This book provides the first presentation of the bilingual textual material that illustrates the transmission of Islamic astronomy to scientists of the Indian Sanskritic tradition. It includes editions of the chapter of the _Tadhkira_ in which the mid-thirteenth century Persian astronomer, Nasīr al-dīn al-ṭūsī discussed the new solutions that he devised to overcome certain technical problems in the lunar and planetary models of Ptolemaic astronomy and of the learned commentary composed by al-Birjandī in the early sixteenth century together with the (...) Sanskrit translation of both made by Nayanasukha at Jaipur in 1729. An English translation of the Arabic texts and a commentary discussing their technical meanings and the deviations from them in the Sanskrit version together with a glossary of the Arabic and Sanskrit technical vocabulary conclude the volume. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the structure of unsuccessful chats over the internet about Japanese religions. On the internet, people of different religions and beliefs can easily meet. However, in Japan, chats about religion rarely succeed. This is due not only to a lack of social cues and anonymity but also because there is power balance between two groups, one with a positive attitude towards religion and the other with a negative attitude. Their different pre-understandings of religion make the discussion difficult. It (...) is important to analyze moments of pre-understanding of discussants in order to better understand the dynamics. We present an approach for such analysis based on Paul Ricoeur’s theory for “Threefold Mimesis.” This is a trial for successful communication among people from different cultures and societies via the internet. It could be a step forward in achieving the global information ethics that Charles Ess claims. This is because differences in the pre-understanding of a topic are an essential problem there. (shrink)

This article presents research on robot therapy for elderly residents in a care house. Experiments were conducted from June 2005, lasting more than 2 months. Two therapeutic baby seal robots were introduced to the residents, and activated for over 9 hours daily. To investigate the psychological and social effects of the robots, the residents’ activities in public areas were recorded using video cameras, during the daytime for over 2 months. In addition, urinalysis of the residents was performed for 17-ketosteroid sulfate (...) and 17-hydroxycorticosteroid. Results of the video analysis indicated that social interaction increased through interaction with the seal robots. Results of the urine tests showed that the reactions of the subjects’ vital organs to stress improved after the introduction of the robots. (shrink)

Interleukin 5 (IL‐5) is a kind of peptide hormone released from T lymphocytes of mammals infected with microorganisms or parasites. It is an acidic glycoprotein with a molecular mass of 40 to 50 kDa that consists of a homodimer of polypeptides. It controls hematopoiesis so that it increases natural immunity. In the mouse, IL‐5 acts on committed B cells to induce differentiation into Ig‐producing cells and on common progenitors for CD5+ pre‐B cells and CD5+ macrophages to support their survival. The (...) antibodies secreted by CD5+ B cells seem to be responsible for the primary protection against the infection with microorganisms or parasites. It also supports the growth and/or differentiation of eosinophil precursor and mature eosinophils, which can be effective for the removal of parasites in combination with the antibodies against them. Murine IL‐5 receptor (IL‐5R) consists of two different polypeptide chains; αL chain and β chain. The IL‐5R α chain is 60 kDa protein that binds IL‐5 with low affinity. The IL‐5R β chain is a 130 kDa protein which does not bind IL‐5 by itself but is necessary to form the high affinity IL‐5R. The β chain was identified by using one of the anti‐IL‐5R mAb and anti‐IL‐3R mAb as the IL‐3R homologue. This β chain is also used as the β chain of GM‐CSF receptor. This fact suggests that there is a common signaling mechanism among these cytokines and efficient cooperation among them. At the same time, these findings may explain the overlapping role of these cytokines in the development of granulocytes. (shrink)

Social technology can improve the quality of older adults' social lives and mitigate negative mental and physical health outcomes associated with loneliness, but it should be designed collaboratively with this population. In this paper, we used participatory design methods to investigate how robots might be used as social facilitators for middle-aged and older adults in both the US and Japan. We conducted PD workshops in the US and Japan because both countries are concerned about the social isolation of these older (...) adults due to their rapidly aging populations. We developed a novel approach to participatory design of future technologies that spends 2/3 of the PD session asking participants about their own life experiences as a foundation. This grounds the conversation in reality, creates rapport among the participants, and engages them in creative critical thinking. Then, we build upon this foundation, pose an abstract topic, and ask participants to brainstorm on the topic based on their previous discussion. In both countries, participants were eager to actively discuss design ideas for socially facilitative robots and imagine how they might improve their social lives. US participants suggested design ideas for telepresence robots, social distancing robots, and social skills artificial intelligence programs, while Japanese participants suggested ideas for pet robots, robots for sharing experiences, and easy-to-operate instructor robots. Comparing these two countries, we found that US participants saw robots as tools to help facilitate their social connections, while Japanese participants envisioned robots to function as surrogate companions for their parents and distract them from loneliness when they were unavailable. With this paper, we contribute to the literature in two main ways, presenting: A novel approach to participatory design of future technologies that grounds participants in their everyday experience, and Results of the study indicating how middle-aged and older adults from the US and Japan wanted technologies to improve their social lives. Although we conducted the workshops during the COVID-19 pandemic, many findings generalized to other situations related to social isolation, such as older adults living alone. (shrink)

The behavioral immune system (BIS) includes perceptual mechanisms for detecting cues of contamination. Former studies have indicated that moisture has a disgusting property. Therefore, moisture could be a target for detecting contamination cues by the BIS. We conducted two experiments to examine the psychophysical basis of moisture perception and clarify the relationship between the perception of moisture and the BIS. We assumed that the number of high luminance areas in a visual image provided optical information that would enable the visual (...) perception of moisture. In two experiments, we presented eight images of dough that contained different amounts of moisture as experimental stimuli. The amount of moisture shown in the images was increased in eight steps, from 28.6% to 42.9% of the total weight of the dough. In Experiment 1, the images were randomly presented on a computer display, and the participants (n = 22) were asked to rank the images in the order of the visually perceived moisture content. In Experiment 2, the participants (n = 15) completed pairwise comparisons based on the perceived moistness of the images. Furthermore, to examine the BIS responses, the participants rated the strength of disgust evoked by the stimuli, their motivation to avoid touching the stimuli, and the estimated magnitude of the risk of contamination by physical contact with the stimuli. The results indicated that the moisture content and the numbers of high luminance areas in the images accurately predicted the perception of moisture, suggesting that the detection of visual moisture was highly accurate, and the optical information served as an essential perceptual cue for detecting moisture. On the other hand, the BIS responses peaked in response to stimuli having approximately 33% to 39% moisture content. These results show that objects containing a moderate amount of moisture could be the target of visually detecting pathogens by the BIS. (shrink)

In several experimental conditions, neuronal excitation at the perirhinal cortex (PC) does not propagate to the entorhinal cortex (EC) due to a “wall” of inhibition, which may help to create functional coupling and un‐coupling of the PC and EC in the medial temporal lobe. However, little is known regarding the coupling control process. Herein, we propose that the deep layer of area 35 in the PC plays a pivotal role in opening the gate for coupling, thus allowing the activity in (...) the PC to propagate to the EC. Using voltage‐sensitive dye imaging for the brain slices of rodents, we show that a slowly inactivating potassium conductance in this area is essential to induce excitation overtaking the inhibitory control. This coupling between the distinct neural circuits persists for at least 1 h. We elucidate further implications of this network‐level plastic behavior and its mechanism. (shrink)

The two target articles agree that processes of cultural evolution generate richness and diversity in music, but neither address this question in a focused way. We sketch one way to proceed – and hence suggest how the target articles differ not only in empirical claims, but also in their tacit, prior assumptions about the relationship between cognition and culture.

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. (shrink)

A robot that is easy to teach not only has to be able to adapt to humans but also has to be easily adaptable to. In order to develop a robot with mutual adaptation ability, we believe that it will be beneficial to first observe the mutual adaptation behaviors that occur in human–human communication. In this paper, we propose a human–human WOZ (Wizard-of-Oz) experiment setting that can help us to observe and understand how the mutual adaptation procedure occurs between human (...) beings in nonverbal communication. By analyzing the experimental results, we obtained three important findings: alignment-based action, symbol-emergent learning, and environmental learning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unconventional Guest: Masao Abe’s Dialogue with the American AcademyWilliam R. LaFleurDuring the two years we were together at Princeton I once took Masao Abe to meet my parents, then alive and living in New Jersey. I had told them some things in advance about Abe, about Zen, and about what in Abe’s ways could at times be unconventional. My mother, I knew, would put lots of effort into preparing (...) the Sunday dinner we ate on the day of our visit. At the meal’s conclusion Abe turned to my mother and declared: “Mrs. LaFleur, this meal has been simply outrageous! ” For a moment I thought he might have meant “delicious” and had landed on the wrong word. But then I saw his smiling eyes and mouth. He had meant what he said. Everyone laughed and my mother promptly thanked him for his “compliment.”Being at times a genially unconventional guest, one who also in academic or dialogic contexts would say surprising or even unsettling things, was something at which Abe excelled. He was also unconventional in his teaching. He frustrated us when we expected the usual approach. In the book edited by Donald Mitchell I told how in 1969 at the University of Chicago Abe aggravated those of us graduate students who wanted to do a survey of all of modern Japanese philosophy; Abe forced us to stay with certain sentences in Nishida, wanting our minds to be changed. He would not budge.1Some years later at Princeton he proved to be maddeningly insistent on this. Reading The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch with graduate students in 1977 who knew some Chinese and Japanese was not for Professor Abe going to be exercise in the usual historico-textual excavation; all that was available, he said, in the introduction and notes to Philip Yampolsky’s translation of that text. He was not interested in an “objectification” that put distance between the voice speaking through the text and the person being addressed by it today. For him the ancient text must read as if written for us and for us today. With Abe as teacher the dialogic mode of the seminar room had to replicate in its own way the lecture hall of the Ta-fan Temple! But graduate students at Princeton, inured as they were to the conventional mode of textual-historical analysis, were made clearly uncomfortable by this. Therefore, hoping I might serve as a mediator, they asked me to ask Abe if we might be more historical and move on more quickly. When, with some trepidation, I transmitted this request [End Page 127] to Abe, he merely chuckled and smiled, leaving me to guess why we should expect no change in his emphasis. What follows is my attempt to unpack what was involved in this... and why it remains relevant today.Even some more recent scholars of East Asian Buddhism in our academy today resemble those graduate students back then in Princeton. They, too, have been suggesting that there was something “behind the times” or in need of being updated in the dialogic teaching mode used so brilliantly by Abe—as well as by Hisamatsu Shin’ichi and D. T. Suzuki. However, there is, I think, something both laughably conventional and arrogantly neocolonialist in these critics’ assumptions. They believe that textual and historicist methods (of which Ideologiekritik is an extension) remain something that the West still needs to teach to the non-West, that these render all other methods outdated and irrelevant, and that they can be deployed to expose what remains flawed in the way that, for instance, Japanese such as Abe study and teach Buddhism and Zen.Ironically, this presumptuous stance itself crumbles under historical and textual analysis—at least when applied to Japan. In various studies, Michael Pye has shown that Tominaga Nakamoto’s studies of Buddhist texts, historical and critical to the core, were done in the early seventeenth century and show a solid tradition of scholarship in this mode arising there without any influence from Europe. As Pye shows, interest in the plurality of religions and an early stage of a “science of religions” were present in Japan... (shrink)