The earliest Chinese record of the maritime relations between India and China can be found in the “History of the Former Han Dynasty” (Chien Han-shu) which covers the period from B.C. 206 to A.D. 23. In its chapter (28b) on geography it is stated that ever since the time of the Emperor Wu (Wu Ti, B.C. 14087) the country called Huang-chih has sent tribute to the Chinese court, which in turn dispatched envoys to this remote country. Huang-chih has been identified (...) by many scholars with Kāñcī (Conjeeveram) on the east coast of South India. It is recorded that there were chief interpreters belonging to the Yellow Gate (the office of eunuchs serving in the palace) who went to sea to buy bright pearls, opaque glasses and other rare articles, taking with them from China gold and various kinds of silk for exchange. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between origami performance, personality traits, and spatial ability. The researchers asked 43 Japanese university students to fold three models of origami. Their performance was assessed by the number of successes in correctly folding the paper to make the models. They also answered the personality inventory NEO-FFI and completed the block-design test of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV, which measures the spatial ability of people. The results showed that although origami performance demonstrated no significant relation (...) with neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, or conscientiousness, it improved as introversion tendency and spatial ability increased. There were no differences based on sex in origami performance. The findings suggest that performing origami requires spatial ability, which supports the view that origami is a potential educational material for training and enhancing spatial ability, and that introversion is advantageous to origami performance. (shrink)

Objective: This study examined the process through which elderly patients with new-onset acute leukemia make treatment decisions from the time of diagnosis, in order to identify factors influencing this decision-making process in Japan. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-two elderly patients with leukemia. The data were analyzed using the modified grounded theory approach. Results: The process of decision-making in elderly patients with leukemia includes three stages: Initial reactions at diagnosis, change in attitudes, and entrusting the physician with the treatment (...) plan. Initial reactions at diagnosis were affected by interactions with others that brought peace of mind to the patients. Change in attitudes was affected by encouragement from others to undergo treatment and their own motivation to face treatment. Patients came to entrust their treatment plan completely to their physician, because they wanted to feel relief and did not want to have to grapple with difficult medical information that was relevant to decision-making about their disease and treatment options. Conclusions: The process of decision-making in elderly patients with leukemia is affected by several factors and included three stages. Our present study findings can provide suggestions on how medical professionals might better support the process of decision-making in elderly patients with leukemia. (shrink)

Cyclic nucleotides can regulate the sensitivity of retinal rods to light through phosducin. The phosphorylation state of phosducin determines the amount of G available for activation by Rho*. Phosducin phosphorylation is regulated by cyclic nucleotides through their activation of cAMP-dependent protein kinase. The regulation of phosphodiesterase activity by the noncatalytic cGMP binding sites as well as Ca2+/calmodulin dependent regulation of cGMP binding to the cation channel are also discussed.

Cultural similarities and differences in facial expressions have been a controversial issue in the field of facial communications. A key step in addressing the debate regarding the cultural dependency of emotional expression is to characterize the visual features of specific facial expressions in individual cultures. Here we developed an image analysis framework for this purpose using convolutional neural networks that through training learned visual features critical for classification. We analyzed photographs of facial expressions derived from two databases, each developed in (...) a different country, in which corresponding emotion labels were available. While the CNNs reached high rates of correct results that were far above chance after training with each database, they showed many misclassifications when they analyzed faces from the database that was not used for training. These results suggest that facial features useful for classifying facial expressions differed between the databases. The selectivity of computational units in the CNNs to action units of the face varied across the facial expressions. Importantly, the AU selectivity often differed drastically between the CNNs trained with the different databases. Similarity and dissimilarity of these tuning profiles partly explained the pattern of misclassifications, suggesting that the AUs are important for characterizing the facial features and differ between the two countries. The AU tuning profiles, especially those reduced by principal component analysis, are compact summaries useful for comparisons across different databases, and thus might advance our understanding of universality vs. specificity of facial expressions across cultures. (shrink)

Revisiting Guattari's visits to Japan in the 1980s during the country's ‘bubble economy’, this paper investigates from a personal perspective the Radio Homerun mini-FM station as well as other stops on Guattari's Tokyo ‘pilgrimage’. Guattari's reception and influence in Japan is contextualised through the writer Kõbõ Abe and philosopher Kiyoteru Hanada, in addition to the groundbreaking work of Tetsuo Kogawa, against the backdrop of the rise of postmodernism. Similarities between Guattari's sense of Japan and Brazil are then broached.