No. 882: Nihon Kohden’s latest technology to keep watching the elderly (November 1, 2015)

Technology:

Nihon Kohdan that is Japan’s largest maker of automated external defibrillators will launch a service named “Sukoyaka (Being healthy)” on November 30 to participate in the service to keep watching the elderly. A sensor installed inside the house detects such actions as standing up, getting seated, and walking of the elderly and digitalize them. The figures will be divided into 100 levels and uploaded on the special site every day. A figure that goes down suddenly indicates possible trouble, and an e-mail will be sent to family members to inform them of the possible trouble. The sensor is a little bigger than a PET bottle. Because it can also measure room temperature and humidity, it can prevent family members from suffering heat stroke. It comes with a meter to measure the amount of activity that can be carried whenever leaving home. It will be distributed by Yamada-Denki, Japan's largest distributor of home lectronics, that has already started to sell the service by subscription. The service is 89,800 yen excluding tax for the system, and the basic usage charge is 2,980 yen excluding tax per month is needed.

Secom that is Japan’s largest security company is scheduled to launch a wearable terminal in 2-3 years for keeping watching the elderly. The company has already started the service to keep watching the elderly for 24 hours in alliance with Tsukui that is one of the leading nursing service companies in Japan. When a user pulls a string, Secom’s terminal will be activated and security staffs will be dispatched. Japan Post will start demonstration experiments of a service for the elderly in alliance with IBM. The elderly respond to a question coming from the tablet “Have you taken medicine?” The answer the elderly make by pushing buttons will be transmitted to family members living apart to let them confirm the health of the elderly. Hitachi collects consumption of electricity and water supply of a household, and immediately informs people concerned of an irregularity whenever it occurs.  

 Nihon Kohden's electrocardiogram

Secom is active around the world

 

No. 881: TDK develops a highly heat resistant magnet without rare earth (October 31, 2015)

Technology:

TDK developed a rare earth-free highly heat resistant magnet for the first time in the world. The new magnet does not deteriorate its property even at such as high temperature as 130 degrees centigrade. The company succeeded in eliminating the necessity of dysprosium that is very expensive because of limited source of supply: Dysprosium was close to 3,000 dollars per kilogram in 2011 because China is virtually the only source of supply. It improved the structure of materials and heat treatment process, and thereby it successfully made the new product entirely without dysprosium. Because the existing product can stand the heat up to 90 degrees centigrade, it can only be used for motors of hard disc drive. But the new product can be applied to electric power steering of vehicles because it does not deteriorate the property of magnet even at 130 degrees centigrade. The company already started the commercial production for several tons per month.

The market of magnets for industrial purposes is estimated at 100 billion yen worldwide, and Japanese companies, such as TDK, Hitachi Metals, and Shin-Etsu Chemical, have strong presence in the world market. Magnet manufacturers are actively involved in developing magnet with increased heat resistance. A magnet that can stand the heat up to 180 degrees centigrade can be used for motors of electric vehicles.   

The world of TDK products

TDK's advanced techology for HDD heads

 

No. 880: Controlling flood damage with the aid of information technology (October 19, 2015)

Technology:
Responding to the increasing number of flood disasters lately, leading IT companies are accelerating their efforts to develop IT-based disaster prevention systems. NTT Data has developed a system to manage disaster information on such issues as landslide quickly using its cloud technology. Fujitsu made it possible to forecast the place where sewage flood occurs and predict the time when it occurs.

The system developed by NTT Data collects weather data by dividing the target area into one-kilometer square and displays such data as rainfall on a PC or tablet. Thereby, local residents can collect data with their terminals as soon as they foresee a possible landside and flood disaster to sound a red alert well in advance of the arrival of the disaster. By utilizing cloud computing and smartphones, the company succeeded in reducing the construction cost of the system to one third of the existing product to about 100 million yen. It is planning to sell this system not only in the domestic market but also in foreign markets.

Fujitsu developed a system to detect damage caused by water flown out from sewage in big rainfall. The system installs a measurement device with sensor on the sewage pipe at intervals of about one kilometer and measures level and amount of water in real time. Collected data will be analyzed and used to predict place and time of flooding to call on residents to evacuate. The annual running cost of the system is 10 million yen for every 1,000 measuring devices. The running cost is less than one tenth of the current level.

Major companies working on the control of damage caused by global warming

Company name	Activities
Fujitsu	It developed a system to estimate flood of sewage
NEC	It developed a system to detect a landside disaster
NTT Data	It developed a disaster management system combined with elaborate weather forecast. It has already put this system on the market.
IBM Japan	It developed an integrated system that can manage disaster information and products in evacuation centers.
Metawater	It is conducting demonstration experiments of a system to predict flood and torrential rainfall.

       

Some researchers predict that world damages caused by flood will increase 170 times from 2015 to about 1 trillion dollars in 2050 unless measures are worked out. 

 

What reaction do people show when they get an alarm mail on their smartphones?

An experiment in Osaka that covered more than 8 million people

Restoration activities after the Great East Japan Earhthquake

No. 879: Increasing the competitive edge of Japanese agriculture (October 8, 2015)

Technology:

It goes without saying that Japan has to increase the competitive edge of its agriculture to cope with the agreement on the picture of the PPT negotiations. Hitachi and the Softbank Group have jointly announced that they will launch the “e-kakashi (scarecrow or bird scanner), which is the support system to help farmers confirm crop’s growing environment, on the 14th of October. Farmers can confirm easily the growing environment of their crop by installing a device that incorporates a senor in their fields to secure the quality of their products.

The new service asks farmers to install a special device with a sensor to measure such data as temperature, amount of insolation, and soil moisture. Collected data will be transmitted to cloud automatically and farmers can see them with their smartphones. No initial setting is required, and what farmers have to do is just switching on the system. Every farmer can operate this system quite easily. The special device can run continuously for three years on the condition that it measures the environment every 10 minutes. Farmers can pick the function to show the optimal environment depending on such growth stages as seeding and sprouting. The system is available for 749,600 yen and up excluding tax, and users have to pay usage charge of 7,980 yen per month. Hitachi builds the device using its internet-of-things technology.

Yano Research Institute, one of Japan’s leading research firms, predicts that the Japanese domestic market of smart agriculture, which is supported by IT technology for better efficiency, will increase to about 31 billion yen in 2020, five times bigger than in 2013. The JAKurikyo in Miyagi Prefecture is scheduled to introduce the system on trial ahead of other agricultural cooperatives with the expectation that the system will help stabilize crop’s quality. 

 

Smartphone to manage rice cropping

Science changes agriculture and fishery

No. 878: Transforming a house into a hydrogen plant (July 30, 2015)

Technology:

Focusing on the next stage of photovoltaic cells, Panasonic will develop a technology to generate hydrogen at home using the photocatalyst technology. The existing photocatalyst technology works only under ultraviolet light, and sunlight contains only a small amount of ultraviolet light. The company developed photocatalyst of the niobium system, and it has already confirmed that the self-developed photocatalyst can generate hydrogen responding to the visible light that has the largest amount of energy among sunlight.

Panasonic’s panel equipment to generate hydrogen

direcdty form natural energy 

 

Panasonic will conduct research to increase the generation efficiency of hydrogen in alliance with New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and Kyoto University. Niobium is abundant and relatively free from price fluctuation as compared with silicone, and its supply is more stable than silicone. Besides, the mechanism to generate hydrogen is simple, opening the way to generate hydrogen at low cost. The company plans to generate sufficient amount of hydrogen to supply energy for household use, excluding energy for vehicle, by hydrogen alone using panels on the house roof. Panasonic wishes to put this technology into practical use by 2030.  

Toshiba’s Hydrogen Energy Research and Development Center 

No. 877: Transforming carbon dioxide to fuel gas in one second (June 8, 2015)

Technology:

Prof. Choji Fukuhara of Shizuoka University and Cataler, a catalyst maker in Shizuoka Prefecture, jointly developed a technology to transform carbon dioxide to fuel gas at a high speed. Carbon dioxide flowed in a narrow tube to which catalyst is applied is transformed to methane gas in about one second.

Prof. Fukuhara’s research team applied a porous material that contains nickelic nanoparticles to aluminum narrow pipes, each of which is 5 cm long and several millimeters in diameter, and combined them to build a pipe. A mixed gas made of carbon dioxide and hydrogen flowed in from one end of the pipe initiates a chemical reaction when it is heated, and methane gas is flows out from the other end. The research team successfully transformed 1.5 ml of carbon oxide into methane gas per second using a pipe 2 cm in diameter. The yield is 90%, and mass production will be available by increasing the number of narrow pipes.

The chemical reaction to produce methane from carbon dioxide and hydrogen has long been known in the academic circle, but it was very hard to increase the transformation efficiency. The research team successfully increased the transformation efficiency by developing the method to make the mixed gas contact nickel nicely. It plans to locate partners for joint research and verify the technology in a demonstration plant. The technology is expected to contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Japanese government plans to reduce greenhouse gases to 26% below 2013 level by 2030.  

Introduction to Cataler  

 

No. 876: Supporting Southeast Asian countries in their attempt to improve infrastructure with the help of information technology (May 7, 2015)

Business trend:
Japanese companies are strengthening their efforts to help Southeast Asian countries improve their infrastructures using information technology. The Japanese government will provide them with indirect support. A syndicate led by Honda Motor will start demonstration experiments of a system to relieve traffic congestion in the Philippines. The system to be introduced in the Philippine is the Vehicle Information and Communication System (VICS) that has already been introduced in Japan. It tells how much the road is congested using the information available from the positional information of vehicles and transmits the information on traffic jam to smartphones and car navigation systems via data broadcasting. JVC Kenwood, Zenrin that is Japan’s map publisher, and Sumitomo Electric joined the syndicate.  

Dentsu that is Japan’s largest advertising agency is to build a business infrastructure that merges broadcasting and communications in alliance with the national broadcasting company in Vietnam. It is developing a system to transmit disaster prevention information to smartphones. Hitachi will start educational-support business that utilizes tablets. NTT Data is scheduled to launch a system that supports air traffic control this month. NEC and Fujitsu will focus on systems to notify information on natural disasters like flood and earthquake and those to detect cybercrimes.  

List of business Japanese companies develop in Southeast Asian Countries

Honda and others	Plan to conduct demonstration experiments of a system to relieve traffic congestion in the Philippines in alliance with leading Japanese companies in car navigation and map publishing.
Dentsu	Develops a system to deliver TV contents via the Internet in alliance with the national TV broadcasting company in Vietnam.
Hitachi	Plans to start educational-support system using tablets making the best use of it successful business of digital textbooks in Japan.
Fujitsu	Has delivered a system to the disaster prevention bureau in Jakarta, and plans to collect information on the level of river water from citizens to formulate flood actions.
NEC	Develop human resources to cope with cybercrime in alliance with the Singaporean government.
NTT Data	Scheduled to put a system that supports air traffic control on the market on May 11.

The Japanese government reached an agreement with the Thai government to strengthen the relations between the two countries in the field of info-communication technology. Japan made a success in the export of IT infrastructure to South America: A total of 17 South American countries adopted the Japanese terrestrial digital broadcasting system. Japanese companies are expected to upgrade their efforts to export technology and service in addition to hardware including equipment in the field of IT infrastructure. 

 A driving support system for express highway

Fujitsu's RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) sensor