Characteristics of Modern Techniques in Art Education: Exploring the development of children’s expression through a workshop for elementary school students

美術教育においてモダンテクニックは小学校だけでなく多様な年齢の実践の場で用いられている。しかし，その特性を活かした実践の創出には課題もある。そこで，本研究では大学の公開講座でのモダンテクニックを用いた生き物図鑑づくりのワークショップを通して，モダンテクニックによる偶発性を活かした活動から生まれる素材を子どもの表現へと結び付けることによって生まれる，子どもの表現の広がりについて考察した。実践の考察の結果，子どもはモダンテクニックによって生まれた色や形の特徴を生き物の素材に活かしており，それが生き物を構想するアイデアにもつながっていた。モダンテクニックによる偶発的な色と形の効果が，子どもの発想や構想を広げ，イメージ創出の方法となることが明らかになった。Modern techniques in art education are used for training not only elementary school students but also students of a wide variety of ages. In this research project, we examined the development of expression in children by reviewing the characteristics and issues related to modern techniques in art education, organizing an actual workshop using these techniques in an outreach program at the University, and linking an activity involving modern technique-based emergence to art expression in children. Modern techniques used in the workshop included streamers, stamping, decalcomania, and spattering, which were then incorporated into collages to form animals. During this activity, colors and shapes created via the effects of these modern techniques were used as elements in the creation of the animals and contributed to the artists’ ideas on how to create their animals. Our observations suggest that the effects of each modern technique contributed to increased expressive potential on the part of the children in creating their animals

A Case of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Presenting with an Acute Abdomen: Successful Treatment with Steroid

Abdominal pain continues to pose diagnostic challenges for emergency clinicians. A 56-year-old Japanese woman was referred to our hospital due to severe abdominal pain which presented as occasional epigastric pain five months before and intermittent abdominal pain. She had a past history of ileus twice, for both of which laparotomy was performed without an alimentary tract resection. The wall thickening with marked three-wall structure from terminal ileum to sigmoid colon was seen and bladder wall was irregularly thick and enhanced irregularly. Among the differential diagnosis of the acute abdomen, autoimmune diseases were suspected, especially lupus erythematosus and Henoch-Schönlein purpura. On the second day of admission, abdominal pain worsened. The results of examinations of antinuclear antibody, anti-double-stranded DNA antibody, ANCA, and the complements were not obtained at that time; however, we started 1-g steroid pulse treatment for three days with success. With the results obtained later, the patient was given a diagnosis of probable systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The present case shows that SLE can present with acute abdomen and should be included in the wide range of the differential diagnosis of acute abdomen

Serial Assessment of Immune Status by Circulating CD8+ Effector T Cell Frequencies for Posttransplant Infectious Complications

To clarify the role of CD8+ effector T cells for infectious complications, 92 recipients were classified according to the hierarchical clustering of preoperative CD8+CD45 isoforms: Group I was naive, Group II was effector memory, and Group III was effector (E) T cell-dominant. The posttransplant infection rates progressively increased from 29% in Group I to 64.3% in Group III recipients. The posttransplant immune status was compared with the pretransplant status, based on the measure (% difference) and its graphical form (scatter plot). In Groups I and II, both approaches showed a strong upward deviation from pretransplant status upon posttransplant infection, indicating an enhanced clearance of pathogens. In Group III, in contrast, both approaches showed a clear downward deviation from preoperative status, indicating deficient cytotoxicity. The % E difference and scatter plot can be used as a useful indicator of a posttransplant infectious complication

Comprehensive Behavioral Analysis of Calcium/Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase IV Knockout Mice

Calcium-calmodulin dependent protein kinase IV (CaMKIV) is a protein kinase that activates the transcription factor CREB, the cyclic AMP-response element binding protein. CREB is a key transcription factor in synaptic plasticity and memory consolidation. To elucidate the behavioral effects of CaMKIV deficiency, we subjected CaMKIV knockout (CaMKIV KO) mice to a battery of behavioral tests. CaMKIV KO had no significant effects on locomotor activity, motor coordination, social interaction, pain sensitivity, prepulse inhibition, attention, or depression-like behavior. Consistent with previous reports, CaMKIV KO mice exhibited impaired retention in a fear conditioning test 28 days after training. In contrast, however, CaMKIV KO mice did not show any testing performance deficits in passive avoidance, one of the most commonly used fear memory paradigms, 28 days after training, suggesting that remote fear memory is intact. CaMKIV KO mice exhibited intact spatial reference memory learning in the Barnes circular maze, and normal spatial working memory in an eight-arm radial maze. CaMKIV KO mice also showed mildly decreased anxiety-like behavior, suggesting that CaMKIV is involved in regulating emotional behavior. These findings indicate that CaMKIV might not be essential for fear memory or spatial memory, although it is possible that the activities of other neural mechanisms or signaling pathways compensate for the CaMKIV deficiency

Two cases of Taeniasis Infection.

We report two cases of taeniasis caused by tapeworm infection. The first was a Japanese female, 23 years old, who had a history of eating raw meat during a visit to Thailand. She was referred to our hospital with a history of passing proglottids in feces. Taenia saginata or T. asiatica was suspected based on the proglottid morphologic features in addition to supportive information regarding her travel and dietary history. The patient was given praziquantel and the tapeworm was excreted. The second was a 35-year-old Thai male who had lived in Japan since 2000 and not left the country since that time. He had consumed beef cooked in the so-called yakiniku style and also sometimes raw, because of nostalgia for that Thai custom. The patient passed proglottids several times and then came to us. The proglottids were compatible with those of T. saginata. Praziquantel was prescribed and the tapeworm was excreted. In both cases, mitochondrial DNA analysis identified the worm species as T. saginata. Since morphological discrimination of three human-infecting Taenia species, T. saginata, T. solium, and T. asiatica, is not always possible, it is necessary to employ DNA analysis for diagnosis of taeniasis to confirm the worm species

Coincidence analysis to search for inspiraling compact binaries using TAMA300 and LISM data

Japanese laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors, TAMA300 and LISM, performed a coincident observation during 2001. We perform a coincidence analysis to search for inspiraling compact binaries. The length of data used for the coincidence analysis is 275 hours when both TAMA300 and LISM detectors are operated simultaneously. TAMA300 and LISM data are analyzed by matched filtering, and candidates for gravitational wave events are obtained. If there is a true gravitational wave signal, it should appear in both data of detectors with consistent waveforms characterized by masses of stars, amplitude of the signal, the coalescence time and so on. We introduce a set of coincidence conditions of the parameters, and search for coincident events. This procedure reduces the number of fake events considerably, by a factor $\sim 10^{-4}$ compared with the number of fake events in single detector analysis. We find that the number of events after imposing the coincidence conditions is consistent with the number of accidental coincidences produced purely by noise. We thus find no evidence of gravitational wave signals. We obtain an upper limit of 0.046 /hours (CL $= 90$) to the Galactic event rate within 1kpc from the Earth. The method used in this paper can be applied straightforwardly to the case of coincidence observations with more than two detectors with arbitrary arm directions.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figures, Replaced with the version to be published in Physical Review