Reducing Accent in English -What will Native Japanese Speakers Benefit from Most?

This paper examines some of the characteristic phonetic differences between Japanese and English and points out major difficulties in pronunciation for Japanese learners of English. English education in Japan focused on mainly reading and writing English for a long time, and little attention has been given to pronunciation teaching and to the development of effective strategies to address the problem (Saito, 2007). Therefore, Japanese learners of English tend to have difficulty in learning English pronunciation. In addition to that, English classes cannot always have native speakers of English as teachers and Japanese English teachers often lack self-confidence in English pronunciation (Saito, 2007). However, accuracy in English pronunciation is important to avoid miscommunication and negative social consequences. This paper focuses on the areas of vowels and a few consonant problems and how the pronunciation errors will occur for Japanese learners and introduce effective teaching strategies for Japanese learners and instructors

Rotational dynamics of optically trapped polymeric nanofibers

The optical trapping of polymeric nanofibers and the characterization of the rotational dynamics are reported. A strategy to apply a torque to a polymer nanofiber, by tilting the trapped fibers using a symmetrical linear polarized Gaussian beam is demonstrated. Rotation frequencies up to 10 Hz are measured, depending on the trapping power, the fiber length and the tilt angle. A comparison of the experimental rotation frequencies in the different trapping configurations with calculations based on optical trapping and rotation of linear nanostructures through a T-Matrix formalism, accurately reproduce the measured data, providing a comprehensive description of the trapping and rotation dynamics.Comment: (21 pages, 5 figures

The Weekly January 22, 2002

For the monitoring of the global 3-D distribution of aerosol components, we developed the method to retrieve the vertical profiles of water-soluble, light absorbing carbonaceous, dust, and sea salt particles by the synergy of CALIOP and MODIS data. The aerosol product from the synergistic method is expected to be better than the individual products of CALIOP and MODIS. We applied the method to the biomass-burning event in Africa and the dust event in West Asia. The reasonable results were obtained; the much amount of the water-soluble and light absorbing carbonaceous particles were estimated in the biomass-burning event, and the dust particles were estimated in the dust event

PiSite: a database of protein interaction sites using multiple binding states in the PDB

The vast accumulation of protein structural data has now facilitated the observation of many different complexes in the PDB for the same protein. Therefore, a single protein complex is not sufficient to identify their interaction sites, especially for proteins with multiple binding states or different partners, such as hub proteins. PiSite is a database that provides protein–protein interaction sites at the residue level with consideration of multiple complexes at the same time, by mapping the binding sites of all complexes containing the same protein in the PDB. PiSite provides easy web interfaces with an interactive viewer working with typical web browsers, and the different binding modes can be checked visually. All of the information can also be downloaded for further analyses. In addition, PiSite provides a list of proteins with multiple binding partners and multiple binding states, as well as up-to-date statistics of protein–protein interfaces. PiSite is available at http://pisite.hgc.j

On the determination of a cloud condensation nuclei from satellite : Challenges and possibilities

We use aerosol size distributions measured in the size range from 0.01 to 10+ μm during Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific (TRACE-P) and Aerosol Characterization Experiment-Asia (ACE-Asia), results of chemical analysis, measured/modeled humidity growth, and stratification by air mass types to explore correlations between aerosol optical parameters and aerosol number concentration. Size distributions allow us to integrate aerosol number over any size range expected to be effective cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and to provide definition of a proxy for CCN (CCNproxy). Because of the internally mixed nature of most accumulation mode aerosol and the relationship between their measured volatility and solubility, this CCNproxy can be linked to the optical properties of these size distributions at ambient conditions. This allows examination of the relationship between CCNproxy and the aerosol spectral radiances detected by satellites. Relative increases in coarse aerosol (e.g., dust) generally add only a few particles to effective CCN but significantly increase the scattering detected by satellite and drive the Angstrom exponent (α) toward zero. This has prompted the use of a so-called aerosol index (AI) on the basis of the product of the aerosol optical depth and the nondimensional α, both of which can be inferred from satellite observations. This approach biases the AI to be closer to scattering values generated by particles in the accumulation mode that dominate particle number and is therefore dominated by sizes commonly effective as CCN. Our measurements demonstrate that AI does not generally relate well to a measured proxy for CCN unless the data are suitably stratified. Multiple layers, complex humidity profiles, dust with very low α mixed with pollution, and size distribution differences in pollution and biomass emissions appear to contribute most to method limitations. However, we demonstrate that these characteristic differences result in predictable influences on AI. These results suggest that inference of CCN from satellites will be challenging, but new satellite and model capabilities could possibly be integrated to improve this retrieval

The English l/r Distinction for Native Japanese

Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1983), pp. 88-9

アメリカの大学で学ぶ日本語学習者を理解するために―サンディエゴ州立大学におけるアンケート調査結果から―

サンディエゴ州立大学と群馬大学教育学部は1973年から交換留学制度を開始し、それ以降、約40年に渡る交流を継続させてきた。しかしながら、これまで受け入れ側の群馬大学におけるプログラムは必ずしも学生のレディネスやニーズを考慮したものを提供してきたわけではない。その要因の一つとして、アメリカの大学で学ぶ日本語学習に関する情報が十分に得られなかったことが挙げられる。そこでサンディエゴ州立大学と群馬大学の交換留学プログラムの担当者が共同で2011年３月にサンディエゴ州立大学日本語プログラムで学ぶ受講生に、第一言語、言語学習経歴、日本語学習の動機等に関するアンケート調査を実施した。調査結果から、調査対象者のほぼ３割が日本語以外に二つ以上の言語を学習していること、「道具的動機」と 好奇心や関心」が強い動機となっていることが明らかになった