奈良女子高師附小における「小合科学習」の理念と家事・裁縫科教育の実践 ―家庭科における「子ども」と「科学」の統合に関する研究(Ⅴ)―

長崎春榮氏が実践した「小合科学習（家事）」の「食物の目的」では、当時使用されていた教科書の記述内容に沿ったカリキュラムを組織し、それを木下の「学習法」の理論で実践していたが、そこで子どもが獲得した知識のレベルは低いものであった。一方、鶴居滋一氏が実践した「小合科学習（地理）」の「中国地方」では、長崎氏と同じく、当時の地理科の教科書の記述内容に沿って授業を構成し、それを木下の「学習法」の理論で実践していたが、教師が計画した内容をほぼ完全に子どもに獲得させることができていた。この違いは、カリキュラムの質の差と教師の力量に起因していると考えられた

自分と子どものかかわりから自己理解を図る 保育授業の開発（第5報) ―中学校選択教科「技術・家庭（家庭分野）」におけるFlour Baby Projectの実践と検討―

本研究の目的では、全ての生徒が乳幼児との関わりを通して、親になるということを考え、自己理解を図る保育授業の開発にある。本報は、中学校家庭科でこの目的を達成するための第二段階として、中学校選択教科「技術・家庭（家庭分野）」を履修している生徒16名（第3学年女子16名）にFlour Baby Project（以下、FBPと称す）を実施し、その有効性を検討した。生徒は、①Flour Babyに対する愛着を持って土･日を含むFBPを行い、②世話に伴う様々な大変さから、③家族の協力の必要性を感じると共に、④「養育態度の反省」から、現在の自分には、子育てに対する責任と知識・経済力が欠如し、自立できていないために、親になることはできないという⑤「現在の自分に関する知識」を形成していた。しかし、最終授業で行ったディスカッションで終了後には、生徒は、「将来は自分も子どもがほしい」、「子育ては大変だがそれを通して自分も成長できるのではないか」という⑥「将来の自分に関する認識」に結びつく意見を記述していた

Muscle Plasticity and β2-Adrenergic Receptors: Adaptive Responses of β2-Adrenergic Receptor Expression to Muscle Hypertrophy and Atrophy

We discuss the functional roles of β2-adrenergic receptors in skeletal muscle hypertrophy and atrophy as well as the adaptive responses of β2-adrenergic receptor expression to anabolic and catabolic conditions. β2-Adrenergic receptor stimulation using anabolic drugs increases muscle mass by promoting muscle protein synthesis and/or attenuating protein degradation. These effects are prevented by the downregulation of the receptor. Endurance training improves oxidative performance partly by increasing β2-adrenergic receptor density in exercise-recruited slow-twitch muscles. However, excessive stimulation of β2-adrenergic receptors negates their beneficial effects. Although the preventive effects of β2-adrenergic receptor stimulation on atrophy induced by muscle disuse and catabolic hormones or drugs are observed, these catabolic conditions decrease β2-adrenergic receptor expression in slow-twitch muscles. These findings present evidence against the use of β2-adrenergic agonists in therapy for muscle wasting and weakness. Thus, β2-adrenergic receptors in the skeletal muscles play an important physiological role in the regulation of protein and energy balance

Interstellar Extinction Law toward the Galactic Center II: V, J, H, and Ks Bands

We have determined the ratios of total to selective extinction directly from observations in the optical V band and near-infrared J band toward the Galactic center. The OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) Galactic bulge fields have been observed with the SIRIUS camera on the IRSF telescope, and we obtain A(V)/E(V-J)=1.251+-0.014 and A(J)/E(V-J)=0.225+-0.007. From these ratios, we have derived A(J)/A(V) = 0.188+-0.005; if we combine A(J)/A(V) with the near-infrared extinction ratios obtained by Nishiyama et al. for more reddened fields near the Galactic center, we get A(V) : A(J) : A(H) : A(Ks) = 1 : 0.188 : 0.108 : 0.062, which implies steeply declining extinction toward the longer wavelengths. In particular, it is striking that the Ks band extinction is \approx 1/16 of the visual extinction A(V) much smaller than one tenth of A(V) so far employed.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap

The effects of the appearance rate of stimulus on the rats' auditory evoked potentials

The mismatch negativity (MMN) is a component of the auditory event-related brain potential which is elicited by the infrequent stimuli within the repeated frequent stimuli. The stimulus sequence which generates the MMN has the property which elicit following two automatic processes: (1) the neural model for frequent stimulus is established, and difference between incoming stimulus and the model is detected (Cowan, Winkler, Teder, & Naatanen, 1993) and/or (2) the neural model for the context, infrequent as figure and frequent as ground, is established, and the attention to figure is called. The Papez circuit is known to be critical for memory because the demage of these regions cause the memory deficit. In this study, auditory evoked potentials for frequent and infrequent tones in the above stimulus sequence were recorded from the regions of the Papez circuit (dentate gyrus, mammillary body, anterior thalamus) and cortices (auditory and entorhinal). The purpose of this study is to examine following three : (1) whether the components which correspond to the automatic processes appear or not in the regions of the Papez circuit; and if these components appear, (2) the temporal relation between the information processing in the Papez circuit and that in cortical area by comparing the latencies of processing in the Papez circuit and that in cortical area by comparing the latencies of components; (3) the effects of stimulus appearance rate on those components in the Papez circuit. In the regions of the Papez circuit, the amplitudes of the positive component peaking at about 30 and 70msec for infrequent tones were higher than those for frequent tones. But in the cortical area, only the amplitude of positive component peaking at about 70msec for infrequent tones was higher than those for frequent tones. These phenomenon disappeared as frequent and infrequent tones came to be more equal in the stimulus appearance rate. The results suggested that the information processing which based on the neural model of the frequent standard stimulus and/or on the context of global stimulus sequence occurred in the cortical area and the Papez circuit in parallel

Rotated Japanese Character Recognition

We proposed a rotated character recognition method using eigen-subspace for alpha-numeric characters so far. We first construct an eigen-subspace for each category using the covariance matrix calculated from a sufficient number of rotated character patterns. Next, we can obtain a locus by projecting their rotated characters onto the eigen sub-space and interpolating between their projected points. An unknown character is also projected onto the eigen subspace of each category. A single projection and multiple projections of the input character image were proposed. Then, the verification is carried out by calculating the distance between the projected points of the unknown character and the locus. Then the multiple projections showed a higher accuracy at low dimensions than a single projection for alphanumeric 62 categories. This time, we applied it for the first class of Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) Kanji set which includes 2,965 categories. As the result, very high recognition accuracy over 99.8% was achieved by especially multiple projections of the input rotated images

Preparation of Ba1-xLnxFeO3-δ and BaFe1-xLnxO3-δ (Ln: trivalent ion) with cubic perovskite structure and random distribution of oxide ion vacancy

Oxides with perovskite structure and random arrangement of oxide ion, such as Ba0.5Sr0.5Fe0.2Co0.8O3-δ, attract much interest as oxygen permeation material. For wide spread of oxygen permeation devices, development of new material without Co is highly desired because of high cost of Co. Recently, we reported that arrangement of oxide ion vacancy in monoclinic BaFeO2.5-δ changes from ordered to random by partial La3+ substitution for Ba2+ site, resulting in cubic perovskite structure and improvement of electrical conductivity [1, 2]. Fujishiro reported preparation of BaFe1-xInxO3-δ with cubic perovskite structure and enhancement of electrical conductivity with In substitution [3]. It is expected that material with higher property may be developed by substitution of other trivalent ion, such as lanthanoid or Y, for Ba- or Fe- site in BaFeO2.5-δ. In this work, preparation of various Ba1-xLnxFeO3-δ and BaFe1-xLnxO3-δ (Ln: trivalent ion) was examined and factors determining substitution site and crystal structure were investigated. The samples of Ba1-xLnxFeO3-δ and BaFe1-xLnxO3-δ were prepared with Pechini method. Each solution of Ba2+, Ln3+ and Fe3+ was mixed with nominal cation composition. After addition of citric acid and ethylene glycol, the solution was heated at about 450 ºC, resulting in precursor. The precursor was calcined at 700 ºC for 24 h in air, followed by 1300 ºC for 10 h in air twice. The crystal structure and lattice constants of the specimens were investigated with X-ray diffraction. The chemical state of Fe and oxygen content of the specimens were evaluated with iodometric titration. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

The four-fermi coupling of the supersymmetric non-linear sigma-model on G/S\otimesU(1)^k

The reducible K\"ahler coset space G/S\otimesU(1)^k is discussed in a geometrical approach. We derive the formula which expresses the Riemann curvature of the reducible K\"ahler coset space in terms of its Killing vectors. The formula manifests the group structure of G. On the basis of this formula we establish an algebraic method to evaluate the four-fermi coupling of the supersymmetric non-linear sigma-model on G/S\otimesU(1)^k at the low-energy limit. As an application we consider the supersymmetric non-linear sigma-model on E_7/SU(5)\otimesU(1)^3 which contains the three families of {10} + {5^*} + {1} of SU(5) as the pseudo NG fermions. The four-fermi coupling constants among diffferent families of the fermions are explicitly given at the low-energy limit.Comment: 33 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Nuclear Physics