French policy towards Tunisia and Morocco: The international dimensions of decolonisation, 1950-1956.

This thesis deals with French decolonisation policy towards Tunisia and Morocco and international impacts on the decolonisation process. It is very important to deal with the two countries at the same time, because nationalist movements in each country and French policy responses were closely related. So far, research on French decolonisation has examined the reason why France was forced to retreat from their overseas territories and indicated that nationalist and international pressures largely contributed to this process. This thesis rather aims to clarify how the French tried to maintain their influence in Tunisia and Morocco. In terms of international impact, the existing research has stressed the role of American pressure towards decolonisation but has not referred to British policy. The thesis also focuses on Britain's role in determining French attitudes especially in the UN. Furthermore, this work aims to locate the decolonisation process of both countries in a broader context of post-war French policy towards their overseas territories. The thesis argues that the French accepted Tunisia's internal autonomy because they realised that the Tunisian people's consent was essential to retain influence. Hitherto, the French had been controlling Tunisia through puppet governments, which had been legitimised by the Tunisian sovereign's traditional authority. Now the French understood that they had to secure collaborators who could rally popular support. The thesis also argues that the French decision on Morocco's independence was aimed at preserving the unity of Morocco, whose opinion had been seriously divided. Indeed, France was aiming to produce pro-French moderate nationalism, thereby maintaining France's interest and influence. However, Morocco, and then Tunisia achieved independence without the framework of the French Union, the organisation grouping French overseas territories. Soon after Morocco's independence, France decided to give internal autonomy to the African territories, a move which paved the way to those territories' independence

Control of the incorporation and release of guest molecules by photodimerization in liposomes

In a drug-delivery system using liposomes, the use of guest molecules bearing hydrophilic moieties results in some leakage from lipid membranes. We suppressed the leakage of coumarins (used as model guest molecules in a drug-delivery system) from lipid membranes by photodimerization at 365 nm. The reason for this phenomenon could be ascribed to an increase in the hydrophobicity of the dimers of the coumarins. The formation of the dimers was detected by 1H NMR, UV-vis absorption, and mass spectra and the leakage percentages of the coumarins were determined by 1H NMR spectra based on the peak intensities. In contrast, when the dimer reverted to a monomer by ultraviolet (254 nm) irradiation, the resulting monomer was released from liposomes.This work was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (Grant No. JP16H04133) and a Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research (Grant No. JP16K13982)

Control of bipedal locomotion with a neural oscillator-based brain-computer interface

This study proposes a neural oscillator-based brain–computer interface (BCI) that controls a bipedal neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) model by inputting electroencephalogram (EEG) signals.In this BCI system, while the bipedal NMS system realizes bipedal locomotion through internal entrainment among neural oscillators and a musculoskeletal system, the locomotion of the system is controlled via external entrainment of the neural oscillators to the external input of EEG signals.As the first step in developing the neural oscillator-based BCI controlling a bipedal NMS model, exploratory numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the behavior of the proposed BCI when sinusoidal waves and alpha waves were inputted.The following tendencies were observed: (a) inputting sinusoidal waves with small amplitudes and high frequencies did not affect the natural walking behavior of the bipedal NMS model that was generated by including only offset values in the external input, (b) inputting sinusoidal waves with small amplitudes and low frequencies disturbed and decelerated the walking behavior, (c) inputting sinusoidal waves with large amplitudes accelerated the walking behavior, (d) inputting sinusoidal waves with large amplitudes and a particular frequency changed walking behavior to running behavior, (e) changing the external input of alpha waves between an eyes-open condition and an eyes-closed condition successfully changed the walking behavior.The eyes-open condition led to faster walking compared with the eyes-closed condition

ショクミンチ ソウシュコク ト ダイサンセカイ ニ オケル レイセン : モロッコ ドクリツ ト スエズ キキ ノ ジレイ カラ

従来、第三世界における冷戦は、主に米ソ冷戦の観点から研究されてきた。その中でヨーロッパ宗主国は、米ソが植民地解放と新興国の国家建設に協力する中、勢力の後退を強いられる存在として描かれてきた。しかし本稿は、旧宗主国が現在でも旧植民地で一定の影響力を保っており、かつアメリカにとっても冷戦の遂行上、重要な同盟国であったことに注目する。事例としては、フランスによるモロッコの独立承認と、スエズ危機におけるイギリスの対エジプト攻撃を取り上げ、両国の動機を検討する。それによって、第三世界における脱植民地化への英仏の対応は、冷戦政策の側面をも持っていたことを指摘する。それぞれの決定は、モロッコと中東のアラブ諸国が、中立主義を選択するのを防ぐためになされた。それらの国を西側陣営に留め置き、重要な資源を安価に供給させ、自国の資本主義経済の繁栄を維持することが、宗主国、特にイギリスの目的であったと考えられる

The correlation between the 500 pc scale molecular gas masses and AGN powers for massive elliptical galaxies

Massive molecular clouds have been discovered in massive elliptical galaxies at the center of galaxy clusters. Some of this cold gas is expected to flow in the central supermassive black holes and activate galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. In this study, we analyze archival ALMA data of 9 massive elliptical galaxies, focusing on CO line emissions, to explore the circumnuclear gas. We show that the mass of the molecular gas within a fixed radius (500 pc) from the AGNs (M_mol ~ 10^7-10^8 M_sun) is correlated with the jet power estimated from X-ray cavities (P_cav ~ 10^42-10^45 erg/s). The mass accretion rate of the circumnuclear gas \dot{M} also has a correlation with P_cav. On the other hand, the continuum luminosities at ~1.4 GHz and ~100-300 GHz have no correlation with M_mol. These results indicate that the circumnuclear gas is sustaining the long-term AGN activities (~10^7 yr) rather than the current ones. The circumnuclear gas mass is a better indicator of the jet power than the continuum luminosity, which probably changes on a shorter time scale. We also study the origin of the continuum emission from the AGNs at ~100-300 GHz and find that it is mostly synchrotron radiation. For low-luminosity AGNs, however, dust emission appears to contaminate the continuum.Comment: Accepted for publication in PAS