Extensive study of receiver point interpolation methods for drawing estimated road traffic noise maps in Japanese city blocks.

There are various issues need to be addressed when drawing estimated road traffic noise maps in Japan. One of them is there is a trade-off between computational load and estimation accuracy due to the number of sound receiver points on the building facades where the noise exposure is evaluated. An interpolation to generate receiver points on facades as post-processing of a computation made on relatively coarse receiver points can be a solution to achieve compromise between computational load and estimation accuracy. In this study, estimated noise maps are drawn in nine real city blocks in Japan with different land-use areas by placing sound receiving points with intervals of 1m, 5m and 10m. The map of the 1m interval is used as the reference noise levels. The maps of the 5m and 10m intervals are interpolated to the 1m interval using 29 interpolation methods. The optimal combination of the interval of sound receiving points and the interpolation method are found based on error of the interpolated maps compared to the reference map.

Godzila

Godzilla, the most iconic movie monster that everyone will think of whenever someone talk with people about a giant monster obliterating a city. Its legacy has been living for almost seventy years and will keep live for the years to come. From looking at the perspective of Ecocentric theory, it seems that Godzilla is a force of nature that obliterates the Japanese city Tokyo to teach humans a lesson that our selfishness, arrogance and the attitude of placing ourselves on top of nature would only lead to tragic consequences. Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this article discuss about the movies which actually focuses on the core element of Godzilla instead of the portrayal of Godzilla as a monster fighter or as a savior of humanity in the aspects of ecocriticism, environmentalism, politics and post-modernism, along with the king of the monsters.

Revisiting Korean Slums in Postwar Japan: Tongne and Hakkyo in the Zainichi Memoryscape

Korean shantytowns existed in every large Japanese city from the postwar years through the late 1960s. Japanese people recall them as secluded, dirty, impoverished, and dangerous. To many scholars, their existence confirms the transwar continuity of Japanese oppression of underclass ethnic minorities. But zainichi Koreans who grew up in such slums, which they called tongne, offer inspirational stories and fond memories of living there. This article sheds light on Koreans’ postwar experiences by discussing the important sociopolitical functions of the tongne and their continuing symbolism among the zainichi population. Viewing the tongne as zainichi's postliberation place of origin and paying attention to the reproduction of its meanings in hakkyo (schools) helps us understand the uneven terrain of power relationships in zainichi society, including why the Chongryun exercised great cultural power at least until the 1970s.

Reconstructed Nostalgia

In chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and their respective subgenres, a common element is the thread of nostalgia, constant in each. This is the case for both the cover art used for these releases, as well as compositional techniques used in the music itself. Although these genres certainly approach nostalgia in different ways, they each rely on imagery that evokes nostalgic feelings or memories in a form of collective, imaginative self-soothing. The memories evoked, however, tend to rely on unrealistic depictions of reality and center on times and places that have perhaps only existed in the listener’s imagination. This article argues that the re-interpretation of cultural memory is an important structural feature in chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and vaporwave subgenres such as mallsoft and the associated Japanese “city pop” revival. Through a discussion of the visual and musical connections that draw these genres together, the concepts of nostalgia in music (as well as the related concept of “reconstructed nostalgia”) are explored. An examination of listeners’ narrative explorations of these genres posted online suggests that users engage knowingly and willingly with this “reconstructed nostalgia.” Ultimately, this forms a collaborative and collective universe used by listeners as a method of escapism, through both their own imaginations and online comments.

Association between Childhood Maltreatment History and Premenstrual Syndrome

Childhood maltreatment history has known relationships with various mental and physical diseases; however, little is known about its association with premenstrual syndrome (PMS). In this study, we investigated the association between childhood maltreatment history and PMS among young women in Japan. In a Japanese city, we approached 3815 women aged 10–60 years who visited a gynecology clinic and one general practice clinic. A questionnaire on childhood maltreatment history and PMS was administered to them. We observed that women with histories of childhood maltreatment demonstrated a significantly increased risk of PMS compared with those without such histories (odds ratio: 1.47, 95% confidence interval: 1.20–1.81). Particularly, women with childhood physical or emotional abuse demonstrated a stronger association with PMS, whereas other forms of childhood maltreatment (emotional neglect, witnessing of intimate-partner violence, or sexual abuse) were not associated with PMS. Our results illustrate that childhood maltreatment may be a risk factor for PMS.

A Hybrid Meta-Heuristic Approach Considering Workload Balancing for Vehicle Assignment and Routing Problem

In recent years, due to the globalization of the market and the expansion of e-commerce, logistics optimization attracts keen interest from manufacturing companies and service providers. The service area expands wider and the number of customers increases rapidly, thus logistics service providers need to determine the customer assignments and the routes for their trucks considering not only the efficiency of logistics but also the balance of workload for each truck. Therefore, in this study, we propose a customer assignment and vehicle routing algorithm based on the saving method and the simulated annealing. The algorithm first determines the customer assignment and initial route for each truck based on the saving method to balance the workload consisting of the number of customers, the demand of the customers, and distance. Then the initial route is improved by applying the simulated annealing. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conducted computational experiments. In experiments, we solved the waste collection vehicle routing problem in a Japanese city where the wastes generated from over 1000 customers are collected by 10 trucks starting from 1 depot. We evaluated the total cost consisting of the number of waste collecting points, the amount of waste, and the distance for this case study.