日本語の存在・所有形式におけるイル・アル交替現象

　Languages vary as to how they express possessive relations in morphosyntax. The Slavic group of languages, for example, expresses those relations in the copular BE construction featuring a preposition. There is another group of languages, including Latin, in which the HAVE verb is employed for the possessive expression, though Dative Case in a copular BE sentence is the unmarked strategy. This phenomenon is well-known as the be/have alternation, and has been extensively studied in the generative literature since the beginning of the 1990s.　Turning our eyes to Japanese, it has long been held in virtually all known studies or textbooks that it does not exhibit such an alternation. Possessive relations are expressed with the aid of two distinct existential verbs aru and iru, the choice of which is fundamentally governed by the (in)animacy of the Nominative-marked DP.　The purpose of this paper is to argue that Japanese is among those languages which exhibit an alternation between HAVE and BE, in contrast to the prevailing view. Specifically, I first give a critical review of the two previous approaches to possessive and existential sentences with aru and iru, and show that neither of them is tenable. I will then propose a morphosyntactic analysis based on the assumption that a phonetically empty postposition and the existential iru are combined into the possessive aru in the course of the derivation, demonstrating that the proposed analysis is empirically superior to the previous ones

Prolactin inhibits osteoclastic activity in the goldfish scale: A novel direct action of prolactin in teleosts

In teleosts, prolactin is involved in calcium regulation, but its role in scale/bone metabolism Is unclear. Using the in-vitro system with goldfish scales developed recently, we explored the effects of teleost prolactin, growth hormone, and somatolactin on osteoclasts and osteoblasts. Addition of prolactin at concentrations of 0.01-100 ng/ml reduced osteoclastic activity, partly via osteoclast apoptosis, after 6-18 h incubation. Conversely, growth hormone and somatolactin at a concentration of 100 ng/ml increased osteoclastic activity after 18 h incubation, indicating the specificity of the inhibitory effect of prolactin on osteoclastic activity. On the other hand, these three hormones promoted osteoblastic activity at concentrations of 10-100 ng/ml. The results from this study are the first demonstration of direct effects of prolactin on scale/bone metabolism and osteoclastic activity in a teleost. © 2008 Zoological Society of Japan

Self-Organized Synchronous Calcium Transients in a Cultured Human Neural Network Derived from Cerebral Organoids

The cerebrum is a major center for brain function, and its activity is derived from the assembly of activated cells in neural networks. It is currently difficult to study complex human cerebral neuronal network activity. Here, using cerebral organoids, we report self-organized and complex human neural network activities that include synchronized and non-synchronized patterns. Self-organized neuronal network formation was observed following a dissociation culture of human embryonic stem cell-derived cerebral organoids. The spontaneous individual and synchronized activity of the network was measured via calcium imaging, and subsequent analysis enabled the examination of detailed cell activity patterns, providing simultaneous raster plots, cluster analyses, and cell distribution data. Finally, we demonstrated the feasibility of our system to assess drug-inducible dynamic changes of the network activity. The comprehensive functional analysis of human neuronal networks using this system may offer a powerful tool to access human brain function