In this study, we discuss the psychological acceptability of an utterance strategy used by the Driving Support Agent. Previous literature regarding DSA suggests that the adoption of a small robot as a form will increase acceptability. However, the agent’s utterance has been reported as a problem faced by the user. Therefore, in this study, we designed the agent’s utterance using politeness strategy as described by Brown and Levinson’s famous sociolinguistics and pragmatics theory and analyzed its acceptability through a participant-based experiment. (...) In this experiment, we used positive and negative politeness strategies. In general, PPS is utilized to reflect the desire to be liked/recognized by others, whereas NPS is utilized to reflect the need for not wanting to be disturbed by others. Based on our results, PPS was rated high compared to NPS. Therefore, many participants highly evaluated PPS. However, there was a group of participants who appreciated NPS. There were also participants who evaluated the two strategies equally. The number of participants in these three groups was observed at 4:1:1. This result contributes as an index on the utterance design of the DSA. (shrink)

Man is the measure of all things: of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not. In “The Age of the World Picture” Heidegger writes that the “essence of the modern age can be seen in the fact that man frees himself from the bonds of the Middle Ages in freeing himself to himself.”1 He goes on to explain that “What is decisive is not that man frees himself to himself from previous obligations, (...) but that the very essence of man itself changes in that man becomes subject.”2 According to Heidegger, when “man” becomes subject, for the first time is there any such thing as a “position” of man. Man makes depend upon himself the way in which he must take his stand in... (shrink)

Endosteal stem cells are a subclass of bone marrow skeletal stem cell populations that are particularly important for rapid bone formation occurring in growth and regeneration. These stem cells are strategically located near the bone surface in a specialized microenvironment of the endosteal niche. These stem cells are abundant in young stages but eventually depleted and replaced by other stem cell types residing in a non‐endosteal perisinusoidal niche. Single‐cell molecular profiling and in vivo cell lineage analyses play key roles in (...) discovering endosteal stem cells. Importantly, endosteal stem cells can transform into bone tumor‐making cells when deleterious mutations occur in tumor suppressor genes. The emerging hypothesis is that osteoblast‐chondrocyte transitional identities confer a special subset of endosteal stromal cells with stem cell‐like properties, which may make them susceptible for tumorigenic transformation. Endosteal stem cells are likely to represent an important therapeutic target of bone diseases caused by aberrant bone formation. (shrink)

For public health professionals, traumatic brain injury and its possible protracted repercussions are a significant source of worry. In opposed to patient neurorehabilitation with developed brain abnormalities of different etiologies, neurorehabilitation of affected persons has several distinct features. The clinical repercussions of the various types of TBI injuries will be discussed in detail in this paper. During severe TBI, the medical course frequently follows a familiar first sequence of coma, accompanied by disordered awareness, followed by agitation and forgetfulness, followed by (...) return of function. Clinicians must be aware of common medical issues that might occur throughout the various stages of neurorehabilitation, for example, posttraumatic hydrocephalus, paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity and posttraumatic neuroendocrine disorders, at each step of the process. Furthermore, we address problems about the scheduling of various rehabilitation programs as well as the availability of current data for comprehensive rehabilitative neuropsychology techniques. (shrink)

An emerging concept is that quiescent mature skeletal cells provide an important cellular source for bone regeneration. It has long been considered that a small number of resident skeletal stem cells are solely responsible for the remarkable regenerative capacity of adult bones. However, recent in vivo lineage‐tracing studies suggest that all stages of skeletal lineage cells, including dormant pre‐adipocyte‐like stromal cells in the marrow, osteoblast precursor cells on the bone surface and other stem and progenitor cells, are concomitantly recruited to (...) the injury site and collectively participate in regeneration of the damaged skeletal structure. Lineage plasticity appears to play an important role in this process, by which mature skeletal cells can transform their identities into skeletal stem cell‐like cells in response to injury. These highly malleable, long‐living mature skeletal cells, readily available throughout postnatal life, might represent an ideal cellular resource that can be exploited for regenerative medicine. (shrink)

法実証主義の現代的展開として法多元主義を位置づけるとともに、社会保障と自衛官合祀訴訟という個別の題材、さらに、組織論にもアプローチ。グローバル化がもたらす国家法と非国家法が交錯する世界を読み解く法理論 。.

This paper applies Dehornoy et al.’s Z theorem and its variant, called the compositional Z theorem, to prove confluence of Parigot’s \-calculi extended by the simplification rules. First, it is proved that Baba et al.’s modified complete developments for the call-by-name and the call-by-value variants of the \-calculus with the renaming rule, which is one of the simplification rules, satisfy the Z property. It gives new confluence proofs for them by the Z theorem. Secondly, it is shown that the compositional (...) Z theorem can be applied to prove confluence of the call-by-name and the call-by-value \-calculi with both simplification rules, the renaming and the \-rules, whereas it is hard to apply the ordinary parallel reduction technique or the original Z theorem by one-pass definition of mappings for these variants. (shrink)

Why has right-wing activism in Japan, despite its persistence throughout the postwar era, only gained significant traction recently? Focusing on the Zaitokukai, an anti-Korean movement in Japan, this article demonstrates how the new Far Right were able to popularize formerly stigmatized right-wing ideas. The Zaitokukai represents a political group distinct from the traditional right and reflective of new Far Right movements spreading worldwide. In Japan, concerns about the growing influence of South Korea and China in the 1980s as well as (...) the decline of left-wing norms opened up a discursive opportunity for the new Far Right. By framing Korean postcolonial minorities as undeserving recipients of social welfare benefits, the Zaitokukai mobilized perceptions of threat that has continued to powerfully influence public perceptions of Koreans even following the group’s organizational decline. While past research has focused on the new Far Right’s political influence, this article stresses their roles as ideological entrepreneurs. (shrink)

BackgroundFinancial interactions between pharmaceutical companies and physicians lead to conflicts of interest. This study examines the extent and trends of non-research payments made by pharmaceutical companies to board-certified allergists in Japan between 2016 and 2020.MethodsA retrospective analysis of disclosed payment data from pharmaceutical companies affiliated with the Japanese Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association was conducted. The study focused on non-research payments for lecturing, consulting, and manuscript drafting made to board-certified allergists from 2016 to 2020. We performed descriptive analyses on payment data. Trends (...) were analyzed using generalized estimating equation models.ResultsOf the 3,943 board-certified allergists, 2,398 (60.8%) received non-research payments totaling $43.4 million over five years. Lecturing fees comprised 85.7% ($37.2 million) of the total payment amounts. For allergists who received at least one payment, the median amount per allergist was $3,106 (interquartile range: $966 – $12,124), in contrast to a mean of $18,092 (standard deviation: $49,233) over the five-year span. The top 1% and 10% of these allergists accounted for 20.8% and 68.8% of all non-research payments, respectively. The annual payment amounts significantly increased by 7.2% annual increase (95% CI: 4.4 – 10.0%, p < 0.001) each year until 2019, but saw a significant decrease in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.ConclusionThe majority of allergists received non-research payments, with a notable concentration among a small group. Payments increased annually until the pandemic’s onset, which coincided with a substantial decrease. Further research is needed to explore the implications of these financial interactions on clinical practice and patient care in Japan. (shrink)

Freezing of gait is a common symptom in the late stages of Parkinson’s disease and related disorders. Videos are the gold standard method to conduct FOG scoring; however, the measurement accuracy of FOG scoring based on videos has not been formally assessed, despite its use in previous studies. This study aimed to calculate the measurement accuracy of video-based FOG scoring. Three evaluators scored the FOG based on 157 video data points collected from 21 patients using an annotation tool. One evaluator (...) measured the intra-rater reliability of the retest. The total duration of observed FOG, percentage of the time spent with FOG during the walking task, and FOG phenotypes were evaluated. Intraclass correlation coefficients were used to determine the intra- and inter-rater reliabilities. The duration of FOG and %FOG showed good measurement accuracy for both intra-rater and inter-rater reliabilities. However, the FOG phenotypes showed poor measurement accuracy in inter-rater reliability. These results indicate that the temporal characteristics of FOG can be scored with a high degree of measurement accuracy, even with different evaluators; conversely, the FOG phenotypes need to be scored by several evaluators. (shrink)

The human ability to flexibly discover alternatives without fixating on a known solution supports a variety of human creative activities. Previous research has shown that people who discover an alternative procedure relax their attentional bias to information regarding the known solutions just prior to the discovery. This study examined whether the difference in the distribution of attention between the finders and non-finders of the alternative procedure is observed from the phase of solving the problem using the trained procedure. We evaluated (...) the characteristics of the finders' distribution of attention in situations where problem solving using a trained procedure was successful. This aspect has been little examined in previous research. Our study obtained empirical evidence for the fact that, compared to non-finders, finders pay more attention to information unrelated to the trained procedure acquired through knowledge and experience, even time when using a trained procedure. We also confirmed that this difference does not exist from the beginning of the task, but emerges during repeated use of familiar procedures. These findings indicate that in order to find an alternative procedure, one should not only divert attention from a familiar procedure just before the discovery but also pay a certain amount of attention to information unrelated to the familiar procedure even when the familiar procedure is functioning well. (shrink)

We show that if a class K of finite relational structures is closed under quasi-substructures, then there is no saturated K-generic structure that is superstable but not ω -stable.

The present study examines the interactional phenomenon of enactment, wherein conversation participants act out themselves or others by utilizing both linguistic and non-linguistic resources and demonstrate certain ideas rather than describe them. While past research has revealed that people, based on their first- or second-hand experiences, frequently use enactment during storytelling activities to depict what story characters said and/or did, this article explores cases in which participants in Japanese conversations enact based on what co-participants have experienced. In such cases, producers (...) of enactment are recipients of the enacted information provided by co-participants. This study refers to interactants who originally provide certain information as “tellers,” and it refers to interactants who enact the received information as “recipients”. Employing Conversation Analysis as an analytical framework, the present study investigates how recipients’ enactments are utilized as a resource to demonstrate their understanding of information given at the moment of their interaction in Japanese. (shrink)

Emotion modulates our time perception. So far, the relationship between emotion and time perception has been examined with visible emotional stimuli. The present study investigated whether invisible emotional stimuli affected time perception. Using continuous flash suppression, which is a kind of dynamic interocular masking, supra-threshold emotional pictures were masked or unmasked depending on whether the retinal position of continuous flashes on one eye was consistent with that of the pictures on the other eye. Observers were asked to reproduce the perceived (...) duration of a frame stimulus that was concurrently presented with a masked or unmasked emotional picture. As a result, negative emotional stimuli elongated the perceived duration of the frame stimulus in comparison with positive and neutral emotional stimuli, regardless of the visibility of emotional pictures. These results suggest that negative emotion unconsciously accelerates an internal clock, altering time perception. (shrink)

The standing screens on the title is the oldest work extant of KANO Motonobu's work as folding screens of thick colored flowers and birds with golden background. This thesis designates that the scenery and the motif of the work are in correspondence with both descriptions of the scenery of Pure Land in several Buddhist scriptures and the design of actual gardens. Firstly, a peacock on the right hand screen is focused to indicate the bird connotes the elements of auspicious birds (...) in Buddhism, such as Mahamayuri and Kalavinka.Secondly, the elements of the scenery in the work, such as the four seasons at the same time ∼ the depiction of perpetuity ∼ and the existence of a pond, are identified with the description of Pure Land in Kwan-mu-liang-shou-ching and Ta-wuliang-shou-ching. These elements of the garden in the work are placed similarly to the Pure Land style gardens, which are illustrated in "Center and Surrounds of Kyoto" 's. In consideration of the above factors, the conclusion that, in the work, KANO Motonobu succeeded to portray the ideal garden by combining the scenery of Pure Land and that of actual gardens, is drawn. (shrink)

Pupil contagion is the phenomenon in which an observer’s pupil-diameter changes in response to another person’s pupil. Even chimpanzees and infants in early development stages show pupil contagion. This study investigated whether dynamic changes in pupil diameter would induce changes in infants’ pupil diameter. We also investigated pupil contagion in the context of different faces. We measured the pupil-diameter of 50 five- to six-month-old infants in response to changes in the pupil diameter of upright and inverted faces. The results showed (...) that in the upright presentation condition, dilating the pupil diameter induced a change in the infants’ pupil diameter while constricting the pupil diameter did not induce a change, and pupil contagion occurred only in the upright face presentation, and not in the inverted face presentation. These results indicate the face-inversion effect in infants’ pupil contagion. (shrink)

This study examined whether 8-month-old infants’ hemodynamic responses in the temporal region were modulated by repeated presentation of “Peekaboo” by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Previous studies have shown that infants’ temporal region responds to faces. A recent electroencephalography study showed that the neural activity of infants was modulated by repeated presentation of “Peekaboo.” Some fNIRS studies also revealed that the movie of “Peekaboo” activated the hemodynamic response of the temporal region in infancy. However, no studies have shown the hemodynamic modulation (...) of the temporal region according to the repeated presentation of “Peekaboo” in infants. In order to examine whether the hemodynamic responses of the temporal region were modulated by repeated presentation of “Peekaboo,” we compared the activity of the temporal region between the early and late trials. We set long and short delays before face-presentation. The results showed that the concentration of oxy-hemoglobin in the right occipitotemporal region in both conditions increased after the presentation of “Peekaboo” relative to the baseline. Moreover, in the long delay condition, the hemodynamic modulation of the right occipitotemporal region was induced according to the repeated presentation of “Peekaboo” in infants. (shrink)

The emerging critique of alternative food networks (AFNs) points to several factors that could impede the participation of low-income, minority communities in the movement, namely, spatial and temporal constraints, and the lack of economic, cultural, and human capital. Based on a semi-experimental study that offers 6 weeks of free produce to 31 low-income African American households located in a New Orleans food desert, this article empirically examines the significance of the impeding factors identified by previous scholarship, through participant surveys before, (...) during, and after the program. Our results suggest economic constraints are more influential in determining where the participants shop for food than spatial and temporal constraints, and the study participants exhibit high levels of human and cultural capital regarding the purchase and consumption of locally grown produce. We also find them undeterred by the market’s predominantly White, middle-class cultural social space, which leads us to question the extent to which cultural exclusivity discourages their participation in AFNs. For all five factors we find that the constraints posed to accessing the local food market were not universal but varied among the participants. Finally, the study reveals some localized social constraints, fragmented social ties in particular, as a possible structural hurdle to engaging these residents in the alternative market in their neighborhood. Conclusions point to the need for a multi-dimensional and dynamic conceptualization of “food access.”. (shrink)

Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes generate positive externalities for social and economic systems, analogous to biodiversity in biological systems. Although some aspects of biodiversity (e.g., pests, parasites and bacteria) can lead to ecological and economic problems, biodiversity provides flows of beneficial ecological services and is widely regarded as a valuable natural resource and informational asset, whose value increases as we learn more and science progresses (Wilson in Bioscience 35(11):700–706, 1985). Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes (and heterogeneous behaviors they generate) similarly (...) provide flows of beneficial economic services. Behavioral diversity should therefore be seen as a natural resource and informational asset likely to improve human wellbeing in surprising ways in the future. Paternalistic policies motivated by the goal of “correcting” allegedly suboptimal beliefs and behavior that diverge from expert recommendations jeopardize behavioral diversity at a substantial cost to social welfare. The risk of encroaching on this beneficial behavioral heterogeneity with policies that aim to induce behavioral and belief monocultures should be included explicitly as costs when evaluating nudges and other paternalistic policies. (shrink)

We investigated the influence of globally ungrammatical local syntactic constraints on sentence comprehension, as well as the corresponding activation of global and local representations. In Experiment 1, participants viewed visual scenes with objects like a carousel and motorbike while hearing sentences with noun phrase (NP) or verb phrase (VP) modifiers like “The girl who likes the man (from London/very much) will ride the carousel.” In both cases, “girl” and “ride” predicted carousel as the direct object; however, the locally coherent combination (...) “the man from London will ride…” in NP cases alternatively predicted motorbike. During “ride,” local constraints, although ruled out by the global constraints, influenced prediction as strongly as global constraints: While motorbike was fixated less than carousel in VP cases, it was fixated as much as carousel in NP cases. In Experiment 2, these local constraints likewise slowed reading times. We discuss implications for theories of sentence processing. (shrink)

Research in the U.S. developed and validated the State Self-Compassion Scale, which measures self-compassionate reactions toward a specific negative event. The current study is aimed at developing the Japanese version of the State Self-Compassion Scale and extending previous findings in the U.S. by showing measurement invariance across sexes and demonstrating the construct validity of this scale. Across two studies, the bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling representation of the SSCS-J showed excellent fit in which a single global factor and most of (...) the specific factors were well defined. Study 1 further provided evidence for the measurement invariance across sexes. The SSCS-J was related with higher trait self-compassion and lower fear of and negative beliefs about self-compassion. In Study 2, participants who were instructed to be self-compassionate reported higher scores in the SSCS-J relative to those in the control condition. These results attest to the replicability of the factor structure of the SSCS in Japan and provide further evidence for the construct validity of this scale. (shrink)

Finding truthmakers for negative truths has been a problem in philosophy for a long time. I will present and discuss the solution to this problem offered by Bertrand Russell, Raphael Demos, D. M. Armstrong, and myself. I will argue that some negative truths do not require truthmakers and that truthmakers for the other negative truths are the entities that these negative truths imply exist. I will also argue that truthmakers for general truths of the form, only X, Y, Z, and (...) etc. are F's, are the sum of each X, Y, Z, and etc.'s being F, and hence that sometimes truthmakers do not necessitate truths. (shrink)

Experimental studies show that some corvids, apes, and rodents possess a common long-term memory system that allows them to take goal-directed actions on the basis of absent spatiotemporal contexts. In other words, evidence supports the hypothesis that Episodic Memory —far from being uniquely human— has evolved as a cross-species meaning making system. However, within this zoosemiotic breakthrough, neurocognitive studies now struggle characterizing the relations between teleological factors and phenomenological factors that would account for the episodic behavior displayed by these living (...) beings. Within such field, this paper identifies four epistemological gaps —the ‘Nagelian’, ‘de Waalian’, ‘Chomskyan’, and ‘semiotic’ gaps—, making a case for the need of a future biosemiotic model of Alloanimal Episodic Memory to come into the equation. As a whole, I conclude that experimental developments in AEM research, and philosophical advancements in biosemiotics could converge through the concept of semiosis. Introducing the latter would account for animal episodic agency as a causal influence and continuity between the above relations, outclassing the reductionist and Cartesian separation between ‘external’ bodily behavior and ‘internal’ computational operations. (shrink)

This paper explores how to theoretically transcend the division that exists between nonautonomous and autonomous evil. Evil in the context of this paper is a social action that harms others against their will. Traditional social theory has explained the evil in modernity as a pathology or as the result of the organizational and bureaucratic structures of society that was beyond the agency of individuals. The concepts of nonautonomous and autonomous evil developed by John Kekes are used to clarify the types (...) of evil as a social action. It follows that structural processes that entail agency can also be applied to unify the different approaches given to evil and fill the misleading gap that exists between nonautonomous and autonomous evil. Regardless of the event or the perpetrator, evil is agency-driven and is always composed of both nonautonomous and autonomous evil. What differs is the degree of nonautonomous or autonomous evil in the social action. It shows that evil is an important part of agency regardless of the agent’s awareness of the evil that actions entail within modernity, and it is therefore the task of social theory to shed light on its social processes. (shrink)

Previous work suggests that Asians allocate more attention to configuration information than Caucasian Americans do. Yet this cultural variation has been found only with stimuli such as natural scenes and objects that require both feature- and configuration-based processing. Here, we show that the cultural variation also exists in face perception—a domain that is typically viewed as configural in nature. When asked to identify a prototypic face for a set of disparate exemplars, Japanese were more likely than Caucasian Americans to use (...) overall resemblance rather than feature matching. Moreover, in a speeded identity-matching task, Japanese were more accurate than Americans in identifying the spatial configuration of features (e.g., eyes). Together, these findings underscore the robustness of culture’s influences on cognition. (shrink)