Japan's Nuclear Power Plant Workers, Exposed to Radiation, Hidden from Sight

Kenji Higuchi (樋口健二) is a photographer in Japan, acclaimed for his work of documenting the effects of industrial pollution and the exploitation of nuclear power plant workers.

This documentary film was released by Channel 4 (UK) in 1995. Cf. Tim Shorrock, "Japan's Nuclear Nightmare (Part One)" (18 March 2011); Tim Shorrock, "Japan's Nuclear Nightmare (Part Two): Nuclear Gypsies -- The Subcontractors Who Do the Dirty Work" (20 March 2011); "メシ最悪、雑魚寝、被曝 . . . 原発作業員「日当４０万円」の過酷労働" (Zakzak, 29 March 2011);

"Of roughly 83,000 workers at Japan's 18 commercial nuclear power plants, 88 percent were contract workers in the year that ended in March 2010, the nuclear agency said. At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 89 percent of the 10,303 workers during that period were contractors. In Japan's nuclear industry, the elite are operators like Tokyo Electric and the manufacturers that build and help maintain the plants like Toshiba and Hitachi. But under those companies are contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors -- with wages, benefits and protection against radiation dwindling with each step down the ladder. . . . Some [Fukushima Daiichi emergency] workers are hired from construction sites, and some are local farmers looking for extra income. Yet others are hired by local gangsters, according to a number of workers who did not want to give their names. . . . Since the mid-1970s, about 50 former workers have received workers' compensation after developing leukemia and other forms of cancer. Health experts say that though many former workers are experiencing health problems that may be a result of their nuclear work, it is often difficult to prove a direct link"
(Hiroko Tabuchi, "Japanese Workers Braved Radiation for a Temp Job," New York Times, 9 April 2011);
"被曝基準超えた作業員の雇用継続求める　労使、国に要望" (Asahi Shimbun, 9 April 2011).

The Android platform

With Android's breadth of capabilities, it would be easy to confuse it with a desktop operating system. Android is a layered environment built upon a foundation of the Linux kernel, and it includes rich functions. The UI subsystem includes:
* Windows
* Views
* Widgets for displaying common elements such as edit boxes, lists, and drop-down lists
Android includes an embeddable browser built upon WebKit, the same open source browser engine powering the iPhone's Mobile Safari browser.
Android boasts a healthy array of connectivity options, including WiFi, Bluetooth, and wireless data over a cellular connection (for example, GPRS, EDGE, and 3G). A popular technique in Android applications is to link to Google Maps to display an address directly within an application. Support for location-based services (such as GPS) and accelerometers is also available in the Android software stack, though not all Android devices are equipped with the required hardware. There is also camera support.
As mentioned, Android runs atop a Linux kernel. Android applications are written in the Java programming language, and they run within a virtual machine (VM). It's important to note that the VM is not a JVM as you might expect, but is the Dalvik Virtual Machine, an open source technology. Each Android application runs within an instance of the Dalvik VM, which in turn resides within a Linux-kernel managed process, as shown below.
An Android application consists of one or more of the following classifications:
* Activities
An application that has a visible UI is implemented with an activity. When a user selects an application from the home screen or application launcher, an activity is started.
* Services
A service should be used for any application that needs to persist for a long time, such as a network monitor or update-checking application.
* Content providers
You can think of content providers as a database server. A content provider's job is to manage access to persisted data, such as a SQLite database. If your application is very simple, you might not necessarily create a content provider. If you're building a larger application, or one that makes data available to multiple activities or applications, a content provider is the means of accessing your data.
* Broadcast receivers
An Android application may be launched to process a element of data or respond to an event, such as the receipt of a text message.
An Android application, along with a file called AndroidManifest.xml, is deployed to a device. AndroidManifest.xml contains the necessary configuration information to properly install it to the device. It includes the required class names and types of events the application is able to process, and the required permissions the application needs to run. For example, if an application requires access to the network - to download a file, for example - this permission must be explicitly stated in the manifest file. Many applications may have this specific permission enabled. Such declarative security helps reduce the likelihood that a rogue application can cause damage on your device.

A brief history of Android

The Android platform is the product of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of organizations collaborating to build a better mobile phone. The group, led by Google, includes mobile operators, device handset manufacturers, component manufacturers, software solution and platform providers, and marketing companies. From a software development standpoint, Android sits smack in the middle of the open source world.
The first Android-capable handset on the market was the G1 device manufactured by HTC and provisioned on T-Mobile. The device became available after almost a year of speculation, where the only software development tools available were some incrementally improving SDK releases. As the G1 release date neared, the Android team released SDK V1.0 and applications began surfacing for the new platform.
To spur innovation, Google sponsored two rounds of "Android Developer Challenges," where millions of dollars were given to top contest submissions. A few months after the G1, the Android Market was released, allowing users to browse and download applications directly to their phones. Over about 18 months, a new mobile platform entered the public arena.