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A citizens' group, the Kodomo-Shokudo Safety and Security Improvement Committee, announced in April 2018, that at least 2,286 "kodomo-shokudo" (cafeterias that provide free or reduced-price meals to children) have been set up throughout Japan as a part of efforts to address child poverty. This figure was based on a survey conducted between January and March 2018 through social welfare councils and other entities in the country's prefectures.
The term kodomo-shokudo first appeared in 2012. According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, as of the end of May 2016, the number of such cafeterias was at least 319 in Japan. Since then, in less than two years, the number increased by approximately 2,000.
The Committee was established by members of the executive committee of a kodomo-shokudo promotion tour -- a nationwide tour launched in 2016 to expand people's understanding of such cafeterias -- with the aim of addressing challenges that were revealed through the tour. Based on the survey, the Committee concluded that these cafeterias have started to shift from being perceived as "special places operated by special people" to local places that are accessible to many people.
The group aims to make such cafeterias more widely-accepted and an essential part of community development, and hopes that not only children but also adults will visit the cafeterias, where children and adults can have positive interactions with each other.
Energy / Climate Change
Image by photo-graphe.
The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the University of Tokyo jointly announced on September 14, 2017, the results of an analysis of changes in tropical cyclone activity and structure associated with global warming. The joint group conducted the analysis by running a program called NICAM, or Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model, on the K supercomputer; NICAM is capable of calculating the formation and vanishing processes of clouds globally. Comparing the distribution of wind speeds around tropical cyclones, the analysts found that, under warmer climate conditions, the radius of gale force wind will expand for cyclones of the same intensity categories.
The analysis compared historical data covering 60 years (1979 to 2008) with the results of a simulation of future climate around the end of the 21st century (2075 to 2104). The results showed that, globally on average, the number of tropical cyclones will decrease by 22.7 percent (%), the number of strong tropical cyclones will increase by 6.6%, and rainfall levels accompanied by tropical cyclones will increase by 11.8%. The radius of gale force wind will increase by 10.9% under warmer climate conditions.
Global atmospheric calculation models previously used for climate predictions had a low horizontal resolution, of tens to hundreds of kilometers, compared to the present analysis, which had a horizontal definition of 14 kilometers. Predictions have been unreliable because cloud systems were explained based on assumptions derived from past experience. The research group succeeded in eliminating uncertainty by using high-resolution NICAM and collecting data on the changes in tropical cyclone scale and on cyclone mechanisms. The group now hopes to further eliminate uncertainty by achieving higher resolutions and deepening their understanding of changes in tropical cyclone activity.
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