Basic Education in Cambodia: The Impact of UNESCO onPolicies in the 1990s

Efforts to enhance opportunities for Basic Education have been growing within many developing nations after the1990 World Conference on Education For All (WCEFA) in Jomtien, Thailand. In the face of political turmoil, financial constraint and social insecurity, Cambodia with the encouragement and assistance of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), took measures to increase educational opportunities for all her citizens through Basic Education strategic plans and pledged to eradicate illiteracy by the year 2000. This article examines the  joint efforts during the 1990s of this organization as a key assistance and support UN agency for educational policy and strategy formulations, and the Cambodian government as a national agency for educational initiatives and implementation. UNESCO’s inputs for policy implementation are also detailed to evaluate the overall impact of the organization during the last decade. Analyses are based primarily on interviews with some key government policymakers, fieldwork observation and interviews with school-aged children, several speeches of top government officials, and existing related official education statistics and indicators in Cambodia

Adaptive state construction for reinforcement learning and its application to robot navigation problems

This paper applies our state construction method by ART neural network to robot navigation problems. Agents in this paper consist of ART neural network and contradiction resolution mechanism. The ART neural network serves as a mean of state recognition which maps stimulus inputs to a certain state and state construction which creates a new state when a current stimulus input cannot be categorized into any known states. On the other hand, the contradiction resolution mechanism (CRM) uses agents' state transition table to detect inconsistency among constructed states. In the proposed method, two kinds of inconsistency for the CRM are introduced: &#34;Different results caused by the same states and the same actions&#34; and &#34;Contradiction due to ambiguous states.&#34; The simulation results on the robot navigation problems confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method</p

An incremental state-segmentation method for reinforcement learning using ART neural network

In this paper, we propose a new incremental state segmentation method by utilizing information of the agents' state transition table which consists of a tuple of (state; action, state) in order to reduce the effort of designers and which is generated using the ART neural network. In the proposed method, if an inconsistent situation in the state transition table is observed, agents refine their map from perceptual inputs to states such that inconsistency is resolved. We introduce two kinds of inconsistency, i.e., different results caused by the same states and the same actions, and contradiction due to ambiguous states. Several computational simulations on cart-pole problems confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method</p

Chemical effect on muonic atom formation through muon transfer reaction in benzene and cyclohexane samples

To investigate the chemical effect on the muon capture process through a muon transfer reaction from a muonic hydrogen atom, the formation rate of muonic carbon atoms is measured for benzene and cyclohexane molecules in liquid samples. The muon transfer rate to carbon atoms of the benzene molecule is higher than that to the carbon atoms of the cyclohexane molecule. Such a deviation has never been observed among those molecules for gas samples. This may be because the transfers occur from the excited states of muonic hydrogen atoms in the liquid system, whereas in the gas system, all the transfers occur from the 1s (ground) state of muon hydrogen atoms. The muonic hydrogen atoms in the excited states have a larger radius than those in the 1s state and are therefore considered to be affected by the steric hindrance of the molecular structure. This indicates that the excited states of muonic hydrogen atoms contribute significantly to the chemical effects on the muon transfer reaction

日本人成人におけるパノラマX線写真上の下顎皮質骨と海綿骨構造との関係：コーンビームCTによる分析

Objectives The purpose of this study was to assess the association between the cortical shape of the mandible, as detected on panoramic radiographs, and trabecular bone structure, as assessed by cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), in Japanese adults. Methods Panoramic radiographs and CBCT images of the mandibles of 50 subjects (18 men, 32 women), aged 45–86 years, were evaluated. An experienced oral and maxillofacial radiologist categorized the cortical shape of the mandible as detected on panoramic radiographs as normal, mildly to moderately eroded, and severely eroded cortices, respectively. All mandibles were scanned using CBCT. Four bone structure parameters of the basal portion of the mandible were calculated in three dimensions using an image-analysis system: total bone volume (mm3); cortical bone volume fraction (%); trabecular bone volume fraction (%); fractal dimension. One-way analysis of covariance with Bonferroni correction was employed to evaluate differences in the four bone parameters among the three cortical shape groups. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was calculated to examine correlations between age and cortical and trabecular bone volume fractions.Results Progression of cortical bone erosion was significantly associated with increased trabecular bone volume fraction (P\0.001) and increased fractal dimension(P = 0.01). Cortical bone volume fraction decreased significantly with age (P = 0.04). However, trabecular bone volume fraction tended to increase with age (P = 0.06). Conclusions The change in the trabecular bone structure of the mandible may differ from that of the general skeleton in Japanese adults.2013博士（歯学）松本歯科大

Development of 1-T Class Force-Balanced Helical Coils Using REBCO Tapes

The authors proposed the concept of the force-balanced helical coils (FBC) using high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes as a feasibility option for superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES). Although the FBC can minimize the mechanical stresses induced by the electromagnetic forces, the FBC has three-dimensional complex shapes of helical winding. Therefore, when the tensile strain and the complex bending strain simultaneously apply to the HTS tapes, the critical current of the HTS coils may decrease irreversibly. The objective of this work is to clarify the critical current property of REBCO tapes depending on the applying complex mechanical strain due to the winding process, the winding configuration and the electromagnetic forces through the development of the HTS-FBC. As a first, design parameters of 1-T class FBC using REBCO tapes and coil winding trajectory were introduced, and the authors discussed the normalized critical current of the HTS-FBC for complex uniaxial strain distribution. The authors also reported a development of a helical winding machine whose motion was optimized to prevent from decreasing the critical current of the HTS tapes during winding process

Enterocyte-Derived TAK1 Signaling Prevents Epithelium Apoptosis and the Development of Ileitis and Colitis

Recent studies have revealed that TAK1 kinase is an essential intermediate in several innate immune signaling pathways. In this study, we investigated the role of TAK1 signaling in maintaining intestinal homeostasis by generating enterocytes-specific constitutive and inducible gene deleted TAK1 mice. We found that enterocyte-specific constitutive TAK1 deleted mice spontaneously developed intestinal inflammation as observed by histological analysis and enhanced expression of IL-1β, MIP2 and IL-6 around the time of birth, which was accompanied by significant enterocytes apoptosis. When TAK1 was deleted in the intestinal epithelium of 4-week-old mice using an inducible knockout system, enterocytes underwent apoptosis and intestinal inflammation developed within 2–3 days following the initiation of gene deletion. We found that enterocytes apoptosis and intestinal inflammation were strongly attenuated when enterocyte-specific constitutive TAK1 deleted mice were crossed to TNF receptor 1 (TNFR1)−/− mice. However, these mice later (>14 days) developed ileitis and colitis. Thus, TAK1 signaling in enterocytes is essential for preventing TNF-dependent epithelium apoptosis and the TNF-independent development of ileitis and colitis. We propose that aberration in TAK1 signaling might disrupt intestinal homeostasis and favor the development of inflammatory disease