Phenomenon of boredom by repetitively listening to the same music: observation through EEG.

The sustainable business must develop the fundamental technology for strategies that ensure people are interested in the information and contents for long periods of time. To contributes to this goal, this study was that a more realistic sense of boredom was evoked by the action of repeatedly listening to music in situations of repetitive consumption, based on the Meaning and Attentional Components (MAC) model defined psychologically boredom as two separate components of meaning and attention. Our experiment was the repetitively listening to the same music which had the highest or lowest level of preference, which was conducted over seven days respectively. Through electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements, decreased attention was measured by the increased alpha wave and the decreased beta wave. In addition, decreased meaning was measured by the increased gamma wave. In conclusion, measuring boredom must include factors of the temporal changes and the conditions of preference, particularly for EEG

Development of Customer Affection System Aimed at Increasing Loyalty among Both Customers and Employees

This research aimed to develop an information-sharing system between customers and employees and utilize it for practical purposes. We named it the "Caffe System (Customer Affection System)," a system for sharing customer service notes and feedback to improve their satisfaction and loyalty and facilitate the sharing of customer information among employees. As a non-mainstream service, "message to customers" has been used by some stores. For example, Starbucks coffee provides with a particular message service to impress customers: providing the drink with a message or illustration. However, we have no way to know its specific impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. In this study, we launched the "cup message card," since we conducted the demonstration experiments in a dine-in coffee shop. One of the focuses was to investigate the satisfaction difference between the "cup message card" and "conversation with clerks," which had already become one of the most mainstream service

Detailed Analysis of Filamentary Structure in the Weibel Instability

We present results of a 2D3V kinetic Vlasov simulation of the Weibel instability. The kinetic Vlasov simulation allows us to investigate the velocity distribution of dilute plasmas, in which the effect of collisions between particles is negligible, and has the advantage that the accuracy of the calculated velocity distribution does not depend on the density of plasmas at each point in the physical space. We succeed in reproducing some features of the Weibel instability shown by other simulations, for example, the exponentially growing phase, the saturation of the magnetic field strength, the formation of filamentary structure, and the coalescence of the filaments. Especially, we concentrate on the behavior of the filaments after the saturation of the magnetic field strength and find that there is a kind of quasi-equilibrium states before the coalescence occurs. Furthermore, it is found that an analytical solution for stationary states of the 2D3V Vlasov-Maxwell system can reproduce some dominant features of the quasi-equilibrium, e.g, the configuration of the magnetic field and the velocity distribution at each point. The analytical expression could give a plausible model for the transition layer of a collisionless shock where a strong magnetic field generated by the Weibel instability provides an effective dissipation process instead of collisions between particles.Comment: 9 pages, 11figures, to appear in Ap

Japanese university students' behavior when reading english: a questionnaire survey and factor analysis

This paper reports on a specific cognitive behavior often found when trying to understand a text not written in readers’ native language. Our research group conducted a questionnaire survey to examine Japanese readers’ cognitive behavior and awareness when reading English texts. We also conducted a factor analysis on this questionnaire to identify the behaviors often found when reading English. Participants were 56 Japanese students studying engineering at Chuo University. After reading the texts, a questionnaire consisting of 43 items was applied to the participants. We used exploratory factor analysis to identify the primary factors related to readers’ cognitive behavior and awareness when reading a non-native language. As a result of the analysis, mainly based on the highest contributing factors, it was suggested that readers may have made substitutions into Japanese, their own words, when reading the English texts. In other words, when reading a non-native language, the reader may read the texts by replacing them with their native language rather than comprehending it in that language. Based on the results of our experiment, it is expected that the research on the cognitive supporting systems may help readers to understand non-native languages quickly and smoothly

Distribution and Endocrine Morphology of Polypeptide YY (PYY) Containing Cells in the Human Gut

Using human materials, the distribution of PYY containing cells was determined by immunocytochemical methods and discussion was made on their morphological endocrinology. PYY cells were fairly numerous in the lower gastrointestinal tract of man, particularly in the colon and rectum. The cells were also present in the pancreas and duodenum but quite rarely. PYY cells were not observed at all in the lower part of the esophagus, stomach and gall bladder. Their peculiar and characteristic shapes as well as distribution suggest that PYY may have some action (probably specific) on the function of the distal gastrointestinal tract