Comparison of metamotivational dominance and cultural identity between Japanese National Team and Māori All Blacks rugby players

This pilot study used a reversal theory framework to examine metamotivational dominance of rugby players on the Māori All Blacks (MABs) squad of New Zealand and the Japanese National Team (JNT). Since the two groups have different cultural team demographics, cultural identity was also examined. Twenty six players from the MABs and 31 from the JNT completed questionnaires on metamotivational dominance and cultural identity. In terms of metamotivational dominance, the findings indicated that the MABs were more playful minded and spontaneous oriented than the JNT. Regarding cultural identity, the JNT showed a greater knowledge of their own culture and higher comfort level in their cultural context, while the MABs felt more positive and willing to sustain their own culture. The motivational personality differences between the teams may reflect the style of play that is valued within each team culture that is, flair, spontaneity and high-risk play within Māori rugby, and structure, team unity and conformity within the JNT. This suggests that metamotivational dominance of teams and players is influenced by the cultural identity of both the individuals and the group, which may have a further impact on team cohesion and performance

Canonical Wnt Signaling Induces BMP-4 to Specify Slow Myofibrogenesis of Fetal Myoblasts

Background The Wnts are secreted proteins that play important roles in skeletal myogenesis, muscle fiber type diversification, neuromuscular junction formation and muscle stem cell function. How Wnt proteins orchestrate such diverse activities remains poorly understood. Canonical Wnt signaling stabilizes β-catenin, which subsequently translocate to the nucleus to activate the transcription of TCF/LEF family genes. Methods We employed TCF-reporter mice and performed analysis of embryos and of muscle groups. We further isolated fetal myoblasts and performed cell and molecular analyses. Results We found that canonical Wnt signaling is strongly activated during fetal myogenesis and weakly activated in adult muscles limited to the slow myofibers. Muscle-specific transgenic expression of a stabilized β-catenin protein led to increased oxidative myofibers and reduced muscle mass, suggesting that canonical Wnt signaling promotes slow fiber types and inhibits myogenesis. By TCF-luciferase reporter assay, we identified Wnt-1 and Wnt-3a as potent activators of canonical Wnt signaling in myogenic progenitors. Consistent with in vivo data, constitutive overexpression of Wnt-1 or Wnt-3a inhibited the proliferation of both C2C12 and primary myoblasts. Surprisingly, Wnt-1 and Wnt-3a overexpression up-regulated BMP-4, and inhibition of BMP-4 by shRNA or recombinant Noggin protein rescued the myogenic inhibitory effect of Wnt-1 and Wnt-3a. Importantly, Wnt-3a or BMP-4 recombinant proteins promoted slow myosin heavy chain expression during myogenic differentiation of fetal myoblasts. Conclusions These results demonstrate a novel interaction between canonical Wnt and BMP signaling that induces myogenic differentiation towards slow muscle phenotype

Stress and crack monitoring during plasma spraying of TBC

Two types of process monitoring techniques are compared and discussed in this presentation. The first one is in-situ curvature monitoring, by which it was possible to evaluate the stress evolution during plasma spraying and separately identify the sources of stresses, i.e., the quenching stress and thermal stress as shown in Fig.1 (a). By changing the spraying parameters, it was possible to prepare specimens at largely different deposition temperatures, which resulted in significantly different levels of residual stresses. Also, it was found that the mechanical properties of the obtained YSZ coatings such as the elastic modulus are strongly dependent on the deposition temperature as shown in Fig.1 (b). Four-point bending test was conducted to these coatings, which clearly showed that the compressive residual stress effectively offset the applied tensile stress to initiate cracking in the YSZ coatings. Another method is based on acoustic emission (AE). Non-contacting laser AE sensors as shown in Fig.2 were used to detect cracking in YSZ coatings during spraying. Due to the intensive noise from the plasma spraying environment, extensive signal processing techniques have been developed to eliminate the noise in the frequency and time domains by using digital filtering and multi-threshold techniques. The obtained results so far indicate that the through thickness temperature gradient during spraying plays a major role in the formation of deep vertically segmentation cracks

Significantly high polarization degree of the very low-albedo asteroid (152679) 1998 KU2_\mathrm{2}

We present a unique and significant polarimetric result regarding the near-Earth asteroid (152679) 1998 KU$_\mathrm{2}$ , which has a very low geometric albedo. From our observations, we find that the linear polarization degrees of 1998 KU$_\mathrm{2}$ are 44.6 $\pm$ 0.5\% in the R$_\mathrm{C}$ band and 44.0 $\pm$ 0.6\% in the V band at a solar phase angle of 81.0\degr. These values are the highest of any known airless body in the solar system (i.e., high-polarization comets, asteroids, and planetary satellites) at similar phase angles. This polarimetric observation is not only the first for primitive asteroids at large phase angles, but also for low-albedo (< 0.1) airless bodies. Based on spectroscopic similarities and polarimetric measurements of materials that have been sorted by size in previous studies, we conjecture that 1998 KU$_\mathrm{2}$ has a highly microporous regolith structure comprising nano-sized carbon grains on the surface.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, and 3 tables, accepted for publication in A&

二次創作作品の個別性と原作との同一性：映画Peter Panと原作Peter and Wendyを具現する仮構的原型（2）

映画作品Peter Panを対象にして、原作の文学作品Peter and Wendyとの存在物としての同等性と差異性の判別条件となる諸要素を様々なシーンやストーリーの詳細項目の対比から抽出して、作品名の固有名詞概念に関する同一性判断の外延範囲の拡張を要求すると思われる存在論的主題を検証する。概念記述である観念小説と映像記述である映画作品の間の種々の位相変換の過程を辿ることにより、量子的多世界解釈における平行宇宙において指摘し得た間世界的存在同一性と類比的な、意味空間における相当的同等性と可能態における分岐的発現可能性に対する示唆として仮構記述の指示を評価し、人格や現象において指摘し得ると同様の多宇宙的存在発現様態が映像的仮構の中に平行記述として参照されていることを示す