What Children Have Lost by the Modernisation of Education: A Comparison of Experiences in Western Europe and Eastern Asia

The discovery of the proper value of childhood during the 18th century in Europe was an important break-through. People began to respect childhood as a sacred world that should not be judged from the standpoint of adults. However, in today' world many children are subjected to all kinds of physical and mental pain, including the so-called examination hell in some Asian countries. Children now live in a paradoxical situation. Theoretically they have obtained the right to enjoy their own world, approved and protected by adults, but in practice they cannot adapt themselves smoothly to the world mainly ruled by the logic of grown-ups. This paper argues that it is time to re-evaluate what has been lost under the slogan of modernisation. The solution is not simply to return to the pre-modern situation but rather to consider what elements from the past could be re-activated to the benefit of children today.     

Development of a computer-assisted Japanese functional expression learning system for Chinese-speaking learners

Educational technology research and development - Because a large number of Chinese characters are commonly used in both Japanese and Chinese, Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese as a second...     

Effects of the inclination of context lines on perception of the Ponzo illusion by pigeons

Pigeons discriminated the length of a bar located between two context lines. Responses to one key were reinforced when the bar was longer than a predetermined length, and those to the other key were reinforced when the bar was shorter. The inclination of the context lines was systematically varied from 54.6° (converging upward) to 125.4° (converging downward). Five out of 6 subjects tended to report “long” when the bars were located near the apex of the context lines, regardless of whether the context lines were oriented upward or downward. The magnitude of the illusion varied almost linearly with the ratio of the length of the stimulus bar to the gap between the bar and the context lines. This relationship held equally for upward- and downward-converging context lines.     

Impact phase kinematics of instep kicking in soccer

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to capture the lower limb kinematics before during and after ball impact of soccer kicking by examining the influence of both sampling rate and smoothing procedures. Nine male soccer players performed maximal instep kicks and the three-dimensional leg movements were captured at 1000 Hz. Angular and linear velocities and accelerations were determined using four different processing approaches: processed using a modified version of a time-frequency filtering algorithm (WGN), smoothed by a second-order low-pass Butterworth filter at 200 Hz cut-off (BWF), re-sampled at 250 Hz without smoothing (RSR) and re-sampled at 250 Hz but filtered by the same Butterworth filter at 10 Hz cut-off (RSF). The WGN approach appeared to establish representative kinematics, whereas the other procedures failed to remove noisy oscillation from the baseline of signal (BWF), lost the peaks of rapid changes (RSR) or produced totally distorted movement patterns (RSF). The results indicate that the procedures used by some previous studies may have been insufficient to adequately capture the lower limb motion near ball impact. We propose a new time-frequency filtering technique as a better way to smooth data whose frequency content varies dramatically.     

Age-Related Changes of Serum Soluble Interleukin 9 Receptor (sIL-9Rα) in Healthy Subjects

Most cytokine receptors including interleukin (IL)-9 have soluble counterparts in body fluids. We planned to investigate the pathophysiological significance of the serum soluble IL-9 receptor (sIL-9R) level. We determined the serum sIL-9Rα chain (sIL-9Rα) levels in 96 healthy Japanese individuals to establish a control value by means of specific human sIL-9Rα ELISA, followed by a preliminary application in a patient with diarrhea positive hemolytic uremic syndrome. Age was negatively correlated with the sIL-9Rα level (Spearman r = −0.241, n = 96, p = 0.0180). The serum sIL-9Rα level showed a progressive decline to the normal adult level by the age of 30. The serum sIL-9Rα level of the patient with HUS was markedly higher than those of the age-matched control from the onset of the disease. Because of the remarkable age-dependent variability of sIL-9Rα in healthy subjects, disease-related changes, as well as therapy-dependent alterations, should be considered with caution. Thus, it is recommended that when the serum sIL-9Rα levels of patients are evaluated, the values should be compared with those of age-matched controls. The established control value will be used to discriminate between normal and the pathological conditions in our future studies.     

Integrated guidance and autopilot design for a chasing UAV via high-order sliding modes

Integrated guidance and control (IGC) approaches exploit the synergy between guidance and control designs. This study focuses on the integrated guidance and control (autopilot) design for a chasing Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) against a target aircraft. A second-order sliding structure with a second-order sliding mode (SOSM) including a high-order sliding mode (HOSM) observer for the estimation of the uncertain sliding surfaces is selected to develop an integrated guidance and autopilot scheme. In order to make the design synthesis easier, intermediate control variables for partial derivatives of a sliding surface are carefully selected. The resulting sliding surface structure is simple and sufficient to relate the actuator input to the sliding surface. The potential of the proposed method is demonstrated through an aircraft application by comparing its simulation performance, number of tuning parameters used, and information needed for its implementation with an approach where the guidance law and the controller are designed separately.     

Development of university life-science programs and university-industry joint research in Japan

How are new university educational programs established in response to expanding sciences and how do they promote university-industry (UI) joint research? To study these questions in relation to life sciences and biotechnology, we first compiled the data on the establishment of new undergraduate and graduate programs on these fields in Japanese universities since the 1950s. We then analyzed statistically whether and how such establishment contributed to the occurrence and frequency of UI joint research in biotechnology. We found that the expansion of such university programs in fact contributed to the promotion of UI joint research. We also confirmed that, even with this contribution controlled, UI joint research projects increased following the 1998 legislation to promote technology transfer from universities (the so-called TLO Act) and the 1999 legislation to allow universities to retain rights on their inventions made with government research funds (the so-called Japanese Bayh-Dole Act).     

Recollections of Expo 70: Visitors' Experiences and the Retention of Vivid Long‐Term Memories

Abstract This study reports on outcomes of an investigation of visitors' longterm memories of the 1970 Japan World Exposition, Osaka. The paper reports in two parts the emergent outcomes of a study that provides understanding of the nature of visitors' long‐term memories of their experiences in an informal leisure‐time context. First, the paper discusses the common and most dominant recollections that emerged from 48 visitors' memories of this event 34 years ago. An overall explication of visitors' memories of their experiences of the event reveals an interesting mix of reactions: wonderment about the world and the amazing technological advances of the era, blended with personal discomfort and frustrations associated with the memories. These mixed feelings are presented against the backdrop of Japanese national identity re‐emergent on the world stage. Second, an analysis and discussion of qualitative data provides case examples of how three psychological and behavioral factors (affect, agenda fulfillment, and rehearsal) shape the vividness of episodic and/or autobiographical memories of the episodes as they are recalled 34 years later. This paper vividly illustrates the power of qualitative data to illuminate understanding of visitors' long‐term memories and presents some significant issues for museum staff to consider as they plan for visitor experiences that will have lasting impact.     

Normalization of titles and their retrieval

This paper presents a method of normalizations of English titles and their retrieval. The title expressed by a noun phrase or a noun clause is converted to a function-expression by parsing. For the retrieval with a reasonable recall rate as well as a high precision rate, the function-expression is transformed to a predicate-governor form, and then normalized to a standard form. Therefrom, various items are extracted and recorded in a hierarchical tree-like inverted file.In order to keep the recall rate in a reasonable value, several retrieval stages are implemented based on the key-term and case-label matching. The retrieval is controlled by the preciseness of the specification of case-labels for each key-term.     

Internal and external discipline: The effect of project leadership and government monitoring on the performance of publicly funded R&D consortia

R&D consortia have been regarded as an effective means of promoting innovation. Several R&D consortia obtain public financial support, which may affect their governance structure and performance. This study investigates the governance mechanisms of publicly funded R&D consortia and their effects on innovation performance. Few studies have empirically addressed the effect of project monitoring by the government or the role of project leadership in R&D consortia. Focusing on a major support program for R&D consortia in Japan and using a sample of 251 firms that participated in publicly funded R&D consortia from 2004 to 2009, we empirically confirm that to enhance firms’ innovation performance, both project leadership as internal discipline and government monitoring as external discipline matter. Our results show that project leadership directly improves firms’ innovation performance, while firms’ commitment indirectly affects performance. Project leadership and government monitoring also promote commitment. Furthermore, both factors are complementary: consortia members are more willing to accept a project leader’s coordination under stricter government monitoring.