement characteristics that humans prefer differ in contact and non -contact movements. In this study, the development of a high five motion model, which is the base for robot movements, was developed. In order to develop a motion model, we first analyzed the movement of the elbow joint at the swinging when humans high five. The obtained elbow joint velocity pattern suggested that the mini mum jerk models could be used. Then, the starting angle, end angle, motion time, and peak position required for the minimum jerk model were analyzed. As a result, the distribution of parameters required for movement generation was analyzed. In addition, it was shown that the movement of the elbow joint has a significant effect by distance.

This article examines Japan's security alignments with key Asian and European partners, notably Australia, India, the UK, France and the EU itself. The articles explores Tokyo's strategic expectations with regard to each of the five partnerships, as well as probing the likely future evolution of these alignments by providing a comparative perspective. Japan's alignments with Australia and India conform with and supplement the US-Japan alliance, addressing Japan's primary geostrategic concerns in the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean region. Tokyo's security partnerships with the European partners, and the EU, are more recent and not rooted in any US-led alliance in Asia. The degree of traditional kinetic military power these European players can bring to Asia is very limited. However, the pace with which Japan's new European alignments are quickly moving beyond the non-traditional security areas to encompass more traditional defence and military-security fields attests to their potential of evolving in the future into mechanisms able to perform a broad range of security functions in response to complex security threats. The boundaries between these two categories of partnerships are likely to be further blurred, providing Japan with various mechanisms at different levels to shape and influence the regional and global security environment.

Since the presentation is a one-sided communication, it is difficult to realize an interactive communication while grasping the behavior of the audience. Therefore, a method that conveys audience’s actions and affects such as interest and concern during the presentation is required. In this study, we focused on the dilated pupils which make favorable impression and developed a presentation support system using group pupil response interfaces. This system generates a dilated pupil response and a nodding motion based on voice input in each interface. Then, a communication experiment was conducted to evaluate the developed system under the condition that the system acts like audience. The effectiveness of the system was demonstrated by mean of sensory evaluations.

Dilated pupil response has effects on favorable impression to human. Focusing on the pupil response in human-robot interaction, we have developed a pupil response system using hemisphere displays and confirmed that the pupil response is effective for enhancing affective conveyance in human-robot interaction. In this study, for the basic research of realizing a friendly communication during embodied interaction between human and robot, we analyzed the pupil response during body contact that is closely related to affinity using a pupil measurement device. On the basis of the analysis results, we developed a pupil response pet-robot for enhancing affinity in human-robot interaction. This pet-robot generates the pupil response based on the body contact using small displays in which the 3D CG model of pupil and iris is represented, and can impress cuteness and familiarity. The effectiveness of the developed pet-robot with dilation of the pupil response at 2.0 times during body contact was demonstrated by sensory evaluations.

Although the tube diameter and stenosis rate are important observations in the diagnosis using medical images of digestive organ, such as digestive systems, the diagnosis is based on the physician's subjective evaluation. On the other hand, automatic measurement of tube diameters by image processing has been used for blood vessels, which are tubular tissues similar to digestive systems, and it is also possible to visualize the vessel diameter by assigning pseudo-colors according to the length of the vessel. However, it is difficult to apply the existing diameter visualization methods directly to digestive system medical images due to the processing time and accuracy problems because the tubes are large and tortuous, unlike blood vessels. In this paper, we propose a method to measure the tube diameter quickly by dynamically calculating the next featured pixel using the history of the midpoints of the tube diameter line. Furthermore, we derive an approximate curve corresponding to the centerline of the tube from the history of the featured pixels and measure the tube diameter with high accuracy. We applied the proposed method to various types of digestive system medical images and confirmed that the proposed method could accurately measure and visualize the tube diameter along the shape of the tube and reduce the processing time by up to 99%.

Pupils give favorable impressions to humans depending on their size. Focusing on effects of the pupil size, various pupil sizes were evaluated using human images as stimulations in previous researches. However, it is difficult to express an extreme pupil size in a face image due to a limited area of eyes. In addition, the evaluation of pupil size itself is hard because impressions in human images are formed depending on not only the pupil size but also other facial parts. In order to evaluate impressions of the pupil size itself, it is desirable to extract only the pupil and exclude other facial parts. In this study, we analyzed impressions on various pupil sizes that combined the dilation / contraction using two kinds of pupil expression media that have been developed so far. In the analysis, the impression evaluation obtained by the SD method was factor-analyzed. As the result of factor analysis, three factors were extracted: acceptability, reliability, and curiosity. Acceptability and reliability factors had a certain peak, and curiosity factor was proportional to the pupil size. These analysis results demonstrated that a certain dilated area of pupil could form a favorable impression regardless of pupil expression media.

In order to clarify the effect of bias treatments on the highly oriented growth of diamond, we investigated the relation between the silicon surface morphology changes after applying a bias voltage, and the orientation of the diamond crystallites after growth. We report two major findings. First, a textured structure on the Si surface after the bias pretreatment was found to be a necessary but insufficient indicator for the subsequent growth of highly oriented diamond. Second, although bias pretreatments effectively enhance nucleation, we did not find a clear relationship between the nucleation density and the percentage of oriented crystallites. The highest nucleation densities resulted in randomly oriented films. We conclude that bias pretreatments affect the nucleation enhancement and the diamond orientation through different mechanisms.

This paper describes the pineapple monitoring system based on the edge computing which consists of the sensing drone and database. A huge sensing data transferred to the computer system will be changed from the cloud to edge, near future. The merits of this change are low power dissipation, reducing data transfer, real time operation, and security issues. To enjoy these merits, effective compaction of sensing data, energy efficient networking, and edge oriented data management architecture has been proposed. We design the pineapple monitoring system using above core technologies and evaluates the enhancement of system performance.