International Relations and Historical Sociology : a search for Post-International Relations History

本稿の趣旨は,実証主義とポスト実証主義の認識論的差異,国際関係論における理論と歴史の方法論的な差異を踏まえながら,国際関係論における歴史社会学の用法を考察していくことにある.歴史社会学の用法や,理論と歴史の差異,言説分析の可能性とその限界等は既に社会学で広範に議論されているが,国際関係論において,歴史社会学のもつ可能性についての研究は少なく,未だ十分に議論されていないというのが現状である.本稿の意図するところはまさに国際関係論における歴史社会学の展開を掘り下げ,その研究上の可能性を考察する事にある.具体的には二つの歴史社会学(ウェーバー型とフーコー型)を比較検討し,とりわけフーコー型の歴史社会学にどのような特徴・妥当性があるのかを吟味していく.換言すれば,歴史社会学における先進的な研究動向を取り入れ,ポスト構造主義の概念を援用して歴史・思想要因を考察する.そして,ポスト国際関係史(或いはポスト国際関係論)を再構成した場合にそこにどのような可能性があるのかを検証する.The aim of this paper is, through considering an epistemological difference between positivism and post-positivism, and a methodological difference between theory and history within the study of international relations, to examine uses of historical sociologies in international relations. While issues like an application of historical sociology, a difference between theory and history, and potentials and limits of discourse analysis, have been already and widely discussed in sociology, there are, in the discipline of international relations, few works that examine an effectiveness of historical sociology and the discussion has been still insufficient. Therefore, this paper tries to explore the positive potentials of historical sociology by widely investigating the development of historical sociology in international relations. The contention of this paper compares Weberian and Foucauldian versions of historical sociology and uncovers features and potentials of the latter. In other words, this paper harmonizes post-structuralism and the well-developed researches of historical sociology in order to examine historical and ideological factors. And this paper finally constructs post-international relations (history), as a unification of post-structuralism and historical sociology, and evaluates its potentials

Japanese Foreign Policy and Identity : from Asia-Pacific to East Asia

本稿は日本外交とアイデンティティの関係をディスコース分析(Discourse Analysis)を基軸に分析し,外交上のアイデンティティが「アジア太平洋」から「東アジア」へと,どのように変容してきたのかを考察したものである.リアリズム・コンストラクティヴィズムといった国際政治学における既存のフレームワークは「利益」および「規範」といった分析変数を用いて外交分析を行うが,本稿はこうした既存のフレームワークからでは見えにくかったアイデンティティの問題をディスコース分析によって日本外交という枠組みの中で再検討しようという試みである.主に吉田茂・岸信介・福田赳夫・中曽根康弘・90年代の「開かれた地域主義」・アジア通貨危機以降のアジア地域主義といった外交言説に着目し,「アジア」が日本外交の中でどのように定義され,「アジア太平洋」という帰属意識がどのように「東アジア」へと変遷してきたのかを分析した.これは,外交をアイデンティティの構築作業として捉えることであり,ディスコース分析が既存の理論的フレームワークの欠点を補完する,若しくは代替的な枠組みとして一定の役割を担いうるのではないかと考えられる.This paper analyses the relation between the Japanese foreign policy and identity from the stand-point of discourse analysis, and assesses how the foreign policy discourses have shifted from \u27Asia Pacific\u27to \u27East Asia\u27. While the existing frameworks of international relations, including realism and constructivism, examine the foreign policy by employing interests and norms as the analytical variables, this paper deals with identities in the context of the Japanese foreign policy, in which has been downplayed by such existing approaches. The paper mainly focuses on the discourses of Shigeru Yoshida, Shinsuke Kishi, Takeo Fukuda, Yasuhiro Nakasone, the \u27Open Regionalism\u27in the 1990s, and the Asian regionalism aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, and explores how the \u27Asia\u27has been defined in the context of the Japanese foreign policy and how the identity of Asia Pacific has re-organised into the East Asia. That is, foreign policy can be seen as the constructing process of the identities, and discourse analysis plays a certain role to fill in the gap and/or be an alternative to the existing theories of international relations

Dyspnoea with activities of daily living versus peak dyspnoea during exercise in male patients with COPD

SummaryDyspnoea measurements in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can be broadly divided into two categories: those that assess breathlessness during exercise, and those that assess breathlessness during daily activities. We investigated the relationships between dyspnoea at the end of exercise and during daily activities with clinical measurements and mortality in COPD patients.We examined 143 male outpatients with moderate to very severe COPD. The peak Borg score at the end of progressive cycle ergometry was used for the assessment of peak dyspnoea rating during exercise, and the Baseline Dyspnea Index (BDI) score was used for dyspnoea with activities of daily living. Relationships between these dyspnoea ratings with other clinical measurements of pulmonary function, exercise indices, health status and psychological status were then investigated. In addition, their relationship with the 5-year mortality of COPD patients was also analyzed to examine their predictive ability.Although the BDI score was significantly correlated with airflow limitation, diffusing capacity, exercise indices, health status and psychological status, the Borg score at the end of exercise had non-existent or only weak correlations with them. The BDI score was strongly significantly correlated with mortality, whereas the Borg score was not.Dyspnoea during daily activities was more significantly correlated with objective and subjective measurements of COPD than dyspnoea at the end of exercise. In addition, the former was more predictive of mortality. Dyspnoea with activities of daily living is considered to be a better measurement for evaluating the disease severity of COPD than peak dyspnoea during exercise

Event style preferences in medical education and research meetings in Japan

Purpose: With the spread of COVID-19, medical education and research events have either been cancelled or shifted to online or hybrid mode. However, there are no accurate records containing the exact number of these events in new modes. This study explores trends in event modes of medical education and research in Japan using registered event data from a web service. Methods: We collected event data from January 2019 to December 2021. Text mining was used to extract and classify data into categories such as on-site and online events. Then, the annual and monthly numbers of categories were counted. Results: The total number of events in March 2020 was drastically reduced, but it recovered in November 2021 to a level equivalent to that of the peak month in 2019. The majority of the events were online by December 2020, increasing in number from March 2020. Hybrid events that integrate on-site and online modes later outnumbered online events and accounted for approximately 20% of the total in June, October, and November 2021. Conclusions: The online and hybrid modes ensured the continuation of medical education and research events during the pandemic. Though online events may reduce after COVID-19, the hybrid mode could become a popular mode that offers diversity

Cost-effective learning for classifying human values

Prior work has found that classifier accuracy can be improved early in the process by having each annotator label different documents, but that later in the process it becomes better to rely on a more expensive multiple-annotation process in which annotators subsequently meet to adjudicate their differences. This paper reports on a study with a large number of classification tasks, finding that the relative advantage of adjudicated annotations varies not just with training data quantity, but also with annotator agreement, class imbalance, and perceived task difficulty

Clinical characteristics of tuberculosis patients in a tertiary hospital

　We retrospectively assessed the clinical characteristics of tuberculosis patients in a tertiary hospital. The subjects consisted of 80 patients who Mycobacterium tuberculosis was isolated from clinical specimens and who received a definite diagnosis of tuberculosis in our tertiary hospital without isolated bedrooms between January 2010 and June 2018. The average age of the 80 patients was 68.3 years old, consisting of 43 males and 37 females (6 non-Japanese). Sixty-eight patients had underlying diseases, and malignant diseases were most frequently recognized. Seven patients were diagnosed as outpatients and the remaining patients were diagnosed after admission. The final diagnose consisted of 56 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and 35 patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis (tuberculous lymphadenitis, tuberculous pleurisy, miliary tuberculosis, etc.). Concerning the results of interferon-γ release assays (IGRAs), while the positive response rate of QFT was 75%, that of T-SPOT was 81%. The clinical specimens used to diagnose tuberculosis were as follows: expectorated sputum, 26 patients; bronchoscopic specimens, 32; biopsy tissue, 17; and others, 5. The interval from the first consultation to diagnosis was three months at the maximum and within one month in most patients. Regarding radiological findings, pulmonary lesions including miliary tuberculosis showed various atypical findings: 39 of 66 patients with bilateral lesions; 50 with no cavity lesion; and 13 with the extent of the lesion exceeding the unilateral lung field. 　Tuberculosis patients in our tertiary hospital had many underlying diseases such as malignant or autoimmune diseases and were receiving immunosuppressive treatment. Therefore, because IGRAs do not always show a positive response and radiological findings also do not show typical findings, it is important to investigate acid-fast bacilli for various clinical specimens and actively perform diagnostic methods including bronchoscopy in order to prevent nosocomial infection

Patient-reported dyspnea and health predict waitlist mortality in patients waiting for lung transplantation in Japan

Background: Waitlist mortality due to donor shortage for lung transplantation is a serious problem worldwide. Currently, the selection of recipients in Japan is mainly based on the registration order. Hence, scientific evidence for risk stratification regarding waitlist mortality is urgently needed. We hypothesized that patient-reported dyspnea and health would predict mortality in patients waitlisted for lung transplantation. Methods: We analyzed factors related to waitlist mortality using data of 203 patients who were registered as candidates for lung transplantation from deceased donors. Dyspnea was evaluated using the modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) dyspnea scale, and the health status was determined with St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ). Results: Among 197 patients who met the inclusion criteria, the main underlying disease was interstitial lung disease (99 patients). During the median follow-up period of 572 days, 72 patients died and 96 received lung transplantation (69 from deceased donors). Univariable competing risk analyses revealed that both mMRC dyspnea and SGRQ Total score were significantly associated with waitlist mortality (p = 0.003 and p < 0.001, respectively) as well as age, interstitial lung disease, arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and forced vital capacity. Multivariable competing risk analyses revealed that the mMRC and SGRQ score were associated with waitlist mortality in addition to age and interstitial lung disease. Conclusions: Both mMRC dyspnea and SGRQ score were significantly associated with waitlist mortality, in addition to other clinical variables such as patients' background, underlying disease, and pulmonary function. Patient-reported dyspnea and health may be measured through multi-dimensional analysis (including subjective perceptions) and for risk stratification regarding waitlist mortality

Relationship between peripheral airway function and patient-reported outcomes in COPD: a cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Health status, dyspnea and psychological status are important clinical outcomes in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV₁) measured by spirometry, the standard measurement of airflow limitation, has only a weak relationship with these outcomes in COPD. Recently, in addition to spirometry, impulse oscillometry (IOS) measuring lung resistance (R) and reactance (X) is increasingly being used to assess pulmonary functional impairment.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We aimed to identify relationships between IOS measurements and patient-reported outcomes in 65 outpatients with stable COPD. We performed pulmonary function testing, IOS, high-resolution computed tomography (CT), and assessment of health status using the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), dyspnea using the Medical Research Council (MRC) scale and psychological status using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). We then investigated the relationships between these parameters. For the IOS measurements, we used lung resistance at 5 and 20 Hz (R5 and R20, respectively) and reactance at 5 Hz (X5). Because R5 and R20 are regarded as reflecting total and proximal airway resistance, respectively, the fall in resistance from R5 to R20 (R5-R20) was used as a surrogate for the resistance of peripheral airways. X5 was also considered to represent peripheral airway abnormalities.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>R5-R20 and X5 were significantly correlated with the SGRQ and the MRC. These correlation coefficients were greater than when using other objective measurements of pulmonary function, R20 on the IOS and CT instead of R5-R20 and X5. Multiple regression analyses showed that R5-R20 or X5 most significantly accounted for the SGRQ and MRC scores.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>IOS measurements, especially indices of peripheral airway function, are significantly correlated with health status and dyspnea in patients with COPD. Therefore, in addition to its simplicity and non-invasiveness, IOS may be a useful clinical tool not only for detecting pulmonary functional impairment, but also to some extent at least estimating the patient's quality of daily life and well-being.</p

Effect of exacerbations on health status in subjects with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Acute exacerbations may cause deteriorations in the health status of subjects with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The present study prospectively evaluated the effects of such exacerbations on the health status and pulmonary function of subjects with COPD over a 6-month period, and examined whether those subjects showed a steeper decline in their health status versus those subjects without exacerbations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 156 subjects with COPD (mean age 71.4 ± 6.3 years) were included in the analysis. At baseline and after 6 months, their pulmonary function and health status were evaluated using the Chronic Respiratory Disease Questionnaire (CRQ) and the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ). An acute exacerbation was defined as a worsening of respiratory symptoms requiring the administration of systemic corticosteroids or antibiotics, or both.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Forty-eight subjects experienced one or more exacerbations during the 6-month study period, and showed a statistically and clinically significant decline in Symptom scores on the SGRQ, whereas subjects without exacerbations did not show a clinically significant decline. Logistic multiple regression analyses confirmed that the exacerbations significantly influenced the Fatigue and Mastery domains of the CRQ, and the Symptoms in the SGRQ. Twelve subjects with frequent exacerbations demonstrated a more apparent decline in health status.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although pulmonary function did not significantly decline during the 6-month period, acute exacerbations were responsible for a decline in health status. To minimize deteriorations in health status, one must prevent recurrent acute exacerbations and reduce the exacerbation frequencies in COPD subjects.</p