Practical Studies in Japanese Language Education

A Report about Action Research Zero Workshop at Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy

New Steps in Japanese Studies - Kobe University Joint Research

This volume presents the outputs of the joint-research project Innovative Japanese Studies through International Cooperation: The Fostering of Young Researchers by Cooperation with Overseas Institutes of Japanese Studies, conducted by the Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University, Japan as part of the Program for Advancing Strategic International Networks to Accelerate the Circulation of Talented Researchers, and nanced by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). From October 2013 to March 2016, young researchers and scholars from Kobe University and from their European project-partners, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, University of Oxford and University of Hamburg, gathered at several conferences and workshops held in Japan and Europe to discuss and develop new perspectives in Japanese Studies under a multidisciplinary and comparative approach, with contributions herein collected, ranging from Literature and Socio-Cultural Studies to Linguistics and Language Teaching

Towards Critical Occidentalism Studies: Re-inventing the 'West' and 'Japan' in Mangaesque Popular Cultures

This paper investigates the reproduction of the imagined geography of the ‘West’ in contemporary Japan by employing a relational, intersectional and positional approach in order to examine Occidentalism and its hegemonic identification and othering process. Particular attention will be paid to emerging Japanese subcultures enacting a parodic and sexualised re-invention of Westernness and Japaneseness within a globalising mangaesque media mix

Popularising the Nuclear: Mangaesque Convergence in Post-war Japan

In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 3/11, one disputed issue has been the acceptance of precedent nuclear energy policies among the wider population, despite Japan being a country of high seismic risk and a nation that experienced atomic bombing on its population during World War II. This paper investigates how the transmedia constellation of the mangaesque intersecting manga, anime, pop-art, governmental educational characters and youth subcultures has been strategic in domesticating contested meanings of nuclear related issues, as well as being deeply informed itself in its ground-breaking stages (Astroboy-Tezuka Osamu, Barefoot Gen-Nakazawa Keiji, Little Boy-Murakami Takashi) by these issues, contributing ultimately to their naturalisation and hegemonic reproduction from ‘below’

Rethinking Nature in Post- Fukushima Japan. Facing the Crisis

It is a pleasure for us to present this book, with the contributions of the International Symposium Rethinking Nature in Contemporary Japan: Fac- ing the Crisis held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. This was the Third International Symposium organised in Venice as the last of a wider three years project generously funded by Japan Foundation: in 2013 we hosted the first Symposium Rethinking Nature in Contempo- rary Japan: Science, Economics, Politics, publishing its results through Edizioni Ca’ Foscari in 2014, while in the same year we organised the Second International Symposium Rethinking Nature in Japan: from Tradi- tion to Modernity, published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari in 2017. The commune aim of the three Symposia was the analysis of Japanese society and the international relationships after the tragic earthquake in Tōhoku in March 2011, including the accident at Fukushima nuclear plant. Its wide-ranging consequences on everyday life of people living in Japan brought into the limelight issues such as the protection of the environment, the management of natural resources, and food safety, both within the country and abroad, as fundamental challenges to our globalised society. Since the first Symposium in 2013, the participation of scholars from Europe, Japan and United States helped us to gain a multifaceted perspec- tive, combining several disciplines under a multidisciplinary and com- parative approach. We aimed at combining such perspectives under the umbrella of a common denominator, often addressed in Japanese figura- tive, performing and literary arts: the relation between man and Nature. While in 2014 we centred on the cultural representations of the idea of Nature in the transition from tradition to modernity, in Fine Arts, Reli- gion and Thought, Literature, Theatre, in 2015’ Symposium – Rethinking Nature in Japan: Facing the Crisis – we finally focused on contemporary Japan, with a particular eye on Fukushima accident, similarly approached through Religion and Thought, Fine Arts, Music, Cinema, Animation and Performing Arts (Theatre and Dance). We had three panel sessions: “Nature and Environment in Japanese Music”, “Nature and Environment in Cinema, Animation and Performing Arts” and “Nature and Environment in Visual Art”. This edited volume brings to our readers only some of the papers presented in each panel. Nicolas Fiévé keynote paper offers a historical critical perspective on Japanese Housing architecture as born out of a constant a high considera- tion of the Human-Nature Relationship. Nature and Environment in Japanese Music are faced by the paper of Daniele Sestili, who presents insights about how to re-think Euro-American concepts application to Japanese Traditional music; by Andrea Giolai’s paper on ecology of Gagaku seen as intertwined connection between Place, Nature and Sound in Japanese Court Music; and by Hosokawa Shūhei’s Sketch on the Modernization of Japanese Music. The contributes from the second panel, about Nature and Environment in Cinema, Animation and Performing Arts are by M. Roberta Novielli, who recalling a Ōshima essay title, presents the cinema of Masumura Yasuzō as “A Breakthrough in the Wall of Japanese Cinema”; by Katja Centonze who brings to the readers the Sound of Radioactivity through Yamakawa Fuyuki Performance Scene and its “Vibrations of March 11”. Ewa Machotka closes the section with a paper on Satoyama at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field as an ‘elected’ place of exhibition for Nature itself. The 2015 International Symposium was closed with a presentation and practical drawing performance of the artist & designer Ōishi Akinori, who beautifully threw to the audience a somehow philosophical question: Is Hap- piness Something to be Found in ‘Nature’? Since the difficulty in writing a paper about the feelings that his drawings inspired in the audience, he offers

Acromegaly is associated with increased cancer risk: A survey in Italy

It is debated if acromegalic patients have an increased risk to develop malignancies. The aim of the present study was to assess the standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) of different types of cancer in acromegaly on a large series of acromegalic patients managed in the somatostatin analogs era. It was evaluated the incidence of cancer in an Italian nationwide multicenter cohort study of 1512 acromegalic patients, 624 men and 888 women, mean age at diagnosis 45 \uc2\ub1 13 years, followed up for a mean of 10 years (12573 person-years) in respect to the general Italian population. Cancer was diagnosed in 124 patients, 72 women and 52 men. The SIRs for all cancers was significantly increased compared to the general Italian population (expected: 88, SIR 1.41; 95% CI, 1.18-1.68, P < 0.001). In the whole series, we found a significantly increased incidence of colorectal cancer (SIR 1.67; 95% CI, 1.07-2.58, P = 0.022), kidney cancer (SIR 2.87; 95% CI, 1.55-5.34, P < 0.001) and thyroid cancer (SIR 3.99; 95% CI, 2.32-6.87, P < 0.001). The exclusion of 11 cancers occurring before diagnosis of acromegaly (all in women) did not change remarkably the study outcome. In multivariate analysis, the factors significantly associated with an increased risk of malignancy were age and family history of cancer, with a non-significant trend for the estimated duration of acromegaly before diagnosis. In conclusion, we found evidence that acromegaly in Italy is associated with a moderate increase in cancer risk

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass