How closer can methodologies approach life? The study of “bodily knowing” in Japan

"Bodily knowing" or "shintai chi" has emerged in Japan since the 1990s in sports and exercise science, education, and cognitive science. This paper explores specific methodologies used in bodily knowing research to shed light on its future development. Bodily knowing encompasses skills, movements, and knowledge rooted in the body. Various fields advocate for studying bodily knowing, recognizing its potential. The paper highlights existing methodologies in bodily knowing research, including analyzing sports and movement skills, exploring aesthetics in everyday life, and self-support research by individuals with disabilities. These methodologies reveal aspects that traditional scientific approaches may neglect and offer insights into constructing a potent methodology for bodily knowing research

Somaesthetics in early Korean history: The educational scope of the hwarang

This paper is concerned with first, reviewing hwarang in early Korean history through the eyes of somaesthetics, and second examining the educational implications of hwarang. Hwarang’s features (aesthetic ideology called pungryudo, their core activities, including songs and journeys) are highlighted from the perspective of somaesthetics. At the core of the hwarang’s activities are such elements as entertainment, pleasure, and joy. In the context of today’s education, the hwarang and somaesthetics promote the insight that one’s intellectual and practical life is integrated into one’s lifestyle based on these bodily experiences

まねることで学ぶ

井上弥先生・樋口聡先生退職記念特集

教育のための「身体感性論」の研究 : 「改良主義」と身体的「実践」に着目して

内容の要約広島大学(Hiroshima University)博士(教育学)Doctor of Philosophy in Educationdoctora

Meliorism in Somaesthetics and Education

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the meliorism in education, and somaesthetics as a clue, to discuss possibilities of new meliorism in education. Education essentially pursuits better changes of people. However, “betterness” is the ambiguous and controversial concept as already revealed in the history of education. For example, education uncritically accepted betterness from eugenics and violated human rights as a result. Also, the Enlightenment defined the state of ignorance one-sidedly. Nevertheless, it is impossible to get rid of a pursuit of betterness from education. Pursuit of betterness is also a major axis of Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics, a study concerned with the experience and the use of one’s body, not only the physical body but also soma as a holistic self.“ Meliorism” or betterness is a fundamental position and idea in somaesthetics. Meliorism in somaesthetics puts the somatic experience in its center. Also, it is a medium of optimism and pessimism to encourage action. This can be a clue to draw up a new meliorism in education. As a specific image of education, Toshio Nakamura’s theory and practices of physical education were considered. They suggest possibilities of meliorism in education from the viewpoint of somaesthetics

A Study on Practical Somaesthetics for Education

The topic of this research is school education from the viewpoint of practical somaesthetics. Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics is a study concerned with the experience and the use of the body, soma as a holistic self. Shusterman outlines its main branches: analytic, pragmatic, and practical somaesthetics. This research maintains the focus on practical somaesthetics. This research consists of three parts: (1) Clarification of Somaesthetics. Its definition, three branches and educational significance are considered. Especially practical somaesthetics is considered specifically, which will be a ground work of actual practical somaesthetics class in elementary school. (2) Actual class of practical somaesthetics in elementary school. (3) Significance of somaesthetics on education. It is to reconstruct a perspective on education rather than to make certain bodily discipline to apply to school. Somaesthetics is providing a chance to rethink our body in the context of school education

What We Can Learn from the Practice of Steiner Education: Focusing on the Body and the Language in Education

In education, “body” and “language” tend to be captured in a divided and limited context. For example, the body is mainly dealt with in physical education, and the language limitedly within the learning of Japanese and foreign languages, with emphasizing the physical body, language system, and its rules only. They have, however, broader meanings and possibilities. The body is deeply related to emotions, thoughts, knowledge, and learning, and the language with its relevance to images and metaphors can be extended to the bodily dimension. To support this understanding of broader concepts of body and language, somaesthetics and the linguistic theory of Saussure can be considered as a theoretical background. In this sense, this study focuses on the practice of Steiner education. Even though there are raising concerns regarding its controversial “philosophy,” it is undeniable that the practices have excellent implications for contemporary education, especially regarding body and language. For example, Eurythmy in Steiner education reflects the meaning of the body extended to child development, rhythm, music, and language. In this manner, this paper focuses on the practices of Steiner education from the viewpoint of body and language. This study aims to explore the possibilities of “body” and “language” in education as seen in Steiner education practice, and based on this, proposes practical examples for the Japanese curriculum

Synthetic biology on acetogenic bacteria for highly efficient conversion of c1 gases to biochemicals

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Synthesis gas, which is mainly produced from fossil fuels or biomass gasification, consists of C1 gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane as well as hydrogen. Acetogenic bacteria (acetogens) have emerged as an alternative solution to recycle C1 gases by converting them into value-added biochemicals using the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway. Despite the advantage of utilizing acetogens as biocatalysts, it is difficult to develop industrial-scale bioprocesses because of their slow growth rates and low productivities. To solve these problems, conventional approaches to metabolic engineering have been applied; however, there are several limitations owing to the lack of required genetic bioparts for regulating their metabolic pathways. Recently, synthetic biology based on genetic parts, modules, and circuit design has been actively exploited to overcome the limitations in acetogen engineering. This review covers synthetic biology applications to design and build industrial platform acetogens

One-Step Generation of a Drug-Releasing Hydrogel Microarray-On-A-Chip for Large-Scale Sequential Drug Combination Screening

Large-scale screening of sequential drug combinations, wherein the dynamic rewiring of intracellular pathways leads to promising therapeutic effects and improvements in quality of life, is essential for personalized medicine to ensure realistic cost and time requirements and less sample consumption. However, the large-scale screening requires expensive and complicated liquid handling systems for automation and therefore lowers the accessibility to clinicians or biologists, limiting the full potential of sequential drug combinations in clinical applications and academic investigations. Here, a miniaturized platform for high-throughput combinatorial drug screening that is "pipetting-free" and scalable for the screening of sequential drug combinations is presented. The platform uses parallel and bottom-up formation of a heterogeneous drug-releasing hydrogel microarray by self-assembly of drug-laden hydrogel microparticles. This approach eliminates the need for liquid handling systems and time-consuming operation in high-throughput large-scale screening. In addition, the serial replacement of the drug-releasing microarray-on-a-chip facilitates different drug exchange in each and every microwell in a simple and highly parallel manner, supporting scalable implementation of multistep combinatorial screening. The proposed strategy can be applied to various forms of combinatorial drug screening with limited amounts of samples and resources, which will broaden the use of the large-scale screening for precision medicine

The voltage-gated proton channel Hv1 promotes microglia-astrocyte communication and neuropathic pain after peripheral nerve injury

Activation of spinal cord microglia contributes to the development of peripheral nerve injury-induced neuropathic pain. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying microglial function in neuropathic pain are not fully understood. We identified that the voltage-gated proton channel Hv1, which is functionally expressed in spinal microglia, was significantly increased after spinal nerve transection (SNT). Hv1 mediated voltage-gated proton currents in spinal microglia and mice lacking Hv1 (Hv1 KO) display attenuated pain hypersensitivities after SNT compared with wildtype (WT) mice. In addition, microglial production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and subsequent astrocyte activation in the spinal cord was reduced in Hv1 KO mice after SNT. Cytokine screening and immunostaining further revealed that IFN-γ expression was compromised in spinal astrocytes in Hv1 KO mice. These results demonstrate that Hv1 proton channel contributes to microglial ROS production, astrocyte activation, IFN-γ upregulation, and subsequent pain hypersensitivities after SNT. This study suggests Hv1-dependent microglia-astrocyte communication in pain hypersensitivities and identifies Hv1 as a novel therapeutic target for alleviating neuropathic pain.The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants (R01NS110825 and R01NS088627) to L.J.W and National Research Founda‑tion of Korea grants (NRF-2017M3C7A1025602, 2018R1A5A2024418 and 2021R1A2C3003334) from Korean government MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT) to S.B.O