Understanding fungal lives coevolved with plants
Terrestrial Microbiology and Systematics
Professor TANAKA Chihiro
Many microbes live in agricultural and forest ecosystems and interact with plants and other organisms. Some of these microbes are parasitic to the plants, bringing severe damage to the hosts, and some other microbes are mutualistic, bringing benefits to the hosts. We are studying these microbes and the nature of the interactions between the microbes and their biotic and abiotic environments to develop new approaches to plant protection and health.
Among these microorganisms, my favorite ones to study are fungi. Fungi are considered to be one of the most ”successful taxonomic groups, with over 1.5 million species thought to exist on the Earth. Fungi play a central role in the global hemical cycle as decomposers of plant remains in current terrestrial ecosystems, but their ancestral forms are aquatic organisms comprised of a single or a few cells, attaching to organic substrates in water. It is thought that the reason such organisms became major players in the chemical cycle of terrestrial ecosystems is that fungal cells took on a filamentous form called hyphae and were able to penetrate solid organic substrates using the hyphal growth mechanism. Furthermore, this ability is thought to have led fungi to evolve into parasites of other multicellular organisms, especially plants. From these pathogens, a symbiotic relationship with host plants might have been selected. In particular, the emergence of mycorrhizal fungi, which invade plant roots and take photosynthetic sugars while the rest of fungal mycelium continue to grow through the soil, dissolving and absorbing inorganic salts and water instead of root hairs and sharing these with their plant hosts, has led to the adaptation of plants to terrestrial environments. The prosperity of plants on land has simultaneously led to the prosperity and diversification of fungi as decomposers, parasites, and symbionts of land plants; moreover, the fungi developed more complicated life systems. However, we do not know exactly how many species of fungi there are. Traditionally, isolation, culturing or microscopic inspection was required for identification. The recent development of environmental DNA analysis methods has made it possible to reveal the diversity of microbiota, including fungi, without isolating them; however, it is still necessary to isolate and culture the fungal species that possess DNA information for close elucidation of their various properties.
Investigations of individual species using several ecological strategies and life systems will reveal the basic principles, diversity, and evolution of fungal lives. These studies will lead to knowledge of biorational applications for our lives. For example, the osmotic stress-response signaling system, which is evolutionarily conserved in filamentous fungi, has attracted attention as a target site for highly selective fungicides with low environmental impact. The mechanism of attachment and invasion of fungi to solid substrates has been of interest not only for plant protection but also for the fermentation industries and for residential hygiene.
Sustainability from the perspective of socio-technical system
Environmental Education
Associate Professor TRENCHER Gregory
What is a socio-technical system and why is it important?
To build a sustainable society, there is an urgent need to develop and diffuse new technologies, energy sources, materials, and business practices. Although many of these exist already, most of the time these don’t diffuse in society, or their diffusion is very slow. Why is this? To understand this, there is a need for a systemic perspective that views technologies as part of social systems. Such socio-technical systems are networks of different elements. These include social elements (e.g. policies, laws, rules, business models, infrastructure, funds), human elements (e.g. users, makers, companies) and material elements (e.g. supporting infrastructure and raw materials). Furthermore, this system concerns two sets of activities: production and use.
Like with most systems in the human and natural world, the goal of a particular socio-technical system is not self-destruction. Instead, the different parts in the system influence each other and evolve together in the goal or attaining stability, growth or continuity.
This systemic view of technologies as part of a broader socio-technical system in this way brings many hints for scholars and policymakers trying to understand how to speed up societal transitions towards sustainability. First, it tells us that if we want to accelerate the production and diffusion of sustainable technologies, we need to consider the other social, human and material elements that affect them. For example, if our goal is to accelerate the diffusion of fuel cell vehicles or renewable energy, then we need to implement strategies that help push all of these parts together towards our desired destination. Thus, the goal becomes not technology diffusion, but system transformation. Second, systems suffer from inertia and don’t like to change. They can become locked-in to developing in a certain direction. This means that strong socio-technical systems built around established technologies (e.g. gasoline vehicles, nuclear or thermal energy) will often resist efforts to transform them. Third, many researchers and policymakers like to focus on supporting the creation of new technologies and business models. But because social systems can often be lockedinto to the pathway of producing and using unsustainable technologies, materials and practices, there is also a need to accelerate their gradual abolishment.
Research topics
From this perspective, the research of myself and students focus on understanding the forces that prevent transitions towards sustainability and strategies that can be used to accelerate the production and diffusion of technologies for decarbonization. We therefore take an interest in both technologies as much as social systems, and the creation of sustainable technologies as much as their destruction. We take inspiration from different social science fields of enquiry that include energy policy, sustainability transitions, human geography, political science and innovation management. My preferred approach is to use both theory and empirical cases. First, we create novel theoretical frameworks to help understand complex energy and socio-technical systems. For example, myself and students have studied the increasing use of passenger vehicles in Bangkok, the production and diffusion of fuel-cell vehicles and battery electric vehicles, and the financing of coal-fired power plants. We then apply these frameworks to case studies to learn about the process of technological change from a socio-technical perspective.
Research on Art and Society in Modern Japan
History of Art and Culture
Professor TAKASHINA Erika
My current research focuses on the history of art and society mainly in modern Japan. This field of research considers the historical significance of works of art from various aspects surrounding their creation and reception. In detail, I use actual artworks as my research subjects to examine how history, society, and people are formatively expressed in art. The research considers the historical context by examining various works of art, materials, and literature to see what kind of environment the work was created in, the meaning and historical significance behind the artistic expression, the social environment it was received in, and how it influenced society.
Japanese Sense of Beauty and Encounter with the West
First of all, the research attempts to clarify the meaning and expression of a specific artwork by considering the historical context mainly in the 19th and 20th century Japan, an era in which Japan began full-fledged exchanges with the West. As new techniques and perspectives were introduced, the society swayed between modernization and Japan’s traditional sense of beauty, which led to an upheaval of systems related to art and education. Through researching artworks created during this era of change, I want to examine how Japanese people perceived human and nature, their relationship to the landscape and various forms of life, and their love for nature. In this context, we will find that Japan’s encounter with western culture led to a rich transformation in Japanese people’s perception, way of expression, and their sense of beauty that had been cultivated up until the Edo period (1603-1868). Recent research on this topic includes a study of the Japanese exhibit and pavilion presented at the Paris International Exposition in 1937. At the exposition held in the nineteenth century, Japanese ceramics, lacquerware, embroidery, and fabrics were highly regarded by Europe and the United States as artworks with Japonisme style, while in the twentieth century, we see a decline in this trend. But at the 1937 exhibition, as France called upon Japan to create a form of artistic inspiration that maintained tradition while incorporating Western culture and technology, the Japanese pavilion structure above all, met these expectations, creating a new style of art.
Artworks and the Social Environment
Another aspect of my research themes is to study the relationship between art and society, focusing on changes in the social environment related to art during the modern era, including the production, distribution, and exhibition of art. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, society was greatly influenced by the Western civilization which led to building art museums and exhibitions. I examine how art was disseminated to society, how it was accepted by people, and how these factors changed artists and their artworks. By clarifying the facts on the basis of documents, I consider, through the history, how art affects society and the human spirit. Recent research on this topic has been done in a study of the Ministry of Education’s art exhibition in the early days and society. The exhibition held in 1907 was the first comprehensive art exhibit organized by the government, which also became a place for artists and sculptors to take on new challenges. I examine the relationship between art and society in the early twentieth century Japan, focusing on conditions surrounding the exhibit, their audience, how the media was involved and the trend among artists during this particular time in the history.
Exploring Hidden Properties in Orderto Create New Elemental Materials
Elemental Materials Chemistry
Professor TANAKA Kazuo
Creation of new elemental materials
Organic and polymeric materials are widely used in our daily lives and are also found in many modern electronic devices. However, conventional materials consist of only a limited number of elements, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. We think that advanced materials with superior properties could be obtained by employing elements which have not yet been used in conventional materials. Based on this idea, we aim to develop new optoelectronic materials, catalysts, and sensors with unique elemental functions. Furthermore, we expect that the results will also reveal new characteristics of the elements involved. The discovery of fundamental properties of elements and practical applications for these materials provide the motivation for our exploratory investigations. Various types of elemental materials have been developed. For example, we recently found that some elemental complexes can exhibit intense emission activity in the solid state where conventional organic dyes commonly show poor luminescence. Moreover, by adding external stimuli, luminescent color changes could also be induced. Based on the results from mechanistic analyses, we showed that several different elements could potentially play a critical role in such unique optical behaviors. As a result of these stimuli-responsive and environment-sensitive solid-state luminescent properties, several chemical sensors and bioprobes have already been developed for a range of uses, such as for monitoring trace amounts of harmful chemicals and real-time sensing on skin surfaces. These technologies could all be used for creating advanced sensing systems. By homogeneously mixing organic and inorganic components on a nanometer scale, organic-inorganic hybrid materials can be obtained. Owing to the high thermal stability of inorganic species, hybridization is regarded as one of the most promising strategies for reinforcing the durability of organic materials. Furthermore, by using cubic silica molecules as a scaffold, we can obtain designable hybrids. Based on preprogrammed designs, we can then obtain stimuli-responsive hybrid materials, such as luminescent chromic hybrid rubbers for detecting distortion, electric conductive flexible hybrids which can monitor the degree of external forces, and thermally stable liquid crystals. In particular, hybrid gels have been used to detect dispersed nano-plastics in water, by means of luminescence color changes. The development of sensing materials such as these could be helpful in carrying out precise environmental assessments in the future.
Discovery of a new element periodic table
Ever since the establishment of the element periodic table by Mendeleev, 150 years ago, we have used this table to help estimate material properties. However, we have since found some curious element properties which do not correspond to any of these preliminary estimations. For example, after photo-excitation, some element complexes show individually different behaviors – even within the same element group. We are interested in the material properties of such elements in the excited state. By introducing another bond into the central element of elemental complexes, we can also form hypervalent states of the element. Recently, we have been able to obtain stable hypervalent complexes and have found that unique environmental sensitivity appears to originate from these extraordinary atomic valences. These new properties are promising platforms for designing the next generation of sensing technologies. By obtaining new insights such as these, we expect to be able to establish a “new element periodic table”.
Project for the Reconstruction of Vernacular Architecture and Its Significance for Contemporary Society
Environmental Design, Regional Architecture
Professor KOBAYASHI Hirohide
Vernacular Architecture in Modern Society
Even in remote villages, the spread of the market economy and accompanying shifts in values have already become part of daily life, and the local culture and customs unique to a region are gradually dying out. In particular, vernacular architecture—the highly indigenous traditional housing cultivated by the natural features of a region— is quickly being replaced with buildings incorporating large amounts of new materials such as concrete blocks, galvanized iron sheets, and cement slates. Field surveys that have been conducted so far across Asia, the South Pacific, and West Africa also reveal that in many cases residents have not been constructing their own traditional buildings since the 1970s and 1980s. For such architectural techniques to be passed down through the generations, there needs to be collaborative efforts among the local community to construct housing without outside help. There is, therefore, a risk that such techniques of vernacular architecture will be lost as highly skilled community residents grow older without the opportunity to transfer their knowledge with the next generation. Moreover, given that architectural spaces reflect not only architectural techniques, but also the daily lifestyles of the village community and its cohabitation with nature, the loss of vernacular architecture will also have an impact on the potential of many traditional customs and rites to be kept alive into the following generations. The diverse abundance of vernacular architecture is gradually slipping away and will be diffi cult to revive once it is lost completely.
Conducting surveys in the villages and listening to what individuals have to say, we find that many are conscious of the necessity and importance of traditional housing. However, a number of factors hinder the construction of such housing, such as restrictions on the use of resources due to forest conservation policies, the decline in useful resources around villages, reluctance to provide construction labor resources in financially struggling village communities, or strong preferences for modern housing using new building materials. At the same time, when my survey research brings me to a central figure in the village community who is concerned about this situation—and when we engage in repeated discussions—this concern comes together as a consensus among the local people, and it is possible to establish a project for reconstructing vernacular architecture. So far, we have cooperated with and supported initiatives in Vietnam (2008 and 2018), Fiji (2011), Thailand (2013), and Vanuatu (2017), tackling various hurdles along the way.
Sustainability of Vernacular Architecture
Based on my experience with reconstruction projects, it is possible to summarize the factors that contribute to the construction and maintenance of vernacular architecture into three elements: local materials, traditional techniques, and collaborative labor. These elements are mutually linked in the sense that knowledge and techniques are passed down through interaction between the generations in the village communities, and such skills are adopted to use forest resources effectively and rationally, allowing the village community to enjoy the substantial gifts of the forest. Moreover, looking at each element as a regional resource, local materials are part of the local natural environment (physical resources), traditional techniques are part of the local culture (intellectual resources), and community cooperation is part of the local society (human resources), such that as a whole such architecture is a product of the local environment itself. This demonstrates how the creation and sustainability of vernacular architecture relies on the preservation of the regional environment. Investigating vernacular architecture means investigating not only buildings, but also communities, natural environments, and even the culture of the area. The distinctive character of such vernacular architecture can be seen as not so much the antiquated product of a bygone era, but as an essential element for creating balanced regional environments in the future from the point of view of regional identity and coexistence with nature in our extremely globalized modern society. In that sense, projects to reconstruct vernacular architecture provide significant insights into not only the community residents in and around the project, but also our daily lives and housing in the modern day.
Striving for Sustainable Development Utilizing Regional Resources
Regional Planning
Professor SAIZEN Izuru
Farming villages weakened in the process of economic development
I engage in research on the development of regional areas and farming villages inside and outside of Japan with a central focus on field surveys and analysis using geographic information systems. In Japan, the depopulation and aging population of farming villages has been a clear issue for several decades. Given the extremely severe and complex background, it is still difficult to find an effective solution. No doubt very few people during Japan’s period of high economic growth predicted that rural communities would lose their vitality. Efforts should probably have been made at the time to devise measures in preparation for the future. Meanwhile, in many of the agricultural villages in the developing countries of Southeast Asia, the benefits of the economic development of the country as a whole have seen improvements in living standards and levels of happiness, as reflected by the contented smiles on many children’s faces. However, such rapid development is also in some ways vividly reminiscent of Japan’s high economic growth, and we therefore need to carefully consider initiatives toward the future. As the economy develops, the concept of a monetary economy begins to encroach on agricultural communities as well. While livehood in the farming villages in such countries was typically based on a system of self-sufficiency, farmers begin to use the fields, in which they previously used for cultivating food for themselves, for growing cash crops and eventually begin to intensively farm a certain crop in order to increase their profits. While this raises the potential for making monetary profit, it also increases their vulnerability to changes in the market value of the crop and to natural disasters. Some may wreak catastrophic and irreparable damages in just a short period of time. And as the populations in farming villages increase, demand arises for new industry. However, as in many developing countries, urban industry is driving the economy so that the rising population lies increasing deindustrialization of the farming villages.
Revisiting what is always there
One method of ensuring sustainable economic development in such regions is to effectively utilize the local resources available in an area. “Regional resources” refers to those resources that have been cultivated throughout the long history of the region, which are highly compatible with the natural environment and climate of that area, and which have supported the lifestyles of the local residents over the years. However, there are many regional resources that are gradually being lost in the shadow of economic development. These include, for example, festivals unique to a certain community, traditional crop cultivation, and slash-and-burn agriculture. These traditions and practices each have the potential to contribute to the community in the form of ecological tourism, securing crops for self-sufficiency, or the sustainable use of forests. By reconsidering regional resources, it is possible to boost the underlying vitality of an area. Developing countries are also entitled to enjoy economic progress and prosperity. At the same time, it is essential to ensure that they pursue suitable and sustainable development in line with the stages of development. I aim to develop achievable measures through discussions with local people.
Conveying the Significance and Safety of Using Recycled Water in Agriculture
Agricultural Economics
Associate Professor YOSHINO Akira
Master’s students at the School of Global Environmental Studies take part in a long-term internship lasting at least three months as a compulsory part of the curriculum. Over the three years since 2015, each year one student from the field of Environmental Marketing Management has pursued his or her internship by participating in an initiative in Itoman City in Okinawa to investigate the potential use of recycled water in farming.
The recycled water has been developed through efforts led by Professor Hiroaki Tanaka’s laboratory at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Engineering. By applying ultrafiltration and UV disinfection to treated waste water, they have created a low-cost supply of safe water suitable for direct use—even to irrigate crops of vegetables sold for raw consumption. In Itoman City in Okinawa, where use of the recycled water is being tested, there are high hopes for its use due to the chronic water shortage that farming in the area has suffered over the years. This approach is also environmentally-friendly as it reduces the amount of treated waste water released into rivers.
Yet, regardless of how safe the water may be, the local government heading up the project and farmers were concerned about the possibility that consumers could be reluctant to purchase vegetables grown with recycled water, given that such water comes from sewage. This is why they reached out to our laboratory. Risk communication for food products has been one of the focuses of our research since the scandal that arose surrounding BSE—or mad cow disease, as it is commonly known.
In order to be able to communicate risk to consumers and the general public it is necessary to start by listening openly to people’s interpretations and concerns regarding the message put out by those developing the products. Chiharu Miwa—the first student to pursue her internship at this project in Okinawa—drew on the knowledge of chemistry that she had acquired as an undergraduate to create a pamphlet and website explaining the significance and safety of recycled water, while also carrying out a survey to listen to what consumers had to say. The results revealed that the majority of consumers were not completely against the idea but had a vague feeling of concern. Such concern focused on the possibility of toxic chemicals that may have been overlooked and the risk of unanticipated accidents, rather than the risk of food poisoning. This result came as a shock to those involved in the development of the water, as they had taken great pains to ensure that E. coli bacteria and viruses had been eradicated.
Serika Yuto, the student who went to Okinawa the following academic year, took part in a test run selling vegetables grown using recycled water with the cooperation of farmers, and created and starred in a video explaining recycled water. Alongside these activities, she conducted a survey and skillfully applied advanced statistical analysis to the results in order to estimate to what extent the actual sale of vegetables cultivated in Okinawa Prefecture would be affected if recycled water was used in cultivation. This revealed that as long as explanations regarding recycled water are provided, the impact on vegetable sales is not significant enough to merit concern.
This, however, left the question of how to ensure that the message gets across. The third student to participate in the internship, Minori Oda, who specialized in education as an undergraduate, set out to tackle this question. In addition to publishing articles in the local newsletter, she also set up a recycled water tank and hydroponics kit in the lobby of the Itoman City Hall, testing out ways of encouraging people to want to find about more regarding recycled water. Displaying such items was highly effective, with just under 90% of local people becoming aware of the existence of recycled water, and just under 40% being drawn to the explanation on recycled water.
As a result of such survey and research activities, the recycled water project in Itoman City is being developed for commercial purposes. As our role draws to an end, it seems fair to suggest this internship and other such opportunities are distinctive of the School of Global Environmental Studies in the way that they allow students from various backgrounds across both the sciences and humanities to cooperate with and learn from researchers from other fields as well as government and industry representatives, and to draw on their own knowledge and ability in their respective specialist fields to contribute to a certain project and, in doing so, pursue their own research.
As a result of such survey and research activities, the recycled water project in Itoman City is being developed for commercial purposes. As our role draws to an end, it seems fair to suggest this internship and other such opportunities are distinctive of the School of Global Environmental Studies in the way that they allow students from various backgrounds across both the sciences and humanities to cooperate with and learn from researchers from other fields as well as government and industry representatives, and to draw on their own knowledge and ability in their respective specialist fields to contribute to a certain project and, in doing so, pursue their own research.