Comparative quantifiers, such as more than three books, cannot take scope over any quantifier in subject position if they occupy object position. This is clearly different from the behavior of other quantifiers (e.g., universal quantifiers). This paper argues that this scope puzzle is due to a more complex internal structure of comparative quantifiers than other quantifiers. In the decompositional approach that I pursue, comparative quantifiers are decomposed into two generalized quantifiers (i.e., in the case above, the comparative operator er than (...) three and the DP many books). In this approach, obligatory narrow scope of comparative quantifiers in object position is a consequence of the interplay of the independently motivated principles of grammar that also constrain other quantifiers. On the basis of the scope puzzle, I specifically argue for two constraints on Scope Shifting Operations (SSOs) a locality condition on SSOs and Scope Economy, proposed by Fox (2000), which prohibits SSOs that have no effect on semantic interpretation. Thus, I argue that the apparently peculiar facts of comparative quantifiers are, in fact, additional evidence for the core properties of SSOs. (shrink)

Japanese conversations are known to contain a large amount of unexpressed information. When a speaker speaks with elliptical information, he or she assumes that the addressee will understand what is not overtly expressed based on the knowledge that is supposed to be shared textually, personally or culturally. The addressee, on the other hand, must determine what is not being expressed overtly using such shared knowledge. At the heart of this kind of communication is the existence of trust assumed among the (...) interlocutors. Using the term ‘entrustment’, we will examine how one particular Japanese formulaic construction, [Noun yo Noun], ‘It’s Noun, you know, Noun’, indexes mutual trust to manage conversational interaction. We will argue that this meta-pragmatic awareness needs to be recognized beyond surface interactional patterns identified in conversation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 2 Seiten: 161-210.

In this paper, we discuss uniform versions of some axioms of second order arithmetic in the context of higher order arithmetic. We prove that uniform versions of weak weak König's lemma WWKL and Σ01 separation are equivalent to over a suitable base theory of higher order arithmetic, where is the assertion that there exists Φ2 such that Φf1 = 0 if and only if ∃x0 for all f. We also prove that uniform versions of some well-known theorems are equivalent to (...) or the axiom of the existence of the Suslin operator. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethical aspects of organ transplant surgery in which a donor heart is transplanted from a first recipient, following determination of death by neurologic criteria, to a second recipient. Retransplantation in this sense differs from that in which one recipient undergoes repeat heart transplantation of a newly donated organ, and is thus referred to here as “reuse cardiac organ transplantation.” Medical, legal, and ethical analysis, with a main focus on ethical analysis. From the medical perspective, it is (...) critical to ensure the quality and safety of reused organs, but we lack sufficient empirical data pertaining to medical risk. From the legal perspective, a comparative examination of laws in the United States and Japan affirms no illegality, but legal scholars disagree on the appropriate analysis of the issues, including whether or not property rights apply to transplanted organs. Ethical arguments supporting the reuse of organs include the analogous nature of donation to gifts, the value of donations as inheritance property, and the public property theory as it pertains to organs. Meanwhile, ethical arguments such as those that address organ recycling and identity issues challenge organ reuse. We conclude that organ reuse is not only ethically permissible, but even ethically desirable. Furthermore, we suggest changes to be implemented in the informed consent process prior to organ transplantation. The organ transplant community worldwide should engage in wider and deeper discussions, in hopes that such efforts will lead to the timely preparation of guidelines to implement reuse cardiac organ transplantation as well as reuse transplantation of other organs such as kidney and liver. (shrink)

Experimental studies have developed, conducted, and evaluated classroom interventions for foreign language anxiety reduction. However, various characteristics of those classroom interventions make it difficult to synthesize the findings and apply them to practice. We conducted what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first systematic review on educational interventions for FLA. Six criteria were established for inclusion of studies. Using English keywords, we identified 854 potentially eligible studies through ProQuest and Scopus, 40 of which were finally included. All included (...) studies were published from 2007 to 2020. The studies differed in type of intervention, duration of intervention, and scale to measure FLA. Our systematic review resulted in seven features of classroom interventions, categorized as student–student interactions, student-teacher interactions, self-management, and mood boosters; we also categorized interventions as either individual or interactional. (shrink)

Using anthropological theory, this paper examines human–android interactions (HAI) as an emerging aspect of android science. These interactions are described in terms of adaptive learning (which is largely subconscious). This article is based on the observations reported and supplementary data from two studies that took place in Japan with a teleoperated android robot called Telenoid in the socialization of school children and older adults. We argue that interacting with androids brings about a special context, an interval, and a space/time for (...) reflection and imagination that was not there before. During the interaction something happens. There is adaptive learning and as a result, both children and older adults accepted Telenoid, and the children and older adults accepted each other. Using frames of play and ritual, we make sense and ‘capture’ moments of adaptive learning, and the feedback that elicits a social response from all study participants that results in self-efficacy and socialization. While “ritual” refers to the application of what has been learned and “play” means that there are no obvious consequences of what has been learned. This analysis illuminates new understanding about the uncanny valley, cultural robotics and the therapeutic potential of HAI. This has implications for the acceptance of androids in ‘socialized roles’ and gives us insight into the subconscious adaptive learning processes that must take place within humans to accept androids into our society. This approach aims to provides a clearer conceptual basis and vocabulary for further research of android and humanoid development. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the logical strength of completeness theorems for intuitionistic logic along the program of reverse mathematics. Among others we show that is equivalent over to the strong completeness theorem for intuitionistic logic: any countable theory of intuitionistic predicate logic can be characterized by a single Kripke model.

In this paper, we investigate the logical strength of two types of fixed point theorems in the context of reverse mathematics. One is concerned with extensions of the Banach contraction principle. Among theorems in this type, we mainly show that the Caristi fixed point theorem is equivalent to math formula over math formula. The other is dedicated to topological fixed point theorems such as the Brouwer fixed point theorem. We introduce some variants of the Fan-Browder fixed point theorem and the (...) Kakutani fixed point theorem, which we call math formula and math formula, respectively. Then we show that math formula is equivalent to math formula and math formula is equivalent to math formula, over math formula. In addition, we also study the application of the Fan-Browder fixed point theorem to game systems. (shrink)

Human space exploration requires massive budgets every fiscal year. Especially under severe financial constraint conditions, governments are forced to justify to society why spending so much tax revenue for human space exploration is worth the cost. The value of human space exploration might be estimated in many ways, but its social significance and cost-effectiveness are two key ways to gauge that worth. Since these measures should be applied country by country because sociopolitical conditions differ in each country and must be (...) taken into consideration, the study on the social significance of human space exploration must take the coloration of a case-study. This paper, focusing on the case of Japan with surveying Japanese literary and national documents as well as taking its sociopolitical conditions into account, examines the social significance of human space exploration. -/- First, we give an overview of the circumstances surrounding Japan's human space exploration program. Derived from the statements of such relevant parties as scholars, journalists, policy makers, and astronauts, this overview indicates that the main concerns about human space exploration in Japan are its social significance and cost-effectiveness (Section 1). Next, an overview of behavioral science—an essential field for human space exploration (referred to in this paper as space behavioral science) that provides support for astronauts—is presented from the perspective of stress research in isolated and confined environments (Section 2). We then give two examples of where such knowledge from space behavioral science research has been applied to terrestrial isolated and confined environments. One is JAXA’s support in 2009 for people who were vulnerable to infection by a new strain of flu and accordingly placed in an isolated and confined facility under the Infectious Disease Law and the Quarantine Law. The other is NASA's support in 2010 for Chilean mine workers who were trapped 700 m underground after a mining accident (Section 3). Based on these case studies, we illustrate the further social utility of such knowledge through a discussion of potential applications in other situations in Japan. Focusing on Japan for its geographical and social features in being an earthquake-prone archipelago and having the world's preeminent aging society, we show that refugees living in evacuation centers and people in an elderly-elderly homecare situation pose socially problematic situations specific to Japan. We then argue that space behavioral scientific knowledge can be applied to support people under these and other isolated and confined environments in various ways (Section 4). Finally, we demonstrate that such an application can be understood as an ethical contribution to Japanese society and that this contribution can be embedded in Japan's space policy (Section 5). We conclude that human space exploration can be a socially significant and cost-effective endeavor that is worthy of tax revenue expenditures because space behavioral science is highly likely to provide unique and useful knowledge to help address various social problems concerning terrestrial isolated and confined environments and support people in sufferings there. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Act Regarding the Promotion of the Appropriate Supply of Hematopoietic Stem Cells for Transplant regulates only how public banks store and provide umbilical cord blood for research or transplantation. Japan had no laws to regulate how the private banks manage the procedures, harvesting, preparation, and storage of such blood. As a result, the status of UCB distribution remains unknown. We conducted a survey to investigate the current status of UCB storage and provision to private biobanks by Japanese institutions that (...) handle childbirth.MethodsQuestionnaire forms were mailed to 3,277 facilities handling childbirth that were registered in the Japan Council for Quality Health Care website.ResultsOf the 1,192 institutions handling childbirth that participated in the survey, 34.4% responded that they currently provide UCB to private biobanks, while 16.1% of facilities did so in the past. Moreover, some institutions currently provide or formerly provided UCB to medical treatment facilities, research institutions, companies, or overseas treatment facilities, research institutions, or companies. A certain number of institutions handling childbirth did not even provide explanations or obtain consent when the UCB was harvested from private bank users.ConclusionsThis is the first study to determine the status of UCB provision to private banks by Japanese institutions handling childbirth. Future studies will need to examine in detail how institutions handling childbirth provide explanations to private bank users and UCB providers as well as how these institutions obtain consent. (shrink)

構造主義からアクターネットワークセオリーまで、哲学と人類学という二つの知的実践は交錯してきた。その現代的な意義を考える。 ドゥルーズ=ガタリ、メルロ=ポンティ、サルトル、モース、デュルケム、ヴィヴェイロス・デ・カストロ、デスコラ、ストラザーン――いずれも「自然」をめぐり、レヴィ=ストロースの神話論理の再解釈や「構造」の捉 えなおしとして進行してきた哲学と人類学について、思考様式の違いや歴史的な影響関係、主題の反復を浮き彫りにする。.

Currently in Japan, discontinuing an invasive mechanical ventilator (IMV) is illegal; therefore IMV-related decision making is a crucial issue. This study examined IMV decision-making factors and psychological conflict in 50 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The Herth Hope Index was used for the assessment of pre- and post-IMV conflict. Interviews identified some decision-making factors: patient’s decision, patient’s and family’s mutual decision, family’s decision, and emergency-induced without patient’s or family’s consent. Participants who experienced no IMV-related regret received sufficient prior IMV education (...) from physicians and nurses, and time for reflection and family consultation. Their hope was similar to their pre-onset levels. Patients who received no prior IMV education accepted treatment as a natural progression. Their hope levels were lower than pre-onset. Those who received only a brief prior IMV explanation rejected the ventilator, experiencing regret if they were given an emergency IMV. Their hope levels were among the lowest. However, some of these patients managed to overcome their regret through being helped by nurses. Sufficient physician explanation and nursing advocacy for autonomous patient decision making are critical for improving hope in this patient group. (shrink)

Context Autopsy is a useful tool for understanding the cause and manner of unexpected patient death. However, the attitudes of the general public and physicians in Japan about clinical autopsy are limited. Objective To describe the beliefs of the general public about whether autopsy should be performed and ascertain if they would actually request one given specific clinical situations where patient death occurred with the additional variable of medical error. To compare these attitudes with previously obtained attitudes of physicians practising (...) at Japanese teaching hospitals. Design, setting and participants We conducted a cross-sectional study of the general public. We sent standardised questionnaires in 2010 to a randomly selected non-physician adult population using a survey company for participant selection. Respondents gave their opinions about the necessity of autopsy and how they might act given various clinical scenarios of patient death. We compared these results with those of a previous survey of Japanese physicians conducted in 2009. Results Of the 2300 eligible general adult population, 1575 (68.5%) responded. The majority of the general public indicated they believed an autopsy was necessary. However, in cases of unclear medical error or unclear cause and effect relationship of medical care and patient death, the general public were much less likely to indicate they would actually request an autopsy than were physicians (p<0.0001). Currently in Japan the debate about the role autopsy should play in the case of error related to death is underway. The results from this study will be important in informing related decisions. (shrink)

We present a nonparametric approach to prediction of the n-back n \in {1, 2} task as a proxy measure of mental workload using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) data. In particular, we focus on measuring the mental workload through hemodynamic responses in the brain induced by these tasks, thereby realizing the potential that they can offer for their detection in real world scenarios (e.g., difficulty of a conversation). Our approach takes advantage of intrinsic linearity that is inherent in the components of (...) the NIRS time series to adopt a one step regression strategy. We demonstrate the correctness of our approach through its mathematical analysis. Furthermore, we study the performance of our model in an inter-subject setting in contrast with state-of-the-art techniques in the literature to show a significant improvement on prediction of these tasks (82.50% and 86.40% for female and male participants, respectively). Moreover, our empirical analysis suggest a gender difference effect on the performance of the classifiers (with male data exhibiting a higher non-linearity) along with the left-lateralized activation in both genders with higher specificity in females. (shrink)

In our former works, for a given concept of reduction, we study the following hypothesis: “For a random oracle A, with probability one, the degree of the one-query tautologies with respect to A is strictly higher than the degree of A.” In our former works (Suzuki in Kobe J. Math. 15, 91–102, 1998; in Inf. Comput. 176, 66–87, 2002; in Arch. Math. Logic 44, 751–762), the following three results are shown: The hypothesis for p-T (polynomial-time Turing) reduction is equivalent to (...) the assertion that the probabilistic complexity class R is not equal to NP; The hypothesis for p-tt (polynomial-time truth-table) reduction implies that P is not NP; The hypothesis holds for each of the following: disjunctive reduction, conjunctive reduction, and p-btt (polynomial-time bounded-truth-table) reduction. In this paper, we show the following three results: (1) Let c be a positive real number. We consider a concept of truth-table reduction whose norm is at most c times size of input, where for a relativized propositional formula F, the size of F denotes the total number of occurrences of propositional variables, constants and propositional connectives. Then, our main result is that the hypothesis holds for such tt-reduction, provided that c is small enough. How small c can we take so that the above holds? It depends on our syntactic convention on one-query tautologies. In our setting, the statement holds for all c < 1. (2) The hypothesis holds for monotone truth-table reduction (also called positive reduction). (3) Dowd (in Inf. Comput. 96, 65–76, 1992) shows a polynomial upper bound for the minimum sizes of forcing conditions associated with a random oracle. We apply the above result (1), and get a linear lower bound for the sizes. (shrink)

In this paper, we generalize a result of Brown and Simpson [1] to prove that RCA0+Π0∞-BCT is conservative over RCA0 with respect to the set of formulae in the form ∃!Xφ, where φ is arithmetical. We also consider the conservation of Π00∞-BCT over Σb1-NIA+∇b1-CA.

In this paper, we show within RCA 0 that weak Konig's lemma is necessary and sufficient to prove that any (separable) compact group has a Haar measure. Within WKL 0 , a Haar measure is constructed by a non-standard method based on a fact that every countable non-standard model of WKL 0 has a proper initial part isomorphic to itself [10].

Attitudes toward robots influence the tendency to accept or reject robotic devices. Thus it is important to investigate whether and how attitudes toward robots can change. In this pilot study we investigate attitudinal changes in elderly citizens toward a tele-operated robot in relation to three parameters: (i) the information provided about robot functionality, (ii) the number of encounters, (iii) personality type. Fourteen elderly residents at a rehabilitation center participated. Pre-encounter attitudes toward robots, anthropomorphic thinking, and personality were assessed. Thereafter the (...) participants interacted with a tele-operated robot (Telenoid) during their lunch (c. 30 min.) for up to 3 days. Half of the participants were informed that the robot was tele-operated (IC) whilst the other half were naïve to its functioning (UC). Post-encounter assessments of attitudes toward robots and anthropomorphic thinking were undertaken to assess change. Attitudes toward robots were assessed with a new generic 35-items questionnaire (attitudes toward social robots scale: ASOR-5), offering a differentiated conceptualization of the conditions for social interaction. There was no significant difference between the IC and UC groups in attitude change toward robots though trends were observed. Personality was correlated with some tendencies for attitude changes; Extraversion correlated with positive attitude changes to intimate-personal relatedness with the robot (r = 0.619) and to psychological relatedness (r = 0.581) whilst Neuroticism correlated negatively (r = -0.582) with mental relatedness with the robot. The results tentatively suggest that neither information about functionality nor direct repeated encounters are pivotal in changing attitudes toward robots in elderly citizens. This may reflect a cognitive congruence bias where the robot is experienced in congruence with initial attitudes, or it may support action-based explanations of cognitive dissonance reductions, given that robots, unlike computers, are not yet perceived as action targets. Specific personality traits may be indicators of attitude change relating to specific domains of social interaction. Implications and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

By , we denote the system of second-order arithmetic based on recursive comprehension axioms and Σ10 induction. is defined to be plus weak König's lemma: every infinite tree of sequences of 0's and 1's has an infinite path. In this paper, we first show that for any countable model M of , there exists a countable model M′ of whose first-order part is the same as that of M, and whose second-order part consists of the M-recursive sets and sets not (...) in the second-order part of M. By combining this fact with a certain forcing argument over universal trees, we obtain the following result : if proves X!Y with arithmetical, so does . We also discuss several improvements of this results. (shrink)

Este ensaio tem a intenção de trazer uma discussão sobre os pressupostos epistemológicos de Bachelard e Fleck, dois referenciais teóricos hoje muito utilizados em teses e pesquisas em Educação, Filosofia e Ensino. Estaremos argumentando que as duas referências têm interessantes convergências epistemológicas e que podem ser potencialmente úteis para pensar a educação científica.

Sleep is mandatory in most animals that have the nervous system and is universally observed in model organisms ranging from the nematodes, zebrafish, to mammals. However, it is unclear whether different sleep states fulfill common functions and are driven by shared mechanisms in these different animal species. Mammals and birds exhibit two obviously distinct states of sleep, i.e., non-rapid eye movement sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, but it is unknown why sleep should be so segregated. Studying sleep in other (...) animal models might give us clues that help solve this puzzle. Recent studies suggest that REM sleep, or ancestral forms of REM sleep might be found in non-mammalian or -avian species such as reptiles. These observations suggest that REM sleep and NREM sleep evolved earlier than previously thought. In this review, we discuss the evolutionary origin of the distinct REM/NREM sleep states to gain insight into the mechanistic and functional reason for these two different types of sleep. (shrink)