A Preliminary Surveying of the Meaning of Colored Pictogram Instructions for Emergency Settings in Manufacturing

AbstractPictograms are often used for situations where people often do not share the same language. The authors surveyed the comprehension of colored pictograms for emergency situations in manufacturing which can be affected by cultural and educational backgrounds. Colored pictograms for manufacturing setting, such as ‘push’, ‘step’ and ‘wheel’, were designed and presented to workers with different cultural and educational backgrounds in a factory. Their acting behavior scales were examined by conducting a questionnaire survey. Pictograms in different seven colors, such as white, black, red, yellow, green, blue and pink, were used in the survey. The questionnaire was presented to 138 factory workers in Thailand with three different nationalities: Thai, Myanmar and Cambodia. Results indicate that colors have effects on their acting behaviors. The mean values of the acting behavior scales for a group with higher educational backgrounds marked the highest of over 50% for red. On the other hand, the average value of middle and low educated groups marked the lowest of less than 3% for red color

科学論文における英語助動詞の実践的役割

東京水産大学共通講座・非常勤講

Molecular mechanisms of micromere specification and nonskeletogenic mesoderm formation in the sea urchin embryo

取得学位：博士(理学)，学位授与番号：博甲第1061号，学位授与年月日：平成20年9月26

A Preliminary Examination of Effect of Massage and Aroma Oil Massage in Foot Care Nursing

AbstractFoot care nursing is attracting attention as a medically effective treatment for the foot lesions caused by such problems as diabetes or aging. In this study, we experimentally examined how aromatherapy affects human brain functions during foot care nursing using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). 11 subjects received both foot care nursing massages and aroma oil massages. We analyzed the changes in their oxygenated hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) concentrations based on their brain activity by t-tests, and the t-test results showed significant differences between two kinds of massages in both the somatosensory and prefrontal association areas. The oxy-Hb concentration in both massages with and without aroma oil also showed a tendency to decrease with time. Our questionnaire results showed that our subjects felt more comfortable and relaxed while receiving foot care nursing with aroma oils. These results suggest that aroma oil massages are an effective foot care nursing tool and that foot care nursing is a medically effective treatment

Par6 regulates skeletogenesis and gut differentiation in sea urchin larvae

Partitioning-defective (par) genes were originally identified as genes that are essential for the asymmetric division of the Caenorhabditis elegans zygote. Studies have since revealed that the gene products are part of an evolutionarily conserved PAR-atypical protein kinase C system involved in cell polarity in various biological contexts. In this study, we analyzed the function of par6 during sea urchin morphogenesis by morpholino-mediated knockdown and by manipulation swapping of the primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs). Loss of Par6 resulted in defects in skeletogenesis and gut differentiation in larvae. Phenotypic analyses of chimeras constructed by PMC swapping showed that Par6 in non-PMCs is required for differentiation of archenteron into functional gut. In contrast, Par6 in both PMCs and ectodermal cells cooperatively regulates skeletogenesis. We suggest that Par6 in PMCs plays an immediate role in the deposition of biomineral in the syncytial cable, whereas Par6 in ectoderm may stabilize skeletal rods via an unknown signal(s). © 2012 Springer-Verlag

Malignant Peritoneal Mesothelioma Mimicking Ischemic Colitis

The prognosis of malignant peritoneal mesothelioma is extremely poor with a mean survival time of 12 months. The initial symptoms are poor and atypical. Because of its rare entity and little knowledge of its treatments, there are few reports of long-term survival. We encountered a very unique case with strong impression on radiological findings of malignant peritoneal methothelioma. We had misdiagnosed it because of the findings and because the time course was similar to that of ischemic colitis. The radiological findings on CT and enema disappeared within one week after antibiotic therapy

Analysis of Speech Anxiety among EFL Learners in Japan: A Comparison

Due to the high encouragement from the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) to promote more internationalization among Japanese graduates, many higher education institutions have started introducing more communicative courses such as public speaking and presentation skills. These goals not only aim to ameliorate students’ communication skills, but also to foster global human resources. Although considerable research has been conducted on students’ communication skills, few have explored the causes of speech anxiety among university students, especially in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Thus, this study aims to fill this gap by analyzing 43 university students in Tokyo, Japan. According to the results, a pivotal link between gender and speech anxiety was found. Specifically, the female students exhibited higher public speaking anxiety, compared to the male students. This study also investigated the sources of speech anxiety in four domains: communicative apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety, and general anxiety of English. Among all four components, the EFL students recorded the highest anxiety in communication apprehension. It is also interesting to note that after completing the presentation skills course, the female students showed a significant reduction in the fear of negative evaluation domain. It is hoped that the findings of this study will be used by instructors to improve EFL students’ communication skills

Krüppel-like is required for nonskeletogenic mesoderm specification in the sea urchin embryo

金沢大学大学院自然科学研究科遺伝情報学The canonical Wnt pathway plays a central role in specifying vegetal cell fate in sea urchin embryos. SpKrl has been cloned as a direct target of nuclear β-catenin. Using Hemicentrotus pulcherrimus embryos, here we show that HpKrl controls the specification of secondary mesenchyme cells (SMCs) through both cell-autonomous and non-autonomous means. Like SpKrl, HpKrl was activated in both micromere and macromere progenies. To examine the functions of HpKrl in each blastomere, we constructed chimeric embryos composed of blastomeres from control and morpholino-mediated HpKrl-knockdown embryos and analyzed the phenotypes of the chimeras. Micromere-swapping experiments showed that HpKrl is not involved in micromere specification, while micromere-deprivation assays indicated that macromeres require HpKrl for cell-autonomous specification. Transplantation of normal micromeres into a micromere-less host with morpholino revealed that macromeres are able to receive at least some micromere signals regardless of HpKrl function. From these observations, we propose that two distinct pathways of endomesoderm formation exist in macromeres, a Krl-dependent pathway and a Krl-independent pathway. The Krl-independent pathway may correspond to the Delta/Notch signaling pathway via GataE and Gcm. We suggest that Krl may be a downstream component of nuclear β-catenin required by macromeres for formation of more vegetal tissues, not as a member of the Delta/Notch pathway, but as a parallel effector of the signaling (Krl-dependent pathway). © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Texture in aging

Texture analysis characterizes regions in an image by their texture content and has been utilized to infer the underlying structures of medical images such as skeletal muscles. Although potentially useful in tissue diagnosis and assessing disease progression of neuromuscular diseases, the use of texture analysis in such purposes are limited, due to lack of information such as effects of aging. Thus, we performed texture analysis of medial gastrocnemius in healthy individuals form their 20s to late 80s. Among the 283 texture features in 6 classes, the features related to histogram, co-occurrence matrix, absolute gradient, and wavelet were correlated to age in 17-40% of the parameters, while none of the features related to run-length matrix and autoregressive model had significant correlation to age. This study showed that age-dependency in many texture features are present and need to be taken into account in elucidating the clinical significance. By contrast, the features related to run-length matrix and autoregressive model could have clinical utility