Public engagement in science and technology has grown in importance as developments in science and technology make increasingly significant impacts on people's lives. Now, efforts to engage publics in social decision-making or consensus-building regarding science and technology involve participation, learning or deliberation opportunities, as well as interactive or coproductive efforts among various sectors in society based on the recognition of scientific activities as a part of social operations - even those performed by scientific communities. We have conducted a community engagement (...) program in the HapMap project, the international human genome program, in Japan since 2002. Consequent upon our various approaches to engage Japanese publics, a range of observations were made, such as that: public engagement is not yet recognized or institutionalized in Japan; there is a wide gap between science and society; and the implications of public engagement in a Japanese context have not been examined enthusiastically, especially from the perspectives of political decision making, social consensus-building or self-determination. In this paper, we provide an overview of public engagement in Japan, and discuss issues and challenges raised by the HapMap community engagement project. We also discuss the implications of public engagement for social decision-making and self-determination, and explore the prospects for public engagement in science and technology in Japan. (shrink)

Children often personify non-living objects, such as puppets and stars. This attribution is considered a healthy phenomenon, which can simulate social exchange and enhance children's understanding of social relationships. In this study, we considered that the tendency of children to engage in personification could potentially be observed in abstract entities, such as numbers. We hypothesized that children tend to attribute personalities to numbers, which diminishes during the course of development. By consulting the methodology to measure ordinal linguistic personification (OLP), which (...) is a type of synesthesia, we quantified the frequency with which child and adult populations engage in number personification. Questionnaires were completed by 151 non-synesthetic children (9--12 years old) and 55 non-synesthetic adults. Children showed a higher tendency than adults to engage in number personification, with respect to temporal consistency and the frequency of choosing meaningful answers. Additionally, children tended to assign unique and exclusive descriptions to each number from zero to nine. By synthesizing the series of analyses, we revealed the process in which number personification diminishes throughout development. In the discussion, we examined the possibility that number personification serves as a discrimination clue to aid children's comprehension of the relationships between numbers. (shrink)

The role of figurative languages such as metaphor and metonymy in creativity has been studied in cognitive linguistics. These methods can also be applied to analyze non-linguistic data such as pictures and gestures. In this paper we analyze fashion design by focusing on visual metaphor and metonymy. The nature of creativity in fashion design is not fully studied from a cognitive perspective compared to other related fields such as art. We especially focus on the aspect of fashion design as a (...) communication tool between the designer and the audience to convey designer’s image of human. Photos from two fashion shows are analyzed. We carried out an experiment to compare how human images in two shows are interpreted by those who are familiar with fashion and those who are not. We got three results: (1) As far as figurative (metaphorical and metonymic) interpretations of human image are concerned, two groups with different familiarity to fashion have significantly different patterns of responses to two shows. (2) For non-figurative interpretations (such as physical or personal attributes), no significant difference in the pattern of response to the show was observed between two groups. The participants as a whole, however, responded to the two shows differently. (3) In addition for non-figurative interpretation, fashion experts found significantly more attributes in human images than the others. The results show that the analysis of figurative interpreations is effective in seeing how the familiarity to fashion affects the mode of seeing fashion shows. (shrink)

Major depression (MD) is a highly heterogeneous diagnostic category. Diverse symptoms such as sad mood, anhedonia, and fatigue are routinely added to an unweighted sum-score, and cutoffs are used to distinguish between depressed participants and healthy controls. Researchers then investigate outcome variables like MD risk factors, biomarkers, and treatment response in such samples. These practices presuppose that (1) depression is a discrete condition, and that (2) symptoms are interchangeable indicators of this latent disorder. Here I review these two assumptions, elucidate (...) their historical roots, show how deeply engrained they are in psychological and psychiatric research, and document that they contrast with evidence. Depression is not a consistent syndrome with clearly demarcated boundaries, and depression symptoms are not interchangeable indicators of an underlying disorder. Current research practices lump individuals with very different problems into one category, which has contributed to the remarkably slow progress in key research domains such as the development of efficacious antidepressants or the identification of biomarkers for depression. The recently proposed network framework offers an alternative to the problematic assumptions. MD is not understood as a distinct condition, but as heterogeneous symptom cluster that substantially overlaps with other syndromes such as anxiety disorders. MD is not framed as an underlying disease with a number of equivalent indicators, but as a network of symptoms that have direct causal influence on each other: insomnia can cause fatigue which then triggers concentration and psychomotor problems. This approach offers new opportunities for constructing an empirically based classification system and has broad implications for future research. (shrink)

In the chapter “Fit for Emperors and Kings,” the Chinese philosopher Chuang-tzu relates the myth of Hun-tun, the emperor of chaos, who died when the seven sense openings were bored into him. The story goes: Shu, the ruler of the Southern Sea, and Hu, the ruler of the Northern Sea, met in the realm of Hun-tun, the emperor of the Center, that is to say in the world of true reality that contradicted their own as being one of vast disorder. (...) Hun-tun received the two emperors warmly, and they both overcame their knowledge-based and conceptional consciousness, entirely forgot the evaluating, one-sided viewpoint of differentiation. Thus they enjoyed the world of true reality, the land of Hun-tun, Emperor Chaos. Subsequently the two guests wondered how they could possibly repay the kindness of Hun-tun. Concluding their consultation, they decided to present Hun-tun with seven openings — the sense doors of the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. They duly proceeded to bore one opening into Hun-tun every day. However, on the seventh day, when he was finally becoming like a human being, Hun-tun died. (shrink)

Diogenes, Ahead of Print. The aim of this study is to elucidate the genesis of communality in the urban street. Although in the modern world cities have long been seen as research laboratories, in today’s context of globalization they are becoming more radical and dynamic; they are becoming experimental theatres of social change. Since the end of the twentieth century, the political and economic reorganization of the world order is producing dramatic changes in various societies throughout the globe. This is (...) bringing about changes which tend to standardize society and atomize individual subjects. These changes are seemingly connected, but they do exist alone, separately. In this complex situation, we are confronted with the fundamental question, how can people construct communality transcending differences among them? The present study looks for an answer to this question, paying special attention to collective violence in the urban street, where ‘emergent but real’ norms are constructed among the rioters and the communality genesis mechanism is activated. In order to make a case for this urban communality, the analysis focuses on events in the streets of Nairobi at the time of the Second Liberation of 1990s and during the Post-Election Violence of 2007–2008. People with different political and religious affiliation and ethnic identity were involved in violent urban riots. They were originally strangers, but they generated new social order and norms. In the street, they constructed and shared a provisional communality, which was emergent and fluid but also real and firm. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conference of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesEiko Hanaoka and Jonathan A. SeitzFour lectures were given, with the theme “The Philosophy of Religion in Hajime Tanabe”:1. “Philosophy as Metanoetics” by Professor Masakazu Fujita2. “Hajime Tanabe’s Philosophy and Christian Dialectic” by Professor Emeritus Isao Onodera3. “‘Christianity’ and ‘Philosophy of Religion’ in Tanabe’s Philosophy” by Professor Emerita Eiko Hanaoka4. “The Original Subjectivity in Pure-Land Buddhism” by Professor Emeritus Akira Kawanami.Professor (...) Emeritus Ausluv Lande from Lund University in Sweden also participated in this conference. [End Page 193]Eiko HanaokaOsaka Prefecture UniversityPalace Side Hotel, Kyoto September 2–4, 2013Copyright © 2014 University of Hawai‘i Press... (shrink)

This study reports an ecologic analysis of the relationship between mean birth weight (MBW) and nutritional, medical and social variables, using 1982 data for 47 prefectures in Japan.

Kripke bundle [3] and C-set semantics [1] [2] are known as semantics which generalize standard Kripke semantics. In [3] and in [1], [2] it is shown that Kripke bundle and C-set semantics are stronger than standard Kripke semantics. Also it is true that C-set semantics for superintuitionistic logics is stronger than Kripke bundle semantics [5].In this paper, we show that Q-S4.1 is not Kripke bundle complete via C-set models. As a corollary we can give a simple proof showing that C-set (...) semantics for modal logics are stronger than Kripke bundle semantics. (shrink)

Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps by Edward Casey Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britain's Renaissance to America's New World by Kenneth Robert Olwig.

In the contemporary world all kinds of culture, thought modes, philosophies and religions are complicatedly active. Social conditions of our contemporary world wear a nihilistic look which Nietzsche prophesied as a fact, 200 years after his time. In this nihilistic ambience, the whole world seems to be overrun by various crimes neglecting morality and ethics. In such a world we are urged to consider how morals and ethics can be realized. In this meaning the „bounds of ethics‟ are considered in (...) regard to the paradigms of different historical epochs as the framework and basis of life, culture and thinking. One of these paradigms, common to East and West, is the one based on being and nothingness: relative being, relative nothingness, absolute being, nihil, and absolute nothingness, which last-mentioned paradigm subsumes the other four. In essence, this paper will discuss how morality and ethics in the paradigm of absolute nothingness can finally act in oneness with religion and overcome nihilism in the contemporary world, even if it acts very slowly. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the new possibility of social transformation by religion in order to save the global nihilistic situation in the contemporary world because of the modern technology which neglected human dignity in all over the world since the Industrial Revolution started from England in the latter half of the 18th Century. Such possibility by religion can be realized, in my view, by “the way of walking” on the ground of “self-awareness”, where each person realizes the great death (...) of egoistic ego and is aware of the true self, which is common to each of all nature, which awareness then results in the faith in God as action, God who is non-substantial and has no peculiar nature of its own. Such religion could be found in the religion and the philosophy of religion advocated by A. N. Whitehead and K. Nishida. (shrink)

Vera Schwarcz's Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden examines the moral, philosophical, and historical meanings of a garden built by a Manchu Chinese prince, subsequently destroyed by British imperialists, commandeered by Red Guard radicals, and finally transformed into the grounds of an art museum. Reading Singing Crane Garden in the context of Schwarcz's previous writings on Chinese intellectuals and Jewish traditions, as well as insights provided by critical philosophers and geographers, this essay explores the moral and ethical dimensions (...) of locating history in specific “emplacements”. The argument begins by examining the phenomenology of place articulated by Edward Casey, weaves through discussions of Chinese spatiality, embodiment, and garden aesthetics, and comments on Schwarcz's study of broken monuments and stele through comparisons with Classical Chinese writers and the contemporary American poet Louise Glück. Comparisons are made between the destruction of the garden by the British forces of James Elgin, the murder of the journalist Thomas Bowlby, and the purging, imprisonment, torture, and brutality against scholars and intellectuals by the Red Guards under Mao. The essay closes with commentaries on Schwarcz's reflections concerning continuing global atrocities, and new insights into the ways that understanding landscape architecture as a form of history can bring meaning to questions of memory, loss, and the desire to evoke unrecoverable experiences. (shrink)

Takahashi translation * is a translation which means reducing all of the redexes in a λ-term simultaneously. In [4] and [5], Takahashi gave a simple proof of the Church–Rosser confluence theorem by using the notion of parallel reduction and Takahashi translation. Our aim of this paper is to give a simpler proof of Church–Rosser theorem using only the notion of Takahashi translation.

A set F of Boolean functions is said to be functionally complete if every Boolean function is definable by combining functions in F. Post clarified when a set of Boolean functions is functionally complete (with respect to classical semantics). In this paper, by extending Post’s theorem, we clarify when a set of Boolean functions is functionally complete with respect to Kripke semantics.

Secreted signaling molecules act as morphogens to control patterning and growth in many developing tissues. Since locally produced morphogens spread to form a concentration gradient in the surrounding tissue, spreading is generally thought to be the key step in the non‐autonomous actions. Here, we review recent advances in tool development to investigate morphogen function using the role of decapentaplegic (Dpp)/bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)‐type ligand in the Drosophila wing disc as an example. By applying protein binder tools to distinguish between the (...) roles of Dpp spreading and local Dpp signaling, we found that Dpp signaling in the source cells is important for wing patterning and growth but Dpp spreading from this source cells is not as strictly required as previously thought. Given recent studies showing unexpected requirements of long‐range action of different morphogens, manipulating endogenous morphogen gradients by synthetic protein binder tools could shed more light on how morphogens act in developing tissues. (shrink)

To understand the public opinion concerning the genethics in culturally different populations, we conducted two focus groups in Japan, with one focus group each in China and Panama between April 2008 and August 2009. Generally, the participants in Japan were more cautious to disclose their personal thinking in a clear manner. Most participants in China and Panama hoped to have children free from any genetic disease if at all possible. The major difference between China and Panama seems to be whether (...) or not they will accept the issue of genetic abortion. Compared to China and Panama, fewer participants accepted a reprogenetics procedure in Japan. ―A goal of genetic counseling is to reduce the number of patients of genetic disease‖ is supported to a greater degree in China and Panama than in Japan. Most participants in China as well as Panama, and fewer participants in Japan accepted the concept of sharing genetic information with relatives, even though it is useful for preventing a possible genetic risk. The difference of the answers for the questions is depending on the cultural and value diversity in each country, while some of them are related into a paucity of knowing the principle of biogenetics. Education as to medical genetics and the principle of bioethics is most important to make genetics more accessible to the general public. (shrink)