the Japanese subsidiary of Chinese robotics company JAKA Robotics has recently launched a new base in Japan to expand its market presence and reinforce its position within the global high-end industrial supply chain amid the rising demand for industrial automation "We chose Toyohashi to be closer to our Japanese customers harness local industrial and human resource advantages and foster technical collaboration to raise our brand's profile," said Makoto Watanabe The Toyohashi site will function as a scenario-based robot technology center promoting localized applications of robotic technologies It will also feature a local solution verification platform to develop flexible systems for industries such as automotive JAKA Robotics Japan plans to foster regional talent development through partnerships with institutions like Toyohashi University of Technology strengthening industry-academia-research collaborations to cultivate specialized talent "We look forward to the strong vitality that JAKA Robotics can bring to our regional economy through close collaboration with local and domestic companies," said Naoto Nagasaka "What's even more exciting is that JAKA is actively advancing industry-academia collaborative research with local universities which we believe will not only cultivate highly creative and technically skilled professionals but also inject new driving force into the city's development." Metrics details Rabies virus (RABV) is the causative agent of rabies RABV strains can be classified into fixed strains (laboratory strains) and street strains (field/clinical strains) which have different properties including cell tropism and neuroinvasiveness RABV Toyohashi strain is a street strain isolated in Japan from an imported case which had been bitten by rabid dog in the Philippines In order to facilitate molecular studies of RABV we established a reverse genetics (RG) system for the study of the Toyohashi strain The recombinant virus was obtained from a cDNA clone of Toyohashi strain and exhibited similar growth efficiency as the original virus in cultured cell lines Both the original and recombinant strains showed similar pathogenicity with high neuroinvasiveness in mice and the infected mice developed a long and inconsistent incubation period We also generated a recombinant Toyohashi strain expressing viral phosphoprotein (P protein) fused with the fluorescent protein mCherry and tracked the intracellular dynamics of the viral P protein using live-cell imaging The presented reverse genetics system for Toyohashi strain will be a useful tool to explore the fundamental molecular mechanisms of the replication of RABV street strains we established an RG system for the Toyohashi strain The recombinant Toyohashi strain was recovered from cloned cDNA and had the same virological characteristics as the original virus as a street strain from the aspects of both in vitro and in vivo we generated a recombinant Toyohashi strain encoding the viral phosphoprotein (P protein) fused with the fluorescent protein mCherry and applied this to live-cell imaging for tracking the intracellular movement of the viral P protein Growth efficiency of the recombinant RABV Toyohashi strain (rToyo) in cell cultures (A) Schematic representation of the plasmid construct encoding the wild-type Toyohashi strain (Toyohashi The full genome cDNA is flanked by the T7 promoter sequence and the antigenomic hepatitis delta virus ribozyme (HDV-Rbz) in a pUC19 vector (B) Mouse neuroblastoma (NA) cells and mouse myoblasts (G-8) were inoculated with Toyohashi (blue square) or rToyo (red circle) at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 0.01 The culture supernatants containing progeny viruses were collected at the indicated time points and titrated using a focus forming assay Means ± standard deviations of triplicate data are shown in the graph Statistics were calculated by a multiple t-test with Welch correction There was no statistically significant difference between titers of rToyo and Toyohashi at each day post infection (dpi) in either cells Pathogenicity of rToyo following intramuscular inoculation Six-week-old male ddY mice were inoculated intramuscularly at the left calf with RABV and monitored daily up to 30 dpi (A) Survival rate of mice (n = 10) inoculated with rToyo and Toyohashi at doses of 102 FFU/head (B) Survival rate of mice (n = 5) inoculated with rCVS and CVS at doses of 106 FFU/head Statistical differences in the survival rate between rToyo and between rCVS and CVS groups were examined by a log-rank test (C) Incubation periods of mice inoculated with rToyo Toyohashi and Yokohama at doses of 102 FFU/head and mice inoculated with rCVS and CVS at doses of 106 FFU/head Each column shows the date of disease onset in each mouse (means ± standard deviation) Distribution of viral mRNA in the brains of RABV-infected mice Six-week-old male ddY mice were inoculated intramuscularly with 103 FFU of rToyo or Toyohashi Mice inoculated with PBS were included as controls (A) Representative images of the distribution of RABV N mRNA (red) in the whole brains at the terminal stage of infection (6 dpi) (B) Magnified fields of the cerebral neocortex and hippocampus cerebellum of Toyohashi (left panel) and rToyo (right panel)-infected mice Generation of fluorescent protein expressing rToyo-P-mCherry for live-cell imaging (A) Schematic representation of the plasmid construction of rToyo-P-mCherry a recombinant Toyohashi strain carrying the fluorescent reporter mCherry gene at the 3′-terminus of the viral P gene (B) Sanger sequencing chromatograms of C terminus region of rToyo and rToyo-P-mCherry (C) Images of fluorescent foci in NA cells at 4 dpi with RABVs Cells were strained with anti-RABV N antibody (green) and Hoechst 33342 (blue) The scale bars on the images indicate 100 μm (D) Intracellular trafficking of Toyohashi P protein SK-N-SH cells were infected with rToyo-P-mCherry and then monitored by live-cell time-lapse imaging from 14 to 26 hpi Fluorescence signals from P-mCherry were visualized in the red color Yellow arrowheads indicate fusion between inclusion bodies Scale bars indicate 20 μm and the time post-infection is displayed in the lower left corner of each panel All the images have been extracted from Supplementary Movie and are shown at 10-min intervals the cells also accumulated Negri body-like structures of various sizes in the cytosol These results indicated that our RG system successfully recovers the Toyohashi strain without impairing the virological properties of the street strain these results indicate that the Toyohashi strain is a typical street strain causing a long and variable incubation period with high neuroinvasiveness All of the findings described above indicate that the Toyohashi strain has a lower growth ability in the central nervous system than the CVS strain this is the first study to observe the kinetics of Negri body-like structures of a RABV street strain by live-cell imaging Future comparative analysis of the dynamics of Negri body-like structures of street and fixed strains may provide new insights into RABV replication we have established a RG system for the Toyohashi strain and successfully obtained a recombinant virus without impairment of the properties of the street strain Generation of rToyo-P-mCherry expressing viral protein tagged with a fluorescent protein offers the tool for tracking viral protein and the development of Negri body-like structures in cells This RG system will be a powerful tool for manipulating the genome of the Toyohashi strain to investigate the molecular basis of infection and pathogenesis of the RABV street strain which is currently prevalent in the Philippines All animal experimental protocols were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Hokkaido University (Approval number 19-0014 and 24-0002) All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations for animal experiments in Hokkaido University (National University Corporation Hokkaido University Regulations on Animal Experimentation) This study is reported in accordance with ARRIVE guidelines Mouse neuroblastoma (NA) cells were kindly gifted by Dr NA and human neuroblastoma (SK-N-SH) cells (RCB0426 Japan) were cultured in Eagle’s minimum essential medium (MEM) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) SK-N-SH cells were maintained in type I collagen-coated plates Mouse muscle myoblast (G-8) cells (CRL-1456; ATCC USA) were cultured in high glucose Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% FBS and 10% horse serum All cells were cultivated at 37 °C in the presence of 5% CO2 The working stocks of RABVs were propagated in NA cells or suckling mouse brains in all experiments To obtain a plasmid vector of pToyo-P-mCherry the mCherry gene fragment was amplified from pmCherry Vector by PCR and inserted at the 3′-terminus of P gene in pToyo plasmid The resulting plasmids pToyo and pToyo-P-mCherry were transformed into Escherichia coli HST08 cells (Takara Bio BHK/T7-9 cells were co-transfected with pToyo or pToyo-P-mCherry The recovered recombinant RABV (rRABV) clones in the culture supernatants were collected at 5 days post-transfection and propagated twice in NA cells To confirm the insertion of mCherry gene in virus genome of rToyo-P-mCherry a cDNA fragment (nucleotide positions from 2258 to 3049 in the genome of Toyohashi) was amplified by RT-PCR and directly sequenced by conventional Sanger sequencing methods Monolayers of NA cells in 24 well-plates were inoculated with tenfold serially diluted specimens Following adsorption for 1 h at 37 °C cells were cultured in overlay medium (MEM containing 2% FBS and 0.5% methylcellulose) Cells were stained with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled anti-RABV N antibody (Fujirebio Infected cells were observed under a fluorescence microscope (IX73 Japan) and virus titers were calculated as focus-forming units per milliliter (FFU/mL) The fluorescent images were obtained by CellSens Imaging Software (Olympus) NA and G-8 cells in 24 well-plates were inoculated with Toyohashi and rToyo at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 0.01 Cell culture supernatants were collected at 24 72 and 96 hpi and subjected to titration by the focus forming assay as described above The median survival time was calculated using GraphPad Prism (version 10.1.0 mice were inoculated intramuscularly with 103 FFU of Toyohashi or rToyo The brains were collected from mice showing > 10% body weight loss at 7–15 dpi and fixed in 10% buffered formalin Fixed brains were embedded in paraffin and sectioned at 4 μm ISH was performed using the RNAscope 2.5HD Detection Reagent-RED (Advanced Cell Diagnostics USA) according to the manufacturer's instructions brain tissue sections were baked in a dry oven at 60 °C for 1 h and deparaffinized tissue sections were pretreated with RNAscope H2O2 solution for 10 min at room temperature The tissue sections were treated with RNAscope Target Retrieval Reagent for 15 min at 98–102 °C and RNAscope Protease Plus Reagent for 20 min at 40 °C The RNAscope Probe-V-RABV-N-C1 targeting the Toyohashi N RNA region was designed and manufactured by Advanced Cell Diagnostics (Cat Tissues were counterstained with hematoxylin and images were captured using a Nikon ECLIPSE 80i light microscope (Nikon SK-N-SH cells in glass base dishes were infected with rToyo-P-mCherry in MEM supplemented with 10% FBS The cells were placed in a stage top incubation chamber at 37 °C and 5% CO2 (Tokai Hit Live-cell time-lapse imaging was carried out from 14 to 26 hpi using a BZ-X800 fluorescence microscope (KEYENCE All statistical analysis was performed using GraphPad Prism (version 10.1.0) A Welch’s t-test was employed for the comparison of two groups at multiple time points A Log-rank (Mantel-cox) test was used for the survival analysis The nucleotide sequence of RABV Toyohashi P2I-2M is available in the GenBank repository (accession number: LC812291) All other data generated during this study are included in this published article WHO Expert Consultation on rabies. World Health Organization. WHO expert consultation on rabies: third report. World Health Organization. https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/272364 (2018) Global burden of rabies in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019: Results from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 Evaluation of country infrastructure as an indirect measure of dog-mediated human rabies deaths On the evolution of fixed strains of rabies virus Genetic and phenotypic characterization of a rabies virus strain isolated from a dog in Tokyo A single amino acid change in rabies virus glycoprotein increases virus spread and enhances virus pathogenicity Involvement of the rabies virus phosphoprotein gene in neuroinvasiveness Roles of the rabies virus phosphoprotein isoforms in pathogenesis Fourth imported rabies case since the eradication of rabies in Japan in 1957 Identification of viral genomic elements responsible for rabies virus neuroinvasiveness The matrix protein of rabies virus binds to RelAp43 to modulate NF-κB-dependent gene expression related to innate immunity Increased pathogenicity of rabies virus due to modification of a non-coding region Phosphoprotein gene contributes to the enhanced apoptosis induced by wild-type rabies virus GD-SH-01 in vitro Reverse genetics in high throughput: Rapid generation of complete negative strand RNA virus cDNA clones and recombinant viruses thereof Near-infrared fluorescent protein iRFP720 is optimal for in vivo fluorescence imaging of rabies virus infection Establishment of a reverse genetics system for rabies virus strain Komatsugawa Molecular analysis of the mutational effects of Thai street rabies virus with increased virulence in mice after passages in the BHK cell line Genomic diversity and evolution of the lyssaviruses Complete genome sequence of a highly virulent rabies virus isolated from a rabid pig in South China Large-scale phylogenomic analysis reveals the complex evolutionary history of rabies virus in multiple carnivore hosts Large-scale phylogenetic analysis reveals genetic diversity and geographic distribution of rabies virus in South-East and South Asia Negri bodies are viral factories with properties of liquid organelles Rabies virus infection induces the formation of stress granules closely connected to the viral factories Serial passage of a street rabies virus in mouse neuroblastoma cells resulted in attenuation: Potential role of the additional N-glycosylation of a viral glycoprotein in the reduced pathogenicity of street rabies virus Point mutations in the glycoprotein ectodomain of field rabies viruses mediate cell culture adaptation through improved virus release in a host cell dependent and independent manner Rabies virus infection of myotubes and neurons as elements of the neuromuscular junction Functional Characterization of Negri Bodies (NBs) in rabies virus-infected cells: Evidence that NBs are sites of viral transcription and replication Rescue of rabies virus from cloned cdna and identification of the pathogenicity-related gene: Glycoprotein gene is associated with virulence for adult mice Generation of recombinant rabies viruses encoding NanoLuc luciferase for antiviral activity assays Revisiting rabies in Japan: Is there cause for alarm? Glu333 in rabies virus glycoprotein is involved in virus attenuation through astrocyte infection and interferon responses Download references This study was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI under Grant numbers 23H02376 and 23KJ0053; the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) Grant number JP243fa627005; the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Moonshot R&D Grant number JPMJMS2025; the Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare Grant number JPMH19HA1008; the World-leading Innovative and Smart Education (WISE) Program from the Ministry of Education International Institute for Zoonosis Control Institute for Vaccine Research and Development contributed to critical resources and methodology All authors reviewed and approved the final version of 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/s41598-024-69613-y 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 The new research has established that Japan's \"Ushikawa Man\" fossils once thought to be from a human who lived more than 20,000 years ago The fossils were discovered in the late 1950s They consist of a long bone thought to be from a human arm and the end or \"head\" of a leg bone The bone fragments were once thought to be some of the oldest human fossils found in Japan The 20,000-year-old fossilized bones of "Ushikawa Man," thought to be some of Japan's most ancient human fossils are not what scientists believed they were The fossils were found in the late 1950s in the city of Toyohashi, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo. But Gen Suwa an anthropologist at the University of Tokyo who led the new project told Live Science that doubts about the Ushikawa fossils were first raised in the late 1980s The new research, published Dec. 1, 2024 in the journal Anthropological Science shows beyond a doubt that the bones are from an ancient brown bear He added that the bones of bears were rarely found in archaeological sites in Japan from this time and so Japanese scientists — including the paleontologists who found the fossils in the 1950s — had a limited understanding of what bear bones could look like these scientists had made "detailed and very accurate" descriptions and also collected large numbers of fossilized skeletal remains over several decades Related: Ancient bones reveal previously unknown Japanese ancestors The fossils are named for the Ushikawa district of Toyohashi where they were unearthed during excavations at a quarry between 1957 and 1959 Suwa said Japanese scientists at that time thought a different bone fragment known as "Akashi Man" was the earliest human fossil from mainland Japan perhaps more than 780,000 years old; but the fossil was destroyed in an Allied air raid on Tokyo during World War II Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox an anatomical analysis in the 1980s of a plaster cast of the lost Akashi fossil indicated it was probably a fragment of a recent human arm bone that had been washed into a different archaeological layer and then mineralized That finding led to greater attention on the Ushikawa fossils while the head of the femur was also determined to be from a bear The discovery that the Ushikawa fossils are not human means the oldest human fossils found on the Japanese mainland are from a limestone quarry near the Japanese city of Hamakita They comprise fragments of a human leg bone collar bone and skull that are thought to be from two different people — one who lived about 14,000 years ago and another who lived about 17,000 years ago —Hirota people of Japan intentionally deformed infant skulls 1,800 years ago —Doban-kun: A 'cute' human-shaped counting tool from prehistoric Japan —Haunting 'mermaid' mummy in Japan is probably a gruesome monkey-fish mix Human fossil remains have also been found on Japan's Ryukyu Islands — also known as the Nansei Islands — situated about midway between Japan and Taiwan Scientists think the youngest of these fossils date from about 18,000 years ago while the oldest may date from up to 32,000 years ago Live Science ContributorTom Metcalfe is a freelance journalist and regular Live Science contributor who is based in London in the United Kingdom Archaeologists discover hundreds of metal objects up to 3,400 years old on mysterious volcanic hilltop in Hungary May's full 'Flower Moon' will be a micromoon Your browser does not support JavaScript, or it is disabled．Please check the site policy for more information Aichi Prefecture--It really is a one-of-a-kind opportunity: Tucking into “oden” hotpot aboard a moving tram The dining service along Toyohashi Rail Road Co.’s Shinai Line is named Odensha blending the words “oden” and “densha” (train) 8 will operate every Friday through Sunday until May 5 an additional train serving the winter delicacy alongside alcohol-free beverages is slated to run once a month 5 for students from three colleges in Toyohashi that had signed cooperation and collaboration agreements with Toyohashi Rail Road The standard cost per diner is 5,800 yen ($37) through the end of March Draught beer will be combined with a boxed meal and oden under an all-you-can-drink offer an Odensha Premium program will be offered on Friday through Sunday at 7,200 yen per person A dedicated “non-alcohol” package is pitched at those who prefer soft drinks Odensha trips in November were fully booked Reservations for tours for December are being taken from 9:30 a.m on Nov contact Toyotetsu Travel Service’s Emoa tourism bureau Reservations can be made via the agency’s official Japanese website at (https://www.mei-rakuraku.jp/toyotetsukankobus/BTCS/Tour/Detail?course=888) Popular Odensha tram in Aichi Prefecture begins running Nov Student holds wrestling event on streetcar to mark graduation China-made tram eyed to take hikers up Mount Fuji Toyohashi offers planetarium with relaxing tatami mats Information on the latest cherry blossom conditions Please right click to use your browser’s translation function.) A series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life A series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II In-house News and Messages No reproduction or republication without written permission Today's print edition Home Delivery died Monday of natural causes at the Toyohashi Zoo & Botanical Park in Aichi Prefecture She was 25½ years old — equivalent to about 100 human years.googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1499653692894-0'); }); Oto had been at the Toyohashi zoo since July 2001 she retained a glossy coat and had no chronic illnesses The zoo made adjustments to her diet and environment to keep her as comfortable as possible in her final days “Beloved by lion enthusiasts across the country Oto brought joy and lasting memories to countless visitors We would like to express our deep gratitude to her for gracing us with her presence May she rest in peace,” the zoo said in a statement on its official website The zoo will set up a floral tribute stand at the lion enclosure from March 11 to 20 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 Search Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) conducted two overseas training programs supported by the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN) for KOSEN students from all over Japan and our university mainly in our overseas base in Malaysia (TUT- Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Technology Collaboration Centre in Penang; TUT-USM Penang) A total of 84 students participated in the two-week "Project Hand-on Training Program" and one-week "Cross-Cultural Training Program" including 62 students from 19 KOSEN 13 TUT undergraduate students and nine TUT master's students as facilitators they participated in lecture given by the Consulate-General of Japan in Penang interacted with local Jit Sin High School (Cluster School of Excellence) students and broaden their exposure in engineering by visiting different types of companies in Penang they were given a tour around the George Town area "It was a fulfilling program and enhanced my experience." "I'm glad I was able to make friends with many students from other KOSEN" and "I hope this training will continue in the future." This program will be further improved and will continue in the future [2024 Penang training for students of KOSEN and TUT (Penang Training locations: Universiti Sains Malaysia (our exchange partner university and location of TUT-USM Penang) Jit Sin High School (school of excellence) Hackathon program at the Universiti Sains Malaysia Lecture by the Consulate-General of Japan in Penang 2024 Penang training for students of KOSEN and University of Technology recruitment https://www.tut.ac.jp/develop/kosen/kosen-penang.html https ://www.tut.ac.jp/international/exchange/penang.html Consulate-General of Japan in Penang website (external site) " Lecture for students from Toyohashi University of Technology and Technical Junior College " * Project Hand-on Training Program https://www.penang.my.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_ja/11_000001_00941.html " Lecture for students of National Institutes of Technology and Toyohashi University of Technology " * Cross-Cultural Training Program https://www.penang.my.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_ja/11_000001_00946.html [Obituary] Dr. Terashima Kazuhiko, President of Toyohashi University of Technology, passed away International Visiting Researcher Dr. Shalini Nagabooshanam receives the Best Oral Presentation Award at ICANM 2024 Entrance Ceremony for Graduate School of Engineering 2024 Delegation from United Nations University Paid a Courtesy Call on President Wakahara TUT was ranked for the first time in the overall ranking of THE Impact Ranking 2024 1-1 Hibarigaoka, Tempaku-cho, Toyohashi, Aichi, 441-8580Contact Us will soon be sent to a zoo in Indonesia for breeding The giraffe named Kiryu has been raised at Toyohashi Zoo and Botanical Park A farewell event will be held at the park on Oct 13 before he departs for Batu Secrete Zoo in Indonesia on Oct please disable the ad blocking feature and reload the page This website uses cookies to collect information about your visit for purposes such as showing you personalized ads and content By clicking “Accept all,” you will allow the use of these cookies Users accessing this site from EEA countries and UK are unable to view this site without your consent There are currently two female giraffes in the Indonesian zoo and the move is being made with plans for breeding the third child of his father Uryu and mother Yurara Kiryu has grown up healthy and is now about 3 meters tall the zoo will still have one male and two female giraffes “I hope he will be loved overseas and be able to spend his days with his new friends in good health.” Our weekly ePaper presents the most noteworthy recent topics in an exciting © 2025 The Japan News - by The Yomiuri Shimbun Aichi Prefecture--The three-day Toyohashi Gion Matsuri kicked off July 19 at Yoshida Jinja shrine here Held annually since the middle of the Edo Period (1603-1867) the festival features handheld “tube” fireworks that spew out pillars of fire showering the people holding with them in a cascade of sparks around 350 fireworks were dedicated to the shrine Spectators thronged the area as representatives of shrine parishioners from each nearby town gingerly hoisted the lit bamboo cannons The activity makes the festival one of summer’s most eye-catching events about 12,000 fireworks will be launched on the banks of the nearby Toyokawa river Special fireworks that shoot up from a barge floating on the river will be revived for the first time in 10 years Adrenaline rush with handheld fireworks display at Aichi shrine Fireworks displays are back this summer after COVID-19 hiatus Akita’s famed Omagari fireworks fest to be held Aug Winter fireworks draw in tourists to famed shrine in Hiroshima AD Leave a rating/comment#PaintingBack to ArticlesSHARE the Toyohashi Gion Festival—during which local men set off large handheld fireworks as part of a Shinto ritual—has taken place annually for more than 350 years According to the AFP photographer Yasuyoshi Chiba each male member of the shrine makes his own set of tezutsu hanabi from bamboo covered by straw ropes with a loaded gun and metal powder.” The festival brings together participants from several nearby towns and this year Yasuyoshi Chiba visited Toyokawa and Toyohashi to photograph some of the spectacular scenes We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com A collection of winning and honored images from this year’s nature-photo competition A collection of amazing recent images made with the Hubble Space Telescope Mourners of Pope Francis gathered at the Vatican scenes from the the second weekend of Coachella 2025 and landscapes of the Earth’s arctic and subarctic regions 12 faculty members from the National University of Laos visited our university under the JICA training program.After an overview of the university and introduction of research activities and industry-academia collaboration by Prof they visited the experimental training factory and the Institute for Research on Next-generation Semiconductor and Sensing Science (IRES²) and had an exchange meeting with students including those from Laos at Hibari Lounge Visit to the experimental training factory Aichi – The summer tradition of drinking beer while riding the “Noryo Beer Tram” in Toyohashi after a test-ride was held Wednesday evening The special tram will make a round trip between Ekimae station and Undokoenmae station of the Toyotetsu city line Wednesday’s temperature in the city was 28.5 C enjoyed the summer mood with snacks and bottomless beer A care worker who participated with her mother smiled and said: “I have always wanted to try the ride someday The rides will be available only for three months Please view the main text area of the page by skipping the main menu. The page may not be displayed properly if the JavaScript is deactivated on your browser Japanese version the house is located on a site surrounded by roads on the three sides in toyohashi city of aichi the house can not open broadly outward without sacrificing the privacy of its occupants to allow the dwelling to open toward nature and sunlight the design team organizes the house around an inner courtyard the interior spaces of the junichi suezaki architect office + osamu kyusojin-designed ‘house in toyohashi’ largely face this light-filled and other family rooms are all integrated within a corridor-type procession which encircles the courtyard to ensure spaciousness and brightness the private rooms not facing the central garden are illuminated by high clerestory windows along with low ribbon windows along the floor taking in natural sunlight while blocking a view from the outside junichi suezaki architects + osamu kyusojin works with shinpei sasahara of oikos landscape architects to design the gardened ‘house in toyohashi.’ the courtyard seeks to create an emotionally impressive atmosphere by using the garden stones collected by the client’s father the planting outside seen from the low windows are also designed by oikos landscape architects with the courtyard as the center of the house the flow of time and the changes of seasons can always be felt architecture: junichi suezaki architect office + osamu kyusojin landscape designer: oikos landscape architects construction: hagimori construction co.　 AXOR presents three bathroom concepts that are not merely places of function but destinations in themselves — sanctuaries of style A fish-shaped robot that can swim under water.© Kentaro Takagi/RIKEN Shortly after pausing a video showing some of his earliest creations — snake- and fish-shaped robots that wriggle and swim underwater using electrically controlled strips of plastic — Kentaro Takagi reflects on the rapid transformation his discipline has undergone in the past 20 years “The field of soft robotics hadn’t even been born when I started researching artificial muscle technology in 2004,” he says we have collaborators in Japanese industries looking to develop new products using polymer actuators and sensors They need design guides for mass production.” A professor in mechanical engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology Takagi is leading a team of graduate students looking to usher in a new era of soft robotics by implementing the sharp rules of control engineering — an approach that uses mathematical modelling to approximate and optimize the behaviours of complex systems Artificial muscles on Takagi’s radar include ionic polymer–metal composites thin membranes that curl up when a voltage is applied to them But predicting how quickly and precisely these muscles move is tricky because performance is related to variables that change rapidly in time and space such as the ion concentration inside the membranes An artificial muscle motor that twists in response to electrical signals.© Kentaro Takagi/DENSO CORP “The equations governing polymer materials are complicated and difficult to solve,” says Takagi “Engineers typically use finite element analysis software the team turned to a mathematical technique known as symbolic finite element discretization symbolic analysis produces equations that relate system performance to various design parameters By modelling sensors based on ionic polymer–metal composites with these new equations Takagi’s team was able to accurately forecast regions of high ion concentrations at a fraction of typical computational costs Takagi was recently approached by DENSO CORP. a Japanese manufacturer of automobile components to tackle an unexpected side-effect of electric-vehicle adoption: consumers now want all interior motors to be as silent as the battery-powered engine had developed a noiseless motor using twisted polymer fishing lines that twist in response to heat with hundreds of times the mechanical power of human muscles Takagi helped the company understand how highly twisted geometries can move in ways that appear counter-intuitive at first glance the polymer chains become inclined and that changes the directions of contraction and expansion,” explains Takagi you can eventually lower the tension in the coil while still having high torque This is critical for understanding how these coiled fishing-line muscles contract.” Takagi’s lab is now seeking to expand upon a field he dubs smart materials robotics “Being able to model several different polymer actuator materials is our advantage; there are limited places in the world that can do this,” says Takagi “We’re seeking to connect materials scientists and robotic researchers using the toolbox of control engineering.” the building is surrounded by convenience stores and their parking lots on the south and west sides and the eastern connecting road with adjacent houses on the north the main challenge of the project was how to secure a bright and open living space while ensuring enough privacy for its residents all images by toshiyuki yano led by architect keiichi kiriyama, airhouse approached ‘house in toyohashi’ through a series of steps that ensure privacy as well as an open living space with plenty of natural light inside the gable roof is lowered on the south side while two large ‘house-shaped’ windows have been opened on the east and west sides each room of the two-story house has been placed on the four corners of the building and connected via a bridge on the upper level all spaces of the interior benefit from plenty of natural light an enclosed courtyard garden (or ‘tsubo niwa’ in japanese) is placed on the south side of the building incorporating the outside environment into the interior it is possible to secure enough privacy without losing the connection to nature and the exterior surroundings a rich living space is created by carefully considering the shape of the roof architect: airhouse National Report Aichi Prefecture--A municipal planetarium here will soon offer a family-friendly box where visitors can lie flat on tatami mats and look up at the stars large enough for a family with two children will be available at the city’s audiovisual education center starting Nov which are often used in traditional Japanese rooms “Experience such comfort that you may drift off to sleep,” said Yuki Sugiura Sugiura hopes the new attraction will make the planetarium more appealing to adults This new box has been installed among the regular seats in a space formerly occupied by a large star projector until 1989 the planetarium has added three premium reclining leather seats that will also become available on Nov Both the premium seats and the box will cost 700 yen ($4.68) in addition to the planetarium admission fee of 300 yen for adults and 100 yen for elementary and junior high school students VOX POPULI: Spring is the best time to look up and peek into the distant universe EDITORIAL: Teen science projects have potential to stun even the experts Fireball turns ‘night into day’ in western Japan Airliner takes passengers for up-close look at the starry sky An elementary school in a central Japan city has been offering an English-immersion program a rare move for a public elementary school With the exception of international schools and private schools that offer lessons in English the use of the language is limited at Japanese public elementary schools Many schools start teaching English from third grade and English classes became mandatory for fifth and sixth grades from fiscal 2020 But at Haccho elementary school in Toyohashi English is the dominant language for a special class in each grade It is used throughout the curriculum except for Japanese language and ethics classes and Japanese is only used when a teacher has to explain the meaning of a word "How many cherries are there?" asked a female teacher from the Philippines in a second grade mathematics class "I can understand words I don't know when I listen to someone talking I want to talk to foreign people in the future," said 7-year-old attendee Mihito Nishitani who has been teaching the classes with foreigners "There were children who became confused at first but their ability to understand English grew far more than what we had expected." He said lessons progress slower than when conducted in Japanese and require more preparation time but the school believes the program is beneficial for students and hopes their efforts will serve as a model case for other schools nationwide "We feel (the program) stimulates children's intellectual curiosity We've seen an increase in the academic performance of students including those who are not in the all-English classes," said the school's vice-principal Tsunehisa Inada which is home to a number of foreign residents and is a member of the council of municipalities with a large number of foreign residents has put a lot of effort into English education Since introducing the program from fiscal 2020 the school solicits city-wide attendees of the classes with a capacity of 26 students each "There are challenges in supporting teachers and providing financial assistance but there is a significance in realizing such classes at public elementary schools in which pupils with diverse backgrounds attend," said Tetsuo Harada a Waseda University professor and an advisor at the World Family's Institute of Bilingual Science Harada added six years of elementary school education is not enough for students to learn all subjects in English "We need to work with junior and senior high schools." No. of primary, middle school students in Japan down 1 mil. in decade FEATURE: Japan kids learn financial education as cashless society takes hold FEATURE: Perseverance and praise key for child learning: brain expert To have the latest news and stories delivered to your inbox Simply enter your email address below and an email will be sent through which to complete your subscription Please check your inbox for a confirmation email Thank you for reaching out to us.We will get back to you as soon as possible Aichi Prefecture--Revelers enjoyed servings of “oden” hotpot and cold beer aboard a running tram here on Nov 7 in a preview of the city’s iconic winter party tram run The Odensha tram will run once a day from Nov 25 at around noon on Sundays and in the evenings on weekdays and Saturdays The 9.4-kilometer round trip from the Ekimae Dentei stop at Toyohashi Station takes about 90 minutes has been offering the winter party tram since 2007 The cost is 5,000 yen ($33) per diner or 140,000 yen for a charter service until the end of January only the Odensha Premium program will be available offering upgraded food and drinks at 6,500 yen per diner and 156,000 yen for a charter More information is available at https://www.toyotetsu.com/news/000412.html Bungling of paperwork meant boy born out of wedlock located in the east of Aichi Prefecture on the border with Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the leading tomato producing areas in Aichi Prefecture In addition to the area planted and the amount of tomatoes harvested has earned a reputation for being of high quality one of the largest groups of greenhouse tomato growers in the Tokai region showed us how his high-quality tomatoes are cultivated located in the eastern part of Aichi Prefecture is a prosperous area for both open-air and greenhouse farming due to its flat land and relatively mild climate throughout the year Especially in the southern part of Toyohashi facing the Pacific Ocean vast farmlands were created during the postwar reconstruction period and after the Toyokawa water supply opened in 1968 the area developed further as an agricultural area The city’s agriculture covers about 70 crops and the variety and output are among the highest in Japan tomatoes have seen a dramatic increase in sales thanks to branding by the growers The JA Toyohashi Tomato Club is one of the largest groups of winter/spring tomato producers in the Tokai region (tomatoes harvested in greenhouses from October to June) In order to meet the needs of consumers who want to purchase high quality the JA Toyohashi Tomato Club recorded pesticide sprays and conducted pesticide residue analysis in order to grow tomatoes that are safe and can be eaten with peace of mind In order to allow consumers to choose tomatoes based on sugar content the company also branded high-sugar tomatoes naming tomatoes with sugar content of 9 degrees or higher “Rei,” tomatoes with sugar content of 7 degrees or higher “Bi,” and tomatoes with sugar content of 6 degrees or higher “Ai the company completed a new variety of mini-tomatoes that have become popular in recent years which offers both color variation and taste The seven colors of colorful mini-tomatoes The state-of-the-art glasshouses provide an optimal environment for growing tomatoes by closely controlling temperature Otake took over his family’s farming business at the age of 20 The family had been growing melons and watermelons so he shared information with his colleagues in the same business and worked hard through trial and error There are more than 300 varieties of tomatoes registered in Japan Otake mainly grows “Momotaro Next,” a large tomato variety that is hardy and can be grown for a long time While high-sugar tomatoes are generally popular these days Ohtake aims to cultivate tomatoes that are not only high in sugar content but also have a good balance with yield Income is proportional to the yield of tomatoes and yield is proportional to the size of the tomatoes so a certain amount of size must be secured If consumers do not think that Toyohashi’s tomatoes are delicious Otake personally went to supermarkets to listen to consumers’ opinions What he realized was that “tomatoes with high sugar content are in demand Growers in the same jurisdiction are not rivals but comrades One of the strengths of the JA Toyohashi Tomato Club growers is that they share their know-how with each other It takes many months to grow a tomato from a seedling until it bears fruit and the challenge can only be attempted once a year 10 people can take on 10 different challenges so 10 years’ worth of data can be obtained at once Ohtake stresses that the value of the tomatoes they produce can be increased Ohtake has been growing tomatoes using “coco bags” since 2022 Coco-bag is a material for growing plants made of coconut shell It has a well-balanced combination of water retention and drainage properties fine control of water and fertilizers was possible but if pathogens developed in the water itself all tomatoes in the greenhouse would be affected the spread of damage can be prevented by replacing the appropriate bag three tomato plants are planted in each CocoBag for a total of approximately 8,000 tomato plants He shares information about this revolutionary isolated cultivation system and now 80% of the growers in the JA Toyohashi Tomato Section have adopted it If each grower shares what they have learned from their experience we can expand the yield and sales price of tomatoes in the entire region Now that we have the problem of a lack of successors the entire production area needs to cooperate to efficiently grow high quality produce Otake’s greenhouses is the long stalks of his tomatoes you will see that each stem is suspended high by wires This is a technique called “high-wire cultivation,” which encourages the growth of the stems and increases yield from wire manipulation to moisture control Although the farmers still harvest by hand every day in May they can now open and close the greenhouse windows from their homes which until then was surprisingly hard work the number of farmers continues to decline Otake attributes this to the fact that “farming has become unprofitable Although Japan has a reputation for its high level of agricultural technology its food self-sufficiency rate is at the lowest level compared to other major developed countries and the amount of agricultural products imported is high even by global standards Since it is impossible to compete with inexpensive imported produce in terms of price Ohtake believes that the only way to survive is to grow produce that consumers find tasty one of the measures he hopes to implement in the future is to process and sell tomatoes that do not meet the standards for size and other characteristics When we made tomato juice from broken mini-tomatoes and had people taste it at an event ‘There is no green tomato smell’ and ‘It’s sweet and tasty We still have a lot of work to do to sell tomato juice because we need to maintain a certain level of quality in order to commercialize it but I hope it will play a role in helping more people learn about the deliciousness of Toyohashi tomatoes Otake continues to envision a bright future for Toyohashi tomatoes A coffee shop in the central Japan prefecture of Aichi has begun catering to elderly people with dementia creating a welcoming community between customers their caretakers and the children given a chance to wait on them named after the regional dialect word "anki" meaning "relief," no one is bothered even if a customer bursts into song or wanders aimlessly around the shop -- behaviors related to the illness often considered too disruptive to be acceptable in regular society she seems so happy," said Eiko Hosokawa from Gamagori in Aichi The 59-year-old has cared for her dementia-suffering 83-year-old mother almost single-handedly for a decade Watching her mother speak to a woman around her age and willingly chat with children serving as staff Hosokawa said she felt comforted that there was "a place for her." The cafe also became her own place of respite Before finding out about the cafe in August last year Hosokawa could never leave her mother alone at home even just to go out to a cafe for a break she was worried that her mother might suddenly start screaming a 52-year-old woman who was forced to care for her father Masamachi who was injured around April 2020 in a workplace accident He became trapped under heavy machinery while cleaning at a construction company operated by a relative It showed two elderly people smiling as they drank some juice "Caretaking is of course important but a place where old people can laugh is necessary," she thought helped by the 82-year-old Masamichi who by that time had recovered Sugino wanted to create a place for people of different ages to communicate at a time when children have fewer opportunities to interact with their grandparents Japan's traditional family structure has shifted and no longer do three generations regularly live under one roof Hoping that spending time with the elderly would foster kindness in children that would lead to them helping the elderly when they are in need Sugino has "hired" around 40 children from nearby elementary schools and kindergartens to be store staff 7-year-old Koharu Ono was helping out at the coffee shop but it's fun asking what people want and bringing them drinks I play card games with guests sometimes too," she said The government estimates that around 7 million people or one in five who are aged 65 years or older "There will be a time when places like Anki Cafe will be necessary across Japan It would make me happy to see more shops undertaking similar projects," Sugino said Credit: COPYRIGHT (C) TOYOHASHI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY The research group of Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering of Toyohashi University of Technology project associate professor; and Atsunori Matsuda demonstrated that solvent polarity characterized by its dielectric constant plays an important role in the formation of crystalline Li7P3S11 in the liquid-phase synthesis a solid electrolyte for all-solid-state lithium-ion secondary batteries the research team found that acetonitrile (ACN) with a high dielectric constant is the best solvent for the liquid-phase synthesis of Li7P3S11 since it enhances the reactivity of lithium thiophosphate and enables the formation of crystalline Li7P3S11 with high conductivity This achievement is expected to lead to the development of mass production technology for all-solid-state batteries All-solid-state batteries are attracting attention as next-generation batteries due to their high safety and energy density and they are expected to find application with electric vehicles The practical application of all-solid-state batteries requires mass production technology for sulfide solid electrolytes with high ionic conductivity Among the synthesis methods for solid electrolytes liquid-phase synthesis is the most promising due to its low cost and suitability for mass production While Li7P3S11 is one of the candidates for solid electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries because of its high ionic conductivity the effect of solvent on the liquid-phase synthesis of crystalline Li7P3S11 has not been systematically investigated the research group selected eight organic solvents with various phisico-chemical properties and revealed the effect of the solvent species on the reaction in the liquid-phase synthesis of Li7P3S11 they found that the use of 1,4-dioxane (Dox) tetrahydropyran (THP) and ACN as solvents results in the formation of crystalline Li7P3S11 and a higher conductivity tends to be obtained in organic solvents with higher dielectric constants The higher the dielectric constant of the solvent applied to the sample the higher the temperature at which desolvation occurred during the heat treatment process This indicates that the dielectric constant of the solvent is an indicator of the strength of the chemical interaction with lithium thiophosphate reactivity in solvents is characterized by dielectric constant it was found that high reactivity is observed in solvents with a high dielectric constant a solvent with a low boiling point is preferable the research group demonstrated that ACN is the best reaction solvent for the liquid-phase synthesis of crystalline Li7P3S11 with high conductivity which is a promising candidate of solid electrolyte for all-solid-state batteries the research team believes that it has found an important basis for solvent selection to achieve high conductivity in Li7P3S11 solid electrolytes In accordance with the basis for solvent selection found from the study the research team intends to utilize it for the development of mass production technology for all-solid-state batteries The effect of solvent on reactivity of the Li2S–P2S5 system in liquid-phase synthesis of Li7P3S11 solid electrolyte This research was conducted as part of the SOLiD-EV project (JPNP 18003) of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) 10.1038/s41598-021-00662-3 The effect of solvent on reactivity of the Li2S–P2S5 system in liquid-phase synthesis of Li7P3S11 solid electrolyte are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system Copyright © 2025 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Professor Shigeki Nakauchi's research team at Toyohashi University of Technology worked with researchers from the University of Minho (Braga Portugal) to examine preferences for color composition particitated by Japanese and Portuguese people for Japanese and Occidental paintings through experiments using the original paintings and paintings with artificially altered color compositions It was discovered that regardless of nationality differences in Japanese and Occidental paintings and differences in figurative and abstract paintings many people preferred the original color composition even for paintings they had never seen This trend can also be seen for the images composed of square pieces collected from different art paintings and composed as patchwork images The universality in preference for color composition in paintings found in this study suggests that beauty as felt towards paintings may have a common biological basis more than cultural background or educational experience Color is one of the visual elements that has the most influence on personal preference it has a major influence on a person's decision-making process when selecting clothing or imagining a company's character from the company's logo Product designers understand well the effect color has on consumer behavior and they utilize this effect as much as possible There are even professional organizations that predict color trends The same is true for the importance of color with paintings Artists attempt to express their personal aesthetic experience unless there is a commercial reason to do otherwise it can be said that the color composition of paintings simply reflects the artist's sensibilities and preferences for color Ample research has been conducted on color preference but the differences in preference among individuals is great and most of the research have really been conducted for single colors a scientific understanding on preferences for balance or harmony of many colors (color composition) as in paintings hasn't progressed To clarify preferences for color composition in paintings this research altered only the colors in paintings without altering spatial composition or lightness The color gamut for each painting piece was rotated counterclockwise around the average color (Figure 1) the relationship between colors found in the painting and the average saturation remained unchanged from the original while the impression of the color composition in the paintings was greatly altered We prepared paintings by rotating the color gamut by 90 and asked participants in the experiment to pick which color composition they preferred the most from among the four varieties of paintings which also included the original painting (four-alternative forced choice) of which 20 were Occidental and Japanese paintings that were photographed in Portugal and Japan (Toyohashi City Museum of Art and History) and the remaining 20 were taken from art galleries on the internet 90 people from Japan and 45 people from Portugal participated in the experiment Participants had not received any special education in art we discovered that around 70% of participants preferred the color composition of the original painting the most even for paintings that they had never seen before this dropped to 25% as chance level.) This trend was the same for abstract painting depicted without objects associated with a specific color We also divided each painting into pieces and scrambled those pieces around as well as creating a patchwork image from pieces of 20 different paintings to make the content painted in the painting hard to distinguish We discovered that about 60% of participants favored the scrambled painting of the original painting or the color composition of the patchwork painting of original paintings the most 　The research team believes that each person has a mechanism for sensing an allure and beauty for color composition and that this characteristic may be surprisingly common among people Why do humans have a mechanism to sense beauty in the first place We hope to answer these questions about beauty which is considered to be an extremely individual and subjective thing by clarifying the mechanism behind our decision-making process for "liking" photos on social media and deciding on interior decoration for rooms Measurements of Japanese paintings were carried out in cooperation with the Toyohashi City Museum of Art and History This research received the following support: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP19H01119 and 20H05956 and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Funding 10.1038/s41598-022-08365-z Universality and superiority in preference for chromatic composition of art paintings Aichi Prefecture in central Japan seemed to have borne the brunt of Typhoon No 2’s ferocity with flooding reaching knee level in some residential areas rescue workers discovered a submerged car around 10:10 p.m on June 2 and eventually managed to pull a male driver believed to be in his 60s from the vehicle Toyohashi and neighboring Toyokawa had the highest evacuation alert according to the Aichi prefectural government which said 477 evacuation centers were set up Officials said 1,137 residents were evacuated across the entire prefecture Homes across the prefecture were flooded but it was difficult to assess the extent of damage due to the number of roads rendered impassable Water levels at some roads in a residential area of Toyokawa rose to about 30 centimeters above the knee One resident called it the worst flooding in the 45 years she had lived in the area the water reached knee level at some roads A mother trapped in one of those cars with her son was rescued with her offspring after she made an emergency call to the municipal fire department which had suspended operations between Tokyo and Nagoya on the afternoon of June 2 due to the pounding rain resumed operations from around midday on June 3 30 hurt as typhoon stirs record rainfall in eastern Japan Heavy rain forecast for wide areas as typhoon sideswipes Japan Japan's southern Okinawa Islands prepare as tropical storm approaches Typhoon Mawar losing strength as it barrels toward Okinawa islands Japan protests North Korea’s failed ‘ballistic missile’ launch Heavy rain pounded a wide swath of Japan on Friday prompting flood warnings and evacuation orders that affected millions of people and leaving a man dead with the weather agency warning of continuing downpours into the weekend The rain also disrupted transportation services including cancellations of shinkansen bullet train services in some areas as well as flights into and out of Japan's southern prefecture of Okinawa The severe weather conditions have been caused by warm and moist air blowing from near Typhoon Mawar and a rain front hanging over Japan's main island Honshu Thunderstorms were observed developing one after another in six prefectures including in the western prefectures of Kochi Rising water levels of rivers prompted some local governments such as Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture and Iwata in Shizuoka Prefecture to issue the highest level of warning to residents calling on them to immediately ensure their safety a man apparently in his 60s was pronounced dead early Saturday after being found inside a car in a flooded agricultural field Friday night adding that water had nearly filled the inside of the vehicle police and firefighters searched for individuals believed to have been swept away near a river and on a flooded road A woman in her 80s also sustained injuries after falling over when trying to evacuate JR Central temporarily suspended all services of its Tokaido Shinkansen line before resuming operation of the section between Shin-Osaka and Nagoya stations Service between Tokyo and Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture on the line remained suspended throughout Friday with the operator saying on Saturday it will resume in the afternoon at least 2 million people were temporarily advised to evacuate The Japan Meteorological Agency reported record rainfall in some areas in the six hours through 9 p.m. with 291 millimeters falling in part of Tosashimizu in western Japan's Kochi Prefecture and 240 mm in Tahara in Aichi Prefecture The agency says it expects the heavy rain to continue falling into Saturday over an area spanning western to northern Japan including against landslides and overflowing rivers the agency is forecasting as much as 250 mm of rain in the central Tokai region 150 mm in the western Shikoku region and the Izu island chain south of Tokyo and 100 mm in the western Kinki region centering on Osaka Prefecture Large typhoon headed for Japan's Okinawa Pref., strong winds warned image: The explicit and hybrid emotion faces with natural (top) and reddish color (bottom) A research team in the Visual Perception and Cognition Laboratory and Cognitive Neurotechnology Unit of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology has conducted experiments to investigate the effects of facial color on implicit facial expression perception It is well-known that we associate reddish faces with happiness or anger but their research explored whether facial coloring also affects how we subconsciously perceive emotions those feelings of which we are not explicitly aware the research team investigated how the color of a person's face affects the way we see emotions even if we do not clearly realize these emotions The results of this study were published in the journal "Some previous research has shown that facial color modulates the recognition of facial expressions and cross-cultural comparisons suggest that the facial color effect may be influenced by language we suggest that facial color also influences implicit facial expressions," explained Dr the research team used special photos with mixed emotions referred to hybrid emotions such as a little happiness or a little anger mixed with neutral emotions they found that these hybrid emotion photos were seen as neutral expressions they tested how friendly these mixed emotions seemed when the photos had different colors They discovered that reddish colors made happiness seem even friendlier but it did not change how we saw angry expressions they confirmed that even with reddish colors our brains still see these mixed emotions in a hidden way their study shows that the color of a face can quietly affect how we perceive emotions The research team believes that research in psychology or in cognitive science is always interesting and highly applicable this research can be a premise for developing many useful future applications in diverse fields technology has been developing fast with the strength of Artificial Intelligence (AI) it is difficult for AI devices to recognize hidden emotions on human faces Even humans in everyday life have difficulties in recognizing those emotions Our research hopes to be applicable in areas such as identifying employee attitudes in the company We believe that with the rapid development of modern science and technology such applications will quickly appear." these research results are only initial suggestions regarding the hypothesis about the impact of facial color on hidden emotions The research team believes that more tests still need to be done to further support this argument investigating different groups with different backgrounds (such as race age...) of test participants is also necessary The effect of facial colour on implicit facial expressions, Cognition and Emotion †These authors share first authorship of this work This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP21K21315 10.1080/02699931.2023.2258575 The effect of facial colour on implicit facial expressions Two people died and at least 35 people were injured after heavy rain pounded wide areas of Japan with landslides and river flooding occurring in many parts in the country's east Thunderstorms were observed developing in succession from Friday through Saturday morning in western and central areas with 23 locations in eight prefectures seeing record levels of 24-hour rainfall according to the Japan Meteorological Agency The severe weather conditions were caused by warm and moist air blowing from Typhoon Mawar and a rain front near Japan's main island of Honshu The typhoon was downgraded to an extratropical cyclone at around 3 p.m Saturday after moving to the Izu island chain south of Tokyo Rising rivers prompted some local governments to issue the most severe flood warning to residents calling on them to immediately move to safer ground a 61-year-old man was pronounced dead early Saturday after being found inside a car in a flooded field Friday night adding that the vehicle was nearly completely submerged also died after being swept into an irrigation channel while 232 houses were completely or partially destroyed At least 2 million people were temporarily advised to evacuate in Gifu In part of the Shizuoka Prefecture city of Hamamatsu 497.5 millimeters of rainfall was recorded while 419 mm fell in Toyohashi in 24 hours through Saturday morning 47.5 mm of rainfall was observed in an hour in Funabashi resumed all bullet train services between Tokyo and Osaka around noon Services on the Tokaido Shinkansen line had been suspended on the section between Tokyo and Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture Trains between Nagoya and Shin-Osaka stations were running about once an hour until around noon The company made trains available for stranded passengers Friday at Tokyo Some 5,300 people spent the night sheltering in the cars Passengers who were forced to spend the night at a station or in a train looked exhausted after the experience "About 80 percent of the seats were occupied," Kengo Kaku from Okayama Prefecture said after spending the night in a bullet train at Tokyo station as stranded passengers checked the operational status of trains on an electronic signboard Heavy rain pounds Japan, prompting evacuation alerts, 1 dies To have the latest news and stories delivered to your inbox, subscribe here. 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Volume 12 - 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00056 Faces represent important information for social communication individuals' tend to find faces unconsciously Why is face-likeness perceived in non-face objects Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies showed that the P1 component (early visual processing) and the N250 component (personal detection) reflect the neural processing of faces Inverted faces were reported to enhance the amplitude and delay the latency of P1 and N170 To investigate face-likeness processing in the brain we explored the face-related components of the ERP through a face-like evaluation task using natural faces and Arcimboldo paintings presented upright or inverted We found a significant correlation between the inversion effect index and face-like scores in P1 in both hemispheres and in N170 in the right hemisphere These results suggest that judgment of face-likeness occurs in a relatively early stage of face processing Faces are the most important visual stimuli for social communication. When humans see each other's faces, personal information can be read immediately, and emotions can be understood from facial expression and color. In this way, face perception is valuable for humans. In addition, people tend to find faces unconsciously, even in objects (e.g., ceiling stains, clouds in the sky, etc.). Even infants preferentially watch face-like objects (Kato and Mugitani, 2015) This phenomenon is called “face pareidolia,” and is a kind of visual illusion do humans perceive face-likeness in non-face objects These results suggest that the inversion effect is a marker for face-like processing Other previous studies investigating holistic and featural processing during face processing of inverted faces, using realistic and schematic images, reported that the N170 amplitude increased when inverted realistic face images were presented (Sagiv and Bentin, 2001) the N170 amplitude decreased when inverted schematic face images were presented This study theorized that schematic faces that did not have enough featural information were recognizable by holistic processing when presented upright the N170 amplitude was reduced due to preferential featural processing instead of configural/holistic processing This suggested that individuals perform holistic processing in response to upright faces and featural processing in response to inverted faces Facial inversion effect studies have investigated face-like objects as well as faces. 1 study investigated holistic processing using face images; Arcimboldo paintings consisting of vegetables, fruits, and books; and object images (e.g., a car and a house) (Caharel et al., 2013) Arcimboldo paintings and face stimuli induced larger N170 amplitudes in the right hemisphere than did object stimuli N170 amplitudes differed between processing of Arcimboldo paintings and face stimuli This suggested that the right hemisphere is related to holistic processing and the left hemisphere to feature processing the N170 component may reflect face-likeness because the N170 component reflects an early stage of structure coding and is sensitive to face-like stimuli we investigated whether the inversion effect index of the N170 component actually reflected face-likeness by observing the correlation between the ERP components and behavioral reports of face-likeness We expected that correlation between the inversion effect index of N170 amplitude and face-like scores would be found P1 and N250 correlate with face-like scores this study investigated face-likeness judgment as reflected by ERP components as well as how and when face-like objects are processed The purpose of this study was to reveal which ERP components contribute to face-likeness judgment based on correlation between face-likeness evaluation scores and the inversion effect of each ERP component right-handed volunteers (age: 19–37 years 3 female) with normal or corrected-to-normal vision participated in the experiment Informed written consent was obtained from participants after procedural details had been explained The Committee for Human Research of Toyohashi University of Technology approved experimental procedures The stimuli in each category are shown in Figure 1. There were 4 categories of stimuli, including natural human faces (without glasses or make-up, and with a neutral expression), Arcimboldo paintings, insects (animate category), and cars (inanimate category). The face category was selected from the FACES database (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin; Ebner et al., 2010) Each category consisted of 6 kinds of stimuli we presented equal numbers of male and female faces Only faces with neutral expression were chosen (interrater agreement N 0.90 The upright orientation of the insect category was defined as erecting a higher face-likeness evaluation score in the image evaluation experiment All photographs were converted to gray scale and mean luminance and size were equalized with Adobe Photoshop®CS2 software All stimuli were 220 × 247 pixels (visual angle 9.7 to 11.6°) Each stimulus was presented in 2 different orientations Images for each condition were randomly presented and the participants performed the face-likeness evaluation task EEG data were recorded with 64 active Ag-AgCl sintered electrodes mounted on an elastic cap according to the extended 10–20 system and amplified by a BioSemi ActiveTwo amplifier (BioSemi; Amsterdam Electrooculography (EOG) was recorded from additional channels (the infraorbital region of right eye and the outer canthus of the right and left eye) Both the EEG and the EOG were sampled at 512 Hz participants were seated in a light- and sound-attenuated room at a viewing distance of 60 cm from a computer monitor Stimulus presentation was controlled by a ViSaGe system (Cambridge Research System graphics resolution 800 × 600 pixels Stimuli were displayed at the center of the screen on a light gray background a fixation point appeared in the center of the screen for 500 ms followed by the presentation of the test stimulus for 500 ms The inter-trial interval was randomized between 1,000 and 1,500 ms Participants performed face-like evaluation tasks and provided their responses by pressing 1 of 7 keys on a numeric keyboard with their right or left index finger; right or left was counterbalanced across blocks (right to left or left to right) They rated face-likeness on a 7-point scale from 1 (non-face-like) to 7 (most face-like) and were requested to respond within 3,000 ms Participants were instructed to maintain eye gaze fixation on the center of the screen throughout the trial and respond as accurately and as quickly as possible Participants performed 96 trials per condition (6 stimuli in each category repeated 16 times in each orientation) Four blocks of 192 trials (4 categories × 6 stimuli × 2 orientations × 4 times) were presented in a pseudo-random order participants performed a total of 768 trials Scores (face-likeness) and reaction times (RTs) were computed for each condition and submitted to repeated ANOVAs with category (faces 4 methods of artifact rejection were performed artifact epochs were rejected based on extreme values in the EEG channel artifacts based on linear trend/variance using the EEGLAB toolbox (max slope [μV/epoch]: 50; R-squared limit: 0.3) were rejected Artifact epochs were also rejected using probability methods (single- and all-channel limits: 5 SD) and kurtosis methods (single- and all-channel limits: 5 SD) Grand-mean ERP waveforms were visually assessed and peak amplitude and latency were extracted and N250 components were extracted at a maximum amplitude value between 80 and 130 ms for the P1 and at the minimum amplitude value between 130 and 200 ms for the N170 and at a minimum amplitude value between 220 and 300 ms for the N250 for different pairs of occipito-temporal electrodes in the left and right hemispheres: 3 left hemisphere electrodes (P5 PO7) and 3 right hemisphere electrodes (P6 the topographies were calculated to assess which electrode optimized the analysis in this study The topographies were calculated by averaging across 4 categories and the relevant time window of each ERP component and N250 were submitted to separate repeated-measure ANOVAs with category and hemisphere as within-subject factors and post-hoc analysis was performed by using Bonferroni method Pearson's correlation analysis was performed between the inversion effect index for each ERP component and the mean face-like score (the mean between upright and inverted score) using the robust correlation toolbox (Pernet et al., 2012) The toolbox automatically implements the Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons for each test and provides bootstrapped confidence intervals for the correlations themselves we calculated the value from each category for each ERP component in each participant Participants responded more strongly to faces than to images in other categories (Figure 2) There were main effects of Category [F(3, 60)= 204.255,  p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.91] and Orientation [F(1, 20) = 78.166, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.80] and an interaction between these factors [F(3, 60) = 15.660, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.44] This interaction showed a significant effect of Category for both orientations [Upright: F(3, 60) = 193.770,  p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.90 the scores of all categories showed a significant difference between upright and inverted orientations (p < 0.001 scores were higher for faces than for other image categories (respectively for both orientations) and the scores for Arcimboldo paintings were higher than those for insects and cars (respectively there was no significant difference between the car and insect categories This interaction showed a significant effect of Orientation for all categories [Face : F(1 Arcimboldo: F(1, 20) = 431.200, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.95 Insect: F(1, 20) = 71.580, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.78 and Car: F(1 participants responded more quickly to faces to other types of images A main effect was found for Category [F(3, 60) = 32.634, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.62] and Orientation [F(1, 20) = 5.010, p= 0.037, ηp2 = 0.20] an interaction was found between Category and Orientation [F(3, 60) = 5.703, p= 0.002, ηp2 = 0.22] This interaction showed a significant effect of Orientation for face category [F(1, 20) = 66.890, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.77] and Arcimboldo paintings category [F(1, 20) = 49.820, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.71] This Category × Orientation interaction revealed that the response time to faces and Arcimboldo paintings was delayed for inverted orientations as compared to upright orientations (p < 0.001) this interaction showed a significant effect of Category for upright orientation [F(3, 60) = 85.570, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.81] Participants responded more quickly to faces than to other image categories in the upright orientation (respectively there were no significant differences between Arcimboldo vs (A) Each bar indicates the mean face-likeness score for each category in the upright (fill) and inverted (no fill) orientations (B) Each bar indicates the mean reaction times for each category in the upright (fill) and inverted (no fill) orientation Figures 3, 4 show the topographies and the ERP waveforms in the 6 channels (Left: PO7 ANOVAs of P1 amplitudes showed a main effect for Category [F(3, 60) = 2.935, p= 0.035, ηp2 = 0.13] and Orientation [F(1, 20) = 22.751, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.53] The main effect of Category indicated that P1 amplitude for the insect category was smaller for Arcimboldo and car categories (respectively The main effect of Orientation revealed that the P1 amplitude was larger for inverted orientations than for upright orientation (p < 0.001) ANOVAs for P1 latency showed a main effect for Category [F(3, 60) = 8.565, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.30] Orientation [F(1, 20) = 13.554, p= 0.001, ηp2 = 0.40] Hemisphere [F(1, 20) = 11.514, p= 0.003, ηp2 = 0.37] and an interaction between Category × Orientation [F(3, 60) = 7.583, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.28] This interaction showed a significant effect of Orientation for the face category [F(1, 20) = 23.44, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.54] and the car category [F(1, 20) = 5.11, p= 0.035, ηp2 = 0.20] this interaction showed a significant effect of Category for both orientations [Upright: F(3, 60) = 6.37, p= 0.001, ηp2 = 0.24 Inverted: F(3, 60) = 11.31, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.36] The P1 latency in response to upright orientations was shorter for the face category than for the Arcimboldo paintings category (p = 0.031) and the P1 latency in response to inverted orientations was shorter for the insects category than for other categories (respectively The grand average of ERP waveforms elicited by each category in the upright and inverted orientations at the left and right pooled occipito-temporal electrode sites (waveforms averaged for electrodes P5/P9/PO7 the waveforms of inversion effect was calculated (see Supplementary Data Sheet 1 and N250 component (Bottom) measured at the left and right pooled occipito-temporal electrode sites (averaged for electrodes P5/P9/PO7 and P6/P10/PO8) displayed for 4 categories in the upright (fill) and inverted (no fill) orientations The inversion effect index for peak amplitude of the P1 (Top) measured at the left and right pooled occipito-temporal electrode sites (averaged for electrodes P5/P9/PO7 and P6/P10/PO8) and displayed for 4 categories ANOVAs for N170 amplitude showed a main effect for Category [F(3, 60) = 18.613, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.48] Hemisphere [F(1, 20) = 5.907, p= 0.025, ηp2 = 0.23] and Hemisphere × Orientation [F(1, 20) = 7.777, p= 0.011, ηp2 = 0.28] This Hemisphere × Orientation interaction revealed that the N170 amplitude in inverted orientation was larger for the right hemisphere than for the left hemisphere (p = 0.012) a three-way interaction was found among hemisphere and orientation [F(3, 60) = 5.464, p= 0.002, ηp2 = 0.22] the Category × Orientation interaction was significant [F(3, 60)= 4.24, p= 0.009, ηp2 = 0.17] as the N170 amplitude for inverted orientation was larger for the face category than for other categories (respectively car: p < 0.001 and insect: p < 0.001) and N170 amplitude for inverted orientation was larger for the insect category than for the Arcimboldo paintings category (p = 0.011) with no statistically significant difference found between the insect and car categories (p < 1.000) [Simple main effect of Category effect: F(3, 60)= 24.010, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.54] no significant Category effect was observed [F(3, 60) = 1.96, p= 0.1290, ηp2 = 0.09] the N170 amplitude for the face category was larger in the inverted orientation than in the upright orientation(p = 0.029) no significant interaction was observed [F(3, 60) = 1.14, p= 0.3420, ηp2 = 0.05] ANOVA results for the N170 latency showed a main effect for Orientation [F(1,20) = 17.947, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.47] Category [F(1.855, 37.100) = 23.194, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.54] and Category × Orientation [F(3, 60) = 13.996, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.41] This Category × Orientation interaction showed a significant effect of Category for both orientations [Upright: F(3, 60)= 39.35, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.66 Inverted: F(3, 60)= 8.64, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.30] This interaction revealed that the N170 latency in response to upright orientations was shorter for the face category than for other categories (p < 0.001) and the N170 latency in response to inverted orientations was more delayed for the car category than for the other categories (p < 0.001) latency in response to face category in the upright orientation was shorter than for the inverted orientation (p < 0.001) and the latency in response to the car category in the upright orientation was shorter than for the inverted orientation (p < 0.001) ANOVA results for the N250 amplitude showed a main effect for hemisphere [F(1, 20) = 4.837, p=0.040, ηp2 = 0.20] and category [F(2.220, 44.394) = 3.639, p= 0.030, ηp2 = 0.15] The N250 amplitude was larger for the right hemisphere than for the left hemisphere (p < 0.001) there was a significant interaction between Category and Hemisphere [F(3, 60) = 3.649, p=0.017, ηp2 = 0.15] and between Category and Orientation [F(3, 60) = 3.852, p=0.014, ηp2 = 0.16] The Category × Orientation interaction showed a significant Category effect for inverted orientation (F(3, 60) = 6.16, p=0.001, ηp2 = 0.24) The N250 amplitude for inverted orientation was larger for the car category than for the Arcimboldo paintings and insect categories (p < 0.05) this interaction showed an orientation effect for face and car categories [Face: F(1, 20) = 7.91, p=0.011, ηp2 = 0.28 and Car: F(1, 20) = 5.85, p=0.028, ηp2 = 0.22] The N250 amplitude for the face category was larger for the inverted orientation than for the upright orientation and the N250 amplitude for the car category was larger for the inverted orientation than for the upright orientation The Category × Hemisphere interaction showed a significant Category effect for the right hemisphere [F(3, 60) = 3.74, p=0.016, ηp2 = 0.16] The N250 amplitude in the right hemisphere was larger for the car category than for the insect category this interaction showed a Hemisphere effect for the face category The N250 amplitude for the face category was larger in the inverted orientation than in the upright orientation (p = 0.002) ANOVA results for N250 latency showed no significant effect and interaction The inversion effect index of the P1 component was then compared with a 1-sample t-test against zero showing a significant index for face category in both hemispheres Arcimboldo painting category in the right hemisphere and car category in the left hemisphere (p < 0.05) The P1 component showed a main effect of Category [F(2.076, 41.510) = 3.709, p = 0.032, ηp2 = 0.16] The inversion effect index was larger for the face category than for the insect and car categories (respectively The inversion effect index of the N170 component was then compared with a 1-sample t-test against zero showing a significant index for face category and Arcimboldo painting category in the right hemisphere (p < 0.05) no effect was found for Hemisphere [F(1, 20) = 0.344, p= 0.564, ηp2 = 0.02] Category [F(3, 60) = 2.372, p= 0.079, ηp2 = 0.11] or the interaction between Hemisphere and Category [F(3, 60) = 2.228, p= 0.094, ηp2 = 0.10] The inversion effect index of the N250 component was then compared with a 1-sample t-test against 0; a significant index for only the car category in the left hemisphere (p < 0.05) was found The N250 component showed a main effect of Hemisphere [F(1, 20) = 5.770, p= 0.026 ηp2 = 0.22] The inversion effect index was larger in the right hemisphere than in the left hemisphere there was a significant interaction between Hemisphere and Category [F(3, 60) = 3.948. p= 0.012, ηp2 = 0.17] This Hemisphere and Category revealed that the inversion effect index in response to car was larger for the right hemisphere than for the left hemisphere (p < 0.05) We performed a correlation analysis to explore the relationship between the face-like score and the inversion effect index (see Figure 6) a significant correlation was observed between the inversion effect index and face-like score in both hemispheres (left: r = −0.273 a significant correlation was observed between the inversion effect index and face-like score in the right hemisphere (r = −0.282 the N250 components showed no significant correlation The results indicate that the face-likeness judgment affects early face processing we also performed a correlation analysis to explore the relationship between the face-like score and raw ERP component (each orientation) or each ERP latency (see Supplementary Figures 2–4) Correlation map between the inversion effect index and the face-likeness score of P1 (Top) calculated for the left (left side) and right (right side) hemispheres The vertical axis indicates the inversion effect index value and the horizontal axis indicates the face-likeness scores Underlines indicate significant correlations The present study investigated brain activity reflecting face-likeness and explored the correlation between the face inversion effect and face-like score Significant correlation was observed for P1 in both hemispheres and N170 in the right hemisphere These results suggest that face-likeness judgment affects early visual processing face-like objects are processed by holistic processing in the right hemisphere these results suggest that the face inversion index can be used as indicator of face-likeness in early face processing Their results are consistent with our findings that showed that the inversion effect was specific to face processing as compared with processing of other object categories the P1 component is sensitive to global face inversion the inversion effect for P1 appeared in both hemispheres in response to face the inversion effect was not observed for the insect category because insect stimuli are not dependent on orientation the difference in amplitude according to orientation suggesting that the amplitude decreased in the right hemisphere and the latency was delayed perhaps because orientation processing was already performed at N170 the face and car categories showed a lower inversion effect which can be attributed to the influence of N170 We calculated the correlation between the inversion effect index for each ERP component and the face-like score for each category Significant correlation for the P1 component was observed in both hemispheres This correlation suggested that the P1 component reflects face-likeness a significant correlation was observed for the N170 component for the right hemisphere The configuration of stimuli may have been similar enough to human faces to cause this correlation only in the right hemisphere suggesting that the P1 component in both hemispheres and the N170 component in the right hemisphere reflect face-likeness no significant correlation was observed for the N250 component there was a trend for correlation between the inversion effect index in the N250 and the face-like score in both hemispheres which suggested that the N250 component is related to face-like processing It is possible that our results could have been affected by sex differences Previous studies have suggested that face-likeness processing or face-ness detection occurred in the early visual cortex (Balas and Koldewyn, 2013) by calculating the correlation between the face-likeness evaluation on the stimulus and the inversion effect index of each ERP component significant correlations were observed in the P1 component and the N170 component these results suggested that the face-like processing or face-ness detection is performed in the early visual cortex and that these processes affect face-likeness judgment we considered that face processing and face-like processing consisted of the following steps including detecting the existing shapes as eye-like is performed in the earlier visual stages represented by P1 while detailed face processing is performed in the face detection stages represented by N170 The process of P1 to N170 components in this study may thus reflect face-likeness judgment these results suggest that the face inversion index can be used as an indicator of face-likeness in early face processing and wrote the initial draft of the manuscript TM and SN contributed to analysis and interpretation of data and assisted in the preparation of the manuscript All other authors have contributed to data collection and interpretation All authors approved the final version of the manuscript and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant numbers 25330169 and 26240043) The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00056/full#supplementary-material Early visual ERP sensitivity to the species and animacy of faces doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.09.014 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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 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: Tetsuto Minami, bWluYW1pQHR1dC5qcA== 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 Kazuhiro Takahashi (top centre) and his team are developing a semiconductor sensor that could be use to detect diseases at home.© Toyohashi University of Technology The ability to diagnose infections or diseases by simply breathing on to a smartphone is a vision of scientists at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan They have developed a semiconductor sensor that can detect minute traces of biomarkers for infections or diseases such as cancer these sensor chips could in the future be incorporated in Internet of Things (IoT) biosensors that would enable home-based health testing for supporting telemedicine Hundreds of millions of COVID-19 tests have been conducted so far the incidence of cancer is growing in nearly every country accurate and convenient biomarker testing that can be performed by compact devices using conventional semiconductor fabrication technology “Our research target is simple and rapid diagnosis using small amounts of body fluids such as blood urine and saliva,” explains Kazuhiro Takahashi a professor in the Electronics-Inspired Interdisciplinary Research Institute at Toyohashi University of Technology they could eventually be used for cancer screening and predicting the severity of COVID-19.” The researchers created a prototype test chip using suspended nanosheets such as graphene The graphene sheet was stretched like a trampoline in a sealed cavity so that it can trap individual biomarkers — molecules that can indicate the presence of a condition or disease When a biomarker adheres to the graphene surface it causes the surface to deform into a dome-like structure When this structure is illuminated by light from an LED the resulting optical interference generates colour changes that can reveal the presence of biomarkers While sealed cavities had been used in previous research Takahashi and colleagues struck upon the original idea of using them for chemical functionalization of the suspended graphene surface it assumes a dome-like shape (right).© Toyohashi University of Technology the Takahashi and his team succeeded in detecting prostate-specific antigen (PSA) a biomarker widely used to diagnose prostate cancer The amount of PSA detected was only 100 attograms This high sensitivity rivals that of large testing devices found in hospitals and yet the prototype sensor is compact and portable and delivers results in real time since it does not use labelling agents The researchers were also able to detect biomarkers for COVID-19 Takahashi and his team are now further developing the sensor so that it can diagnose disease by screening exhaled breath or gas released through the skin “The device could be integrated in a mobile sensor system,” says Takahashi “It shouldn’t be expensive because the sensor and readout circuit will be a very tiny module We can reduce the cost by using semiconductor and mass-production technologies.” Commercialization of the sensor may take two to three years and the researchers are seeking industrial partners in their quest to realize ultrasensitive biosensors for home use By advancing the latest tools such as semiconductor and IoT technology Toyohashi University of Technology is committed to fostering innovations that benefit society Credit: COPYRIGHT (C) 2014 TOYOHASHI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Hiroshi Yokoyama and his colleagues at Department of Mechanical Engineering Toyohashi University of Technology in collaboration with researchers at YAMAHA Corporation have succeeded in directly predicting sound radiating from a recorder for the first time all over the world (Figure 1 The calculations for this study took two weeks using about 100 nodes of supercomputers (FX10 in the Tokyo University or Kyushu University) In air-reed instruments such as a recorder the flow velocity fluctuates by the blowing of performer These fluctuations generate sound (pressure and density fluctuations) It had been known that a small change of the shape or material of instruments critically affects ease of playing or how a performer feels during performance the detailed relationship of the shape or material and the sound had not been clarified and the reason why they affect the tones was unknown we understand the way the sound is radiating from flows in the recorder the way the sound is propagated to the far field (performer's ears or audience) around the recorder was also clarified (Movie 2) These results contribute to the revolution of the design of future musical instruments Everyone knows the instrument radiates sound when we blow it the complex flow and sound phenomena are hidden did you find it difficult to resonate the lowest "do" in music classes we can clarify the effects of the shape of instruments on tones clearly using computers I believe that it becomes possible to propose a new design of musical instrument easy-to-play or new musical instruments first and second year junior high school students from Aichi Prefectural Toyohashi Special Needs School visited Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) Toyohashi Special Needs School is a special needs school for children with physical disabilities and this was the second time for us to host the students the seven students visited the Interaction and Communication Design Laboratory led by Prof where they were briefed by the lab students and enjoyed talking and interacting with many <"weak" robots> they also visited the Robot Contest Club to see up close the robot that won the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2023 the students were able to experience two of the University's <"weak" robots> and <strong robot> The oldest person to climb Mount Fuji last year was 93-year-old Masashi Toyoda according to records at Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha but I would like to climb (Fuji) again this year," said Toyoda enthusiastically.googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1499653692894-0'); }); opens to the public two smaller shrines under its supervision — Okumiya and Kusushi — located at the top of Mount Fuji The special purpose company (SPC) Toyohashi Bio Will K.K. represented by JFE Engineering Corporation (President and CEO: Hajime Oshita recently completed the "Toyohashi City Biomass Utilization Center." A Completion Ceremony organized by the client A large number of distinguished guests and related persons attended the ceremony commented that he "hopes this advanced scheme to utilize waste and sewage sludge as resources will become a standard for Japan as a whole." The recently-completed facilities are Japan's largest-scale composite-type biomass energy facilities for combined methane fermentation treatment of sewage sludge human waste/septic tank sludge and food waste which had been treated separately until now The plant uses the biogas generated in this process as fuel for generation of electric power.The composite treatment process not only achieves effective utilization of the energy of waste that had not been recovered until now but also realizes complete energy conversion by converting the residue generated by methane fermentation to fuel by a carbonization process.In comparison with treatment by separate facilities this combined treatment plant makes it possible to reduce the costs of construction This facility is operated as a PFI (private finance initiative) project will perform maintenance and operation for a period of 20 years and the power generated by the facility will be sold by using the FIT scheme (FIT: Feed-in Tariff scheme which requires that electric utilities purchase power generated by renewable energy at a fixed rate) It is expected that similar composite treatment facilities would become popular among local governments throughout Japan in the future JFE Engineering will actively propose such scheme to local governments using the Toyohashi plant as an advanced model.In order to contribute to the creation of a recycling society JFE Engineering will also actively promote this technology in Southeast Asia and other regions where urbanization is progressing rapidly and not only power shortages but also treatment of sewage sludge and food waste have become issues Aichi Prefecture--A canine skull that was used as an amulet to recover from diseases is now recognized as the only specimen of an extinct Japanese wolf in Aichi Prefecture A 75-year-old woman from Toyokawa in the prefecture donated the cranium in January to the Toyohashi Museum of Natural History “The skull is an important specimen particularly because some skin tissue remains on it,” said Kensuke Yasui “We will analyze its DNA and other factors to obtain clues on when the animal is from and how it lived.” A number of elements led the museum to conclude the skull was from an extinct adult wolf The 21-centimeter-long skull has six neuropores in the temporal area It also does not have an uneven section between the forehead and the nose tip a hollow exists at the central part deep on the upper jaw an attribute not found in dogs and gray wolves likely because the wolf’s brain was collected for use as “kampo” traditional medicine The sex of the wolf has yet to be determined the bone was used by generations of her family to pray for recovery from illnesses until around 1950 The specimen was then placed in a wooden box deep on the “tokonoma” alcove at her home The box contained a letter of reply from Japanese dog researcher Hirokichi Saito to a request from the donor’s grandfather in 1936 to examine the skull he sent The letter says the cranium is likely “from one of Japanese wolves caught in the Mikawa region during the Edo Period.” wolves were respected as guardians to protect people from evil during the Edo Period (1603-1867) in Mikawa the eastern part of present-day Aichi Prefecture A prewar research paper says four Japanese wolf skull specimens have been confirmed in the prefecture The museum concluded that the donated bone is one of the specimens and derives from a wolf caught in Mikawa during the Edo Period The remaining three skulls have not been discovered Japanese wolves are believed to have died out after the last one was caught in Higashi-Yoshino Three stuffed specimens and about 80 skulls have been confirmed in Japan Most head bones of the species are owned by individuals Only 10 or so skulls are kept by public organizations The donated skull is the first specimen of a Japanese wolf kept at a public organization in the Tokai region which also includes Gifu and Mie prefectures The legend of ‘Monster Wolf,’ savior of crops Plesiosaur fossil suggests it regurgitated inedible parts Gifu fossils may provide clues to evolution of seals Fossil found in Iwate confirmed to be ancient shark ancestor Fossils show yet another dolphin species had lived in Gunma Top > Tech-Overtures Toyohashi Tech’s Takanori Miyoshi has developed an innovative gadget that enables people to ‘shake hands’ over the internet irrespective of their location (Fig.1 and Fig.2) Miyoshi recently displayed his handshake gadget in April 2014 at the 2014 Niconico Chokaigi “We connected people located in Japan and Taiwan,” says Miyoshi.” The participants in Tokyo included Japan’s Prime Minister.” approximately 96% of the participants showed ‘excitement for the device’ and more than 65% could feel ‘mutual force and motion’ The handshake gadget developed by Miyoshi is simple and constructed using components readily available on the internet The main parts include the well-known Falcon haptic device “I solved the problem of howling by constructing a unique low pass filter,” explains Miyoshi This is the triangular component shown as ‘Ws(s) in Fig “The filter keeps the gain at less than unity and thereby prevents instabilities in the circuit.” Miyoshi intended to develop the handshake system for applications including internet games remote surgery to give doctors greater feeling during surgical procedures and hand operated robotic arms used in nuclear power stations managing radiative materials PDF to Menu｜to Contents This page requires JavaScript to operate correctly This page requires Stylesheet to operate correctly Home > News & Topics > Dr visited Toyohashi Tech for the special lectures on 9-12 March 2015 Gollner gave the two lectures at the university: the theme of the first lecture was "International Exchange Programs at the University of Maryland" and the theme of the second lecture was "Fire Protection Engineering - A Unique Program in the American University System" he also had the meetings for exchange of views on the international exchange with the Institute for Global Network Innovation in Technology Education (IGNITE) staff members Exective Trustee and Vice President on the last day