Policy for forming an industrial cluster, or industrial cluster policy, plays an important role in developing a region in East Asia. Industrial cluster policy is followed not only in Japan by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, but also in most countries in East Asia such as Malaysia and Singapore. Silicon Valley in the US and Bangalore in India are well-known success stories of devel...

In this article, we introduce a novel geometrical index δagg, which is associated with the Euler number and is obtained by an image processing procedure for a given digital picture of aggregated particles such that δagg exhibits the degree of the agglomerations of the particles. In the previous work (Matsutani, Shimosako, Wang, Appl. Math. Modeling 37 (2013), 4007–4022), we proposed an algorith...

This paper studies how firm heterogeneity in terms of productivity affects the balance between agglomeration and dispersion forces in the presence of pecuniary externalities through a selection model of monopolistic competition with variable mark-ups. It shows that firm heterogeneity matters. However, whether it shifts the balance from agglomeration to dispersion or the other way round depends ...

Firms and workers are much more productive in large and dense urban environments. There is substantial evidence of such agglomeration economies based on three aproaches. First, on a clustering of production beyond what can be explained by chance or comparative advantage. Second, on spatial patterns in wages and rents. Third, on systematic variations in productivity with the urban environment. H...

The article presents the essential issues and algorithm of the methodology of a four-step transportation model, which was constructed in order to carrying out a household interview survey. The results of this research are source data for determining the travel behaviour of the users of transportation systems, including intelligent transport systems (ITS). The presented issues regarding the surv...

In this research iron manganese oxide nanocomposites were prepared by co-precipitation, sol-gel and mechanochemical methods by using iron (III) nitrate, iron (II) sulfate and manganese (II) nitrate as starting materials. These nanocomposites were prepared in the presence of various catalyst beds. The polyvinyl pyrrolidon (PVP) was used as a capping agent to control the agglomeration of the nano...

The behavior of Fe2O3/Al2O3 particles as oxygen carriers (OCs) for CO chemical looping combustion (CLC) under different reaction temperatures (700 ◦C, 800 ◦C, 900 ◦C, and 1000 ◦C) were tested in a lab-scale fluidized bed and a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) unit. The results show that the oxygen carrier presents the highest reactivity at 800 ◦C, even after 30 cycles of redox reaction in a flu...

A novel hierarchical star-like Co(3)O(4) was successfully synthesized from self-assembled hierarchical Co(OH)F precursors via a facile hydrothermal method and subsequent annealing in air. The morphological evolution process of the Co(OH)F precursors was investigated by examining the different reaction times during synthesis. First, hexagonal plates are formed, and then nanodiscs grow on the sur...