Research Regarding Educational Consultation Support Services for Junior High School Students - Relationship between Personality Traits and Help-Seeking Skills for Teachers-

中学生が自分自身での問題解決が不可能な状態に陥った場合，周囲の援助者に適切に援助要請をすることができれば，不適応状態に陥るのを予防することができる。そこで本研究では，学校不適応の予防的観点から，学校生活における援助サポートのひとつである教師を取り上げ，「中学生の教師への援助要請スキル」を研究の対象とした。そして，特に援助要請スキル活用における個人的な特性に焦点を当て，562 名の中学生を対象とし，近年主流になりつつあるパーソナリティ検査である「Big Five」を用いて，援助要請スキルとパーソナリティ特性との関連を検討した。その結果，他者を助けようとする「協調性」，問題解決に向けて様々な取り組みのできる「知性」の援助要請スキルへの関与が明らかになり，「協調性」および「知性」の得点が高い生徒は，3 つの援助要請スキル得点も高いことが示された。In cases in which junior high school students are unable to solve a problem by themselves, it is possible to prevent the students from entering a maladaptive condition if appropriate requests for assistance can be made to surrounding supporters. Therefore, from the viewpoint of preventing maladaptation to school, teachers were raised as an element of support within school life, and the skill of junior high school students to request assistance from teachers was made the focus of this research. Furthermore, particular emphasis was placed upon individual traits of students within the process of requesting assistance, and the relationship between the skill of requesting assistance and personality traits was examined for 562 junior high school students by using the "Big Five", a personality test that has become prevalent in recent years. Results demonstrated the contribution towards the skill of requesting assistance made by the traits of "agreeableness", or the desire to help others, and "intelligence", or the trait which makes it possible to undertake various measures in an effort to solve a problem. Students who scored high in the categories of "agreeableness" and "intelligence" also showed high scores in the three skills for help-seeking.東京海洋大学非常勤講師東京海洋大学非常勤講師・昭和女子大学大学

Abeta Is Internalized via Macropinocytosis

Intracellular amyloid β peptide (Aβ) accumulation has drawn attention in relation to the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease in addition to its extracellular deposition as senile plaque. Cellular uptake of extracellular Aβ is one of the possible mechanisms by which intracellular Aβ deposits form. Given the relevance of Aβ inside cells, it is important to understand the mechanism by which it is taken up by them. In this study, we elucidated that Neuro2A and SH-SY5Y cells internalize specifically oligomerized Aβ in a time- and dose-dependent manner. The depletion of plasma membrane cholesterol with methyl-β-cyclodextrin or treatment with trypsin diminished the internalization of oAβ, suggesting that the oAβ uptake might be both a lipid raft-dependent and heparan sulfate proteoglycan-mediated process. Treatment with a macropinocytosis inhibitor (ethylisopropyl amiloride and wortmannin) also drastically reduced the uptake of oligomer-Aβ (oAβ). oAβ-treated cells exhibited an increase in Rac1 activity, indicating that macropinocytosis induced by oAβ is regulated by these small GTPases. These findings suggest that macropinocytosis is a major endocytic route through which oAβ42 enters cells

Efficient derivation and banking of clinical-grade human embryonic stem cell lines in accordance with Japanese regulations

[Introduction] We recently established clinical-grade human embryonic stem cell (hESC) line KthES11 in accordance with current good manufacturing practice standards in Japan. Despite this success, the establishment efficiency was very low at 7.1% in the first period. [Methods] To establish clinical-grade hESC lines, we used xeno-free chemically defined medium StemFit AK03N with the LM-E8 fragments instead of feeder cells. The protocol was then optimized, especially in the early culture phase. [Results] We established five hESC lines (KthES12, KthES13, KthES14, KthES15, and KthES16) with 45.5% efficiency. All five hESC lines showed typical hESC-like morphology, a normal karyotype, pluripotent state, and differentiation potential for all three germ layers. Furthermore, we developed efficient procedures to prepare master cell stocks for clinical-grade hESC lines and an efficient strategy for quality control testing. [Conclusions] Our master cell stocks of hESC lines may contribute to therapeutic applications using human pluripotent stem cells in Japan and other countries

Research on the Awareness of Teachers regarding Special Educational Support - Expectations

特別支援教育はノーマライゼーション社会（障害の有無に関わらず，すべての人間が相互に人格と個性を尊重して支え合う共生社会）の実現を目指し，学校現場においてLD，ADHD，高機能自閉症などの発達障害を抱える子どもたちへのサポートを充実させていく取り組みである。2007年度より全国で完全実施となったこの取り組みであるが，現状としては多くの教員が発達障害に関する専門的な知識や対応を求めている点が指摘されている。このことから，特別支援教育の導入においては，対象となる子どもへのサポートだけではなく，その支援や指導を担当する教員へのサポートも不可欠であるといえよう。学校内にある教員のサポート資源としては，発達障害や心理の専門家である心理職（スクールカウンセラーなど）があげられる。本研究では，特別支援教育導入に伴い，教員が心理職にどのようなサポートを期待しているのかを把握することを目的とした。その結果，教員へのコンサルテーションや心理査定などの専門的なサポートに加え，授業などにおける子どもたちへの支援，特別支援教育の対象となる子どもの保護者へのサポートや関係機関との連携役などが期待されていることが明らかになった。Special educational support offers assistance to students enrolled in regular school classes who have slight learning disabilities such as LD, ADHD and high-functioning autism, with the goal of realizing a normalized society (a supportive, unified society in which people, regardless of handicaps, respect each other\u27s character and individuality). Although this initiative has been fully implemented across the country since 2007, there are indicators that teachers presently lack expert knowledge and handling of slight learning disabilities. Due to this, one can say that it is indispensable for the introduction of special educational support to not only direct support towards children, but to also offer support and guidance to teachers responsible. Psychiatric workers with expertise in learning disabilities and mental health (school counselors, etc.) are available in schools to teachers as supporting resources. The purpose of this research is to understand what support is expected of psychiatric workers by teachers with the introduction of special educational support. The results show that in addition to expert support to teachers such as consultations and psychiatric assessments, there is a need for student support in the classroom, support by guardians of children receiving special educational support, and a cooperative role for institutions.東京海洋大学非常勤講師東京海洋大学非常勤講師・昭和女子大学大学院臨床心理学講

AVIDa-hIL6: A Large-Scale VHH Dataset Produced from an Immunized Alpaca for Predicting Antigen-Antibody Interactions

Antibodies have become an important class of therapeutic agents to treat human diseases. To accelerate therapeutic antibody discovery, computational methods, especially machine learning, have attracted considerable interest for predicting specific interactions between antibody candidates and target antigens such as viruses and bacteria. However, the publicly available datasets in existing works have notable limitations, such as small sizes and the lack of non-binding samples and exact amino acid sequences. To overcome these limitations, we have developed AVIDa-hIL6, a large-scale dataset for predicting antigen-antibody interactions in the variable domain of heavy chain of heavy chain antibodies (VHHs), produced from an alpaca immunized with the human interleukin-6 (IL-6) protein, as antigens. By leveraging the simple structure of VHHs, which facilitates identification of full-length amino acid sequences by DNA sequencing technology, AVIDa-hIL6 contains 573,891 antigen-VHH pairs with amino acid sequences. All the antigen-VHH pairs have reliable labels for binding or non-binding, as generated by a novel labeling method. Furthermore, via introduction of artificial mutations, AVIDa-hIL6 contains 30 different mutants in addition to wild-type IL-6 protein. This characteristic provides opportunities to develop machine learning models for predicting changes in antibody binding by antigen mutations. We report experimental benchmark results on AVIDa-hIL6 by using neural network-based baseline models. The results indicate that the existing models have potential, but further research is needed to generalize them to predict effective antibodies against unknown mutants. The dataset is available at https://avida-hil6.cognanous.com