Sometimes being the villain is way more fun than being the hero.

Mamori Wataya is used to being a nobody. She lingers in the shadows of her high school, dismissed by everyone around her—that is, until she meets Soshi Fuji, the school’s notorious troublemaker. Fueled by her deep admiration for villains, Mamori quickly becomes captivated by Fuji’s devil-may-care attitude, and together they embark on a rebellion against the status quo.

Fuji has ordered Mamori to go on a date with his younger brother Koichi, lovingly nicknamed “the Prince” by all his admirers. And although Fuji hopes to mess with his brother’s head, Koichi has his own ulterior motives for asking out Mamori that quickly turn the date into a nightmare. Just when Mamori thinks things can’t get any worse, a young woman named Ichika appears, claiming to be Fuji’s fiancée…

Sometimes being the villain is way more fun than being the hero.

Mamori Wataya is used to being a nobody. She lingers in the shadows of her high school, dismissed by everyone around her—that is, until she meets Soshi Fuji, the school’s notorious troublemaker. Fueled by her deep admiration for villains, Mamori quickly becomes captivated by Fuji’s devil-may-care attitude, and together they embark on a rebellion against the status quo.

After discovering that Fuji lives in the shadow of his popular and perfect younger brother, nicknamed “the Prince” by all the girls at school, Mamori offers to help Fuji derail his brother’s campaign for student council president. But as Fuji’s audacious pranks pull them closer together, Mamori discovers there’s more to like about Fuji than his just villainy.

'Information Technology and Economic Development' looks at the effect of information technology on fields such as politics, education, sociology and technology.

This collection presents fundamentals and the current status of friction stir welding (FSW) and solid-state friction stir processing of materials, and provides researchers and engineers with an opportunity to review the current status of the friction stir related processes and discuss the future possibilities. Contributions cover various aspects of friction stir welding and processing including their derivative technologies. Topics include but are not limited to: * derivative technologies * high-temperature lightweight applications * industrial applications * dissimilar alloys and/or materials * controls and nondestructive examination * simulation * characterization

This book addresses the mechanism of enrichment of heavy elements in galaxies, a long standing problem in astronomy. It mainly focuses on explaining the origin of heavy elements by performing state-of-the-art, high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations of dwarf galaxies. In this book, the author successfully develops a model of galactic chemodynamical evolution by means of which the neutron star mergers can be used to explain the observed abundance pattern of the heavy elements synthesized by the rapid neutron capture process, such as europium, gold, and uranium in the Local Group dwarf galaxies. The book argues that heavy elements are significant indicators of the evolutionary history of the early galaxies, and presents theoretical findings that open new avenues to understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies based on the abundance of heavy elements in metal-poor stars.

This books presents a current look at friction stir welding technology from application to characterization and from modeling to R&D. It is a compilation of the recent progress relating to friction stir technologies including derivative technologies, high-temperature applications, industrial applications, dissimilar alloy/materials, lightweight alloys, simulation, and characterization. With contributions from leaders and experts in industry and academia, this will be a comprehensive source for the field of Friction Stir Welding and Processing.

This collection focuses on all aspects of science and technology related to friction stir welding and processing.

The existence of life at high temperatures is quiet fascinating. At elevated temperatures, only microorganisms are capable of growth and survival. A variety of microbes survive and grow at such high temperatures. Many thermophilic microbial genera have been isolated from man-made (washing machines, factory effluents, waste streams and acid mine effluents) and natural (volcanic areas, geothermal areas, terrestrial hot springs, submarine hydrothermal vents, geothermally heated oil reserves and oil wells, sun-heated litter and soils/sediments) thermal habitats throughout the world. Both culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches have been employed for understanding the diversity of microbes in hot environments. These organisms not only tolerate such high temperatures but also usually require these for their growth and survival. They are known as thermophiles/thermophilic microbes, which include a wide variety of prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea) as well as eukaryotes (Fungi, Algae, Protozoa). Interest in their diversity, ecology, and physiology has increased enormously during the past few decades as indicated by the deliberations in international conferences on extremophiles and thermophiles every alternate year. The Phylogenetic relationship of the known microorganisms indicates the presence of thermophilic microorganisms at the position close to the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). It is widely accepted that metal-reducing microorganisms have a large impact on the geochemistry of subsurface environments through the cycling of metals and organic matter, and thereby affect water quality and taste. Furthermore, metal-reducing micro-organisms have potential applications in bioremediation, mineral leaching and energy generation processes and are of evolutionary interest as metal reduction is considered to be a very ancient form of respiration. Protein characterization surprisingly indicated that possible additional functionality and alternate site promiscuity could contribute to the diverse biochemical abilities of the bacteria, especially with respect to microbe-metal interactions. Thermophilic bacteria are also able to reduce a wide spectrum of other metals including Mn (IV), Cr (VI), U (VI), Tc (VII), Co (III), Mo (VI), Au (I, III), and Hg (II) which can be used for immobilization of toxic metals/radionuclides, e.g. for the bioremediation of hot waste water of disposal sites of radioactive wastes having temperature range favorable for thermophiles for a long period of time. The main sources of CO in hot environments inhabited by anaerobic thermophiles are volcanic exhalations and thermal degradation of organic matter. A number of phylogenetically diverse anaerobic prokaryotes, both Bacteria and Archaea, are known to metabolize CO. CO transformation may be coupled to methanogenesis, acetogenesis, hydrogenogenesis, sulfate or ferric iron reduction. The key enzyme of anaerobic CO utilization, the Ni-containing CO dehydrogenase, is synthesized in hydrogenogens as an enzyme complex with the energy-converting hydrogenase. The genomic analysis shows this enzymatic complex to be encoded by a single gene cluster. Themophilic moulds and bacteria have been extensively studied in plant biomass bioconversion processes, as sources of industrial enzymes and as gene donors for the heterologous expression of thermostable enzymes. In the development of third generation biofuels such as bioethanol, thermophilic fungal and bacterial enzymes are of particular interest. The entire genomes of several thermophilic bacteria and archaea have already been sequenced. The analysis of the genomic data provided resources for novel and useful proteins and enzymes. The entire genomic data have also provided specific feature of microbes and important information on the evolution of thermophilic microorganisms. In some thermophilic archaea, multiple types of chaperonins have been identified. The chaperonins have been found to change according to the environmental conditions, suggesting that the mechanism for maintaining correct structure of thermostable proteins in the thermophilic archaea is regulated by changing chaperonine molecules. These organisms have evolved several structural and chemical adaptations, which allow them to survive and grow at elevated temperatures. Thermostable enzymes play an important role in the biosynthesis of fine chemicals. They are generally more robust against the conditions of industrial biocatalysis utilized by the industry, which can be solvent based or at elevated temperatures. Many non-natural industrially interesting substrates are often not soluble under aqueous conditions and at ambient temperatures. The thermophilic Archaea are a good source of these enzymes, which have been cloned and over-expressed in Escherichia coli. These include alcohol dehydrogenases for chiral alcohol production, aminoacylases for optically pure amino acids and amino acid analogues, transaminases for chiral amine production and gamma lactamases for chiral gamma lactam building blocks which are subsequently incorporated into carbocyclic nucleotides. Considerable interest has been generated in the mechanism that nature utilizes to increase the stability of enzymes found in thermophilic and hyperthermophilic species. A comparative approach has been used to carry out a detailed study of specific enzymes from a range of organisms in order to understand acquired stability at a structural level. A directed or site-specific mutagenesis approach has been used for stabilizing mesophilic proteins. The specific mutations have been introduced by looking at the most primitive forms of life, which are thought to have evolved in a thermophilic environment. The book is aimed at bringing together scattered up-to-date information on various aspects of thermophiles such as the diversity of thermophiles and viruses of thermophiles, their potential roles in pollution control and bioremediation, composting and microb

This book is a compilation of the recent progress on friction stir technologies including high-temperature applications, industrial applications, dissimilar alloy/materials, lightweight alloys, simulation, control, characterization, and derivative technologies. The volume offers a current look at friction stir welding technology from application to characterization and from modeling to R&D. Contributions document advances in application, controls, and simulation of the friction stir process to aid researchers in seeing the current state-of-the-art.

Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on the Applications of the Mossbauer Effect (ICAME 2011) held in Kobe, Japan, September 25-30, 2011
Y. Yoshida (Ed)
Professor Rudolf L. Mossbauer passed away just before this conference on 14 September 2011. At the Opening Ceremony by Denes Nagy, Chairperson of IBAME, with Yutaka Yoshida, Chairperson of the Organizing Committee, dedicated the conference to the memory of Professor Mossbauer. This volume focuses on the most recent studies on the materials research for the global environment among the usual topics which have been discussed in this long-standing conference series: Advances in Experimental techniques and Methodology, Theories of Hyperfine Interaction, Dynamics, Biological and Medical Application, Chemical Applications, Nanomaterials, Solid State Physic, Earth Science, Mineralogy and Archaeology, Materials Science and Industrial Applications. Prof. W. Keune gave us a keynote lecture on the applications of Mossbauer Spectroscopy in Magnetism. There were both a special session on the Database and the hot topics session on Iron based superconductors. Prof. S. Campbell made concluding remarks. The special papers presented by Profs. C.E. Johnson, I. Nowick, G. Vogl, J.M. Genin, F. E. Wagner, and J. Stevens in Evening session are also included in this volume.

Reprint from Hyperfine Interactions"

Medicinal and Aromatic Plants XII comprises 18 chapters. It deals with the distribution, importance, conventional propagation, micropropagation, tissue culture studies, and the in vitro production of important medicinal and pharmaceutical compounds in the following plants: Artemisia annua, Coriandrum sativum, Crataegus, Dionaea muscipula, Hyoscyamus reticulatus, Hypericum canariense, Leguminosae, Malva, Ocimum, Pergularia tomentosa, Phellodendron amurense, Sempervivum, Solanum aculeatissimum, S. chrysotrichum, S. kasianum, Stephania, Trigonella, and Vaccinium. It is tailored to the needs of advanced students, teachers, and research scientists in the fields of pharmacy, plant tissue culture, phytochemistry, biomedical engineering, and plant biotechnology in general.

This cutting edge collection focuses on the nature of civil society and its role in facilitating governance in Central Asia, considering local implications related to the concept of social capital and civil society in the Uzbek context. It discusses the complexity of the notion of social capital in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, detailing the challenges and pressures facing the Uzbek people.Challenging prevailing views on post-Soviet political transitions, the book demonstrates that successful transition to democracy and rule of law cannot be accomplished unless the concerns, fears, frustrations and local understandings of the desired political system are heard, registered and carefully interpreted. Offering a comparative study of civil society and social capital in Asia, this collection is a key read not only for scholars and students in civil governance and post-soviet transitions, but also aid agencies, foreign governments, and international organisations working with civil society groups.

Mites are very small animals, characterized by wingless and eyeless bodies, in which sociality has been discovered. This book offers detailed descriptions of the diverse social systems and the social evolution of mites, ranging from genetic to ecological aspects. Through a broad spectrum of studies including traditional natural history, taxonomy, modern evolutionary and behavioral ecology, and theoretical models as well, the book addresses a number of important findings on plant mite evolution and species radiation, with the author succeeding in combining theoretical and practical approaches in behavioral ecology by proposing a new game theory. These findings reflect the complex evolutionary history of these taxa and also help to point out clearly what is known and what is not yet known to date. Mites have been considered a minor animal group, but the author shows that mites actually possess great diversity and therefore make unique materials for evolutionary and behavioral studies.

With rapid increase of mobile users of laptop computers and cellular phones, support of Internet services like e-mail and World Wide Web (WWW) access in a mobile environment is an indispensable requirement. The wireless networks must have the ability to provide real-time bursty traffic (such as voice or video) and data traffic in a multimedia environment with high quality of service. To satisfy the huge demand for wireless multimedia service, efficient channel access methods must be devised. For design and tuning of the channel access methods, the system performance must be mathematically analysed. To do so, very accurate models, that faithfully reproduce the stochastic behaviour of multimedia wireless communication and computer networks, must be constructed.
There exist several books on the performance analysis and evaluation for data communication networks or computer networks. This book attempts to present exact and approximate analytical solution methods and techniques using queueing theory in the complex multimedia traffic systems with procedures of random multiple access schemes. In particular, this book presents how to approximate the system performance of discrete-time multimedia networks, the probability distribution of the interarrival time of internetwork packets at the adjacent network and the higher moments of the transmission departure distribution and delay in wireless multimedia communication environment. In general the modeling of discrete-time multimedia communication systems are more complex than that of continuous-time systems because multiple state changes can occur from one time-unit to the next. This complicates the analysis of the model. This book alsodiscusses numerical results that illustrate the applications of the theory and various properties.
Performance Analysis of Multichannel and Multi-Traffic on Wireless Communication Networks should prove useful to a post-graduate course in computer science or electrical engineering. It can be a pre requisite to some other more advanced courses like network design and management or queueing theory with applications to multimedia communication and computer networks. It can also be used for a course on stochastic models in applied mathematics and operations research departments.

Animal cell technology is a growing discipline of cell biology which aims not only to understand structures, functions and behaviors of differentiated animal cells, but also to ascertain their abilities to be used in industrial and medical purposes. The goal of animal cell technology includes accomplishments of clonal expansion of differentiated cells with useful ability, optimization of their culture conditions, modulation of their ability for production of medically and pharmaceutically important proteins and the application of animal cells to gene therapy, artificial organs and functional foods.
This volume gives the readers a complete review of present state-of-the-art in Japan and other countries where this field is well advanced. The Proceedings will be useful for the cell biologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, immunologists, biochemical engineers and other disciplines related to animal cell culture, working in either academic environments or in industries of biotechnology and pharmacy.

Agent-based modeling/simulation is an emergent approach to the analysis of social and economic systems. It provides a bottom-up experimental method to be applied to social sciences such as economics, management, sociology and politics as well as some engineering fields dealing with social activities. This book includes selected papers presented at the Eighth International Workshop on Agent-Based Approaches in Economic and Social Complex Systems held in Tokyo, Japan, in 2013. At the workshop, 23 reviewed full papers were presented and of those, 13 were selected to be included in this volume.

Since the mid-1970s, the tropical savanna, known as Cerrado, has been transformed into one of the world's largest grain-growing regions. This book explores how and by what Brazil achieved inclusive and sustainable growth in the Cerrado.

The SOLAR-A spacecraft was launched by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan (ISS) in August 1991, and, following and ISAS tradition, was renamed YOHKOH. This mission is dedicated principally to the study of solar flares, especially of high-energy phenomena observed in the X-ray and gamma-ray ranges. With a co-ordinated set of instruments including hard X-ray and soft X-ray imaging telescopes as well as spectrometers with advanced capabilities, it is expected to reveal new aspects of flares and help better understand their physics, supporting international collaborations with ground-based observatories as well as theoretical investigations. An overview of this mission, including the stallite, its scientific instruments, and its operation is given in this book.

Medically unexplained somatic symptoms are problematic in psychiatry, primary care settings, and other clinical areas. The burden they impose on health-care systems constitutes a significant public health problem. At the international symposium "Rethinking Somatoform Disorders," this problem was addressed by specialists working in somatoform disorders, psychiatric nosology, epidemiology, and biological and cross-cultural psychiatry. The meeting was the third of the Keio University International Symposia for Life Sciences and Medicine, in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the World Psychiatric Association.

This graduate text gives an introductory overview of the fundamentals of quantum nonlinear optics. It deals with the organization of radiation field, interaction between electronic system and radiation field, statistics of light, mutual manipulation of light and matter, laser oscillation, dynamics of light, nonlinear optical response, nonlinear spectroscopy as well as ultrashort and ultrastrong laser pulse. In addition, latest results of the frontier of this science are presented. Problems and solutions help the reader to become familiar with the material given.

Microelectronic Packaging analyzes the massive impact of electrochemical technologies on various levels of microelectronic packaging. Traditionally, interconnections within a chip were considered outside the realm of packaging technologies, but this book emphasizes the importance of chip wiring as a key aspect of microelectronic packaging, and focuses on electrochemical processing as an enabler of advanced chip metallization. Divided into five parts, the book begins by outlining the basics of electrochemical processing, defining the microelectronic packaging hierarchy, and emphasizing the impact of electrochemical technology on packaging. The second part discusses chip metallization topics including the development of robust barrier layers and alternative metallization materials. Part III explores key aspects of chip-package interconnect technologies, followed by Part IV's analysis of packages, boards, and connectors which covers materials development, technology trends in ceramic packages and multi-chip modules, and electroplated contact materials. Illustrating the importance of processing tools in enabling technology development, the book concludes with chapters on chemical mechanical planarization, electroplating, and wet etching/cleaning tools. Experts from industry, universities, and national laboratories submitted reviews on each of these subjects, capturing the technological advances made in each area. A detailed examination of how packaging responds to the challenges of Moore's law, this book serves as a timely and valuable reference for microelectronic packaging and processing professionals and other industrial technologists.

Tutorials on Mossbauer Spectroscopy
Since the discovery of the Mossbauer Effect many excellent books have been published for researchers and for doctoral and master level students. However, there appears to be no textbook available for final year bachelor students, nor for people working in industry who have received only basic courses in classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, chemistry and materials science. The challenge of this book is to give an introduction to Mossbauer Spectroscopy for this level.
The ultimate goal of this book is to give this audience not only a scientific introduction to the technique, but also to demonstrate in an attractive way the power of Mossbauer Spectroscopy in many fields of science, in order to create interest among the readers in joining the community of Mossbauer spectroscopists. This is particularly important at times where in many Mossbauer laboratories succession is at stake.
This book will be used as a textbook for the tutorial sessions, organized at the occasion of the 2011 International Conference on the Application of Mossbauer Spectroscopy (ICAME2011) in Tokyo."

Hidenori Kimura, renowned system and control theorist, turned 60 years of age in November, 2001. To celebrate this memorable occasion, his friends, collaborators, and former students gathered from all over the world and held a symposium in his honor on November 1 and 2, 2001, at the Sanjo Conference Hall at the University of Tokyo. Reflecting his current research interests, the symposium was entitled "Cybernetics in the 21st Century: Information and Complexity in Control Theory," and it drew nearly 150 attendees. There were twenty-five lectures, on which the present volume is based. Hidenori Kimura was born on November 3, 1941, in Tokyo, just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. It is not hard to imagine, then, that his early days, like those of so many of his contemporaries, must have been difficult. Fortunately, the war ended in 1945, and his generation found itself thoroughly occupied with the rebuilding effort and with Japan's uphill journey in the last half-century. He entered the University of Tokyo in 1963, received a B. S. in 1965, an M. S. in 1967, and, in 1970, a Ph. D. degree for his dissertation "A Study of Differential Games. " After obtaining his doctorate, he joined the Department of Control En gineering at Osaka University as a research associate, and in 1973 he was promoted to an associate professor."

This book covers the practical application of dependable electronic systems in real industry, such as space, train control and automotive control systems, and network servers/routers. The impact from intermittent errors caused by environmental radiation (neutrons and alpha particles) and EMI (Electro-Magnetic Interference) are introduced together with their most advanced countermeasures. Power Integration is included as one of the most important bases of dependability in electronic systems. Fundamental technical background is provided, along with practical design examples. Readers will obtain an overall picture of dependability from failure causes to countermeasures for their relevant systems or products, and therefore, will be able to select the best choice for maximum dependability.