Resistance and reform: discourses on marital law in Japan

This article examines opinions concerning fūfubessei (a married couple retaining their birth surnames) posted on an online forum. Recently, the topic of fūfubessei has once again come under a spotlight, since the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Code Article 750, which stipulates that a married couple must choose either the husband's or wife's surname upon marriage registration. Owing to the large number of women forfeiting their surnames, the fūfubessei issue has often been researched from feminist perspectives, which may have hindered the voices of others. This article analyzes, using text mining (quantitative analysis) and discourse analysis (qualitative analysis), a large number of opinions from people of various cultural backgrounds. The results of this study reveal a diversity of beliefs and attitudes towards Article 750, reflecting the complexity of the issue. In general, proponents of reform claim the law violates equality, rights and liberty. From opponents there was a strong push to conform rather than to recognize a need for individual choice. Moreover, the many personal narratives provided insight into issues on the ground and revealed how many in Japanese society have dealt with the law, social pressure and social expectations and why they have followed the path they have chosen

個別漢字の形特性と出力との関係

　漢字は,非漢字系学習者にとって,日本語学習における最も困難な学習要素の一つである。漢字学習の困難点は多数あるが,その最たるものとして記憶保持あげられている(豊田,1995)。知覚,認識,記憶保持,再生への課程には様々な要因が絡み合っているが,本稿では,個別漢字の持つ形の特性と出力との関係に焦点を当てる。先行研究では画数の多い漢字,斜めの線や点を含む漢字,対称でない漢字,などが再生が難しいとされている(加納1987,駒井1993)。本論では,学習者に課した条件付の作文型式のクイズの回答を分析し,考察した。その結果,1)画数及び直線性は再生の難易を予測する決定的な手かかりではない,2)対称性の弱い漢字は対称性の強い漢字に比べて誤って出力されやすい,3)誤って再生されやすい漢字と再生されにくい漢字とでは漢字のタイプやパターンが異なる,などが明らかになった。今回の分析は漢字の字形特性に注目したものであるが,更なる調査によって,音,意味の特性,漢字間の関係特性も明らかになれば,すべての漢字を一様に扱うのではなく,それぞれの漢字の特性を考慮した教授,学習方法を検討することができる。また,クイズやテストの無答や誤答に対して,正か誤かだけの評価ではなく,その原因を指摘することができるようになると考える。　The study of kanji is recognized as one of the most difficult aspects of learning Japanese for students whose native languages is non-kanji based. The reasons for the difficulties in studying kanji are numerous, with memory retention being shown to be significantly difficult (Toyoda, 1995). Recognizing that the learning process of perception, recognition, retention, and production involves various interrelated factors, this paper focuses on the relationship between the characteristics of kanji shape and production. Kanji exhibiting greater number of strokes, diagonal lines or dots, or asymmetrical shape have been shown to be more difficult to reproduce (Kanou, 1987; Komai, 1993). This paper presents an analysis of the results of kanji composition style quizzes. Results indicate that 1).the number of strokes and the degree of linearity do not necessarily provide accurate predictions of the degree in difficulty of production, 2).kanji with a weak degree of symmetry show a positive correlation to mistakes in production, and 3).kanji produced with mistakes, versus kanji which were not produced, show differences in type and pattern. This paper concludes with an address for further study on the factors of reading, meaning, Dan characteristics of inter-kanji relations in the formation of compound words, to enable a more comprehensive focus to be placed on the development of teaching curricula. In addition, the possibility for revision of current testing parameters form standard correct/incorrect into a system that accurately addresses the reasons for difficulties in kanji reproduction presents itself

Effect of the new diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes mellitus among Japanese women

Background　 The new diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), proposed by the International Association of Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups in 2010, were recently accepted in Japan. Therefore, the frequency of GDM is four times higher than previously recorded. This means that GDM has become a more clinically important disease. This study aimed to assess how the number of patients with GDM as well as its complications have changed after adoption of the new criteria. Methods　 A total of 3,610 pregnant women in the Japan Assessment of GDM Screening Trial and Okayama University Hospital were included. We analyzed the prevalence of GDM and its complications using the old and new criteria. Results　 The prevalence of perinatal outcomes was increased by adopting the new criteria. There were many important perinatal complications in the additional new GDM criteria; therefore, patients with mild GDM, such as one-point disorder patients, should have careful interventions. Admission to the neonatal intensive care unit was significantly increased (p = 0.01) according to the new GDM criteria because the old criteria were stricter than the new ones. GDM patients with obesity (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) had a high frequency of perinatal complications that could require active intervention and strict follow-up. Conclusions　 Because the new GDM criteria greatly affect perinatal complications, intervention for GDM starting at an early stage and strict follow-up (especially GDM with obesity) are important for reducing complications as well as the incidence of diabetes and metabolic syndrome in the mother and child

漢字語と仮名語における語処理の差異 : 英語話者日本語学習者の思考過程

メルボルン大学メルボルン大学The University of MelbourneThe University of Melbourne本稿では,英語を母語とする日本語学習者の漢字語と仮名語における学習ストラテジーの差異を明らかにするために行った実験を,語認識処理の観点から分析を試みた。その結果,英語話者学習者は,(1)漢字語でも仮名語でも,語を部分に分割して分析的に処理(分割分析処理)を行うが,漢字語のほうがその割合が多い,(2)漢字語と仮名語とでは,異なる処理経路で分割分析を行う,(3)漢字語でも仮名語でも,分析処理後に分析したものをより大きい意味概念の中で再構築することを示した。以上の結果は,基本的なアプローチは,第一言語の習得過程で身につけた語認識のスキルによって影響を受けるが,異なるタイプの文字に対しては,その文字の特質にあった語認識処理をすることを示唆している。In this paper we attempted to analyze differences in the word recognition processes of Japanese words written in Kanji versus Kana among English native speakers, based on the results of an experiment investigating learning strategies. Results showed that 1) the English speaking learners segmented and analytically processed (segmental analysis processing) both the words written in Kanji and words written in Kana, but they used segmental analysis processing more on words written in Kanji, 2) the learners employed different processing codes for words written in Kanji from words written in Kana, 3) after the segmental analysis the learners reconstructed the words which they analyzed in terms of larger semantic concepts. These findings suggest that while there may have been some influence from the word recognition skills acquired in L1, the learners processed the different types of orthography differently

Identification of glycosylation genes and glycosylated amino acids of flagellin in Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci

A glycosylation island is a genetic region required for glycosylation. The glycosylation island of flagellin in Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci 6605 consists of three orfs: orf1, orf2 and orf3. Orf1 and orf2 encode putative glycosyltransferases, and their deletion mutants, Delta orf1 and Delta orf2, exhibit deficient flagellin glycosylation or produce partially glycosylated flagellin respectively. Digestion of glycosylated flagellin from wild-type bacteria and non-glycosylated flagellin from Delta orf1 mutant using aspartic N-peptidase and subsequent HPLC analysis revealed candidate glycosylated amino acids. By generation of site-directed Ser/Ala-substituted mutants, all glycosylated amino acid residues were identified at positions 143, 164, 176, 183, 193 and 201. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) analysis revealed that each glycan was about 540 Da. While all glycosylation-defective mutants retained swimming ability, swarming ability was reduced in the Delta orf1, Delta orf2 and Ser/Ala-substituted mutants. All glycosylation mutants were also found to be impaired in the ability to adhere to a polystyrene surface and in the ability to cause disease in tobacco. Based on the predicted tertiary structure of flagellin, S176 and S183 are expected to be located on most external surface of the flagellum. Thus the effect of Ala-substitution of these serines is stronger than that of other serines. These results suggest that glycosylation of flagellin in P. syringae pv. tabaci 6605 is required for bacterial virulence. It is also possible that glycosylation of flagellin may mask elicitor function of flagellin molecule

A POS-based preordering approach for English-to-Arabic statistical machine translation

In this work, we present a POS-based preordering approach that tackles both long- and short-distance reordering phenomena. Syntactic unlexicalized reordering rules are automatically extracted from a parallel corpus using only word alignment and a source-side language tagging. The reordering rules are used in a deterministic manner; this prevents the decoding speed from being bottlenecked in the reordering procedure. A new approach for both rule filtering and rule application is used to ensure a fast and efficient reordering. The tests performed on the IWSLT2016 English-to-Arabic evaluation benchmark show a noticeable increase in the overall Blue Score for our system over the baseline PSMT system

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Family matters: Nippon Kaigi and keeping things normal

This study focuses on the discourse around social morals relating to the family that appear in written material and videos produced by conservative intellectuals belonging to the Nippon Kaigi (The Japanese Nationalist Association), which further their agenda of surveillance and control over the Japanese population. In particular, we focus on discourse on the contentious issue of fūfubessei (the retention of former family names after marriage). Here we aim to understand (1) the reasoning of their core argument that adopting fūfubessei will lead to the collapse of family, society and the Japanese nation, (2) the ideology behind this argument, and (3) the rhetoric used in attempts to persuade the public. We posit that the hostility towards fūfubessei is a reflection of the broader agenda of conservatism which leverages a moral imperative to protect traditional and normative notions of family and, ultimately, what it means to be Japanese