Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

We examine the rotating gaseous configurations in the point-mass and logarithmic potentials, using the similarity method, and analytically find new-type solutions for astrophysical tori. We ignore the self-gravity, viscosity, magnetic, and radiation fields, but consider the isothermal and polytropic cases. In the point-mass potential, the gaseous configuration is generally limited within the conical region for both the isothermal and polytropic cases. In the logarithmic potential, on the other hand, the gaseous configuration extends over the whole space for the isothermal case, whereas it is limited within the conical region in the polytropic case. For both potentials, the density contours have toroidal or conical shapes with a self-similar manner. When the rotational speed is high and/or the sound speed is low (cold), the configurations become flat, and vice versa.

The purpose of this study is to investigate regional differences in the business characteristics of Japanese agricultural cooperatives (JAs), which have been widely criticized for depending on non-agricultural activities, contradictory to cooperative principles. We construct a panel data set over 2004–2019 from the financial statements of JAs’ prefectural-level federations and use a stochastic meta-frontier cost function model, which enables the decomposition of meta-frontier efficiency into two components: technical efficiency and technology gap ratios. The operational differences between JAs in urban and rural areas are investigated by comparing their efficiency and economies of scale and scope. The main results are summarized as follows: first, the meta-cost efficiency scores of JAs in urban areas are, on average, larger than those in rural areas, which reflects the differences in technology gap ratios. Second, JAs exhibit overall economies of scale in both areas; however, the product-specific economies of scale differ between financial and nonfinancial outputs. Finally, JAs in rural areas exhibit relatively larger economies of scope than those in urban areas. These findings indicate clear distinctions between urban and rural areas in cost-reduction effects. Finally, financial activities bring higher efficiency for JAs in urban areas, while benefits from simultaneous production are larger for those in rural areas.

Assessing learners’ individual differences helps identify students who need teacher support in classrooms. Previous studies have examined second language (L2) achievement based on reading anxiety because reading is an input-based activity essential for successful L2 learning. This study applied a latent rank model to identify L2 learners who are likely to be struggling or successful in classrooms according to their L2 reading anxiety symptoms. Moreover, a psychometric function was developed to determine the cutoff anxiety scores that discriminate against their substantial differences. The model was applied to responses from the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) provided by 335 Japanese learners of English. The results showed that the FLRAS classified students into three ranked groups with ordinal information regarding L2 reading anxiety. Rank 1 exhibited good conditions in L2 reading anxiety. Rank 2 reported high anxiety toward unfamiliar grammar during L2 reading. Rank 3 had even higher anxiety levels, especially for vocabulary and grammatical knowledge deficits and reading difficulty. The cutoff anxiety scores estimated by the model detected students who failed their L2 class with 79% accuracy. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical issues in language anxiety were discussed in terms of diagnosis and different approaches to teaching L2 reading.

This article focuses on the concept of space and two different structures of space in the mythological chronicles Kojiki and Nihon Shoki . It considers two main invisible divine gods of space, probably connected to Chinese mythology and appearing in the mythological chronicles first – Ame-no-minaka-nushi and Kuni-no-tokotachi . It traces their evolution in history and also deals with obtaining by some of Japanese gods, within the Buddhist worldview, a fantastic appearance and the key role in cosmogenesis. It also deals with the connection of the first verbal descriptions of the appearance of the Japanese lands as a living creature or a symbolic thing seen from above with the ritual of “viewing the realm” ( kunimi ), and also with a technique of Chinese-Japanese painting wherein an object is portrayed as seen from above (for the purpose of which, in the cases of indoor scenes, a building is depicted without a roof), etc.

This paper uses a synthetic control method (SCM) and a Ridge Augmented SCM to estimate the impact of holding the Tokyo Olympic games on the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Tokyo (Japan). Our analysis with these methods enables us to estimate the causal impact of the Tokyo Olympics on COVID-19 cases by constructing counterfactual COVID-19 cases for Tokyo (Japan) as the optimal weighted average of COVID-19 cases of OECD countries that are not affected by holding the Olympics through a data-driven approach. Based on reliable estimates obtained from different analytical settings, we find that, compared to the counterfactuals, holding the Tokyo Olympics significantly increased the daily average number of COVID-19 cases by 105 to 132 cases in Tokyo (47 to 65 cases in Japan as a whole) per million people. This result suggests that holding the Olympics likely led to the spread of COVID-19 infection in Tokyo (Japan).

サマリーライティングは、読解授業において学習内容の理解を確認するのに有効な方法であると同時に、それ自体が読解教材の主旨を選び取るという学習活動そのものでもある。学習者はこうした選択を行うためのスキルや基準を身につける必要があり、それには理論に基づく指導が有効である。本稿では、選択体系機能言語学(SFL)におけるジャンル、および正当化コード理論(LCT)の意味の波という二つの概念の組み合わせを使ったケーススタディを紹介する。前者の概念は教材テクストの社会的目的に注目し、後者は教材に表現された内容の文脈依存性の尺度を提供する。指導には理論的概念の提示、第一稿、教師のフィードバック、学習者の自己評価と修正の各段階が含まれ、この過程によって学習者は選択の過程をより意識するようになった。理論上の概念を学習者にわかりやすく提示することが重要である。 Summary writing is a common classroom activity aimed at confirming the understanding of contents in reading classrooms, but it is also a learning activity of its own in that students choose for themselves the main points from among the variety of information in the material. Students need skills and criteria to make such choices, and to this end, theory-based instruction is useful. In this paper, I present a case study that uses a combination of concepts from two theories, i.e. genre from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), which focuses on the social purpose of the text, and semantic wave from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). which offers a scale of the degree of context dependency of the content. Through the stages of presentation of theoretical concepts, first-draft writing, teacher’s feedback, and student self-evaluation and revision, students have become more aware of the selection process. Making theoretical concepts accessible to students is the key.

This study investigates the influence of foreign macroeconomic conditions on antidumping actions. We focus on the role of macroeconomic conditions in exporting countries, although previous studies have emphasized the role of macroeconomic conditions in importing countries. Our theoretical analysis shows that dumping exports is more likely to occur when the exporting country’s economic condition is good. The appreciation of the import country’s currency is less likely to induce dumping exports, whereas it causes damage to the import country’s industry. Using the data on antidumping activity in the USA, we find that higher economic growth in exporting countries is positively related to antidumping initiatives, dumping determinations, and injury determinations. These antidumping actions against an exporting country are also associated with increased imports from the country. In contrast, the appreciation of the US dollar against an exporting country’s currency is linked only to the injury determination against the country. Antidumping measures are easy to use to protect domestic industries from an increase in imports from booming foreign economies.

Organizations may suffer from unforeseen negative shocks, potentially leading to severe bottlenecks. This paper studies an optimal incentive scheme robust to those shocks in the effort induction problem in team production. The optimal scheme under the no-shock assumption is typically vulnerable in that a single shock can lead to shirking of sizable non-shocked members. We show that an optimal scheme is associated with a uniform order of worker subsets; and identify relative complementarity as a novel source of the determinant of the optimal organization structure.

This article explores the relevance of the life and works of Kiyoshi Miki (1897–1945), a Japanese philosopher, to Maslovian humanistic psychology. Although Miki and Maslow differ in many respects, they shared a few common points that are important to examine. In his early articles, Miki equated philosophy with confessions of the soul and argued that individuality was impossible within the traditional framework of logic. His first main work on Pascal’s anthropology was an attempt to assimilate and synthesize the German existential/hermeneutic and the French moralist traditions he had learned in Europe in the early 1920s. Despite pioneering works by Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, humanistic psychology has not exhausted the potentialities of Marxism. Maslow and other intellectuals sympathetic to this materialist philosophy were mutually disappointed. However, Maslow’s enlightened or eupsychian management may be an important step toward social revolution, compensating for a missing psychological viewpoint in traditional Marxism. Miki’s hermeneutic approach to this ideology offers two important points relevant to humanistic psychology: his concept of basic experience—later called Pathos—as the basis of any ideology, and the distinction between dialectic and organicism. His last years, during the War and fascism, raise important questions regarding what talented, self-actualizing intellectuals can do without freedom of speech and expression under a totalitarian and authoritarian regime. Finally, this article addresses how well Miki’s concept of utopia—on which he wrote an essay in the context of a dark age—corresponds to Maslow’s idea of eupsychia.

Syntactic structures and meaning appear to independently contribute to structural priming within English structural alternations. Japanese uses scrambling of case-marked phrases to create syntactic alternations, and it is not clear how meaning impacts scrambling-based structural choices. To examine this issue, meaning overlap with dative targets was manipulated in two structural priming experiments. In Experiment 1, datives primed dative targets, but structurally similar primes with idiomatic meanings did not prime. In Experiment 2, transitive primes that differed from datives in thematic roles showed as much priming as dative primes. The transitive results demonstrate that scrambling-based alternations in Japanese can be primed from structures that differ in role meaning, but the lack of idiom priming means that these structures may be less independent of meaning than those in other languages.

Language sometimes requires tracking the same participant in different thematic roles across multiple visual events (e.g., The girl that another girl pushed chased a third girl). To better understand how vision and language interact in role tracking, participants described videos of multiple randomly moving circles where two push events were presented. A circle might have the same role in both push events (e.g., agent) or different roles (e.g., agent of one push and patient of other push). The first three studies found higher production accuracy for the same role conditions compared to the different role conditions across different linguistic structure manipulations. The last three studies compared a featural account, where role information was associated with particular circles, or a relational account, where role information was encoded with particular push events. These studies found no interference between different roles, contrary to the predictions of the featural account. The foil was manipulated in these studies to increase the saliency of the second push and it was found that this changed the accuracy in describing the first push. The results suggest that language-related thematic role processing uses a relational representation that can encode multiple events.

Emergentist approaches to language acquisition identify a core role for language-specific experience and give primacy to other factors like function and domain-general learning mechanisms in syntactic development. This directly contrasts with a nativist structurally oriented approach, which predicts that grammatical development is guided by Universal Grammar and that structural factors constrain acquisition. Cantonese relative clauses (RCs) offer a good opportunity to test these perspectives because its typologically rare properties decouple the roles of frequency and complexity in subject- and object-RCs in a way not possible in European languages. Specifically, Cantonese object RCs of the classifier type are frequently attested in children’s linguistic experience and are isomorphic to frequent and early-acquired simple SVO transitive clauses, but according to formal grammatical analyses Cantonese subject RCs are computationally less demanding to process. Thus, the two opposing theories make different predictions: the emergentist approach predicts a specific preference for object RCs of the classifier type, whereas the structurally oriented approach predicts a subject advantage. In the current study we revisited this issue. Eighty-seven monolingual Cantonese children aged between 3;2 and 3;11 ( M age: 3;6) participated in an elicited production task designed to elicit production of subject- and object- RCs. The children were very young and most of them produced only noun phrases when RCs were elicited. Those (nine children) who did produce RCs produced overwhelmingly more object RCs than subject RCs, even when animacy cues were controlled. The majority of object RCs produced were the frequent classifier-type RCs. The findings concur with our hypothesis from the emergentist perspectives that input frequency and formal and functional similarity to known structures guide acquisition.

This book collects fifteen academic essays that address the aesthetic, cultural, historical, and personal connections among Beat Generation poets and Black Mountain poets.

En este artículo se describen y comparan las estrategias de hablantes nativos de español peruanos y colombianos utilizadas para expresar cortesía en textos de petición escritos. Asimismo, con el fin de determinar tendencias de uso, el trabajo adapta (i) la teoría de la cortesía y (ii) la metodología de la pragmática interlingüística al análisis de la variedad lingüística. La exploración de los mensajes redactados por los participantes para cuatro situaciones ficticias reveló la existencia de similitudes y diferencias asociadas con la fuerza relativa entre el emisor y el receptor, y con el grado de imposición.

We consider the mean–variance utility maximization problem for banks. In particular, we consider the utility maximization problems of the portfolio return and accounting profit. Moreover, we consider balance sheet models for both conditions irrespective of whether the items on the liability side are internalized in terms of assets. The calibration result shows that there is no significant difference in the accuracies of the fit of the utility maximization models for the portfolio return and accounting profit as long as the balance sheet is internalized. Therefore, internalization of the balance sheet model is important to describe the bank’s behavior.

Japanese polite language (teineigo) varies with the speaker-addressee relationship as well as social norms. Descriptive studies have found that young Japanese children use polite-speech early in development. This claim was experimentally tested in 3- to 6-year-old Japanese children and correct use of polite verb forms was found even in the youngest children. The early acquisition of these verb forms is surprising, because there is a Japanese social norm that parental speech to children is mostly not polite, so it is not clear how children acquire the knowledge of how to use polite forms. To examine this, a large scale corpus analysis of polite language was performed using a probabilistic measure of the intended addressee. We confirmed that parental speech is mostly not polite, but parents also produced a substantial amount of polite language that varied appropriately with addressees and this can help to explain the early use of polite speech in Japanese children under experimental conditions.

Until recently, business email was viewed as a particular use case of common written business correspondence . However, during recent decades, email has received recognition as a new and separate genre of business communication with its own discourse . The evo- lution of business email in Russia has, as yet, attracted little attention from researchers, although there is sufficient evidence of significant changes . The composition of email, which was regarded historically as a simplified business letter transferred by the Internet, has grown into a field of communication . The style and language of modern email can be considered inappropriate in business letters . The main goal of this research is to examine the current features and recent trends in business email writing in Russia and describe deterrents and factors influencing the further development of modern Russian business etiquette . This article will focus both on the content and linguistic features of business email and will discuss recent advances in email writing . Issues such as the “formal vs . informal” approach and “orality vs . literacy” will be reviewed based on an analysis of modern Russian business communication textbooks . This research should be of in- terest for academics in the field of Russian studies as well as business people involved in business transactions with Russia .

This study explores the effect of electoral systems on politicians’ stances regarding free trade agreements. Utilizing the institutional features of the Japanese election system, we empirically investigate how electoral systems affect Diet members’ responsiveness to agricultural organizations’ protests against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Japan. This study shows that, even when controlling for differences in constituency size, Diet members elected in the proportional-representation constituency tend not to support the farm lobbies’ protest against the TPP, regardless of the length of their remaining terms of office. Conversely, constituency size does not affect legislators’ stances toward the TPP after controlling for the types of constituency systems in which they are involved. This study also finds that Diet members other than those elected from the proportional-representation constituency tend not to support the anti-TPP campaign when their next election is farther away. These results hold even when using another explained variable. The types of constituency systems and election proximity play key roles in shaping legislators’ trade policy stances.