Development and Social Implementation of Smartphone App Nige-Tore for Improving Tsunami Evacuation Drills: Synergistic Effects Between Commitment and Contingency

This research explored how we can improve tsunami evacuation behavior,which has been a major social issue since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.We introduce Nige-Tore,a smartphone app for supporting tsunami evacuation drills,which was developed within an interdisciplinary research framework.Nige-Tore serves as an effective interface tool that successfully visualizes the dynamic interactions between human actions(evacuation behavior)and natural phenomena(tsunami behavior).Drill participants can check,on their smartphone,the estimated inundation area of the approaching tsunami,along with their own current evacuation trajectory.The results of real-world trials using NigeTore show that the app is more powerful than conventional devices and methods that have been used in tsunami evacuation training,such as hazard maps and traditional drills that do not make use of any apps,because Nige-Tore provides an interface that enables commitment and contingency thinking—which at first glance appear to represent different orientations—to not only coexist but to synergize.‘‘Commitment’’(devotion or involvement)refers to the act of immersing oneself in and viewing as absolute one particular scenario or its potential to be actualized,given conditions in which infinite scenarios may be actualized,depending on the interactions between human systems and natural systems.‘‘Contingency’’thinking(an accidental or incidental state)refers to the act of relativizing and separating oneself from any particular scenario or its potential to be actualized,given the same conditions.The synergistic effect of‘‘commitment’’and‘‘contingency’’thinking also expands people’s capacity to cope with unexpected and unforeseen events.

A portable viable Salmonella detection device based on microfluidic chip and recombinase aided amplification

creening of foodborne pathogens is important to prevent contaminated foods from their supply chains.n this study, a portable detection device was developed for rapid, sensitive and simple detection of viable almonella using a finger-actuated microfluidic chip and an improved recombinase aided amplification (RAA) assay. Improved propidium monoazide(PMAxx) was combined with RAA to enable this device to distinguish viable bacteria from dead ones. The modification of PMAxx into dead bacteria, the magnetic xtraction of nucleic acids from viable bacteria and the RAA detection of extracted nucleic acids were performed using the microfluidic chip on its supporting device by finger press-release operations. The fluorescent signal resulting from RAA amplification of the nucleic acids was collected using a USB camera nd analyzed using a self-developed smartphone App to quantitatively determine the bacterial concenration. This device could detect Salmonella typhimurium in spiked chicken meats from 1.3 × 10^(2) CFU/m L o 1.3 × 10^(7) CFU/m L in 2 h with a lower detection limit of 130 CFU/m L, and has shown its potential for on-site detection of foodborne pathogens.