Memoirs of the Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University.

Mode of access: Internet.

Memoirs of the College of Engineering, Kyoto Imperial University = Kyōto Teikoku Daigaku Kōgaku Daigaku kiyō.

Title from cover.

Memoirs of the College of Science, Kyoto Imperial University

Mode of access: Internet.

Kyoto Bujutsu Kyokai zasshi

Mode of access: Internet.

The 'law of requisite variety' may assist climate change negotiations:a review of the Kyoto and Durban meetings

Ashby wrote about cybernetics, during which discourse he described a Law that attempts to resolve difficulties arising in complex situations – he suggested using variety to combat complexity. In this paper, we note that the delegates to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Kyoto, 1997, were offered a ‘simplifying solution’ to cope with the complexity of discussing multiple pollutants allegedly contributing to ‘climate change’. We assert that the adoption of CO2eq has resulted in imprecise thinking regarding the ‘carbon footprint’ – that is, ‘CO2’ – to the exclusion of other pollutants. We propose, as Ashby might have done, that the CO2eq and other factors within the ‘climate change’ negotiations be disaggregated to allow careful and specific individual solutions to be agreed on each factor. We propose a new permanent and transparent ‘action group’ be in charge of agenda setting and to manage the messy annual meetings. This body would be responsible for achieving accords at these annual meetings, rather than forcing this task on national hosts. We acknowledge the task is daunting and we recommend moving on from Ashby's Law to Beer's Viable Systems approach.

A környezethez való jog és a Kiotói Jegyzőkönyv (Right to environment and Kyoto Protocol)

A Kiotói Jegyzőkönyv az 1992-ben Rio de Janeiro-ban megrendezésre került Környezet és Fejlődés Világkonferenciáján elfogadott nyilatkozatának 1997-ben aláírt kiegészítő jegyzőkönyve. A Kiotói Jegyzőkönyvben minden aláíró ország vállalta, hogy egy bizonyos százalékos arányban csökkenti országában a kibocsátott üvegházhatást okozó gázok mennyiségét, ezáltal mérsékelve a globális felmelegedés előrehaladtát. A Jegyzőkönyvhöz az Egyesült Államok és több fejlő ország, mint Kína vagy India gazdasági megfontolásból másrészt politikai szűklátókörűségből nem csatlakozott. Ez azonban a komoly aggályokat vet fel azzal kapcsolatban, hogy a környezetvédelmi szabályokat betartó államok erőfeszítései önmagában elegendőek lesznek-e a globális felmelegedés megállítására, de legalábbis csökkentésére. _____________ The Kyoto Protocol signed in the Japanese city in Kyoto in 1997 is a supplemental document to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development organized in Rio de Janeiro. In the Kyoto Protocol individual countries have mandatory emissions targets for the greenhouse gases they must meet to slow down global warming. The United States of America, and several developing countries, as China and India did not yet joined the Protocol partly because of economic reasons and other ways because of narrow-minded political interests. This brings up serious doubt weather the efforts of the parties of the Protocol can make any change in the recent global processes.

Rethinking Kyoto Compliance from a Consumption-Based Perspective.

Environmental consequences of international trade are quite relevant for climate change policy. Apparent decoupling of GHG emission and GDP growth, observed in several European countries, is partly due to the increasing dislocation of manufacturing industries from the developed world to emerging economies. Consequently, decoupling is coupled with increasing GHG emission embodied in imported products from these nations. The article scrutinises the GHG emission embedded in Hungarian import of Chinese products. It argues that a stagnating GHG emission observed in Hungary is intertwined with hidden GHG export to China that takes place through trading of goods. Objective evaluation of compliance status with Kyoto targets would require a consumption-based accounting of GHG emissions rather than a production-based one, unless we accept facing a BIG problem at global level.

The Kyoto School and Confucianism: a Confucian reading of the philosophy of history and political thought of Masaaki Kosaka

This dissertation examines the philosophy of Masaaki Kōsaka (1900-1969) from the East Asian perspective of Confucianism, which I believe is the most appropriate moral paradigm for comprehending his political speculations. Although largely neglected in post-war scholarship, Kōsaka was a prominent member of the Kyoto School during the 1930s and 40s. This was a group of Japanese thinkers strongly associated with the philosophies of Kitarō Nishida and Hajime Tanabe. Kōsaka is now best known for his participation in the three Chūō Kōron symposia held in 1941 and 1942. These meetings have been routinely denounced by liberal historians due to the participants’ support for the Pacific War and the Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, many of these liberal portrayals have failed to take into account the full extent of the group’s resistance to the military junta of Hideki Tōjō. Adopting the methods and techniques of the empirical disciplines of academic history and Orientalism, I develop an interpretative framework that is more receptive to the political values that mattered to Kōsaka as a Confucian inspired intellectual. This has necessitated the rejection of moral history, which typically prioritises modern liberal values brought a priori to the historical record of wartime Japan, as well as recognition of the different ontological foundations that inform the unique political theories of the East Asian intellectual tradition. Reinforced by the prior research of Michel Dalissier and Graham Parkes, as well as my own reading of the Confucian canon, I adopt David Williams’s thesis of ‘Confucian Revolution’ as my principle schema of interpretation. This, I believe, is better able to reconcile Kōsaka’s support for the war with his strong condemnation of the imperialist practices of the Japanese military. Moreover, acknowledging the importance of Confucianism allows us to fully appreciate Kōsaka’s strong affinity for Kant’s practical metaphysics, Hegel’s political philosophy and Ranke’s historiography.

Comunicazione urbana nelle città storiche del Sol Levante: l'esperienza di Kyoto tra tradizione e innovazione

The book collects the Papers (from Europe, Asia and Latin America) presented at the Workshop organized by the ICOMOS International Committee in Historic Towns and Villages (CIVVIH) and by ICOMOS Italy in Palazzo Coppini (branch of Fondazione Romualdo del Bianco) in Florence (March 3-4, 2016) and focus on the comparison of different propositions of digital urban signage to realize a good quality of the “visit experience” in the historical towns, not only as urban marketing, but of a authenticity genuine culture. The urban culture founded on the identity and authenticity of every historical towns and their multilayered history must be the objective of an tourism of culture for the inhabitants and the visitors. The book focused its interest on the outstanding existing urban assets in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and heritage not sufficiently promoted.

Small states and the promotion of their foreign policy agenda in the international scenario: Trinidad and Tobago and the Kyoto Protocol

Este estudio de caso busca identificar los elementos del portafolio de política exterior de Trinidad y Tobago que le permitieron promover exitosamente sus intereses en el Protocolo de Kioto. Al hacer esto, este texto analizará las limitaciones de Trinidad y Tobago en términos de vulnerabilidades de localización, burocracia y recursos. Posteriormente, una revisión del portafolio de política exterior de este Estado ilustrará el uso de estrategias de creación de capacidades y de organización como lo son el contacto con actores institucionales y no gubernamentales, la formación de coaliciones y estrategias argumentativas, entre otras. Finalmente, este artículo concluirá que dichas acciones permitieron la promoción de la agenda de política exterior de Trinidad y Tobago a través de la creación de hojas de ruta y la coordinación de la incertidumbre con el Protocolo de Kioto. Para hacer esto, este trabajo se concentrará en examinar conceptos como vulnerabilidad y priorización, asimismo contrastando diferentes artículos académicos en la materia junto con documentos oficiales de Trinidad y Tobago.

Existential experience : the unfolding

This paper reports on a project concerned with the relationship between person and space in the context of achieving a contemplative state. The need for such a study originated with the desire to contribute to the design of multicultural spaces which could be used for a range of activities including prayer and meditation. Given that the words ‘prayer’ and ‘meditation’ are highly value-laden and potentially alienating for some people, it was decided to use the more accessible term ‘contemplative’. While the project is still underway,several findings have emerged that can be reported on and are of relevance to the conference both methodologically and substantively. Informed by phenomenological methodology, data were collected from a diverse group of people using photo-elicitation and interviewing. The technique of photo-elicitation proved to be highly effective in helping people to reveal their everyday lived experience of contemplative spaces. This methodological aspect of the project is described more fully in the paper. The initial stage of analysis produced two categories of data: varying conceptions of contemplation and contemplative space; and, common understandings of contemplation and contemplative space. From this it was found that achieving a state of contemplation involves both the person and the environment in a dialectic process of unfolding. The unfolding has various physical, psycho-social, and existential dimensions or qualities which operate sequentially and simultaneously. In the paper, these are labelled:the unfolding of the core; distinction; manifestation; cleansing; creation; and sharing, and have parallels with Mircea Eliade’s 1959 definition of sacred as 'something that manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane’. It also connects with the views of Nishida Kitaro from the Kyoto School of Philosophy on the theme of ‘absolute nothingness’: ‘the body-mind is dropped off and we are united with the consciousness of absolute nothingness’ (Kitaro in Heisig, 2001, p. 169). According to Marion (2005), ‘nothingness’ is defined by givenness. In the paper, this fold of givenness is interpreted in the context of the qualities of the environment that accomplish the act of coming forward into visibility through the dialectic relationship with a person. (Eliade, 1959, Heisig, 2001, Marion, 2002)

Reduction of Secondary Degeneration after Spinal Cord Injury by Acute Delivery of Proinflammatory Growth Factors

INTRODUCTION Inflammation is a protective attempt to facilitate the removal of damaged tissue and to initiate the healing response in other tissues. However, after spinal cord injury (SCI), this response is prolonged leading to secondary degeneration and glial scarring. Here, we investigate the potential of sustained delivery of pro-inflammatory factors vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and platelet derived growth factor (PDGF) to increase early inflammatory events and promote inflammatory resolution. Method Animal ethics approval was obtained from the Queensland University of Technology. Adult Wistar-Kyoto rats (12-16 weeks old) were subjected to laminectomies and T10 hemisections. Animals were then randomised to treatment (implantation of osmotic pump (Alzet) loaded with 5ug VEGF & 5 ug PDGF) or control groups (lesion control or lesion plus pump delivering PBS). Rats were sacrificed at one month and the spinal cords were harvested and examined by immunohistology, using anti-neurofilament-200(NF200) and anti- ionized calcium binding adapter molecule 1 (Iba1). One way ANOVA was used for statistic analysis. Results At 1 month, active pump-treated cords showed a high level of axonal filament throughout the defects as compared to the control groups. The mean lesion size, as measured by NF200, was 0.47mm2 for the lesion control, 0.39mm2 for the vehicle control and 0.078mm2 for the active pump group. Significant differences were detected between the active pump group and the two control groups (AP vs LC p= 0.017 AG vs VC p= 0.004). Iba-1 staining also showed significant differences in the post-injury inflammatory response. Discussion We have shown that axons and activated microglia are co-located in the lesion of the treated cord. We hypothesise the delivery of VEGF/PDGF increases the local vessel permeability to inflammatory cells and activates these along with the resident microglia to threshold population, which ultimately resolved the prolonged inflammation. Here, we have shown that maintaining the inflammatory signals for at least 7 days improved the morphology of the injured cord. Conclusion This study has shown that boosting inflammation, by delivery VEGF/PDGF, in the early phase of SCI helps to reduce secondary degeneration and may promote inflammation resolution. This treatment may provide a platform for other neuro-regenrative therapies.