Comparative Study on Disaster Prevention Consciousness and Evacuation Intention of Inbound Tourists and Japanese

In Japan, inbound tourists reached over 30 million in 2018 with drastic increase and tourism policies for securing safety of tourists are gaining attention along with preparation for Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games (JNTO, 2018). However, there was problem in responding to evacuation of foreigners in past natural disasters. One of the reasons behind the problem is that there has not been enough study conducted understanding inbound tourist’s disaster prevention behavior and mechanism. The objective of the study is to understand inbound tourist’s disaster prevention consciousness, intended evacuation behavior and information seeking behavior and compare with Japanese. In the study, we adopted the measurement of disaster prevention consciousness developed by Ozeki and Shimazaki (2017a; 2017b) and Ozeki et al. (2017). This study is based on data obtained from online survey company during the February 16th to 21st, 2019. The findings provide the central government as well as stakeholders in tourism (accommodation facilities, transportation operators, tourism information centers, etc.) implications for detailed tourism disaster management planning to consider evacuation guidance and information provision

Natural attenuation of arsenic by sediment sorption and oxidation

Arsenic sorption onto aquifer sediments was investigated in anaerobic laboratory batch and column uptake experiments and characterized by As, Fe, and Mn X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to estimate the extent and mechanism of abiotic sorption and oxidation of As(III). Batch experiments at pH 6 showed that the amount of As(III) or As(V) sorption from synthetic background porewater to sediments was similar as a function of total As concentration, but slightly more As(V) was sorbed than As(III) with increasing As concentrations. Column experiments with As(III) solutions in the absence and presence of dissolved Fe^2+ showed more As uptake in the presence of Fe but also more Fe desorption during flushout with As-free solutions such that net As uptake was similar to, or less than that of, the Fe-free experiment. Fits to bulk Fe X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) spectra showed no change between unreacted and reacted sediments. Manganese XANES revealed small increases in absorption in the spectral region associated with Mn(II) after reaction, indicating sediment Mn reduction. However, XANES spectra showed that Mn is not present as Mn^(IV)O_2(s) but is probably substituted into other sediment minerals as a mixture of Mn(II,III). Quantitative analyses of As XANES spectra, which indicated mixtures of As(III) and As(V) after reaction with As(III) solutions, were used to estimate a fraction of As(V) in excess of native As(V) in the sediment (0.2 mmol kg^−1) that corresponds to sorbed As(III) oxidized to As(V). The spectroscopic and solution data indicate that the aquifer sediments have a limited abiotic capacity to oxidize As(III), which did not exceed 30% of the total amount of As sorbed and was estimated in the range of 0.025−0.4 mmol kg^−1 sediment. In the presence of dissolved Fe^2+, the precipitation of Fe(III) hydrous oxide phases will be an effective mechanism for As scavenging only if there exists sufficient dissolved oxygen in groundwater to oxidize Fe. Once the aqueous oxidative capacity is exhausted, dissolved Fe^2+ may compete with As(III) for the limited abiotic oxidation supplied by sediment Mn-bearing phases

Past evacuation behavior and intended shelter selection of Japanese considering presence of foreign tourists

Due to the rapid growth, tourism in Japan has been receiving significant attention from the Japanese government and has been placed as a key policy. Japan is a country prone to several natural disasters like earthquake, typhoon, flood etc. In light of this vulnerability, the central government and local municipalities have worked towards evacuation planning to secure safety of foreign tourists. This study aims to develop suggestions for better regional tourism evacuation shelter planning targeting both Japanese and foreign tourists. The main research objectives are to understand 1) evacuation experience of Japanese during past disasters; 2) intended evacuation behaviour and preference of Japanese under Tokyo Metropolitan Earthquake scenario; and 3) impact of presence of foreign tourists on evacuation shelter choice of Japanese in case of an emergency. We conduct a local resident survey to identify the need of dedicated evacuation shelter planning as disaster preparedness for foreign tourists in Japan. End Proctoring

Generating reliable tourist accommodation statistics: Bootstrapping regression model for overdispersed long-tailed data

Purpose: Few studies have applied count data analysis to tourist accommodation data. This study was undertaken to investigate the characteristics and to seek for the most fitting models for population total estimation in relation to tourist accommodation data. Methods: Based on the data of 10,503 hotels, obtained from by a nationwide Japanese survey, the bootstrap resampling method was applied for re-randomisation of the data. Training and test sets were derived by randomly splitting each of the bootstrap samples. Six count models were fitted to the training set and validated with the test set. Bootstrap distributions for parameters of significance were used for model evaluation. Results: The outcome variable (number of guests), was found to be heterogenous, over dispersed and long-tailed, with excessive zero counts. The hurdle negative binomial and zero-inflated negative binomial models outperformed the other models. The accuracy (se) of the estimation of total guests with training sets that ranged from 5% to 85%, was from 3.7 to 0.4 respectively. Results appear little overestimated. Implications: Findings indicated that the integration of the bootstrap resampling method and count regression provide a statistical tool for generating reliable tourist accommodation statistics. The use of bootstrap would help to detect and correct the bias of the estimation

RBFOX3 regulates Claudin-1 expression in human lung tissue via attenuation of proteasomal degradation

RBFOX3, a nuclear RNA-binding protein, is well known as a regulator of alternative pre-mRNA splicing during neuronal development. However, other functions of RBFOX3 are poorly understood. Here, we investigated the function of RBFOX3 in the cytoplasm with respect to regulation of Claudin-1 expression. In human lung tissue, Claudin-1 is higher in RBFOX3-positive cells than in RBFOX3-negative cells. Immunostaining and mRNA quantification revealed that protein levels, but not mRNA levels, of Claudin-1 are increased by RBFOX3. In addition, cycloheximide treatment of human lung cancer cells revealed that RB-FOX3 increases the stability of Claudin-1 through attenuation of its ubiquitination. Our study provides insights into the molecular mechanisms by which RBFOX3 regulates Claudin-1 expression in human lung tissue