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Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal driver of anthropogenic climate change. Asia is an important region for the global carbon budget, with 4 of the world's 10 largest national emitters of CO2. Using an ensemble of seven atmospheric inverse systems, we estimated land biosphere fluxes (natural, land-use change and fires) based on atmospheric observations of CO2 concentration. The Asian land biosphere was a net sink of −0.46 (−0.70–0.24) PgC per year (median and range) for 1996–2012 and was mostly located in East Asia, while in South and Southeast Asia the land biosphere was close to carbon neutral. In East Asia, the annual CO2 sink increased between 1996–2001 and 2008–2012 by 0.56 (0.30–0.81) PgC, accounting for ∼35% of the increase in the global land biosphere sink. Uncertainty in the fossil fuel emissions contributes significantly (32%) to the uncertainty in land biosphere sink change.

In fatigue tests of high strength steels and surface hardened steels, a characteristic fatigue behavior such that S-N curve tends to come down again in the long life region of N>107 was often observed and reported by many researchers. When the mechanical design is based on the fatigue limit of the material, the above aspect introduces a typical difficulty to provide the reliability of the mechanical structures. In order to clarify such S-N characteristics in wide life region, a series of fatigue tests were performed by means of same type fatigue testing machines and same type of fatigue specimens in a definite high carbon chromium steel for the use of bearing as a collaborative study by the authors. Thus the complicated S-N property of this steel was tentatively interpreted as duplex S-N characteristics given by superposition of S-N curves for the respective fracture modes of the surface-originated fracture and the inclusion-originated fish-eye fracture.

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Silk is a protein fiber used to weave fabrics and as a biomaterial in medical applications. Recently, genetically modified silks have been produced from transgenic silkworms. In the present study, transgenic silkworms for the mass production of three colors of fluorescent silks, (green, red, and orange) are generated using a vector originating from the fibroin H chain gene and a classical breeding method. The suitability of the recombinant silks for making fabrics is investigated by harvesting large amounts of the cocoons, obtained from rearing over 20 thousand silkworms. The application of low temperature and a weakly alkaline solution for cooking and reeling enables the production of silk fiber without loss of color. The maximum strain tolerated and Young's modulus of the fluorescent silks are similar to those of ordinary silk, although the maximum stress value of the recombinant silk is slightly lower than that of the control. Fabrics with fluorescent color are demonstrated using the recombinant silk, with the color persisting for over two years. The results indicate that large amounts of genetically modified silk can be made by transgenic silkworms, and the silk is applicable as functional silk fiber for making fabrics and for use in medical applications.