Asahi Intecc (Japan)

Recently, IoT (Internet of Things) security is a critical issue while IoT is a big trend where a huge number of devices would be connected to the Internet. We focus on protecting physical devices from illegal access by intruders and give basic analysis for fundamental gaps between physical devices and embedded IoT softwares. We clarify that the critical difficulty in IoT security is implementing both of device functions and IoT functions on a same physical device. We also propose the IoT Agent Platform mechanism to separate IoT functions from physical devies and to run isolated IoT functions on cloud environment. The mechanism is based on the Dripcast which is a transparent programming framework for IoT devices where we don't care about communication, server-side programming nor database, at all. The Dripcast provides a very simple and easy development model which is a key for device vendors to develop physical devices to use IoT functions.

Microvolume anion-exchange porous polymer disk-packed cartridges were prepared for Am/Np separation, which is required prior to the measurement of Neptunium-237 ((237)Np) with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS). Disks with a volume of 0.08 cm(3) were cut out from porous sheets having anion-exchange-group-containing polymer chains densely attached on the pore surface. Four different amine-based groups, N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate, trimethylammonium, diethylamine, and triethylenediamine (TEDA), were selected as the anion-exchange groups to be introduced into the porous sheets. The separation performances of Am/Np were evaluated using a standard solution of (243)Am, which had the same activity as its daughter nuclide (239)Np in secular equilibrium. (239)Np recovery of close to 100% with practically no contamination of (243)Am was achieved using the TEDA-introduced disk-packed cartridge. The time to elute (239)Np from the cartridge was approximately 40 s. The TEDA-introduced disk-packed cartridge was applied to the separation of Np from a spent nuclear fuel sample to confirm its separation performance. A known amount of (243)Am ((239)Np) was added to the spent nuclear fuel sample solution to monitor the chemical yield of Np. The chemical yield of Np calculated from a measured concentration of (239)Np was 90.4%. Am leakage in the Np-eluted solution was less than 1 ppt, corresponding to 0.001% of the original Am concentration in the sample. This indicates that no additional (239)Np was produced by the decay of the (243)Am remaining in the Np-eluted solution, thus providing a reliable chemical yield. U, which can cause a serious spectral interference involving the peak tail from the mass spectrum of (238)U, was thoroughly removed with the TEDA cartridge, providing interference-free measurement of (237)Np. The concentration of (237)Np obtained by ICPMS was 718 ± 12 ng/mg-U, which agrees well with the theoretically calculated value. Compared with the conventional separation technique using commercially available anion-exchange resin columns, the time required to adsorb, wash, and elute Np using the TEDA- introduced disk-packed cartridge was reduced by 75%.

BackgroundTo promote research activities in a particular research area, it is important to efficiently identify current research trends, advances, and issues in that area. Although review papers in the research area can suffice for this purpose in general, researchers are not necessarily able to obtain these papers from research aspects of their interests at the time they are required. Therefore, the utilization of the citation contexts of papers in a research area has been considered as another approach. However, there are few search services to retrieve citation contexts in the life sciences domain; furthermore, efficiently obtaining citation contexts is becoming difficult due to the large volume and rapid growth of life sciences papers.ResultsHere, we introduce the Colil (Comments on Literature in Literature) database to store citation contexts in the life sciences domain. By using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and a newly compiled vocabulary, we built the Colil database and made it available through the SPARQL endpoint. In addition, we developed a web-based search service called Colil that searches for a cited paper in the Colil database and then returns a list of citation contexts for it along with papers relevant to it based on co-citations. The citation contexts in the Colil database were extracted from full-text papers of the PubMed Central Open Access Subset (PMC-OAS), which includes 545,147 papers indexed in PubMed. These papers are distributed across 3,171 journals and cite 5,136,741 unique papers that correspond to approximately 25 % of total PubMed entries.ConclusionsBy utilizing Colil, researchers can easily refer to a set of citation contexts and relevant papers based on co-citations for a target paper. Colil helps researchers to comprehend life sciences papers in a research area more efficiently and makes their biological research more efficient.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13326-015-0037-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The microstructures and mechanical properties of amorphous/nanocrystalline hybrid TiNi wires produced by severe cold drawing were investigated. Annealed wires of Ti-50.9 mol%Ni and Ti-41 mol%Ni-8.5 mol%Cu were subjected to severe cold drawing of 50-70% reduction. The as-drawn TiNi wires were composed of the mixture of amorphous phase and predominantly B2 nanocrystalline phase. Young’s modulus increased with the drawing reduction which can be attributed to the increase in the amount of amorphous phase. For the binary TiNi wires, the volume fraction of amorphous phase was estimated to be about 60% from Young’s modulus and electrical resistivity. The wires drawn over 60% exhibited peculiar large linear elastic strain which is quite different from superelasticity. Aging at 573 K led to an increase in tensile elongation as well as in the recoverable strain. The amorphization by cold drawing was also confirmed for Ti-41 mol%Ni-8.5 mol%Cu in 62% drawn wires.

We attempted the development of highly efficient fishing lights using LEDs for saury fishing. Considering the spectral luminous efficacy characteristic of a Pacific saury, LED fishing lights were fabricated. Transmission properties in sea water in LED fishing lights were investigated, and it was found that the fabricated LED fishing lights sufficiently can be utilized even in sea water. Furthermore, we attempted the saury-fishing experiments by using the LED fishing lights, and comparable catch of Pacific saury was achieved by approximately 55% electric power by using both LED poles and incandescent lamp poles.