In this study, we propose the Ankle-Worn Sensor Sleeve to help people maintain their health. Furthermore, our approach uses this sensor sleeve to improve walking motivation by making the walking motion more sensible. In this research, we pursue the design of a wearable device that users can wear as a “shoe accessory,” with the aim of promoting people’s walking motivation. This device is ankle-worn and generates electricity using the physical flexion and extension of the ankle, detects and acquires the amount (...) of electricity generated, and uses the resulting power to produce sound and light feedback while walking. The Sleeve is designed to support health problems, such as locomotive syndrome and dementia, which are caused by physical inactivity. This article presents the results of a questionnaire survey conducted on 172 people who experienced or observed the device during exhibitions. The results reveal that this device increased people’s interest and motivation to walk, including those who did not like to walk. (shrink)

The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Dictionary 2015 is a standard text analysis dictionary that quantifies the linguistic and psychometric properties of English words. A Japanese version of the LIWC2015 dictionary has been expected in the fields of natural language processing and cross-cultural research. This study aims to create the J-LIWC2015 through systematic investigations of the original dictionary and Japanese corpora. The entire LIWC2015 dictionary was initially subjected to human and machine translation into Japanese. After verifying the frequency of use (...) of the words in large corpora, frequent words and phrases that are unique to Japanese were added to the dictionary, followed by recategorization by psychologists. The updated dictionary indicated good internal consistency, semantic equivalence with the original LIWC2015 dictionary, and good construct validity in each category. The evidence suggests that the J-LIWC2015 dictionary is a powerful research tool in computational social science to scrutinize the psychological processes behind Japanese texts and promote standardized cross-cultural investigations in combination with LIWC dictionaries in different languages. (shrink)

Land Tenure, Fiscal Policy, and Imperial Power in Medieval Syro-Egypt. By Daisuke Igarashi. Chicago Studies on the Middle East, vol 10. Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, University of Chicago, 2015. Pp. vi + 264. $79.