Railway stations in Japan and elsewhere are undergoing redevelopment to accommodate new spaces of consumption and leisure. Tokyo Station redevelopment is a representative case illustrating the experiment of integrating new facilities into an existing spatial system. The station's image is being recast as an important urban centre in Tokyo with a particular mix of prestige business, shopping and unique entertainment venues. The walking network is being reconfigured in a larger space with a complex set of new land uses, leading to new spatial configurations and patterns of behaviour. These transformations support a new role for the station. The station redevelopment, along with related investments in the surrounding space represent a distinctly Japanese approach to transit-oriented development. This article examines the urban design strategy underlying these transformations.

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Transportation is a key element to understanding the socio-spatial structure of colonial cities and the lives of individuals living under colonial governance. This study investigates the disparity in transit-based travel time between colonial rulers (Japanese) and subjects (Koreans) in Colonial Seoul (Keijo) in 1936 using modern GIS and open-source transport analysis tools. Findings suggest a significant disparity in travel time to a major urban facility (i.e., City Hall) between the two population groups of the largest colonial city in the Korean peninsula.

A transcription-reverse transcription (RT) concerted reaction (TRCR) method was developed for rapid and specific detection of EV71 from clinical specimens. This method was validated with EV71 strains from all of the known genotypes (genotypes A, B1 to B5, and C1 to C5), with detection limits of 10 to 10 3 copies, and was useful for identification of EV71 from throat swabs of patients with hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD). Enterovirus 71 (EV71) is a major etiological agent for hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) and herpangina, along with coxsackievirus A (CVA) types such as CVA10 and CVA16 (1, 10). In contrast to CVA infection (3), EV71 infection is also associated with severe neurological diseases, such as brain-stem encephalitis and poliomyelitis-like paralysis (4, 9, 14) with a high incidence (case severity rate of Ͻ0.3%) (6). Effective vaccines are not available at present, and only supportive care can be provided for the treatment of severe brain-stem encephalitis (reviewed in reference 15). Because of the rapid progression of symptoms in fatal cases of EV71 infection (Յ12 h after hospitalization) (2), rapid diagnosis of EV71 infection is essential for severely EV71-infected patients to provide proper care among patients with or without HFMD caused by other EV infections.In this study, we aimed to develop a diagnostic test for EV71 by using a transcription-reverse transcription (RT) concerted reaction (TRCR) method (7, 13). The TRCR method is an isothermal RNA amplification method as well as an RT-loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method, but it utilizes T7 RNA polymerase and avian myeloblastosis virus (AMV) reverse transcriptase instead of DNA polymerase (7, 13). The major advantages of the TRCR method are (i) rapid detection (20 min of reaction time), (ii) high specificity (by intercalation activating fluorescence [INAF] probes) (8), and (iii) high sensitivity (as low as 10 copies). For its rapid measurement of RNA, the TRCR method has been used as a diagnostic tool for Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium, and Mycobacterium intracellulare in some hospitals

Transportation is a key element to understanding the socio-spatial structure of colonial cities and the lives of individuals living under colonial governance. This study investigates the disparity in transit-based travel time between colonial rulers (Japanese) and subjects (Koreans) in Colonial Seoul (Keijo) in 1936 using modern GIS and open-source transport analysis tools. Findings suggest a significant disparity in travel time to a major urban facility (i.e., City Hall) between the two population groups of the largest colonial city in the Korean peninsula.