College Students\u27 Prejudiced Attitudes toward Homosexuals: A Comparative Analysis in Japan and the United States

This thesis examined the prejudiced attitudes toward homosexuals among university students in Japan, and the relationships of these attitudes with the students\u27 demographic information, contact experiences with homosexuals, attitudes toward men\u27s and women\u27s roles, and living experience in foreign countries. In addition, this thesis compared Japanese and American university students\u27 prejudice toward homosexuals. Survey data were collected from 166 university students in Japan, which is then compared to data on 956 university students in the United States (Baunach and Burgess 2002). The regression results demonstrated that Japanese respondents who had contact with homosexuals and who had relatively egalitarian gender role attitudes were less prejudiced than those who had no contact and who had relatively traditional gender role attitudes. American students expressed more prejudiced attitudes toward homosexuals than Japanese students. Even after controlling for gender, parents\u27 education, gender role attitudes, and contact experiences, American students were more prejudiced than Japanese students

The Mental Health Consequences of Losing a Parent: Does Culture Moderate the Impact of Parental Death?

The death of a parent represents a potential traumatic life event that has been linked to depression in both Japan and the United States. Yet experiences surrounding death and ways of grieving are framed differently across cultures. At the individual level, the majority of the bereaved people in both Japan and the United States attempt to maintain bonds with the deceased family members. Being complementary to the individual-level desire, Japanese death-related beliefs and practices seem to provide a tool to maintain bonds. In contrast, American death-related beliefs and practices may be at odds with the individual desires by encouraging the bereaved individuals to detach themselves from the deceased parents. Japanese culture may work as a macro level support to bereaved individuals, while American culture is not supportive of the individual desires. Using two national data sets from Japan and the United States, this study tested whether: (1) bereaved individuals report worse mental health than non-bereaved individuals, (2) the mental health consequences of losing a parent is greater in the United States than in Japan, and (3) in this vein, persons in Japan report greater emotional support than those in the United States, and emotional support explains cultural differences in the link between being bereaved and depression. Supporting Hypothesis 1, bereaved respondents were more depressed than non-bereaved respondents. The statistical test rejected Hypothesis 2, and Hypothesis 3 was not testable. This research considers the role of culture as a macro-level support and cross-national research methods

Biogeographic variation in skull morphology across the Kra Isthmus in dusky leaf monkeys

Despite the growing literature on the underlying factors of geographical phenotypic variation, little is known about how and to what extent biogeographic barriers in South‐East Asia have shaped morphological variation in primates. We aimed to investigate the geographical variations in skull morphology in dusky leaf monkeys by decomposing them into clinal (latitudinal), non‐clinal spatial (discrete difference between regions north and south of the Isthmus of Kra), and environment‐related components. We applied geometric morphometrics to measure 53 adult male specimens from 36 localities, covering the regions both north and south of the Isthmus of Kra. A linear model was used to test the effects of region (north vs. south of the Isthmus of Kra), latitude, and environmental factors (temperature and rainfall) on the size and shape of skulls. A part of variation in skull shape differed moderately between the regions in the north and south of the Isthmus of Kra, and this difference cannot be explained by latitudinal and environmental factors. However, for size and the majority of variations in shape, we detected limited contributions of region and the two environmental factors. Shape differentiation that was unexplained by latitudinal and environmental factors suggests that dusky leaf monkeys may have experienced a population division due to habitat constriction around the Isthmus of Kra. However, this divergence probably has been obscured by subsequent gene flow between populations after habitat recovery

A method to suppress local minima for symmetrical DOPO networks

Coherent Ising machine (CIM) implemented by degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) networks can solve some combinatorial optimization problems. However, when the network structure has a certain type of symmetry, optimal solutions are not always detected since the search process may be trapped by local minima. In addition, a uniform pump rate for DOPOs in the conventional operation cannot overcome this problem. In this paper proposes a method to avoid trapping of the local minima by applying a control input in a pump rate of an appropriate node. This controller breaks the symmetrical property and causes to change the bifurcation structure temporarily, then it guides transient responses into the global minima. We show several numerical simulation results

A method to suppress local minima for symmetrical DOPO networks

Coherent Ising machine (CIM) implemented by degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) networks can solve some combinatorial optimization problems. However, when the network structure has a certain type of symmetry, optimal solutions are not always detected since the search process may be trapped by local minima. In addition, a uniform pump rate for DOPOs in the conventional operation cannot overcome this problem. In this paper proposes a method to avoid trapping of the local minima by applying a control input in a pump rate of an appropriate node. This controller breaks the symmetrical property and causes to change the bifurcation structure temporarily, then it guides transient responses into the global minima. We show several numerical simulation results.Comment: This paper is under article submission and will be published on Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications, IEICE(Vol.E11-N, No.4, Oct. 2020