DDBJ Activities: Contribution to the Research in Information Biology

DDBJ (DNA Data Bank of Japan; "http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/":http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/)started its database activities in 1986. From the beginning, DDBJ has been one of INSDC (International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration; "http://www.insdc.org/":http://www.insdc.org/) that is a tripartite collaboration with EMBL-Bank/EBI and GenBank/NCBI.The total base number of the primary nucleotide sequence data collected and distributed by INSDC exceeded 100 Gbases in August 2005. Since then it took only three years for the total base number to be doubled (200 Gbases). Now, the collaboration is being expanded to Traces (DNA sequence chromatograms) and Short Reads (raw reads data from 454, Solexa, SOLiD etc). DDBJ is also collecting and releasing gene expression data at CIBEX (Center for Information Biology gene EXpression database; "http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/":http://cibex.nig.ac.jp/). Furthermore, DDBJ contributed to international annotation jamborees such as FANTOM (mouse), H-Inv (human), RAP (rice) and E. coli K12. DDBJ provides many services to the research in information biology or bioinformatics. They include Web-API for Biology (WABI) "http://www.xml.nig.ac.jp/":http://www.xml.nig.ac.jp/ and All-round Retrieval of Sequence and Annotation (ARSA) "http://arsa.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/":http://arsa.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/. These activities are presented with the perspective of DDBJ in the coming years

Analysis of why Japanese students misuse “或者” and “還是”

本文宗旨在探討日籍學生混用「或者」與「還是」的原因。研究者首先透過對「中央研究院現代漢語平衡語料庫」的語料分析，整理「或者」與「還是」二者在肯定句（包含複句）、疑問句（包含複句）、「無論」、「不論」及「不管」所在的複句、動詞（多為「知（道）」、「在乎」、「關心」等表示心裡狀態的動詞）否定句中的使用頻率。並且在此基礎上引用「中央研究院現代漢語平衡語料庫」的語料佐證二者在用法上的區別。其後，研究者以中日對比的方式對於日籍學生混用「或者」與「還是」的原因加以探討及分析。研究結果顯示，日籍學生將「または」、「あるいは」、「それとも」這三個連詞與中文「或者」對應，由此導致混用「或者」與「還是」。日文與中文對應詞使用規則之間有差異，日籍學生沒有掌握好兩個語言使用規則上的不同，由此造成負遷移

A Study of Exercises in Novice Level Chinese Teaching Materials Used at Japanese Universities for Intercultural Communication Competence Teaching

　　本文分析近五年在日本出版的35本大學初級華語教材練習，以更精準理解現行日本華語教材練習的特徵及問題。研究結果顯示，教材練習以帶領式練習居多，重視語言形式的操練，而帶領式練習與互動式練習的比例嚴重失衡；教材練習未能結合語言知識傳授、語言技能訓練與文化對比；教材練習所涉及的語言文化構面亦侷限於語言結構層面，涉及語言交際文化的練習實屬少數，因此不利於培養學生全面的跨文化溝通能力。希冀本文的分析結果能為今後華語教材的編寫及教學設計提供一些啟示

Surface Modification of Polylactic Acid Films by Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Treatment

A new approach for the modification of polylactic acid (PLA) materials using atmospheric pressure plasma (APP) is described. PLA films plasma exposure time was 20, 60, 120 s. The surface morphology and wettability of the obtained PLA films were investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and the sitting drop method. The atmospheric pressure plasma increased the roughness and surface energy of PLA film. The wettability of PLA has been improved with the application of an atmospheric plasma surface treatment. It was shown that it is possible to obtain PLA films with various surface relief and tunable wettability. Additionally, we demonstrated that the use of cold atmospheric pressure plasma for surface activation allows for the immobilization of bioactive compounds like hyaluronic acid (HA) on the surface of obtained films. It was shown that composite PLA-HA films have an increased long-term hydrophilicity of the films surface