Some are necessary and we can’t switch them off Others help us to provide you with the best possible service We use cookies to personalise content and ads to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic We also share anonymous information about your use of our site with our social media By accepting cookies you will be helping us to continue to provide you with the best possible service the owner of Japanese rental company Nishio Rent All announced that it will integrate the general rentals business of its subsidiary Sacos Corp into Nishio Rental-All The remainder of Sacos will focus on specialized rental activities including power rentals Sacos will also now be the parent of Nishio’s Singapore-based power and temperature control rental business United Power & Resources Pte Ltd Nishio said the restructuring would help it grow its business in metropolitan Tokyo with the aim of increasing revenues from Yen50 billion (€305 million) in its 2023 financial year to Yen70 billion €428 million) within five years The company added that the integration of Sacon in Japan would give it “know how” on rental consolidation It said future growth in Japan’s rental market would require industry restructuring and that the Sacos transaction would act as a “demonstration of possible future industry reorganisation” You’ve reached your limit of premium article views this month Become a Plus Member today and gain further access to the content Off Highway Research - Market research Unique marketing services that create demand for your products locally Marketing Services Download Media Kits you can reduce the power consumption and CO2 emissions generated by the website's screen display The news on this website is as of the date announced and may change without notice The Japan Chapter of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications in the presence of ECRVP (Jay Heimbach) and DFi VP (Aki Nishio) who were on mission to Tokyo including the Environmental Minister (MP Ito) and MP Odawara (Secretary General of the Japan Chapter) Chair/Minister Matsumoto underscored the importance of the World Bank Group in today’s challenging world and reiterated his commitment to working closely with the Bank’s team for the success of the WBG “Understanding Risk Global Forum” (UR2024) a biannual policy forum with a strong focus on disaster risk management Parliamentarians Highlights from recent activities of the Japan Chapter of the Parliamentary Network (PNoWB Japan) The Parliamentary Network STAY CURRENT WITH OUR LATEST DATA & INSIGHTS This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. 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To learn more about cookies, click here As the concessional window of the World Bank the International Development Association (IDA) plays a central role in developing the poorest countries and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) IDA support is particularly important in countries beset with conflict and fragility where issues of development—such as donor proliferation and harmonization and local ownership—are particularly complicated The 21st replenishment round (IDA21) is now in process to secure renewed funding for the IDA’s next three-year cycle the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program held an event with global experts to discuss how aid architecture can address challenges of advancing development in fragile and conflict-affected environments Following introductory remarks by World Bank Vice President Aki Nishio and Prime Minister of Haiti Garry Conille Senior Fellow George Ingram moderated a panel composed of Prime Minister Garry Conille recent Brookings Visiting Fellow Allison Minor and Alliance for Peacebuilding Executive Director Elizabeth Hume Aki Nishio offered concluding takeaways for the IDA process Viewers submitted questions by emailing [email protected] and via X @BrookingsGlobal using the hashtag #IDA21 The world needs the International Development Association As the largest source of development funding for low-income countries IDA is a lifeline for governments facing multiple crises that have set back global development putting millions of lives and livelihoods at risk IDA is preparing for its 21st replenishment round so that it can respond to these challenges and accelerate progress toward a world free of poverty on a livable planet In the lead-up to IDA21, IDA has convened regional forums for civil society organizations. The decision to expand to regional forums was strongly informed by CSO requests for this type of engagement. The main purpose of these forums is for senior leaders of the World Bank and IDA borrowers to listen to the voices of civil society promoting mutual understanding of what IDA21 ought to focus on over 800 organizations representing academia A final global forum will take place in October to share the key findings from this process with civil society A social enterprise, we connect and inform over 1.3 million development, health, humanitarian, and sustainability professionals through news, business intelligence, and funding & career opportunities so you can do more good for more people. We invite you to join us. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Yui Nishio (ゆいにしお) stands out in the Japanese pop scene with her blend of nostalgic and modern sound her vivid lyrics that capture the everyday life and emotions of Japanese youth which continues to capture listeners with the charm of everyday life portrayal Let’s dive in as we explore Yui Nishio’s unique inspirations from her roots in Shibuya kei and folk music and discover how her international fans motivated her to release an English version of her hit anime song Could you tell us about your musical style and influences I was influenced by this kind of music that’s known as Shibuya kei It’s a pop genre that I got to know through my father when I was a child My own music has gradually morphed in style I was also inspired by an artist called HAPPY END which kept my mind centered on this acoustic flavor of sound I’m now weaving in Shibuya kei from my childhood roots more and more these days and I try not to remain too particular about any genre when I write I can say that the themes running through all my work are the lyrics that I hope resonates with the day-to-day lives of women of my generation and you mentioned influences from “Shibuya kei” I’m not sure how fans who are really into the genre would feel if I were to give my own take here… it’s the entirety of the movement that occurred in Shibuya There’s a lot of influence from western music and it feels slightly distant from all the Jpop that led up to it it points to a genre that’s kind of rebellious and cynical I love how you can catch glimpses of the flippant attitudes of the youth during that era as they saw a familiar cityscape begin to change there are huge redevelopments in Shibuya that keep transforming the city I think about how the youth of today can still carry those same emotions from the past These are the feelings that draw me to Shibuya kei While you don’t remain too particular about any genre today what was it that drew you into blending folk and funky pop tunes But the songs that I love the most are the ones with lyrics that I can relate to I suppose you could say that I didn’t really connect with the lyrics from HAPPY END It was important for me to work on material that could connect with the lives of women of my generation I felt that if I blended this with folk songs that I grew up with it would lead to this new style that felt fresh but was still easy to listen to and absorb would you mind sharing what led you to pursue a career in music in the first place I was 19 years old when I decided to pursue my career as Yui Nishio I wanted to form a band and had even joined student activity groups during college looking for other musicians But I wasn’t great at chatting with strangers and I ended up being shy and unable to recruit members for my band [laughs] I felt surprisingly comfortable performing on my own I also did end up playing in a band from time to time and I learned that I preferred to create my own world rather than work with other people I landed on my current management and got to where I am today and recently on “Shin no Nakama” with the opening theme song Could you tell us about the song “routine life” and how you accommodated it to the anime The biggest aspect that sets apart my songs for anime is the story that’s already been written by the anime’s source material My songwriting is usually based on observations from my own everyday life that I jot down on my phone I then take these piecemeal thoughts and piece them all together into a song I need to really read into the original story and extract a few things that I think would make for good ingredients for me to digest and turn into my kind of music Hm… I guess the common thread between the two processes is that connection that I try to make between my life and those of my audience I never completely reproduce the anime universe and rather aim to write with lyrics that tie back to my own life in mind Does “routine life” also reflect the characters in the anime in any way This is my second time writing for Shin no Nakama Since I also wrote the opening theme back in season 1 the main character Ruti abandons her season 1 role as Hero for a carefree life As I thought about ways to convey this imagery of being liberated from painful responsibilities I thought about how people in real life who pour their hearts into their work could one day hit a breaking point The song reaches out to the people who’ve found themselves in this position and it also remains true to the messaging from the original story I think the way these elements tie together remains in my mind Similar to how the main characters in “Shin no Nakama” are pursuing their ideal lifestyle I’d like to live in a home that’s a little bigger than the one I’m in now [laughs] Right… I need to be realistic about finances and all that I’d like to be somewhere in Tokyo that’s lush with nature I could get greedy and say I want to build a big place that still has quick access to the Shibuya and Shinjuku neighborhoods [laughs] which would let me work on my music as I’d go about my day There are times when it’s hard to be both a full-time employee and a musician But the essences from work definitely feed into my lyrics I suppose I can be employed in some form of work that’s not necessarily a full-time role but I feel I’d like to keep working as I pursue my career as a musician and we imagine as an artist with folk influences it’s not easy to navigate the anime music landscape that is largely dominated by fast-paced pop rock songs When I first received the offer of penning a song for an anime I also had the impression that I had to write a brisk intense piece that we typically associate with opening themes But then I realized that if the creators wanted that kind of music they probably wouldn’t have thought of Yui Nishio when making the request So I wrote it with the mindset of remaining entirely true to myself and that’s how the theme for season 1 of Shin no Nakama came about We all wondered what kind of feedback we’d actually receive once the series began airing We heard that people felt it sounded close to anime music from the 2000s These voices made me feel so relieved that I decided to keep writing songs for other anime I fell into a place that’s both a breath of fresh air and at the same time laced with a bit of nostalgia I don’t have much experience writing music for battle scenes in anime You could say that it’s not my style to write combat music and it’s just that I haven’t written anything like it I’m not sure if I’ve reached this level yet but I think I can meld with the anime more by thinking closely about the lives of each character [laughs] Do you intend to pursue more opportunities in the anime scene there’s nothing finalized yet for my next move in the anime scene I do feel like I want to work on more projects for anime Because the songs I’ve written have all tied into everyday life and because the source material mostly came from light novels I’d also like to contribute to other genres of anime but “routine life” has received an English version This is the first time I’ve recorded an English version Around the time I had worked on the music for Season 1 of Shin no Nakama we saw a huge growth in international listeners Most comments coming in on YouTube were in English there were so many people commenting and even requesting “Sing Beautiful Day!” that even fans in Japan posted their comments in English [laughs] I wanted to approach my music in a language other than Japanese and I decided to include the English version on the album What were some challenges when performing the English version and I don’t have much experience speaking it either I got help translating the lyrics from Azusa Suga who’s written a lot of lyrics for his own band His interpretations were close to how I’d pronounce the original lyrics in Japanese it was all for naught if you couldn’t make out what I was saying so I looked up ways to pronounce each word on Google several times before they stuck in my head Pronouncing words in English was an important piece reminded me that remaining true to the nuances from the Japanese version would give my English singing more weight I kept in mind the emotions I’d felt from my Japanese lyrics and tried not to deviate too far from them The English version of “routine life” is also included in your second full-length album that was just released last month in March What are the things you’d like the listeners to pay attention with this new album this album weekday is about the things we associate with as we go about our week I’d like listeners to pay close attention to the contents of the lyrics which I’ve packed with emotions from my own weekdays Some parts may or may not align with the experiences of the listeners but it will make me happy if they at least serve as triggers for recalling some fond memories for everyone I think the previous records had a distinct live band sound but there’s more use of pre-programmed tracks this time around There are moments when my singing feels relaxed and others when I have to stay pretty tight with the programmed beats so I hope people take note of the contrast in my voice What did you want to achieve with this particular album It filled me with joy to be able to write with artists and music arrangers whom I’ve wanted to work with and I was so happy to have him arrange the third track Sakura bringing in music arrangers whom I’d worked with previously I feel like the album pursued new sounds while still retaining the classic characteristics of Yui Nishio do you find that your relationship with music has changed over time but the things I’ve tried to express through music have seen gradual changes I wrote songs like I would entries in a journal “These are the things that happened today” or “I’d been so hurt from this romantic relationship” It was as if I were reading out of my diary Or I’d scroll through social media and write songs that reflect what people there are feeling I’d pull out that diary and extra words or scenes that I think people could relate to and work those into the lyrics and now it’s transformed into a journal that we all log together Considering the everyday life aspect that “weekday” explores how does your music help people cope with their everyday life I’d love to hear directly from people who feel supported by my music [laughs] I hope that people will hear about my many pleasures of going about my week from the lyrics throughout [the album] weekday They don’t need to empathize with me on every observation but I’d want my lyrics to be reminders of their own day-to-day or the things they used to love growing up The moments that bring us joy probably didn’t change that much as we age so maybe we’d recreate them after tapping into our memories or maybe return to a familiar place to feel reinvigorated It would make me happy if my music nudges people to make that one small step forward have you found yourself drawn to any new hobbies or interests but I started drinking craft beers sometime last year I got so into craft beers that I ended up qualifying for a grade 3 license as a certified Japanese beer expert Craft beer is quite trendy in Japan these days and noticed that there are several women patrons about my age there It’s not all folks who are older than me anymore The pastime seems to be making its way into the younger generation too Can you share any memorable experiences or highlights from your performances or interactions with fans I noticed the different ways fans connect with my music These expressions really come out in a live setting and help me realize which parts of each song resonate with the listeners I also appreciate through social media the lengths fans go to explore their own ways of having fun I often post choreography for my own songs on TikTok and I was shocked to find that multiple people perfectly copied the dances I should probably put a little more effort into coming up with the moves [laughs] please share a message to our readers overseas Thank you for always listening to music from Yui Nishio it might be difficult for many of you to follow along in a foreign language I deeply appreciate how you interpret and absorb each word I hope to be able to write songs entirely in English and even tour overseas our conversation was interesting and relaxed and hopefully this interview captures that as well We want to extend our thanks to Yui Nishio for taking her time to chat with us Topic Artist which produces industrial and medical equipment has released an anime short that commemorates its 150th anniversary The animation is a Studio KAI production with Tetsuo Tokuno as director The character designs come from Tetsuya Nishio (Naruto The central characters in the animation are voiced by Kenjiro Tsuda and Sora Amamiya Source: Shimadzu Corporation YouTube channel The program cover for Alan Nishio’s celebration of life Alan Nishio was part of a group of Japanese Americans interested in getting built in Little Tokyo some sort of recreation center that could help bring the community together Although there was likely no ink­ling then that someday the community would gather at what would become the Terasaki Budokan to honor and celebrate Nishio’s life it was fitting the event took place there as a testament to his foresight when friends and family members gathered to pay him tribute Amy Watanabe speaks at Alan Nishio’s celebration of life on Feb 10 at the Terasaki Budokan in Little Tokyo A respected, influential, beloved, well-known, decorated and accomplished member of Los Angeles’ Japanese American  community, Nishio died at age 78 on Dec.  27, 2023, after a years-long battle with leiomyosarcoma (see Pacific Citizen’s Jan. 26-Feb. 8, 2024, issue,  tinyurl.com/vcw5psk3) Serving as master of ceremonies for Nishio’s celebration of life was Chris Aihara The program included musical performances by Kira Nishio Lockwood as well as a multimedia presentation by Nagatani Dan Kuramoto and Kimo Cornwell perform at Alan Nishio’s Feb Nishio’s life was summed up by a friend and peer Note: A PDF of Nishio’s celebration of life program may be viewed at tinyurl.com/y6t2y9nd The gymnasium at the Terasaki Budokan was at capacity for Alan Nishio’s celebration of life on Feb The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday that Toei Animation, Daisuke Nishio, and Takashi Washio's "Magic Candies" ("Amedama") short has been nominated for Best Animated Short Film (nominations for this category start at about 5:34 in video below): The other nominees for Best Animated Short Film are: "Beautiful Men," "In the Shadow of the Cypress," "Wander to Wonder," and "Yuck!" The awards ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on March 2 Source: Oscars' YouTube channel Please log in and check your service registration status.To cancel your subscription 1) === '|') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";");else document.write(unescape(l[i]));} Rental companies demonstrated how they are adapting their businesses to secure growth in in week that was Oct United Rentals has been investing heavily in specialty rental to reduce its reliance on the cyclical construction sector In its third quarter results, the world’s largest rental company reported that its Specialty rentals activity has driven a 7.5% increase in revenues while its general rental business was almost flat year-on-year while its general rentals business rose by 0.9% By registering for an account you also register for an account across all our sites Please check the options provided to opt-in and receive marketing communications from KHL Group you will be among the first to get updates on our events We’ve sent a confirmation link to your email Please check your inbox and click the link to continue Today's print edition Home Delivery B-29 bombers started a firestorm that turned humans to ash and Tokyo into a wasteland Five months before the United States dropped atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was World War II's deadliest using conventional bombs.googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1499653692894-0'); }); In a time of both misinformation and too much information quality journalism is more crucial than ever.By subscribing Your subscription plan doesn't allow commenting. To learn more see our FAQ Sponsored contents planned and edited by JT Media Enterprise Division World Bank Vice President of Development Finance (DFi) Akihiko (Aki) Nishio is the World Bank Vice President of Development Finance (DFi) where he oversees strategic mobilization of Bank resources, including the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Nishio focuses on furthering IDA’s innovation: leveraging its equity by blending donor contributions with internal resources and funds raised through debt markets scaling up engagement in fragile countries and finding new ways to promote private sector development Nishio has over 30 years of experience combining managerial leadership and a track record of collaboration with development partners in economics from Hitotsubashi University in Japan and an undergraduate diploma from the Université Catholique de l’Ouest in Angers Japanese rental company Nishio Rent All has opened new headquarters for its Vietnam business and said it will expand operations in the country The unveiling of the new facility in Hanoi located a few kilometres from its previous HQ is almost double the size and includes office space  We are at a critical moment in history The world faces a perfect storm of intertwined and complex global challenges the lingering effects of the global pandemic and the urgent climate crisis all threaten to unwind development gains and plunge as many as 95 million more people into poverty The World Bank is transforming to respond to these compounding crises—fighting to preserve the hard-won development gains of previous decades and evolving to be a better partner to meet the most pressing needs of people and the planet in the future Trust funds and financial intermediary funds (FIFs) are powerful tools for global development and an important part of this equation Trust funds and FIFs complement the World Bank’s core funding to meet critical needs working across the development spectrum and delivering on the World Bank’s global challenge programs Trust funds and FIFs have a powerful multiplier effect by targeting resources to issues of global concern piloting innovative solutions for the most entrenched problems and allowing the World Bank to respond with urgency and in places otherwise out of reach The evolution of the World Bank’s mission is an opportunity to further strengthen the impact of trust funds and FIFs The reforms of the past five years have resulted in fewer and more strategically aligned trust funds positioning them to meet this moment as they provide an established pathway for the World Bank to expand partnerships to increase available funds and impact Partnerships play a crucial role in the success of the World Bank Nowhere is that more prevalent than in trust funds and FIFs We express gratitude to all our development partners and client countries for their active involvement and commitment to our common mission and vision As we work collectively to catalyze change and multiply impact in the face of cascading global crises trust funds and FIFs are an integral component of the effort to end poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet Akihiko NishioVice PresidentDevelopment Finance Article By: Clark Leonard Dr. Tomoe Nishio, assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Georgia (UNG), has been named the College Teacher of the Year by the Georgia Association of Teachers of Japanese Nishio helped launch the minor in Japanese when she joined UNG in 2016 after the university received a $400,000 Japan Foundation grant She has formed an exchange program with Nanzan University in Nagoya developed new Japanese courses and hosted cultural events on campus It feels like my efforts have paid off," Nishio said but it's a great milestone personally and for the program." The exchange with Nanzan University began with summer study abroad opportunities led by Nishio. It was followed by a 2019 visit from Japanese students to UNG after they spent weeks corresponding with UNG students to help make their visit more beneficial for students from both universities.  Nishio's research interests include language learning and technology she has published journal articles and presented in academic conferences on telecollaboration and Collaborative Online International Learning which is one of the programs of partnership between UNG and Nanzan She has also sought to form ties with organizations regionally to enhance UNG's Japanese program © 2025 The University System of Georgia and the University of North Georgia UNG follows the section 508 Standards and WCAG 2.1 for web accessibility. If you require this content in another format, please send an email to the ADA Coordinator. Use of military-themed imagery does not constitute endorsement by the U.S we deeply value and uphold the cherished right of every American to freely express themselves As a distinguished Senior Military College we take great pride in our role of cultivating leaders who tirelessly defend these fundamental freedoms for all citizens.  The legacy of our graduates in this regard is second to none our primary responsibility is to cultivate an academic environment that ensures this exchange of ideas and the safety of our community we are committed to fostering a welcoming atmosphere where individuals feel empowered to freely express themselves and engage in exploration and learning it is essential that these rights are exercised in a manner that upholds our academic mission and is in accordance with our institutional policies and other criminal acts will not be tolerated at the University of North Georgia and civility as we equip our students to walk toward their purpose But what was meant to be a joyful time quickly turned into a nightmare as US B-29 bombers launched a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo This was a night that would transform her life forever creating a firestorm that obliterated large parts of Tokyo with some estimates suggesting that more than 100,000 perished It remains one of the most destructive conventional bombing raids in history often overshadowed by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later that year Nishio and her family fled to a nearby school for shelter But the situation quickly worsened as wave after wave of bombers dropped incendiaries on the city creating a massive inferno that engulfed over 16 square miles of Tokyo Nishio's 19-year-old cousin and a nurse who had stayed behind to help in the shelter were among the hundreds who died in the flames Nishio and her family emerged from the shelter only to find their city had been reduced to a wasteland with charred bodies scattered across the ground like "human logs." Nishio recalls was part of a strategy devised by US General Curtis LeMay His goal was not only to destroy military targets but also to dismantle Japan's economy by burning down residential areas and factories British historian Richard Overy describes the raid as a deliberate attempt to create an "unstoppable conflagration" to break Japan's war economy the extent of the destruction and the loss of civilian life were staggering and the raid on Tokyo remains one of the deadliest conventional bombings in history the firebombing of Tokyo is often overshadowed by the atomic bombings that followed Overy notes that while the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well-remembered the firebombing raid on Tokyo—causing even more deaths—remains underappreciated in historical discussions who was eight years old at the time of the bombing recalls the "eerie red" glow of the sky and the sounds of the devastating firestorm "It was bright like it was daytime," she remembers as the fire spread through her neighbourhood says she never fully recovered from the psychological scars of that night She recalls the sounds of air raid sirens that haunted her throughout her life and how the echo of ambulances would always remind her of those dark days watching the ongoing war in Ukraine today brings painful memories of her childhood trauma "When I watched television about the Ukraine situation a stark reminder of the universal tragedy of war and its impact on innocent lives Eighty years after the firebombing of Tokyo the memories of survivors like Nishio and Kitamura serve as powerful reminders of the devastation wrought by war Their stories highlight the horrors of that fateful night and the enduring resilience of those who survived determined to share their experiences and ensure such suffering is never forgotten Get the latest news and updates straight to your inbox US economy seen losing as foreign tourists stay away UK wildfires push records in first four months of 2025 Services resume at Paris station after WW2 bomb defused This was a year dominated by COVID-19 and the ensuing global health and economic crisis The pandemic has taken lives and disrupted livelihoods in every corner of the world It has raised the urgency of mitigating severe economic impacts on poverty and overcoming the dangers of climate change The World Bank Group’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 crisis has been massive and decisive with trust funds and financial intermediary funds (FIFs) contributing to immediate relief initiatives and providing strategic support to countries as they rebuild for a resilient recovery This report highlights the important work trust funds and FIFs are supporting to help shorten the crisis and lay a strong foundation for a future that is more prosperous and better prepared for disasters like COVID-19 Ongoing trust-funded activities are part of the World Bank Group’s efforts to build this foundation of greater resilience Looking across the thematic areas of health this report shows how trust fund and FIF resources—disbursing $51.62 billion from fiscal years 2017 to 2021—support the World Bank Group’s goals to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity through greener more inclusive and more resilient development Trust funds and FIFs complement the core funding and activities of the World Bank Group increase the scope and reach of its activities and further its knowledge and learning agenda They help address global and regional issues that transcend national boundaries and make it possible to support countries where the World Bank Group cannot provide financing from its own resources This report also examines how the World Bank Group brings value to trust-funded partnerships at both the international and country level optimizes coordinated action on shared development priorities to achieve impact at scale Partners benefit from the World Bank Group’s extensive technical expertise country experience and supervision capacity and its ability to monitor and report on results Ongoing reforms in trust fund and FIF management also ensure strategic alignment and predictability in the use of resources As part of the drive to enhance financial sustainability new measures are also being implemented to recover costs in delivering externally funded activities Partnerships are at the core of trust fund and FIF success and dedication to our shared mission and vision we are building on forward momentum to generate a resilient recovery that ensures a broad and lasting rise in prosperity for all With the aim of achieving carbon neutrality in production by 2035 AISIN has commenced the evaluation of its newly developed "resource recycling system” that separates and utilizes CO2 at the Nishio Die-Casting Plant South Building We are implementing various initiatives in terms of both production and products in order to achieve carbon neutrality toward the goal of achieving carbon-neutral production by 2035 we are promoting technological development focusing on the key themes of "reduction in power sources heat sources and waste,” “clean energy,” and “resource recycling aimed at zero waste.” Our resource recycling system consists of a process that separates and recovers CO2 (0.024 t-CO2/day) from the exhaust gas produced from the combustion equipment at the plant and a methanation process that produces methane gas (12m3/day (ntp)) from the recovered CO2 The methane produced is then used as fuel.By recovering CO2 contained in the exhaust gas from the aluminum melting furnace in operation at the plant and circulating the methane gas produced as fuel for that melting furnace we evaluate the system under actual operating conditions (Circulating 1/100th of the amount of CO2 generated from a single melting furnace) We have adopted a chemical absorption method for CO2 separation and recovery by using a uniquely designed recovery mechanism and an absorbent optimized for that mechanism we have achieved the downsizing of the system and energy-efficient separation and recovery Based on the field data obtained from this evaluation we aim to develop a system by FY2025 that can recover all of the CO2 generated from a single melting furnace AISIN will continue to promote the development of technology to improve the environment and society thereby realizing  the AISIN Group Philosophy: Inspiring “movement,” creating tomorrow the governments of Japan and the Dominican Republic came to an agreement Japan – a nation still recovering from the Second World War – would finance the journeys of 1,500 people to live in five colonies on land given to them by the D.R the son of two of those emigrés from the mountain town of Constanza came to settle in the heart of Providence’s Dominican community on “La Broa” That’s the short story of Mitsuhisa “El Ninja” Nishio who opened his Dominican- Japanese fusion restaurant “My mom used to cook a lot of Japanese food but didn’t do Dominican all that well,” Nishio said she began to cook Dominican specialties like sancocho (stew) and longaniza (sausage) So I developed a taste for both types of food growing up “I can just as easily tell you that ‘these habichuelas (kidney beans) are good,’ as I can “this sushi rice needs more vinegar.” The two influences come together for the food at a restaurant whose slick décor and playlist of Bachata and Merengue would easily fit in Santo Domingo what makes his sushi Dominican are “maduro” – sweet plantain – a uniquely Caribbean twist on the Japanese tradition They feature prominently on one of his favorite creations La Pela is a combination maki of shrimp tempura with cream cheese crowned by a small slice of maduro and covered with a mixed seafood sauce Dip it in one of three sauces - mayo-ketchup Other fushion rolls feature shimp tempura and queso frito in La Broa; salmon tempura in Bavaro Beach Roll; the El Ninja Roll with chicken tempura bacon and cream cheese; La Chapi with chicken tempura and chicarron; Costanza Roll with asparagus tempura and Japanese sweet potato; and a spicy Volcano Roll The menu includes a traditional lineup of sushi including California rolls There are also eel avocado and spicy yellowtail as well as a Rainbow Roll What better way to get to the Dominican Republic influences than in a boat Though perhaps the Yola appetizer would best be used to house shrimp rather than a crew with the sweet plantain carrying shrimp that floats in a savory ‘what goes into El Ninja’s Special Sauce?’” Nishio said “I always tell them that it’s just heavy cream It’s a such a simple sauce but so good and I don’t give the recipe to anybody.” Other appetizers offer a wide variety of tastes such as Dominican-style fried pork belly Ninja’s crab cream croquettes and gyoza The menu includes desserts which reflect both cuisines There’s flan and a passion fruit tres leches cake but also Banana Tempura and Imochi a savory broth of fresh seafood and vegetables Traditional style entrees on the menu at El Ninja include teriyaki stir fry dishes as well as Pollo Ninja a chicken breast stuffed with Dominican sausage and mozzarella cheese A signature surf and turf with churrasco and lobster tail accompanied by yucca mash asparagus and shrimp is topped with the Ninja sauce Pescado Relleno is a crispy red snapper dish with bacalao Langosta Rellena is a whole stuffed lobster topped with Salsa de Coco the work and people’s reception of it “When we opened this in the middle of the pandemic I didn’t know what to expect,” he said “I didn’t know if people would come for fear of getting the virus “I feel like people here love me as if I’ve been in Providence for 10 years already.” to 1 a.m; Sunday 3 to 11 p.m.; and Monday 3 to 10 p.m The internment camp was surrounded by barbed wire fences and eight machine gun towers. When her family took walks at night, they were hit by floodlights, as if they were criminals. Esther wanted nothing more than to return to California to start college. That opportunity arrived sooner than expected. On a hot, listless day in the dog days of that summer, an old family friend named Hugh Anderson had come in on the train from Los Angeles with news. The federal government had given him the go-ahead to bring a single Japanese American student back to Southern California to enroll in college. It was a test case for the resettlement of all the detainees of Japanese descent, and he thought Esther, 19, would be a perfect candidate. The nation was starting to envision the end of the war. Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were all on the retreat. But anti-Japanese sentiment was unabated and withering, and hatred extended to the Nikkei in the United States — in ways it did not for Germans and Italians. Since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans had read daily headlines about “Jap” atrocities while tens of thousands of American men were killed in the Pacific theater. The Japanese immigrants and their U.S.-born children were bound to be targets of deep-seated rancor. Anderson, a Quaker accountant who had worked at the incarceration camp in Poston, Ariz., explained to her parents that Esther would enroll at Pasadena Junior College while living with his family in Altadena. Her resettlement would gauge the public reaction and, if all went well, lead the way for tens of thousands more to return to the West Coast. Her parents agreed to let her go, putting their fears aside. They needed to show the nation their people’s humanity, and their loyalty. But when Esther boarded the westbound train a few weeks later, her father had a moment of panic: Am I sending my daughter to her death? The roundup and incarceration of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent on the West Coast — 62% of them American-born citizens — during World War II is a chapter of American history now roundly viewed as a betrayal of the country’s ideals, an inhumanity driven not by military necessity, but by racism, paranoia and greed. In California, some of the first to lobby for their removal were white farmers who coveted their land and wanted them out of the market. The lesser known part of the story was the rutted road to resettlement. Families that had been here for decades and thrived before the war — many turning marginal farmland into some of the state’s most productive soil — returned to find little was left for them. Most had to start from nothing, in the most hostile of times. Esther Takei Nishio, the first to make that journey home, died last month at her home in Pasadena at the age of 94. “Even at our church, a lot of people didn’t know what she had done,” her son John Nishio said. “They heard it the first time at the memorial service.” Her experience — documented here from two oral history interviews, World War II-era news articles, archived correspondence and interviews with her son — illuminates a seminal moment of Los Angeles and California history, American race relations and civil rights. Nishio helped lead her people home to a bewildering new reality in the country that betrayed them. “She was a kind of parallel to the first African Americans who integrated white universities in the years after World War II,” said Greg Robinson, a history professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal who has written extensively on the relocation camps. “She ran the risk of attracting bigotry and perhaps violence, and her success helped open doors for other Nisei.” Esther grew up in a most peculiar place and time in the United States: Venice Beach in its early heyday, a rollicking carnival by the sea, with speakeasies and bingo parlors, an amusement pier and canals of crooning gondoliers. Her father and mother — Shigehisa “Harry” Takei and Ninoe Takei, first-generation Issei — had started several game concessions along the pier, where patrons pitched baseballs at milk bottles, tried to hook wooden fish in a pond, and shot corks at candy bars on a shelf. They lived in a two-story house at 64 N. Venice Blvd., between the beach and the Grand Canal. A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times. In her first oral history interview, she recalled the Venice of those pre-war days as “very glamorous” with its Italianate architecture, grand ballroom, plunge pool, and shuttle boats that took people out to mob-run gambling ships outside territorial waters, just three miles from shore. Her parents bought an Octopus ride that became one of the pier’s top attractions. As a girl, Esther didn’t know any other Nisei — the children of Japanese immigrants — but said she never felt the sting of racism, other than knowing white people were allowed in the plunge and she was not. She never considered herself anything other than American. “It wasn’t until I went to Venice junior and senior high schools that I came across a lot of Nisei,” she would later tell interviewers. At Venice High School, she joined the Glee Club and a Japanese American club. In her senior year she was selected to be on the Venetian Ladies, an elite women’s honor society, for her academic achievements and service in the community. She got her club sweater — but world events intervened before she could pose for the annual picture. Esther was at home on Dec. 7, 1941, when she heard the news about Pearl Harbor on the radio. Her parents were working on the pier, and it took her three hours to summon the nerve to leave the house and join them. They came home in a state of shock. War with Japan would upend their lives. Esther’s parents had the money and family connections to return to Japan, but they had no intention of leaving their new country. They had already made plans for the possibility of war: to pack up their concession equipment in their two flatbed trucks and move to an interior state. But the next day, the FBI knocked on their door and arrested Harry as a suspect in aiding imperial Japan. He was in his pajamas, and they told him he had to go as he was dressed. He said, no, he was a community leader, and insisted on putting on his navy blue suit. The agents relented. His family had no idea where the agents took him. Newspapers in California began whipping up hysteria. President Franklin Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, confirmed Esther and her mother’s worst fears. The military was gearing up to expel “enemy aliens” from the West Coast, even though federal officials had investigated the Nikkei for years and determined they would be loyal to the United States in the event of war with Japan. But Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Command, advised Roosevelt that no person of Japanese descent could be trusted. In the weeks before their forced removal began in April, Esther and her mother stored some of their equipment in the garage of Anderson’s Altadena home. They turned the concessions, equipment and octopus ride over to two employees, who were supposed to keep the businesses going for them. The Japanese on the West Coast were given so little time to prepare for their removal — with no more than a suitcase per person — that they were forced to sell properties, farms, tractors and plows, fishing boats and nets, vehicles, furniture and appliances for a fraction of what they were worth. Or they entrusted white friends to keep these belongings for them until they returned. Esther’s mother took her to JC Penney in Santa Monica to buy “rough clothes” for “camping.” Days later, mother and daughter walked off to catch the Red Car train to downtown Los Angeles, where they boarded buses for the “Assembly Center” at the Santa Anita Park racetrack. They were pointed to barracks in the parking lot. “I had taken civics and studied about the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and how great it was to be an American citizen,” Nishio recalled in 1999. “And then, when the exclusion order came, I was really shocked and hurt. But I was — I guess, I just turned 17 in February of ’42. I thought, well, I guess, as a good American citizen, we have to do what the government wants us to do.” She recalled that, despite the grim surroundings, she was excited to meet so many new Nisei at Santa Anita, all of them enjoying a certain freedom from parental supervision. She had her first boyfriend and worked as a waitress in the mess hall. In September they boarded a train for the tiny town of Granada, Colo. Camp Amache, as it was called, sat on a hill southwest of town, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. The area, near the Kansas border, had been hit hard by the Dust Bowl and still suffered dust storms. The Takeis moved into Block 6E, next to the sewage plant. As in Santa Anita, Esther made new friends and found a job, this time working as a dental assistant for a Dr. Nagamoto. But the weather was oppressively hot in summer and cuttingly cold in winter, with heavy snow. She was cooped up in the barracks, disaffected and restless, her life on hold, her parents set back to zero. She set her sights on college and got approval to move in with a family in Boulder outside Denver to work as a maid — cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, and gardening. Within a year she’d have state residency and could apply to the University of Colorado. But she hated the “slave work,” as she later called it, and felt lonely and unhappy. Her father brought her back to Granada in early 1944. Hugh Anderson grew up in Pasadena, the son of a merchant who started the Model Grocery Co. He went to Pasadena Junior College and then Stanford University in 1937, becoming an accountant and auditor, first managing his family stores, then working for other companies and the state of California. He became a Quaker and got involved in human rights advocacy, setting up an interracial credit union and arranging for a Jewish family of four to escape from Berlin to California through Russia and China. Anderson strongly opposed the Japanese relocation and had joined a group in Pasadena called Friends of the American Way, started by a local real estate agent, William Carr, to keep in touch with the local Nikkei residents who were sent to camps and manage their affairs as best they could. Anderson and Carr had started plotting ways to end the Japanese exclusion from the West Coast. In the spring of 1944, they hatched a plan to bring a single student back — quietly, with no news coverage — and wrote to the new commander of the Western Defense Command, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Bonesteel Jr., for approval. “He had us on the phone almost immediately and said he was in favor of it and to go ahead with the program,” Anderson wrote in his memoirs. Anderson traveled to Granada in July to get the Takeis’ approval and returned to make the final preparations for Esther to attend Pasadena Junior College (now Pasadena City College). School administrators polled the students about her return and the responses were 90% positive. John A. Sexson, superintendent of schools, fully supported her enrollment. Esther was excited about the challenge, though not fully aware of the potential danger; for all its bleakness and drudgery, the camp had largely spared her from the hatred outside. When she boarded the Super Chief train in September, she felt heartache saying goodbye to her parents and friends, but brimmed with optimism over a new adventure. When she arrived in Pasadena on Sept. 12, Esther was greeted enthusiastically by the Anderson family, along with the editor of the school newspaper and members of the Student Christian Assn. She moved into the Andersons’ quaint two-story home with a swooped roof on Roosevelt Avenue in Altadena and was the guest of honor that night at the Eagle Rock residence of E.C. Farnham, executive director of the Church Federation of Los Angeles. The warm welcome was short-lived. The next morning, newspapers tipped off by the editor of the campus newspaper published articles about her arrival — including the address of Anderson’s home. The story was then picked up by Stars and Stripes and published in papers around the world. Local nativist groups began whipping up a froth. Menacing letters started piling up in Anderson’s mailbox. “The only kind of a Jap the people of Cal. trust is a dead one,” an anonymous correspondent from Los Angeles wrote. Others railed against Anderson as being un-American. “I have a son in the service who has just recently been discharged. “ a Mrs. J.H. Wilson wrote. “The boys wonder what they are fighting for when the government tells them to kill them and our citizens take them into their homes.” Phone calls were even more threatening. “Your house is being watched,” snarled one caller. A local man named George L. Kelley formed a Ban the Japs Committee and demanded the Pasadena Board of Education expel Esther. She was buoyed by the people who stood up for her, particularly former servicemen just back from the war in the South Pacific. They formed a group that escorted her from class to class to make sure she was safe. With her ebullient, unflappable personality, Esther made many quick friends at school. And she got dozens of letters supporting her, from other Nisei, from churches and housewives, and particularly, from soldiers, sailors and Marines who had fought Japanese forces. A sailor named David Mumford, on night watch in the Pacific, scratched out a letter commending her own fight for the nation’s ideals. “I write to express to you the hope that you will remain in good cheer and stand fast in your little battle zone. Your importance as a person is as nothing, in a larger sense, to your importance as an example of what can be done or else, cannot be done to an American citizen.” But the hatred didn’t ease up on the streets. Esther often ran into an “old lady” at her bus stop. “She would always call me, ‘Jap’, and [say,] ‘Get out of here!’ And one day she slapped me.” Other people spit on her, and so many drivers motored up Anderson’s street to scream epithets — or just get a glimpse of her — there were traffic jams. When the school principal received a bomb threat, Anderson moved Esther to another house for 10 days and sent his family away. The stress made it difficult to study. Kelley, the anti-Japanese crusader, held a protest of the board on Sept. 26 and said he would take court action if it didn’t heed his demands. Supt. Sexson stood his ground. Three days later, Kelley attended a panel in Pasadena with his opponents, the Committee for American Principals and Fair Play, and Dillon S. Myer, director of the War Relocation Authority. Myer, who was in charge of the relocation camps, was now advocating to resettle the Nikkei detainees. There is no record of what was said on the panel. But it had a momentous effect — at least on Kelley. The next day he made the stunning announcement that he was resigning from his own committee, stating plainly that he was wrong. “When I’m wrong I’ll admit it, and I was wrong,” Kelley said. “That Dillon Myer fellow convinced me.” Anderson sent a report to Maj. Gen. Bonesteel, who later told him that Esther’s experience persuaded him to approve widespread West Coast resettlement in January 1945, a year before he had planned to. Esther began speaking to churches and colleges and on race-relation panels. Her parents arrived in Pasadena from Grenada in the spring of 1945, only to find they had lost everything that they hadn’t left with Anderson. Their employees who kept their equipment and trucks had sold them out. They stayed in a hostel before they could find a small apartment. Esther couldn’t bear to see them struggle and dropped out of college to support them. She started working as a secretary in a war surplus company in Los Angeles. Ninoye, 48, found employment in a garment factory. Harry, 55, bought a trowel and some basic tools and started working as a gardener. He held his head high as he endured insults, taking the bus from job to job. The Takeis were resilient, and Harry used his business acumen and connections to get ahead. In the early 1950s, Harry, with other Issei, founded Rose’s Frozen Shrimp Co. in downtown Los Angeles — selling wholesale frozen fish sticks and Mexican shrimp. He and Ninoye built a small house in Pasadena. One day, Shig Nishio, a young man Esther had met in the barracks at Santa Anita, asked her on a date. She was excited and bought new pedal pushers and tennis shoes. They went to the Ocean Park pier. “I was just swooning!” she recalled with a laugh half a century later. “He was so cute and so nice. And so that was it for me!” They got married in 1947, had their son John the next year and built their own home in Pasadena in 1952. Harry Takei applied for and received U.S. citizenship the moment he was allowed to under new immigration laws passed in 1952. But he missed Japan and tired of the racism he continued to face. In 1958 he and Ninoye moved back to Tokyo. Still, Harry loved nothing more than wearing his double-breasted navy blue suit and chatting up American servicemen in the perfect English that he mastered as a carny. John Nishio, 71, left, and Shig Nishio, 98, in John Nishio’s Japanese garden at his home. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times) Esther Takei Nishio took a job as a secretary for the Flying Tiger Line for the perks it offered — travel to Japan to visit her parents. Their son spent two full summers with his grandparents. At home, John played baseball — in the Japanese Little League because he wasn’t allowed in the “real one.” “My parents never missed a game, watching me miss fly balls and strike out,” he recalled. At home, the Nishios were active in the Pasadena Union Presbyterian Church, founded by Issei in 1913. When John joined an all-Nikkei Boy Scout troop, Shig became the Scoutmaster. The family often went fishing and camping in the Eastern Sierra, in part because hotels turned them away. Driving up Highway 395, they stopped at empty fields where the Manzanar Relocation Camp once stood and, poking around one time, found the cemetery. “We found the grave of a baby covered in weeds,” John Nishio recalled, and were moved by that. They cleared the weeds, and returned to do that at least once a year. Esther Nishio never forgot what happened to her family in 1942. In 1981, she was one of the first to volunteer to testify before Congress about how her parents’ belongings were effectively stolen. Years later she spent hours with interviewers from the Japanese American National Museum and Densho, a group that documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans during their World War II incarceration. But she really liked to recall small, poignant — or funny — moments with her family, like the time she hired a belly dancer to embarrass Shig on his 60th birthday. She couldn’t stop laughing about that, her son said. Around 4 am on Oct. 1, Shig discovered that his wife of 72 years had collapsed on the floor and died. She had a smile on her face, John said, and he came and lay beside her for hours. “She was always just so cheerful,” John said,” always praising people, trying to help them. “The Japanese American community lost a true heroine when she passed, and so did our family.” Joe Mozingo is a deputy Metro editor for the Los Angeles Times. Lifestyle California Climate & Environment Entertainment & Arts Travel & Experiences World & Nation Subscribe for unlimited accessSite Map In a world grappling with the profound challenges of climate change collective action is more important than ever Our two institutions have a long and storied history, which has continued to evolve and expand over the past 70 years. At the global, sectoral, regional, and country levels, AFD Group and the World Bank now work in coordination to reduce aid fragmentation, improve client delivery and impact, enhance knowledge exchange, strengthen operational collaboration, and increase mobilization of new and existing resources The Finance in Common initiative is one example of this partnership in action the annual summit brings together more than 500 development banks with the aim of better aligning the financial system with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement As a member and supporter of the Finance in Common initiative the World Bank works with the AFD Group and national development banks to develop shared standards and best practices and shift strategies toward sustainability these banks are responsible for $2.7 trillion in annual investment representing significant potential to enhance impact on global development The World Bank and the AFD Group also share a commitment to universal social protection. Our institutions have partnered on adaptable systems to boost support for vulnerable people, disaster management, and preparation for climate change. These programs are helping millions of households build resilience and foster access to income-earning opportunities in fragile parts of the world To address food insecurity crises in Mauritania our institutions worked with other development banks to strengthen Brazil’s safety net program providing financial support to impoverished families and promoting access to education and health services An innovative co-financing framework agreement has also helped channel billions of dollars into transformative development projects that are spurring socioeconomic progress fostering stability and security in fragile settings With an average cumulative financing of $468 million per year flowing through this mechanism the benefits and value-add at the project level go far beyond larger financing volumes as each institution brings its own unique skills to co-financed projects the total portfolio of co-financing and parallel financing has reached $30 billion for 116 operations over the last decade (including 51 co-financed projects with the World Bank that are worth $15 billion) Through such collective efforts the AFD Group and the World Bank have set a standard for international cooperation. We have shown that when institutions come together with a common purpose and partnership practices that foster trust It is through this spirit of cooperation and shared vision that we will continue paving the way for a more resilient and equitable world Thank you for choosing to be part of the Voices community The latest blog posts and blog-related announcements will be delivered directly to your email inbox World Bank Vice President of Development Finance (DFi) Partnerships and Communication Department - Agence Française de Développement (AFD) An up-and-coming rising star of the J-pop world Yui Nishio is here bringing folk-style and feel-good music to everyone Anime Corner had the chance to talk with the artist delving into her musical journey and exploring her connection with anime and manga we’d like to learn more about your path towards becoming a musical artist how did you get to where you are today?A: I started my career as “Yuinishio” in 2016 I’d just entered university that year and wanted to form a band so I started singing with my guitar anyway I wondered if the singer-songwriter style was my thing Q: How do you stay inspired and motivated during the songwriting and production process You compose and write lyrics too – not a small feat!A: The songs I create are born from the fabric of daily life and I draw inspiration from my daily experiences identifying what I feel comfortable with and what I don’t like as I navigate through life I tend to get inspirations when I take a bath and walk The reactions of my friends and listeners when they listen to my music give me motivation compelling me to strive for improvement with the thought “I’ll create an even better song,” and that’s motivation for me as well lolWriting lyrics and composing music is undoubtedly hard work but I feel so indebted to the arrangers who arrange the music for me!Q: Could you walk us through on your approach to coming up with the lyrics for your songs?A: I always jot down my thoughts and feelings as I go about my daily life on my iPhone documenting even trivial things that might never make it into a lyric When I notice connections between these fragments of writing I immerse myself in the original manga to extract/write down my own interpretations and insights to shape the draft lyrics.Recently I have been jotting down memorable phrases from books I read in bullet-point form on the left page of my notebook and later writing out essays related to the book’s content on the empty right page While this process may not directly yield lyrics I value the opportunity to input and output on a daily basis what drew you towards folk and funkier pop styles?A: Originally I liked simplistic songs with minimal notes so I often listened to Japanese folk songs and bossa nova for their inherently uncomplicated soundscapes I began to like songs with richer notes that are rhythmical leading me to listen to genres like funk and R&B.Q: Do you have a favorite instrument?A: I normally play the guitar but I like the piano so it feels like a long-time friend.Q: If you could collaborate with any musical artist I’d love to collaborate with artists like Gen Hoshino Benny Things and Phum Viphurit.Q: Can you share a memorable moment from your career so far that has had a significant impact on you as an artist?A: Last year I had a live performance in Taiwan for the first time I believe most of the audience didn’t hear of or see Yui Nishio for the first time until then But they waved their penlights and clapped in rhythm to cheer me on all my CDs were sold out at the venue on the day It was the first time for me that all the CDs were sold out at a live concert Despite having different languages and cultures I enjoy being able to communicate through music and that made my first overseas performance such a wonderful memory Q: Given you performed the opening for both seasons how familiar were you with the Banished from the Hero’s Party series before the anime premiered so I started out not knowing what kind of work it was the title of the work explained it all so it was helpful hahaQ: Do you watch anime or read manga/light novels in your spare time?A: Not light novels really I like the works by MAKIHIROCHI and Chica Umino Q: What was your reaction upon learning that your song was chosen as a theme for an anime for the first time?A: I was of course truly happy I felt anxious because my songs don’t sound very much like anime theme songs I got really enthusiastic.Q: You also performed the ending song for Reborn to Master the Blade did you take a different approach than you did with the opening theme songs A: I thought that unlike the opening theme it didn’t necessarily have to closely mirror the storyline so I focused more on creating a soothing sound and crafting lyrics that could be easily enjoyed I view the song’s approach as akin to a character song reflecting the personalities and lives of the characters.Q: Is there an anime franchise you would love to perform a theme song for someday Or perhaps a manga that hasn’t been adapted yet?A: I want to create theme songs if food-themed works are animated And She Loves To Eat,” “What Did You Eat Yesterday?” and “Happiness comes from eating International Development Association (IDA) provides support to the world’s 74 poorest countries and at the final meeting held in December 2021 development partners agreed on a historic $93 billion financing package to help countries recover from the COVID-19 crisis and build societies adapting to climate change To learn about IDA and the World Bank Group’s challenges going forward we interviewed Vice President Akihiko Nishio who led the IDA20 replenishment negotiations Editor-in-chief of International Development Journal (IDJ) I worked for Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) before joining the World Bank in 1988 through the Young Professional Program I held diverse positions across the institution including taking part in IDA15 replenishment exercise in 2007 As Director for Strategy and Operations for Equitable Growth I assumed the Development Finance (DFi) vice presidency which used to be assumed by someone with an European origin mobilized nearly 20 trillion yen (USD 175 billion) ――Give us a sense of the the World Bank strategy going forward Resilient and Inclusive Development (GRID) approach with the view to providing support to developing countries whose economies are severely damaged by the pandemic as they are most likely to miss the poverty reduction target set by the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs Our aim is to realize a swift recovery that is green and highly resilient to future crises that benefits not only the advantaged but also the entire population IDA20 replenishment is aligned with this approach IDA20 has adopted “climate change,” “fragility conflict and violence (FCV),” “gender,” and “job and economic transformation,” and “human capital” as special themes.  Human capital covers issues as COVID19 vaccination rollout and building resilient healthcare systems.  East Asia has achieved steady economic development over a sustained period has considerably increased its contribution to IDA20 India graduated from IDA several years ago and is now an IDA donor Pakistan still borrows from IDA but became a donor country several years ago affirming that they would also like to contribute to IDA While the United States and European countries still hold a major presence among IDA donors Asian countries have increased their presence Japan has been a major donor since IDA’s establishment in 1960 Many countries in the East Asia region are heavily dependent on China economically and thus vulnerable to the slowdown of Chinese economy Added to this is the disruption of supply chains under the pandemic division among countries poses major economic challenges economic and people-to-people interactions are anemic among these countries If the region holds together as a single market it has the capacity to demonstrate great competitiveness they have the potential to generate huge hydroelectric power with the capacity of building a cross-border power grid in the region the decoupled relationships among the countries are not making such regional cooperation possible and we are continuing our engagement with other aid agencies and donor countries in the field on how to support the poorest people.  ――Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 8) is scheduled to take place this year How will WBG support to Africa look like going forward?  Akihiko Nishio World Bank Vice President of Development Finance (DFi)  deficits in human capital are more acute than in other regions Human Capital Index clearly stands very low in Africa The World Bank therefore aims to focus on education the World Bank has been working hard on regional projects that connect multiple countries There are many regional integration projects including cross-country highways and power projects that come along with enhanced grid connections Africa is yet to be fully integrated as a single market While Africa has put in place the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) since January 2021 and more needs to be done to strengthen the connectivity Yet another immediate challenge is to boost COVID vaccinations vaccination ratio remains less than 4% of the total population COVAX and other institutions need to come together to address the challenge Let me also underscore that the World Bank is stepping up adaptation finance in Africa and beyond including by providing support in agricultural area and others.  this can be attributed to o Japan’s sustained commitment to the long-term development of developing countries which is underpinned by Japan’s knowledge and expertise Of particular note is Japan’s expertise on disaster risk management Japan has also been a leader in the area of nutrition The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted food supply chains posing serious challenges from food insecurity as malnutrition among children has been an issue for decades in many low-income countries Japan has played a leading role in the international community including by hosting the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in December 2021 Another topic that Japan has been focusing on is the “Universal Health Coverage (UHC)” whose goal is to ensure that everyone can access basic health services at affordable cost COVID has been a reminder call that achieving UHC is critically important This is yet another example where Japan’s long-standing efforts are highly appreciated the Government of Japan has demonstrated outstanding leadership most of the donor countries were reluctant to advance the replenishment given their tight fiscal constraints Japan’s strong call to advance the replenishment by one year was deeply appreciated by recipient countries Let me finally provide a personal suggestion to the Japanese aid community: deeper engagement with WBG country-strategies The World Bank Group has started to work on Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) to help countries align their climate actions and development efforts If Japan could play a more active role in joining the discussion in the field The World Bank prepares CCDRs for each client country with inputs from donor countries and aid organizations It would be great to see Japan play a more active role in shaping assistance strategies 西尾昭彦 開発金融総局担当副総裁 西尾昭彦 世界銀行開発金融担当副総裁（IDA担当副総裁）関連ニュース・ブログ・イベント Your request appears similar to malicious requests sent by robots Please make sure JavaScript is enabled and then try loading this page again. If you continue to be blocked, please send an email to secruxurity@sizetedistrict.cVmwom with: Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Volume 8 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.633045 This article is part of the Research TopicInteraction in Robot-Assistive Elderly CareView all 9 articles communication robots aiming to offer mental support to the elderly have attracted increasing attention Dialogue systems consisting of two robots could provide the elderly with opportunities to hold longer conversations in care homes we conducted an experiment to compare two types of scenario-based dialogue systems with different types of bodies—physical and virtual robots—to investigate the effects of embodying such dialogue systems Forty elderly people aged from 65 to 84 interacted with either an embodied desktop-sized humanoid robot or computer graphic agent displayed on a monitor The elderly participants were divided into groups depending on the success of the interactions The results revealed that (i) in the group where the robots responded more successfully with the expected conversation flow the elderly are more engaged in the conversation with the physical robots than the virtual robots and (ii) the elderly in the group in which robots responded successfully are more engaged in the conversation with the physical robots than those in the group in which the robots responded with ambiguous responses owing to unexpected utterances from the elderly These results suggest that having a physical body is advantageous in promoting high engagement and the potential advantage appears depending on whether the system can handle the conversation flow These findings provide new insight into the development of dialogue systems assisting elderly in maintaining a better mental health it is not clear which type of robot the elderly prefer in such a type of conversation this paper investigates how the behavior of the elderly and their feelings change depending on whether the interlocutor robots have physical bodies or not in the experience-asking conversation Although it was limited to a text-based conversation with younger participants, Kiesler et al. reported that their engagement in conversation with a physical robot was more enhanced than a virtual one (Kiesler et al., 2008) we consider fully verbal conversations for evaluation which seems to be a more user-friendly way for the elderly than the text-based one We conjecture that the positive engagement of the elderly in the fully verbal conversation will also be reproduced in terms of both behavioral aspects (H1) The elderly are more engaged in the experience-asking conversation with physical robots than with the virtual robots By contrast, Kiesler et al. also reported that people disclose themselves to virtual robots more than physical robots (Kiesler et al., 2008). Consistently, although it was not examined in the experience-asking conversation, Looije et al. showed the negative effect of having a physical body on the conversation, kindness, and friendliness of the robot (Looije et al., 2010) we predict that the total impression about the relationship with the robots is less positively evaluated for the one with physical bodies than the one without them (H2) The elderly evaluate virtual robots as closer interlocutors than physical ones in the experience-asking conversation To verify these hypotheses, we implemented two conversation systems: one with multiple physical robots and one with multiple virtual robots. We conducted an experiment in which participants aged from 65 to 84 compared these systems. Even though the multiple robot conversation system (Iio et al., 2020b) is expected to work to avoid conversational breakdown it is still difficult to perfectly control the quality of conversation among participants because of the unexpected recognition of their replies we consider how successfully the robot detects expected words in human replies This paper reports the results of the experiment and discusses their implications These studies indicate that the physical and virtual robots have their own benefits and it is important to choose the type of robot depending on the purpose It is worth noting that the conversations carried out in these studies were task-oriented conversations the effect of the physical body of the robot in a more social conversation such as casually asking people's experiences we investigated the difference between the interaction with physical robots and that with virtual robots in the experience-asking conversation Multiple robots were allowed to ask open questions to the elderly; this provided a robot-initiated but more freewheeling conversation We developed a question-answer-response dialogue model (Iio et al., 2020b) extended with an active listening function which encouraged the elderly to speak in certain ways we conducted a field experiment in a facility for the elderly and a laboratory experiment and investigated whether the elderly's speech increases by adding the listening function we focus on the potential effects of the physical bodies of a multi-robot This section describes the system implemented in the experiment The question-answer-response dialogue model is a model developed to continue to interact with a person even with low speech recognition accuracy. It has four states as illustrated in Figure 1: (i) Question state where the system asks a question to the person (e.g. “Have you ever been abroad?”) (ii) Answer state where the person answers it (e.g. “I don't remember.”) (iii) Backchannel state where the system shows a brief acknowledgment to the human answer (e.g. and (iv) Comment state where the system expresses its opinions and impressions to the human answer (e.g. “I would like to go aboard.”) The system begins with the question state and moves to Answer it starts again with Question state and follows the same sequence the system continues the conversation with the person In the exceptional cases when no answer is detected in the Answer state the system skips Backchannel and transits to Comment state the system utterances are generated by choosing one from several patterns depending on the recognized answer in the Answer state assume that the system has supposed that the person replies with either answer formats such as “yes I have been to Hawaii,” the system finds the phrase “yes I have” in the format and produces a corresponding backchannel such as “sounds nice” in the Backchannel state and a corresponding comment such as “you have a wonderful experience” in the Comment state I would like to go abroad,” the system finds the phrase “no I haven't” and utters “oh there are many people who haven't been abroad right?” When there is no matching phrase the system randomly selects one from the prepared general sentences in the Backchannel and Comment state such as “I see” and “I haven't been abroad so I want to go there,” respectively When one robot in the Question state queried a person the other robot showed a backchannel in the Backchannel state the robot that asked in the Question state produced a comment in the Comment state the two robots alternated roles with each other we intended to equalize the numbers of utterances of the two robots In the question-answer-response dialogue model (Iio et al., 2020b) the system identifies the end of speech of the person when no utterance has been detected for a certain period in the Answer state and then moves to the Backchannel state the system detects the end of speech even when the person intends to continue speaking but inserts a relatively long pause during his or her speech we have developed a listening function to try promoting a person's speech when it detects silence so that it avoids terminating his or her speech before he or she finishes the system produces not only a backchannel but also an utterance to promote the person to speak more (e.g. “Please tell me more about it”) It then waits for the person to speak again for 5 s it produces a backchannel again and waits for the person to speak again for 3 s When it does not detect any utterances within the waiting time it recognizes that the person has finished his/her speech and shifts to the Comment state it selects comments depending on the person's utterance detected in the Answer state and then returns to the Question state Note that for the purpose of controlling the experiment the listening function was activated only for predetermined questions In this study, we implemented two types of conversation systems: one with physical robots and the other with virtual robots. For the one with physical robots, two desktop size humanoid robots “CommU” developed by Vstone and Osaka University were adopted (Figure 2 Left) CommU has 14 degrees of freedom (DOF): three for the neck and one for the waist were utilized with the aim of practical application at a low cost in the future it produces a sequence of postures that are defined for each command each of which made it look like tilting its head Since the positions of the person and two robots were fixed the actions for looking were implemented to produce predefined postures of the neck and waist so that it looked at either the face of the person or another robot The commands to open and close the mouth were alternately sent to the speaking robot at a constant tempo during its utterance The appearance of CommU (Left) and the virtual CommU (Right) For the virtual robot, two computer graphics characters “virtual CommU” were adopted (Figure 2 Right) The 3D model of the virtual CommU was created by accurately scanning CommU to resemble its appearance Virtual CommUs were drawn on the web browser by using Three.js a JavaScript library for creating 3D content which is a JavaScript allocation programming interface for rendering interactive 3D graphics on the web browser They were displayed on the monitor to be of the same size as CommU while a black background was drawn behind them They can produce an animation of the same actions as those prepared for CommU Note that the looking action at the person by virtual CommU was implemented by making it look at the focal point of the scene camera to capture the 3D content so that the person felt being looked at by the virtual robot Figure 3 shows the system architecture diagram Sounds captured by a microphone array were sent to the server program that recognized the speech and sent back the recognized text Another program synthesized childlike voices and sent them to a terminal computer to play them with a stereo speaker Although the appearances of the two robots were the same each robot was made to have different characters so that the person could discriminate between them one was given the name of a boy (Taro) and a voice like that of a boy while the other was given the name of a girl (Hanako) and a voice like that of a girl we carried out an experiment comparing two conditions: physical and virtual The experiment involved a between-subject design an elderly participant talked with a conversation system that operated two physical robots an elderly participant interacted with the system that operated two virtual 3D characters that resembled CommUs The participants were asked to answer the questionnaire after talking with either pair of robots The experiment was approved by the ethics committee of Osaka University Forty elderly persons (20 men and 20 women) aged between 65 and 84 years were recruited by a temporary employment agency to participate in the experiment We included participants who were able to come by themselves to take part in the experiment the experimenter found no difficulty in communicating with them We were assured that they had no hearing problems and did not feel excessive fear when confined in a room for the experiment They were randomly assigned to the physical or virtual condition Eleven men and nine women were assigned to the physical system while nine men and 11 women were assigned to the virtual system The participant faced either CommUs or virtual CommUs (Figure 4) in an experiment room and a stereo speaker were placed on a desk ~1.2 m long Virtual CommUs were displayed on a 27-inch monitor A white stage with a height of 30 mm was used to place the CommUs on it so that their height was equal to those of virtual CommUs The distance between the two robots was about 0.4 m and the stereo speakers were placed behind each of them The participant sat 0.6 m away from the robots or the display A camera was installed on the left back of the participant for an experimenter to monitor the experiment room A small table was installed at the back and right side of the participant for him/her to answer the questionnaire Bird's eye view (left) and scenes (right) of a conversation between a participant and the robots of each condition (A: the physical condition We prepared two conversation scenarios for the experiment was employed to get the user accustomed to the conversation with physical or virtual robots the robots introduced themselves and requested the participant to answer questions they asked questions based on the proposed model described in section Related Works The topic of the questions was about weather and seasons such as “Is the weather good today?” and “Where do you want to go if you go to a cool place in summer?” For only a limited number of questions the system was allowed to activate the listening function to reduce the burden of answering on the participant they said that the training session was over and asked him/ her to wait for a while until the next conversation would start Note that they terminated the conversation after 5 min even if they did not finish asking all questions they thanked the participants for answering their questions Note that they terminated the conversation after 15 min even if they did not finish asking all questions The conversation length was determined by a pilot experiment so that we could expect that each participant was allowed enough time to answer the questions for the collection of a sufficient amount of data Questions used as the experimental stimuli a backchannel and comment utterances were prepared for each expected word which were produced when the system detected the user utterance containing it another ambiguous comment was prepared for each question which was used when it did not detect any expected words Note that nine utterances were prepared to be commonly used as backchannel utterances when the system did not detect any expected words Some utterances in the scenarios included special symbols representing the names of the participants The symbols were replaced with the name of the current participant before the experiment so that the robots could reproduce it the participant received an explanation about the procedure of the experiment from an experimenter in a waiting room The participant then moved to the experimental room and sat down in front of the robots After the experimenter confirmed it through the camera installed in the room the participant made the system start the first conversation for practice the system terminated the conversation either when 5 min had passed or all five questions were asked the experimenter asked the participant to check if he/she found any problem while interacting with the system that needs to be fixed The experimenter then made the system start the next conversation The system lasted the conversation until either when 15 min had passed or when all 20 questions were asked the experimenter asked the participant to answer a questionnaire to report their subjective evaluations of the robots we focused on the average amount of utterance of the participant because we had limited time to restrain the participants in the experiment we assumed that the participants engaged in a conversation when they used a large amount of utterances To evaluate the perceived closeness to verify the hypothesis H2, we used the inclusion of another in the self (IOS) scale (Aron et al., 1992), which has been widely used in previous human–robot interaction research (Mutlu et al., 2006; Cramer et al., 2009; Vázquez et al., 2017) the subject is asked to choose a figure to best represent the relationship between him or her and the target agent each of which consists of two circles and the amount of their overlap represents the degree of closeness namely the figure representing the furthest relationship was one while the score representing the closest relationship was seven we compared the IOS scores for physical and virtual robots The engagement and impression of the elderly toward the robot may change depending on how successful the robot is in responding to a speech (Pripfl et al., 2016) The robots generated different responses depending on the participant's answer to their questions They could produce utterances explicitly about their question if they found words in the participant's answer As candidate words were carefully prepared to decrease the false positive ratio by not expecting to have a high true positive ratio it was assumed that the former type of utterance would likely sound more contextually successful It is considered that the frequency of such successful utterances had a significant impact on the user's impression about the interlocutor To consider the successfulness of the robots' utterances in the analysis we divided the participants into two groups based on the average number of participants' utterances involving the matched words which were supposed to induce a successful response from the robot the independent variables of the experiment were the type of robot (two levels: physical or virtual) and the successfulness of the robots' utterances (two levels: more or less) We carried out a two-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the average amount of utterances of the participants and IOS scores The number of participants who replied to over 10 questions were 26 (15 men and 11 women). The average number of successful answers of all participants out of the 10 answers to be focused was 3.54. The participants were divided into the more successful group and the less successful group depending on whether they got more or less successful answers than the average. Table 2 shows the average number of successful answers in each group The number of participants in the more successful group were 16 (eight each for the physical and virtual conditions) while the number of participants in the less successful group were 10 (five each for the physical and virtual conditions) Average number (and standard deviation) of answers that the agents responded successfully Figure 5 shows the average amount of utterances of the participant per question The solid and broken lines represent the physical and virtual conditions Two-factor ANOVA showed that the interaction between the type of the robots and the success did not reach at the significant level (p < 0.05) but the tendency level [F(1 Analysis of the simple main effect of each factor revealed that the average amount of utterances was longer in the physical condition than in the virtual condition [F(1 ηp2 = 0.31] for the more successful group the average amount of utterances was longer in the more successful group than in the less successful group [F(1 the value of the mean squared error was 75.45 The average amount of utterance of the participants per question Figure 6 shows the average IOS score of the participants in each condition Two-factor ANOVA did not reveal any significant main effects or interaction The average IOS score of the participants in each condition participants in the physical robot condition may attribute social abilities to their successful responses more than in the virtual one It is worth noting that the current result also implies that the benefit of having a physical body becomes more prominent as technologies for successful responses further develop This specific effect might conceal the predicted low evaluation of closeness to physical robots The virtual robot is limited in its movement and facial expression one of the advantages of a virtual robot is the capability of arbitrary non-verbal expression which is difficult for a physical robot the most effective expression in the conversation for the virtual robot is not apparent we compared the virtual robot with the physical robot under the same conditions It is noteworthy that the current result did not suggest that the advantages of having a physical body are always shown under any conditions There is thus scope for further study to investigate the effective expressions of the virtual robot for the elderly complex confound between the engagement of the elderly and the success of the robots' answers we divided the participants into two groups based on how successful the robot is in responding to a speech We then analyzed the data to investigate the effects of embodying in each group there may be still confounding in the data even after such a division the potential confounding between the engagement and the success of the robots' answers is worth investigating by an experiment with a larger number of participants which allows us more careful consideration of how much successful (less ambiguous) conversation is established it could be interesting to examine the effects of having a physical body to the engagement of the elderly while considering how much the robots give ambiguous answers which may reveal more (or less) importance of having a physical body relative to having successful responses The number of participants in this experiment was not large the order and the topics in the experiment were limited to be fixed for all participants to allow more reliable and precise analysis it is worth performing further experiments with more variations in topics with more subjects it could be interesting to investigate the words and expressions preferred by the elderly aiming to develop a robot as a conversation partner for the elderly we investigated whether the robot should have a physical body or a virtual body We implemented conversation systems in which two physical or virtual robots interacted with an elderly person We conducted an experiment with 40 participants to confirm which type of robot they would interact with more and feel closer to The results of the experiment indicated that the elderly who is successfully responded to by robots engaged more in the conversation with the physical robots than the virtual robots The effect of physical robots is expected to increase as their ability to converse with people improve in future; 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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Toshiaki Nishio, bmlzaGlvLnRvc2hpYWtpQGlybC5zeXMuZXMub3Nha2EtdS5hYy5qcA== Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish Aisin Seiki held a completion ceremony on August 7 for the south building of the Nishio Die-Casting Plant where it started to build an extension last year All seven production lines will be operational by March 2018 The Aisin Group has added a building to increase production capacity on the premises of the Nishio Die-Casting Plant which produces die-cast aluminum components such as transmission cases for automatic transmissions so as to meet increasing production demand for automatic transmissions The newly added south building is a state-of-the-art plant with maximum consideration given to worker safety and the environment as well as improved production capacity and high product quality under the concept of "achieving a world-leading die-casting plant through technological and human innovation." the main work flows are lined up in the center of the plant with die-casting equipment arranged on the both sides aiming for ease of management with fewer personnel disaster risks are minimized by separating the melting and production areas and securing the material flow area.In the process of transferring molten aluminum to die-cast equipment direct chutes from melting furnaces to die-casting equipment have enabled automatic conveyance of molten aluminum as well as drastic reduction of safety risk while contributing to improvement of molten aluminum quality.From the perspective of the working environment the building is designed so that the die-casting workplace is well-ventilated through construction of underground passages and open ceiling spaces the workplace is brighter and more pleasant thanks to more lighting and white interiors the Aisin Group intends to continue producing superior products in an optimal environment and maximize competitiveness Products: Transmission cases for automatic transmissions Metrics details Cell-free gene expression systems have been valuable tools for understanding how transcription/translation can be regulated in living cells Many studies have investigated the determining factors that affect gene expression Here we report the effect of the length of linearized reporter DNAs encoding the firefly luciferase gene so as to exclude the influence of supercoiling It is found that longer DNA molecules exhibit significantly greater potency in gene expression; for example the expression level for DNA with 25.7 kbp is 1000-times higher than that for DNA of 1.7 kbp AFM observation of the DNA conformation indicates that longer DNA takes shrunken conformation with a higher segment density in the reaction mixture for gene expression in contrast to the stiff conformation of shorter DNA We propose an underlying mechanism for the favorable effect of longer DNA on gene expression in terms of the enhancement of access of RNA polymerase to the shrunken conformation It is expected that the enhancement of gene expression efficiency with a shrunken DNA conformation would also be a rather general mechanism in living cellular environments Effects of various factors on the efficiency of gene expression (a,b) Schematic diagram of the parental 4.3-kbp and 25.7-kbp plasmid DNAs The white box on the plasmid DNA represents a firefly luciferase reporter gene with a T7 promoter The red arrow in the white box shows the direction of reporter gene transcription (c) DNA fragments resulting from Sal I digestion of the parental 25.7-kbp plasmid or PCR amplification Sal I yields a single 25.7-kbp linear reporter gene and a 2.6-kbp non-coding DNA fragment were prepared by standard PCR The 25.7-kbp linear reporter gene and the 2.6-kbp non-coding DNA region are colored in red and gray of the coupled transcription/translation reaction of luc-gene as evaluated from the change of luminescence intensity the same nucleotide-unit concentration (1.8 μM or a combination of both (the same luc-gene and nucleotide-unit concentration) (0.12 μM and 1.8 μM the longitudinal axis shows the relative luminescence intensity normalized to that of luc25.7 k The relative protein expression levels with luc25.7 k are presented as means ± SD of at least five independent experiments The above results clearly indicate that the level of gene expression markedly increased in response to an increase in the length of templates, in addition to the effect of nucleotide concentration in the reaction buffer solution. It is revealed that the potency of expression is in the order of luc25.7k > luc4.3k > luc1.7k under all conditions tested here (Fig. 1) but rather on the length of the template DNA These results also suggest that the noncoding region in reporter DNAs is involved in the regulation of gene expression Nucleotide-length dependency of the coupled transcription/translation of the luc-gene (a) Schematic diagram of the parental 25.7-kbp plasmid DNA with restriction enzyme digestion sites (b) DNA fragments resulting from enzyme digestion reactions of the parental plasmid Aat II and ApaL I generate a 11.2-kbp reporter gene and three kinds of 4.8-kbp non-coding DNA fragments a 3.3-kbp reporter gene and five kinds of non-coding DNA fragments (7-bp and a 2.8-kbp reporter gene and four kinds of non-coding DNA fragments (20.7-kbp The reporter genes in the DNA fragments are colored red for Sal I green for Aat II and light blue for ApaL I treatments as evaluated from the luminescence intensity 2.5 ng (c) and 15 ng (d) of digested DNA mixtures were used as DNA templates for the reaction the longitudinal axis shows the relative luminescence intensity normalized to that of luc25.7k The relative protein expression levels with luc25.7k are presented as means ± SD of at least five independent experiments AFM images of reporter DNAs with different lengths together with the schematic representations (a) AFM images of each linear reporter DNAs in 10 mM Tris–HCl buffer (pH7.5) (b) AFM images of each linear reporter DNA in a 0.05% reaction mixture for in vitro gene expression It is thus regarded that the translation phase is not involved in controlling gene expression in the present experiments in a cell-free system By taking the variables n (number density of DNA) and C (density of DNA in base pair units) the relationship is obtained as in \(nL=C.\) From these relationships the total active volume of DNA molecules is deduced to be \({V}_{E }\sim n{v}_{E} \sim \frac{C}{L}\left(L- \alpha {L}^\frac{2}{3}\right)=C(1-\alpha {L}^{-\frac{1}{3}})\) the value \({L}^{-\frac{1}{3}}\) corresponds to the degree of the decrease in gene expression By taking the gene expression of luc1.7k as a control the increase in activity is estimated from the calculations of “2.5–2.0 = 0.5” and “2.5–1.0 = 1.5” These expected values of the increase in genetic activities correspond to the observed experimental trend despite the simplicity of the theoretical argument it has become clear that such relatively long DNA molecules exhibit a shrunken conformation in reaction buffer which increases the opportunity for encountering RNA polymerase and NTPs due to an increase in their effective concentration around DNA Although the discovery of the size effect of DNA on gene expression is still in a preliminary stage it would be promising to extend this insight by shedding light on the actual mechanisms of gene regulation in living cells through extensive studies for longer DNA molecules with the sizes of Mbp–Gbp It would also be interesting to examine the effect of DNA length on the activity of other enzymes For AFM imaging using an SPM-9700 (Shimadzu Japan) with a High-Throughput Scanner (Shimadzu 0.3 μM DNA was dissolved in 10 mM Tris–HCl buffer (pH 7.5) including 10 μM spermidine or in 0.05% TnT Quick Master Mix (in vitro gene expressions reaction mixture) The DNA solutions were transferred onto a freshly cleaved mica surface and then incubated for 10–30 min at room temperature (24 °C) the samples were rinsed with ultra-pure water All measurements were performed in air using the tapping mode was 200 μm long with a spring constant of 9–20 N/m The scanning rate was 2 Hz and images were captured using the height mode in a 512 × 512 pixel format The obtained images were plane-fitted and flattened by the computer program supplied with the imaging module Reaction mixtures containing the reporter DNAs were incubated for 90 min at 30 °C on a Dry Thermo Unit (TAITEC The expression levels of luciferase were evaluated following the addition of luciferin as a luciferase substrate (Luciferase Assay Reagent Promega) by detecting the emission intensity at around 565 nm using a luminometer (MICROTEC Co. 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transcription Transcriptional suppression of ribosomal DNA with phase separation All-or-none folding transition in giant mammalian DNA DNA compaction: Fundamentals and applications Giant DNA molecules exhibit on/off switching of transcriptional activity through conformational transition Sequence-independent and reversible photocontrol of transcription/expression systems using a photosensitive nucleic acid binder Branched-chain polyamine found in hyperthermophiles induces unique temperature-dependent structural changes in genome-size DNA Scaling Concepts in Polymer Physics (Cornell University Press The persistence length of DNA is reached from the persistence length of its null isomer through an internal electrostatic stretching force Critical behavior of megabase-size DNA toward the transition into a compact state The biology and polymer physics underlying large-scale chromosome organization Download references This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI (JP20H02859 to S.S and JP20H01877 to K.Y.) and ISHIZUE 2019 of Kyoto University Research Development Program (to S.S.) designed and performed in vitro coupled transcription/translation experiments interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript The authors declare no competing interests Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91243-x Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science While reporting a good first half to the financial year Japan-based Nishio Rent All sees its events rental activities being hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic with group profits forecast to drop by 31% Managing Director of the company’s Administrative Divisions “The first half of the financial year (ending 31 March) was largely as planned the influence of Covid-19 began to appear in March and there were many cancellations of events.” The company’s net sales for the first half of the financial year were up 6% year-on-year to JPY83.6 billion compared to the same period in the previous year Nishio Rent All has forecast that net sales will be down 2.2% to JPY150.5 billion and operating profit will drop 31% to JPY10.8 billion “The construction machinery sector has not been greatly affected Nishio is closely watching the situation as some private construction projects may be postponed the Olympics and Paralympic Games will be postponed and the situation will remain severe until autumn Nishio expects the demand for events in response to new situations will gradually recover from this fall.” Nishio Rent All ranked 9th in this year’s IRN100 listing of the world’s largest rental companies according to their 2019 reveneus which will be published in the June issue of IRN When Chie Nishio started frequenting the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights in the mid-1990s, she wasn’t the most likely candidate to document the neighborhood’s Hasidic community. But Nishio, who immigrated from Japan in 1969, and her camera were welcomed into that famously close-knit world, and her photos, now on display at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch show no signs of being the work of an outsider Nishio would often see men with full beards had little information to help satisfy her curiosity so she decided to find out more on her own Nishio tried photographing the Hasidim in Williamsburg but found she “couldn’t make a connection with anybody.” When she tried Crown Heights one day “I came out of the subway at Kingston Avenue and I started to walk down the main street I saw a big crowd and I took out my camera so I put my camera back in my bag,” said Nishio “When I turned to a side street I saw a little boy and girl playing with their father I asked the father if it was to OK take a picture and she did so again and again over the years from religious ceremonies to intimate family gatherings “They were very open and curious about what this Japanese woman was doing there There were many newcomers in Crown Heights—but not Japanese females,” Nishio Nishio was also a witness to history, as her time in Crown Heights coincided with some of the final years of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson present for the three-day Crown Heights race riots of 1991 even when she returned and saw signs of the conflict that had taken place Nishio often found herself misunderstood in America and she therefore sympathized with the Hasidim she hoped she could help influence public attitudes about them “I want people to understand other groups of people and to give them more respect.” “The Hasidim of Crown Heights, Brooklyn: A Community Study by Chie Nishio” is on display at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch until Feb overlapping crises stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic The pandemic has led to an increase in global poverty and an erosion of the fiscal space in many developing countries these already- stressed countries are now experiencing the global impact of the war in Ukraine Compounding crises have led to supply chain disruptions that further threaten food and nutrition security and access to energy climate change impacts continue to intensify with natural disasters becoming more frequent and damaging to vulnerable countries The World Bank Group is meeting the enormity and urgency of these crises head-on with the largest response in its history It has called upon the full array of its financial resources It is helping countries worldwide navigate the uncertainties and move forward on the path to recovery Total Bank Group financing for the 24 months between April 2020 and March 2022 reached including from the World Bank (IBRD and IDA) This mobilization has included the effective use of trust funds and financial intermediary funds (FIFs) that complement and contribute to the World Bank Group’s core funding and activities the World Bank Group disbursed $5.8 billion of trust fund financing These resources support a wide variety of projects being implemented by recipients on the ground and advisory services provided by the World Bank Group staff to support client needs The relatively modest volume of these disbursements—5 percent of total World Bank project disbursements and 25 percent of administrative expenditures in FY2022—belies their many advantages and the out-sized role they play in specific areas that enhance World Bank Group efforts to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity in a sustainable way The World Bank Group makes strategic use of trust fund resources to complement its own funding and advance the development priorities of its clients Taking a look at FY2022 and the last five years (FY2018–22) this annual report showcases how the World Bank Group manages and utilizes trust funds and FIFs to deploy financing quickly and generate new knowledge to support client countries during these turbulent times Trust funds and FIFs have supported rapid responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies In the first 10 months of the pandemic (March–December 2020) World Bank trust fund commitments totaled $644 million for COVID-19 related operations When war erupted in Ukraine in February 2022 the World Bank Group disbursed $2.45 billion of trust fund resources to support Ukraine from April to June 2022 Early trust fund support for the preparation of new World Bank investment projects was particularly important in ramping up the Bank’s COVID-19 response In-country operations and experiences over the last two years have also led to the development of a new global trust-funded program and a new FIF They aim to help low-income countries strengthen the resilience of their health systems and facilitate investments in pandemic prevention Trust funds and FIFs have extended the Bank Group’s reach in countries affected by fragility and non-sovereign entities that cannot receive World Bank Group financing FCV-affected countries have received more than half (57 percent) of total World Bank trust fund disbursements for recipient-executed activities during the last five years This includes helping to protect the poor and most vulnerable during active and post-conflict situations in Afghanistan which received 71 percent of World Bank trust fund disbursements to recipient-executed activities in countries impacted by FCV in FY2022 Two new trust funds were established to support Ukraine’s efforts to rebuild Development partners have also continued to demonstrate their commitment to the people of Afghanistan Operations in Afghanistan were paused due to political instability in 2021 but the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund has supported work- arounds to get $1.07 billion of trust fund resources flowing through UN agencies to help deliver essential health services and other emergency assistance to the Afghan people Trust funds and FIFs have supported the generation and dissemination of knowledge and advice to advance crisis recovery efforts and to achieve long-term development goals trust funds have financed 63 percent of the World Bank’s advisory services and analytics (ASA) providing countries with guidance and recommendations on strengthening policies ASA is a core component of the World Bank Group’s knowledge services and products which also include diagnostic tools and guidelines that support Bank Group operations and global public knowledge goods that are widely shared to support better development outcomes Approximately 70 percent of the World Bank trust fund disbursements for Bank-executed country and global engagement activities in the last five years have supported knowledge products and services Over 40 trust-funded activities from around the world are featured in this report They demonstrate the many ways trust funds and FIFs are contributing to the four development outcomes the World Bank Group has focused on delivering throughout the pandemic and compounding global crises ensuring sustainable business growth and job creation Our robust response has relied on strong collaboration and recipient clients for their unwavering commitment and determination during these challenging times we are navigating the uncertainties and progressing toward a greener