To help reduce consumption of fossil fuels, renewable, natural and distributed power sources are being adopted. These alternative energy sources inevitably show fluctuations in the amount of output power, frequency, and voltage. The suppression of such fluctuations is a key issue to avoid...

A power router has been recently developed for both AC and DC applications that has the potential for smart-grid applications. This study focuses on three-phase power switching through the development of an experimental setup which consists of a three-phase direct AC/AC matrix converter with a...

Controlling power flow and achieving appropriate matching between power sources and loads according to the quality of energy is expected to be one of the approaches to reduce wasted energy consumption. A power router, proposed recently, has the capability of realizing circuit switching in a...

SUMMARY We propose a method for detecting changes in the order balance in stock markets by applying a stochastic model to the feature vectors extracted from the order‐book data of stocks. First, the data are divided into training and test periods. Next, a Gaussian mixture model is estimated...

We investigate a simple system of two coupled discrete stochastic resonators in the following two cases, to clarify the role of coupling. Case A: an oscillating force is applied to the whole system. Case B: an oscillating force is applied to one of the coupled resonators. We have obtained...

In recent years, shade coffee certification programs have attracted increased attention from conservation and development organizations. The certification programs offer an opportunity to link environmental and economic goals by providing a premium price to producers and thereby contribute to...

This study estimates the effect of farmer field schools in rural Ethiopia on income from agriculture. The farmer field schools were established in association with participatory forest management associations for forest protection funded by Japanese aid. We employ a difference-in-differences...

This study uses remote sensing data to quantitatively examine the impact of establishing participatory forest management associations in Ethiopia. The results indicate that where there is a forest association, forest area declines more in the year the association is established than it does in a...

A stochastic resonator constructed of three discrete states is proposed to explain microscopically why one applies the Arrhenius-type relaxation time to the time scale of thermal relaxation of each two-state kinetic Ising spin in previous papers which have studied stochastic resonance using...