Response Collector: A Video Learning System for Flipped Classrooms

The flipped classroom has become famous as an effective educational method that flips the purpose of classroom study and homework. In this paper, we propose a video learning system for flipped classrooms, called Response Collector, which enables students to record their responses to preparation videos. Our system provides response visualization for teachers and students to understand what they have acquired and questioned. We performed a practical user study of our system in a flipped classroom setup. The results show that students preferred to use the proposed method as the inputting method, rather than naive methods. Moreover, sharing responses among students was helpful for resolving individual students' questions, and students were satisfied with the use of our system.Comment: The 2018 International Conference On Advanced Informatics: Concepts, Theory And Application (ICAICTA2018

Computing Information Quantity as Similarity Measure for Music Classification Task

This paper proposes a novel method that can replace compression-based dissimilarity measure (CDM) in composer estimation task. The main features of the proposed method are clarity and scalability. First, since the proposed method is formalized by the information quantity, reproduction of the result is easier compared with the CDM method, where the result depends on a particular compression program. Second, the proposed method has a lower computational complexity in terms of the number of learning data compared with the CDM method. The number of correct results was compared with that of the CDM for the composer estimation task of five composers of 75 piano musical scores. The proposed method performed better than the CDM method that uses the file size compressed by a particular program.Comment: The 2017 International Conference On Advanced Informatics: Concepts, Theory And Application (ICAICTA2017

Chiral Phase Transitions in QED at Finite Temperature: Dyson-Schwinger Equation Analysis in the Real Time Hard-Thermal-Loop Approximation

In order for clarifying what are the essential thermal effects that govern the chiral phase transition at finite temperature, we investigate, in the real-time thermal QED, the consequences of the Hard-Thermal-Loop (HTL) resummed Dyson-Schwinger equation for the physical fermion mass function $\Sigma_R$. Since $\Sigma_R$ is the mass function of an ``unstable'' quasi-particle in thermal field theories, it necessarily has non-trivial imaginary parts together with non-trivial wave function renormalization constants. In the present analysis we correctly respect this fact, and study, in the ladder approximation, the effect of HTL resummed gauge boson propagator. Our results with the use of numerical analysis, show the two facts; i) The chiral phase transition is of second order, since the fermion mass is dynamically generated at a critical value of the temperature $T_c$, or at the critical coupling constant $\alpha_c$, without any discontinuity, and ii) the critical temperature $T_c$ at fixed value of $\alpha$ is significantly lower than the previous results, namely the restoration of chiral symmetry occurs at lower temperature than previously expected. The second fact shows the importance of correctly taking the essential thermal effect into the analysis of chiral phase transition, which are, in the previous analyses, neglected due to the inappropriate approximations. The procedure how to maximally respect the gauge invariance in the present approximation, is also discussed.Comment: Revtex4 with 6 figures, 11 page

On Pitch Accent Phenomena in Standard Japanese.

The central goal of this thesis is to provide a principled account of various pitch accent phenomena in Standard Japanese, and to demonstrate that the formalism of pitch accent assignment is identical to that of stress assignment in languages such as English. I have followed the framework of government phonology, which attempts to replace the rule component of a phonology by a set of universal principles shared by all languages, plus a group of parameters which impose a limit on the ways in which language sound system may differ from one another. Some of the accentual processes which I have chosen to account for have already been treated in the literature. However, the analyses which these previous works offered are generally arbitrary and therefore lacking in explanatory value. With respect to the claim that the formalism of pitch accent assignment and stress assignment is identical, I offer a non-arbitrary account of pitch accent phenomena in nouns (with and without Case-marking particles), compounds, and also in sentences, all based on one set of principles and parameters. In other words, various accentual processes which have been treated as separate events, are now explained in a unified manner. Among the issues addressed is an explanatory account of the accent assignment of various noun-noun compounds. From the morphological and lexical accentual properties of the morphemes involved, the location of compound accent is found to be predictable. The topics of my thesis include a new approach to the assignment of pitch in a sentence. I show how high-pitch assignment reflects the syntactic structure of the sentence in question

Logical Operation Based Literature Association with Genes and its application, PosMed.

PosMed prioritizes candidate genes for positional cloning by employing our original database search engine GRASE, which uses an inferential process similar to an artificial neural network comprising documental neurons (or 'documentrons') that represent each document contained in databases such as MEDLINE and OMIM (Yoshida, _et al_. 2009, Makita, _et al_. 2009). PosMed immediately ranks the candidate genes by connecting phenotypic keywords to the genes through connections representing gene–gene interactions other biological relationships, such as metabolite–gene, mutant mouse–gene, drug–gene, disease–gene, and protein–protein interactions, ortholog data, and gene–literature connections.

To make proper relationships between genes and literature, we manually curate queries, which are defined by logical operation rules, against MEDLINE. For example, to detect a set of MEDLINE documents for the AT1G03880 gene in _A. thaliana_, we applied the following logical query: (‘AT1G03880’ OR ‘CRU2’ OR ‘CRB’ OR ‘CRUCIFERIN 2' OR ‘CRUCIFERIN B’) AND (‘Arabidopsis’) NOT (‘chloroplast RNA binding’). Curators refined these queries in mouse, rice and _A. thaliana_. For human and rat genes, we use mouse curation results via ortholog genes in PosMed.

PosMed is available at "http://omicspace.riken.jp/PosMed":http://omicspace.riken.jp/PosMed

References:
Yoshida Y, et al. _Nucleic Acids Res_. 37(Web Server issue):W147-52. 2009. 
Makita Y, et al. _Plant Cell Physiol_. 2009 Jul;50(7):1249-59.
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＜小特集＞北欧のコミュニティと公共図書館

日本における北欧の図書館への関心は高く、これまでも北欧の数々の図書館が、訪問記の形で紹介されてきた(1)。本稿はスウェーデン、デンマーク、ノルウェーの各国の公共図書館について、その最新の状況を報告するとともに、図書館サービスの置かれた状況や課題を論じるものである

Natural course and characteristics of cutaneous neurofibromas in neurofibromatosis 1

Neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1) is characterized by cutaneous, neurological and osseous manifestations. Most NF1 patients develop cutaneous neurofibromas. However, time‐dependent change with aging and the predilection site of cutaneous neurofibromas remain unclear. To clarify the natural course and characteristics of cutaneous neurofibromas, a retrospective study was conducted for 57 NF1 patients who were treated at the Department of Dermatology of Tottori University Hospital between January 2007 and April 2016. For each patient, we investigated the time‐dependent changes and the numbers of cutaneous neurofibromas in four body surface regions. There was a positive correlation between age and number of cutaneous neurofibromas (r = 0.75, P < 0.001). Cutaneous neurofibromas were located on the trunk (60.2%), lower limbs (16.1%), upper limbs (14.4%), and head and neck (9.2%). There was no significant relationship between each body type (e.g. obese or thin) and cutaneous neurofibromas. With respect to the year‐to‐year percentage change in cutaneous neurofibromas, the average annual rate of increase was 0.21 (range, −0.71 to 1.2). The number of cutaneous neurofibromas had increased in approximately 61% of the patients 1 year later. Our data will enable physicians to estimate the overall state of cutaneous neurofibromas in NF1 and will be useful for handling cutaneous manifestations before they become a serious condition