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The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the spread of accessible e-books, especially ones of STEM much more in developing countries, an efficient/systematic scheme to localize tools for producing/reading them should be established. Furthermore, even in many advanced countries, Print-disabled people still do not have a good tool to write a content including technical notations such as mathematical formulas in their own local language. This work is aimed at giving a practical solution for those problems.

Here, multilingual support in a tool to produce accessible STEM contents and its new localization scheme are discussed.

It is shown that the accessible STEM-document editor can be customized easily for print-disabled people so that they can read and author a material including complicated technical notations in their own local language. The localization for Vietnamese and other various languages actually has been worked on.

The Vietnamese version was completed, and some prototype versions for the other languages were also given. It is expected that the software can contribute to improve STEM accessibility much more in many countries.

Aims to review the CLAWAR 2004 conference on climbing and walking robots.

Selects key papers from the conference and presents a brief outline of the research undertaken and the conclusions reached.

The CLAWAR conference covered every aspect of climbing and walking robots including design, locomotion, navigation, actuation and control, sensors, tele‐operation and tele‐presence. Researchers spoke of robots for applications ranging from de‐mining, tank inspection and building cleaning to walking aids for the disabled.

Focuses only on part of the CLAWAR 2004 conference, which featured some 120 presentations.

Climbing robots are starting to achieve practical applications such as cleaning building facades and windows.

Outlines trends in the development of climbing and walking robots.

In this study I explore how practices and creativity in the commercial context conceptualize death in the changing styles of funerals by depicting the supply of contemporary funeral services. The cases are primarily based on ethnographic accounts derived from my fieldwork in Japanese funeral homes. I focus on the work and efforts of the funeral industry that make innovative services to shape and shift a set of cultural values and practices in the funerals of today.