Television,Japan, and Globalization

Prime-time network programs broadcast between 7 993 and 2002 underrepresent elderly characters. More women between the ages of 50 and 64 were classified as elderly, rather than middle-aged. The age distribution of minority men resembles that of White women, while minority women are typically cast in younger age groups. The world of work on television is one of diminished options for the elderly. Television celebrates youth while it neglects and negates the elderly.     

Adoption of structured abstracts by general medical journals and format for a structured abstract.

BACKGROUND: The use of a structured abstract has been recommended in reporting medical literature to quickly convey necessary information to editors and readers. The use of structured abstracts increased during the mid-1990s; however, recent practice has yet to be analyzed. OBJECTIVES: This article explored actual reporting patterns of abstracts recently published in selected medical journals and examined what these journals required of abstracts (structured or otherwise and, if structured, which format). METHODS: The top thirty journals according to impact factors noted in the "Medicine, General and Internal" category of the ISI Journal Citation Reports (2000) were sampled. Articles of original contributions published by each journal in January 2001 were examined. Cluster analysis was performed to classify the patterns of structured abstracts objectively. Journals' instructions to authors for writing an article abstract were also examined. RESULTS: Among 304 original articles that included abstracts, 188 (61.8%) had structured and 116 (38.2%) had unstructured abstracts. One hundred twenty-five (66.5%) of the abstracts used the introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) format, and 63 (33.5%) used the 8-heading format proposed by Haynes et al. Twenty-one journals requested structured abstracts in their instructions to authors; 8 journals requested the 8-heading format; and 1 journal requested it only for intervention studies. CONCLUSIONS: Even in recent years, not all abstracts of original articles are structured. The eight-heading format was neither commonly used in actual reporting patterns nor noted in journal instructions to authors.     

An Investigation of Japanese and American Early Care and Education

Staff interviews and classroom observations based on predetermined observation criteria and open-ended questions were conducted at early care and education programs in Kakunodate, Akita, Japan; Tazawako, Akita, Japan; Butte, Montana; and Missoula, Montana. Differences in curriculum, classroom structure and educational strategies were found. For example, group instruction was more prevalent in Japan and individual instruction was more common in the United States. Physical environments reflected these differences; Japanese schools had gymnasiums, swimming pools, pianos and televisions for large group activities and American schools had learning centers and computers for individual and small group activities. American teachers reported developing curriculum and activities based on individual child development and Japanese teachers reported developing curriculum based on promoting community and regard for others. Further study of Japanese early care and education is suggested to assist American educators in partnering with Japanese and Japanese-American families in providing more culturally relevant curriculum.     

Single or Dual Representations for Reading and Spelling?

Neuropsychological models postulate that the memory representation acquired for use in reading words is separate from the one acquired for use in spelling, while developmental models assume that the same representation is developed for access in both reading and spelling. The dual-representation model contends that there is often more precise information in reading representations than in spelling representations. This claim was tested in the current study using adult native speakers of English. People were supplied with minimal visual feedback while they spelled words that they knew and could read, and were then shown their whole spelling and asked whether they could improve upon it. People detected spelling mistakes on fewer than one in six trials after the reading check. They also returned many spellings to the original form, and were unable to improve upon them any more often than to change them to something equally bad or worse. The findings favour the view that normal individuals acquire a single orthographic representation from repeated exposures to a word during both reading and spelling. The representation may be adequate to permit successful reading but be insufficient for reproduction of the word-specific knowledge required for accurate spelling.     

Social Metaphorical Mapping of the Concept of Force “CHI‐KA‐RA” in Japanese

This research focused on the concept of “force” (“CHI‐KA‐RA” in Japanese) in Newtonian mechanics. The primary objective was to develop a tool, based on metaphor, to interpret student thinking in learning scientific topics. The study provides an example of using the tool to trace the process of mutual changes in thinking during a dialog among students who have different perspectives on the same topic. “Social metaphorical mapping” was used to interpret a dialog between two groups of junior high school students with different epistemological paradigms with regard to the concept of force (CHI‐KA‐RA) in the learning environment of a computer simulation. Both source domains were recontextualized through social metaphorical mapping and the process of mutual changes in concepts was traced. Participants noticed that the Buridanian ¹ 1. Buridan was a French scientist in the fourteenth century who proposed a theory of impetus. concept of“force” differs from the Newtonian concept of “force,” differentiated between the concepts of “force” that use the same Japanese term “CHI‐KA‐RA,” and noticed that the Buridanian concept of “force” resembles the Newtonian concept of “momentum.”