In the iron and steel manufacturing process, a large amount of slag, a byproduct consisting mainly of oxides, is generated after iron ore is extracted from the ore by smelting. In order to reduce the environmental impact, it is necessary to reduce the amount of slag generated and to promote its recycling, and this presentation will discuss the measures to achieve this, especially its use as soil material to promote plant growth in marine environments, which has been attracting attention recently.

　There are nearly 100 breweries in Japan alone. It is said that there are several thousand brands of beer in the world, and each of them produces a unique beer. The main ingredients of beer are barley, hops, and beer yeast, and there has been a need in the beer industry for a simple method to evaluate the activity of beer yeast used in alcoholic fermentation, since properly identifying the activity of the yeast and selecting the best yeast with high activity will help ensure the taste and quality control of beer. In this lecture, we will introduce our research on a new method for evaluating the activity of beer yeast.

　The urban shrinkage that is expected to occur in Japan in the future due to population decline and super aging will bring about new challenges that Japanese cities have never experienced before, such as the rapid increase of vacant land. Conventional urban planning has been designed to control the expansion of cities, so it has no effective way to deal with the new issue of shrinkage. 　In this presentation, we attempt to present a new framework for urban restructuring based on "agriculture" in response to this situation. Agriculture also provides an answer to another major challenge facing cities today, namely low-carbon development. It is one of the traditions of Japanese cities that they embrace agriculture. The reorganization of cities based on agriculture may be said to be the establishment of an old but new image of the city that is suited to the culture of Japan.