Childcare and Child Development in Japan

For decades, the notion has persisted in developed countries that exclusive care by the mothers is best for the development of children up to 3 years of age. To examine the veracity of this “myth of the first three years” in Japan, we examined the effects of childcare facility use for children younger than 3 years on their development using the cohorts of the Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st Century conducted in Japan. Of the 47,015 respondents to the survey, we studied the children of 5,508 mothers with university/professional education to evaluate the relationships between primary early (< 2.5 years) childcare providers during weekday daytime hours and specific development indices for the ages of 2.5, 5.5, and 8 years. At the age of 2.5 and 5.5 years, children attending childcare facilities were judged as having more advanced developmental behaviors by their parents, such as being able to compose a two-word sentence (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 0.22) or to express emotions (aOR: 0.81), compared with those cared for by mothers. However, at the age of 8 years, children who attended childcare facilities as infants < 2.5 years showed more aggressive behavior in interrupting people (aOR: 1.20) and causing disturbances in public (aOR: 1.26) than those cared for by mothers (after adjustment for numerous child and parental factors). Although these results are generally consistent with previous studies, issues potentially involved with problem behavior such as quality of childcare require further investigation, as does the case of children of mothers with more modest educational attainment

Pseudogap Phase Boundary in Overdoped Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_8 Studied by Measuring Out-of-plane Resistivity under the Magnetic Fields

The characteristic pseudogap temperature T* in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 system has been systematically evaluated as a function of doping, especially focusing on its overdoped region, by measuring the out-of-plane resistivity under the magnetic fields. Overdoped samples have been prepared by annealing TSFZ-grown Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 single crystals under the high oxygen pressures (990 kgf/cm2). At a zero field, the out-of-plane resistivity showed a metallic behavior down to Tc (= 62 K), while under the magnetic fields of over 3 T,it showed typical upturn behavior from around 65 K upon decreasing temperature. This result suggests that the pseudogap and superconductivity are different phenomena.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures. Final version accepted for the Proceedings of the M2S-IX Conference (Tokyo, September 2009

CARACTERIZAÇÃO E QUANTIFICAÇÃO DE RESÍDUOS SÓLIDOS EM ESCOLA PÚBLICA DO MUNICÍPIO DE MATINHOS, PR, PARA PROPOSIÇÃO DE MEDIDAS DE GESTÃO DE RESÍDUOS.

Brazil was inserted into the complexity that showed the management of solid waste (SW), demonstrates an alarming situation especially regarding the proper disposal of garbage. In this study the possibility to minimize this situation through joint actions in an educational institution. Therefore, this research, part of the Scientific Initiation, sought to quantify and qualify of SW produced in the school of Matinhos, Pr, Brazil. The methodology applied was the initial diagnosis, followed by interviews and gravimetric composition method for characterization and quantification of the SW. It was observed that the solid waste of the organic generation is high, 57%, followed by “fill fraction” 17%, plastic, paper and 15%, 11%. It was concluded the there is a need to strengthen environmental education and, paying attention to the spread of knowledge in the pursuit of changing perceptions and attitudes towards environmental issues.O Brasil, inserido na complexidade que se configura a gestão de resíduos sólidos (RS), retrata uma situação preocupante especialmente quanto à destinação final adequada desses. A presente pesquisa observa a possibilidade de minimizar tal situação através de ações conjuntas em uma instituição de ensino. Portanto, esta pesquisa de Iniciação Científica objetivou a quantificação e caracterização dos RS gerados em escola do município de Matinhos, Pr, visando medidas de gestão, tal como estímulo a ações em educação ambiental (EA).  A metodologia aplicada foi de diagnostico inicial, seguida de entrevistas e o método de composição gravimétrica para caracterização e quantificação. Observou-se que o RS de alta geração é o orgânico, 57%, seguido pela “fração aterro” 17%, plástico, 15% e Papel, 11%. Concluiu-se a necessidade de cursos de capacitação, com ênfase na EA, atentando para a propagação do conhecimento na busca por mudanças de percepções e atitudes em relação às problemáticas socioambientais

Speech of stakeholders across the use and access to natural resources: the case of artisanal fishermen of Matinhos, Paraná

This research was the objective to reflect how speech groups historically excluded from development processes has and that currently go through socio-environmental conflicts due to the use and access to natural resources in some Latin American countries. Highlighting, the case of artisanal fishermen of Matinhos town, Paraná state, community that comes through in recent years by numerous environmental conflicts, among them a conflict on the implementation of an Integral Protection Conservation Unit, which has prevented the use and customary access of fishery resources in the region.Este artigo tem como objetivo refletir como tem se dado o discurso de grupos historicamente excluídos dos processos de desenvolvimento e que atualmente passam por conflitos socioambientais devido ao uso e acesso aos bens naturais em alguns países latinoamericanos. Destaque para o caso dos pescadores artesanais do município de Matinhos, Paraná, comunidade que vem passando nos últimos anos por inúmeros conflitos de ordem ambiental, dentre eles um conflito ligado à implantação de uma Unidade de Conservação de Proteção Integral, que vem impedindo o uso e acesso consuetudinário dos recursos pesqueiros da região

A Problemática Socioambiental na Unidades de Conservação:: conflitos e discursos pelo uso e acesso aos recursos naturais

Historically, the establishment of protected areas such as the Conservation Units has given rise to complex situations of socio-environmental conflicts, either because of the relocation of populations living in such areas, or as a consequence of the restriction of the access and customary use of natural resources contained therein. In this context, this literature-review article focuses on socio-environmental conflicts, especially those that take place around areas of integral protection, elucidating the main streams of environmentalism that approach the topic. From the theoretical insights into the subject, it was observed that the field is permeated by intense debate between social-environmentalists and conservationists, who argue mainly about the legal right of populations to remain in and use resources from such areas, as opposed to the need of preserving an ecosystem from any human presence.Historicamente, o estabelecimento de áreas naturais protegidas, como as Unidades de Conservação, tem dado margem a complexas situações de conflitos socioambientais, seja pela realocação das populações residentes em tais áreas, seja pela restrição ao acesso e uso costumeiro dos recursos naturais contidos nela. Diante desse cenário, o presente artigo de revisão de literatura focaliza os conflitos socioambientais, especialmente aqueles que se dão em torno de Unidades de Conservação de Proteção Integral, elucidando as principais correntes do ambientalismo que discursam sobre o tema. A partir do aprofundamento teórico sobre a temática, observa-se que o campo é permeado por discussões entre socioambientalistas e conservacionistas, que travam juntos uma intensa discussão sobretudo acerca do direito dessas populações de permanecerem e utilizarem os recursos dessas áreas versus a necessidade de conservar um ecossistema sem a presença humana

Unsupervised vocal dereverberation with diffusion-based generative models

Removing reverb from reverberant music is a necessary technique to clean up audio for downstream music manipulations. Reverberation of music contains two categories, natural reverb, and artificial reverb. Artificial reverb has a wider diversity than natural reverb due to its various parameter setups and reverberation types. However, recent supervised dereverberation methods may fail because they rely on sufficiently diverse and numerous pairs of reverberant observations and retrieved data for training in order to be generalizable to unseen observations during inference. To resolve these problems, we propose an unsupervised method that can remove a general kind of artificial reverb for music without requiring pairs of data for training. The proposed method is based on diffusion models, where it initializes the unknown reverberation operator with a conventional signal processing technique and simultaneously refines the estimate with the help of diffusion models. We show through objective and perceptual evaluations that our method outperforms the current leading vocal dereverberation benchmarks.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to ICASSP 202

Morphology control of clay-mineral particles as supports for metallocene catalysts in propylene polymerization

Spray dry granulation of clay minerals was studied to obtain clay mineral base support material for metallocene supported olefin polymerization catalysts. The morphology of the granules was strongly influenced by the nature of the clay mineral itself. Because of swelling characteristics of montmorillonite, its water dispersion was highly viscous even in the low slurry concentration (< 4 wt %). Therefore, it was very difficult to control the granule characteristics such as size, shape, and inside structure by the spray dry with the clay mineral slurry. Then we examined some methods in order to change the clay mineral surface properties for getting less viscous dispersion. It was found that the milling of montmorillonite increased the amount of surface OH groups. This surface characteristic change should promote the interaction between the edges and basal planes of the primary particles of milled montmorillonite, resulting in the lowering the slurry viscosity. The milling is effective for overcoming difficulty in use of high concentration montmorillonite slurry in spray dry granulation which is indispensable for producing granules in the wide range of size (10–50 μm). The spray-dried montmorillonite granules are useful as a "Support-Activator" for an olefin polymerization catalyst combined with metallocenes