Japanese Conceptions of Privacy: An Intercultural Perspective

This paper deals with intercultural aspects of privacy, particularly with regard to important differences between Japanese and the Western views. This paper is based on our discussions with Rafael Capurro – a dialogue now represented by two separate but closely interrelated articles. The companion paper is broadly focused on the cultural and historical backgrounds of the concepts of privacy and individualism in “Western” worlds; our main theme focuses on different concepts of privacy in Japan and their sources in related aspects of Japanese culture. The interrelationship between our two papers is apparent in our taking up identical or similar topics in each paper. Reading our two papers in conjunction with each other will bring about deeper and broader insights into the diverse values and worldviews of Japan and Western cultures that underlie concepts of privacy that at a surface level appear to be similar     

Cultural Difference in Conflict Management Strategies of Children and Its Development: Comparing 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across China,Japan, and Korea

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n = 114), Japan (n = 98), and Korea (n = 90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which strategy children would prefer to use in 2 hypothetical conflict situations. Results indicated that, first, for disagreement, 3-year-olds in the 3 countries equally preferred the dominating strategy. For competition for resources, 3-year-olds differed in their strategy preference across all cultures. Second, the observed strategy preference of 3- to 5-year-old children in this study was more or less different from that of older schoolchildren, regardless of culture. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the significance of the context, the complexity of the phenomenon of the development of cultural differences, and the significance of cohort sampling.     

游牧及其改革

笔者根据蒙古高原和欧亚内陆草原游牧人的经验总结出游牧的特征即移动性。保持移动游牧的生产方式的根本条件是共同所有和共同使用牧场。游牧业与养畜业的本质区别决定了游牧改革的走向。如果照搬产生于19世纪末期的适合于养畜业的饲养方法来推进牧业现代化．草原将会被破坏，不利于草原的可持续利用．从而影响畜牧业的发展。     

Multiscale fabrication of a transparent circulation type blood vessel simulator

We proposed and fabricated multiscale transparent arteriole and capillary vessel models with circular cross sections of 10-500 μm using photolithography. The circularities of the fabricated 10, 50, and 500 μm diameter microchannels were 84.0%, 61.5%, and 82.3%, respectively. Next, we connected these different models to realize a circulation type blood vessel model simulating arteriole networks. We proposed a novel connection method using an intermediate connector made of wax, which we used to connect these models to make a circulation model. In flow experiments, the fabricated models showed no leakage and circulation models with seamless connections were achieved.     

Mining subtopics from text fragments for a web query

Web search queries are often ambiguous or faceted, and the task of identifying the major underlying senses and facets of queries has received much attention in recent years. We refer to this task as query subtopic mining. In this paper, we propose to use surrounding text of query terms in top retrieved documents to mine subtopics and rank them. We first extract text fragments containing query terms from different parts of documents. Then we group similar text fragments into clusters and generate a readable subtopic for each cluster. Based on the cluster and the language model trained from a query log, we calculate three features and combine them into a relevance score for each subtopic. Subtopics are finally ranked by balancing relevance and novelty. Our evaluation experiments with the NTCIR-9 INTENT Chinese Subtopic Mining test collection show that our method significantly outperforms a query log based method proposed by Radlinski et al. (2010) and a search result clustering based method proposed by Zeng et al. (2004) in terms of precision, I-rec, D-nDCG and D#-nDCG, the official evaluation metrics used at the NTCIR-9 INTENT task. Moreover, our generated subtopics are significantly more readable than those generated by the search result clustering method.     

Design of bridge expansion joints with perforated dowels under impact loading

The expansion joints are expected to have movement capacity, bearing capacity for static and dynamic loading, water-tightness, low noise emission and traffic safety. In particular, the failure due to impact loading is the main reason for the observed damages. The problem of dynamic behavior of the expansion joints is so complex that we shall focus our attention on the impact factor for vehicle load that is governed by traffic impact. In order to overcome this difficulty, the cantilever-toothed aluminum joint (finger joint) is one of the promising joints under impact loading. In this study, from the viewpoint of design methodology, numerical studies for impact behavior were conducted for aluminum alloy expansion joints with perforated dowels. The design impact factor for the expansion joints with the perforated dowels against traffic impact loading was examined by using numerical simulations.     

Limitations of cadence-based walking for assessing bouts of moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity under free-living conditions

Abstract

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the relationship between the accumulation of 1000 steps in 10 minutes (1K) and 3000 steps in 30 minutes (3K) with the amount and intensity of daily physical activity. Thirty-three adults (16 males and 17 females, 53 ± 19 years) wore an accelerometer (Lifecorder) for seven consecutive days in order to determine the number of steps and the time spent in physical activity at light intensity (LPA), moderate intensity (MPA), vigorous intensity (VPA) and moderate to vigorous intensity (MVPA). Furthermore, based on the minute-by-minute stepping rate, the number, intensity and duration of walking bouts (1K and 3K) were evaluated. The daily number of steps, LPA, MPA and VPA were significantly higher on the days with 1K or 3K compared with that observed on the days without 1K or 3K (P <0.05). The duration of 1K was not found to be correlated with an MVPA >10 minutes. An MVPA >10 minutes was less than 2 min · day^?1 on the days with 1K or 3K. Therefore, it is doubtful that the concept of cadence is an alternative indicator for the commonly used definition of MVPA. It remains unclear whether participation in 1K and 3K guarantees that an individual will meet the current MVPA guidelines.     

Interpersonal variability in timing strategy and temporal accuracy in rapid interception task with variable time-to-contact

In rapid interceptive actions such as hitting a baseball, cricket ball or tennis ball, ball speed varies between trials, and players have to compensate the time lag by controlling the moment of movement onset and movement duration. Previous studies have found that these two variables can flexibly co-vary and are robustly influenced by target speed (i.e. velocity-coupling effect: faster movement for faster target). However, some studies reported an interpersonal variability in the timing control strategy and the relationship between the strategy and temporal accuracy in rapid interception is unclear. We used a baseball-simulated rapid interceptive task to assess this issue. Under relatively easy time constraints, there was a large interpersonal variability, and participants were distinctively divided into two groups: those who mainly modulated their movement duration and those who mainly controlled their movement onset. When the time constraint became severe, the second strategy shifted to the first strategy in most of the second group participants. In the both cases, being able to mainly control movement onset resulted in higher temporal accuracy. These results suggest that minimising the velocity-coupling effect is an important factor to achieve high temporal accuracy in rapid interception.