Does School/Site Based Management (SBM) in Japan Achieve its Policy Purposes? A Policy Analysis of Japanese Education Reform RegardingSchool Advisors and School Management Councils

The purpose of this paper is to analyze decentralized education reform in Japan in terms of School/Site-Based Management (SBM). In the literature, SBM embraces two major elements, namely, the devolution of decision-making authority to the individual school level and Shared Decision-Making (SDM). In Japan, school advisors and school management councils have been established with similar purposes with SBM since 2000. However, because the decision-making authority is not sufficiently devolved to each school and many groups of stakeholders are not significantly involved in decision-making processes, a SBM form of school governance has not been realized in Japan. Cet article a pour but d’analyser la réforme de décentralisation de l’éducation au Japon en termes de l’Administration basée sur l’école ou le site (SBM). Dans la littérature, la SBM se comprend de deux éléments: la dévolution au niveau de chaque école les droits d\u27exécuter des décisions et la politique des décisions partagées (SDM). Au Japon, les postes de conseillers et les conseils d’administration ont été établis depuis l’an 2000. Et pourtant, parce que les instances ne sont pas assez engagées dans le processus décisionnel, une forme de gouvernance des écoles selon la SBM n’a pas pu se réaliser au Japon

Histomorphological species identification of tiny bone fragments from a Paleolithic site in the Northern Japanese Archipelago

AbstractBone histomorphology is an effective method for species identification of fragmentary osseous remains. The 1997–1998 excavations of the Kashiwadai 1 Upper Paleolithic site (ca. 22–20.5 kyBP) in Hokkaido (the northern island of the Japanese Archipelago) yielded tiny bone fragments, which had been burned to white and broken into pieces less than 1 cm in size, making their species identification by gross morphology alone impossible. For the purpose of species identification, histomorphological analyses were performed on thin sections of the Kashiwadai 1 bone fragments. Compact bone cross sections taken from medium- to large-sized land mammals in the Pleistocene and Holocene Hokkaido were prepared for comparison. The structures of the Kashiwadai 1 samples consisted of secondary osteons and plexiform bone. Consideration of the presence versus absence of plexiform bone and quantitative assessments of osteon sizes and bone cortical thickness allows for distinction between medium-sized deer, large-sized artiodactyls, small- to medium-sized carnivores, large-sized carnivores, elephants, and humans. The histomorphological characteristics of the Kashiwadai 1 samples were quite similar to those of both sika deer and ancient sika deer. A probable conclusion is that medium-sized deer was the primary game hunted by Paleolithic people at the Kashiwadai 1 site. Interestingly, the samples did not include elephant or large-sized artiodactyls, which were the predominant species in other Paleolithic sites of the Japanese Archipelago. This is the first evidence of human hunting medium-sized animals in the Upper Paleolithic period of the Japanese Archipelago based on faunal remains

マウスガードの自律神経活動への影響 : 瞳孔フラッシュ応答による定量的評価

Background:Recently, it has been reported that mouth guards (MGs), which reduce the incidence and severity of traumatic oral injuries in contact sports, may actually affect sports performance. We have observed that a majority of subjects showed improved dynamic visual acuity during head rotation when using a MG, but subjects who were unwilling to use a MG showed the opposite effect. Thus, we hypothesized that unpleasant sensations due to MGs may decrease sports performance.Methods:In this study, we measured autonomic nervous system activity to evaluate unpleasant sensations objectively and quantitatively by measuring the pupillary flash response (PFR) and heart rate variability (HRV), before, during, and after wearing 3- and 5-mm-thick custom-made MGs in 10 healthy subjects.Results:It was found that the 5-mm MG had a higher incidence of unpleasant sensations (50% of subjects) than did the 3-mm MG (10%). PFR (not HRV) analysis showed that both sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activities increased in subjects with unpleasant sensations.Conclusions:We suggest that the unpleasant sensation induced this unusual autonomic nervous system response, which could not be detected by traditional methods such as HRV analysis. By using PFR analysis, it is possible to make MGs without unpleasant sensations for better sports performance.博士（医学）・乙第1306号・平成24年11月27日Copyright © 2012 Japanese Stomatological Society. Published by Elsevier Japan K

Emphysematous Cystitis in a Patient with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

A 62-year-old woman with a history of poorly controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus was admitted to our hospital with a 3-week history of mild fever, vomiting, and anorexia. Abdominal computed tomography (CT) showed bilateral hydronephrosis and gas accumulation in the urinary bladder wall and left ureter. Laboratory tests showed leukocytosis and elevated C-reactive protein level. Urine culture showed heavy growth of Escherichia coli. The final diagnosis was emphysematous cystitis. The patient was treated with systemic antibiotics and drainage using a urethral catheter. The clinical and radiographic findings resolved rapidly, and she was discharged from the hospital on day 28. Emphysematous cystitis is a relatively rare urinary tract infection associated with gas formation, and has the potential for a serious outcome if untreated. Early detection by imaging studies such as CT is important in providing prompt treatment and favorable clinical outcome

SHEAR ZONE DEVELOPMENT AND FRICTIONAL INSTABILITY OF FAULT GOUGE

ABSTRACT: Earthquakes are typical phenomena of frictional slip of geomaterials in nature. To evaluate slip instability, shear development in a gouge layer or fault material has been investigated. However, the quantitative relationship between slip instability and shear development has not been revealed because of difficulty in quantitative observation of microstructures under high pressure. Hence, we aim to describe shear development in a gouge layer energetically, and discuss the relation between shear development and slip instability. To this end, we calculated shear angles by utilizing experimental data of gouge. As a result, this study reveals that shear bands in a gouge layer develop at lower angles or almost parallel to rock-gouge boundaries toward the occurrence of unstable slip, particularly under low confining pressure. Additionally, variation in Riedel shear angles throughout gouge layers depends on confining pressures: Under low confining pressures, heterogeneous localized shears trigger voluntary increase in strain. On the other hand, under a high confining pressure, gouge layers deform homogeneously, and the whole of samples slips dynamically. Clarification of shear development of geomaterials is useful for evaluating the occurrence of frictional slip such as earthquakes and slope failures

Reducing nonideal to ideal coupling in random matrix description of chaotic scattering: Application to the time-delay problem

We write explicitly a transformation of the scattering phases reducing the problem of quantum chaotic scattering for systems with M statistically equivalent channels at nonideal coupling to that for ideal coupling. Unfolding the phases by their local density leads to universality of their local fluctuations for large M. A relation between the partial time delays and diagonal matrix elements of the Wigner-Smith matrix is revealed for ideal coupling. This helped us in deriving the joint probability distribution of partial time delays and the distribution of the Wigner time delay.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, no figures; published versio

AC resistivity of d-wave ceramic superconductors

We model d-wave ceramic superconductors with a three-dimensional lattice of randomly distributed $\pi$ Josephson junctions with finite self-inductance. The linear and nonlinear ac resistivity of the d-wave ceramic superconductors is obtained as function of temperature by solving the corresponding Langevin dynamical equations. We find that the linear ac resistivity remains finite at the temperature $T_p$ where the third harmonics of resistivity has a peak. The current amplitude dependence of the nonlinear resistivity at the peak position is found to be a power law. These results agree qualitatively with experiments. We also show that the peak of the nonlinear resistivity is related to the onset of the paramagnetic Meissner effect which occurs at the crossover temperature $T_p$, which is above the chiral glass transition temperature $T_{cg}$.Comment: 7 eps figures, Phys. Rev. B (in press