Systems Development and Difficulties in Implementing Procedures for Elder Abuse Prevention Among Private Community General Support Centers in Japan

The present study examines differences in systems development and difficulties in implementing procedures for elder abuse prevention in 1,119 private and 606 public community general support centers under the public long-term care insurance program in Japan. The private community general support centers showed more difficulty implementing procedures than the public community general support centers. Controlling for the type of municipality, progress in systems development did not differ between the private and public community general support centers. Further research should examine how the characteristics of municipal governments are related to systems development in community general support centers.     

Sufficient conditions for the admissibility under the LINEX loss function in non-regular case

Consider an estimation problem under the LINEX loss function in one-parameter non-regular distributions where the endpoint of the support depends on an unknown parameter. The purpose of this paper is to give sufficient conditions for a generalized Bayes estimator of a parametric function to be admissible. Also, it is shown that the main result in this paper is an extension of the quadratic loss case. Some examples are given.     

Biodiversity and community structure of temperate butterfly species within a gradient of human disturbance: An analysis based on the concept of generalist vs. Specialist strategies

We monitored nine butterfly communities with varying degrees of human disturbance by conducting a census twice a month during 1980 by the line transect method in and around Tsukuba City, central Japan. We analyzed the biodiversity and community structures using the generalist/specialist concept. The site (community) order based on decreasing human disturbance was positively correlated with butterfly species diversity (H′), species richness (the total number of species), and the number of specialist species in a community, but not with the number of generalist species. The number of generalist species was rather constant, irrespective of the degree of human disturbance. Thus, both the butterfly species diversity and species richness were more dependent on the specialists than the generalists. Our analyses also showed that the generalist species were distributed widely over the communities, and they maintained high population densities, resulting in high rank status in abundance in a community, with more spatial variation in density per species. Specialist species showed the opposite trends. These results demonstrate that the generalist/specialist concept is a powerful tool applicable to analyse the biodiversity and structure of natural communities.     

Differences in facilities' acceptance of patients under long-term care insurance in Japan

OBJECTIVES: In April 2000, Japan launched a public, long-term care insurance (LTCI) plan for elderly people who need support. This study describes how medical support for the elderly is delivered at LTCI care facilities in Japan now and gaps between system goals and current activity. Recommendations are made for enhancing the implementation of LTCI. METHODS: We mailed questionnaires to all health service facilities for the elderly (HSF) and special nursing homes for the elderly (SNH) located in the Kyushu area of Japan, asking whether they would accept patients with nine specific conditions. RESULTS: We found that HSFs, which are required to employ a full-time doctor and are reimbursed at a higher rate, accept significantly fewer patients with four conditions that need medical support than are accepted by SNHs, which are not required to employ a full-time doctor. DISCUSSION: In this study, we find discrepancies between system goals and current activities at LTCI care facilities. For the Japanese LTCI system to work well in the limitation of medical resources, we must understand how it really works and to reform the system continuously.     

A field study of the effect of prebaiting on censusing by the capture-recapture method in a vole population

Summary Populations of the vole,Clethrionomys rufocanus, in a lowland woodlot of Hokkaido were studied for the presence of effects of prebaiting on censusing by the capture-recapture method. A grid of 121 live-traps, spaced 5 m apart, was laid out on each of two plots, one of which alone was prebaited three days long. Owing to very high densities and great trap-efficiency, sufficient and favourable samples could be available for statistical analysis, except the trend of delayed catch for young in sampling. The population on either plot, however, proved to be markedly variable in catchability of unmarked animals in the course of trapping; while the probability of recapture was counted as invariable on the average from day to day, the recapture frequency was different between juveniles, subadults and adults. Needless to say, the catchability was distinctly greater for marked voles than for unmarked ones, whether prebaited or not, through the trapping period, except that the first-day catchability for unmarked ones on the prebaited plot seems not to be significantly lower than that for marked ones. Consequently, it turns out that the prebaiting has almost never helped to eliminate the important bias induced by differential trap-response of marked and unmarked animals; its contribution is only that the catchability for unmarked ones is slightly higher on the part of the prebaited plot on earlier days of the period. In accordance with the heterogeneous catchability, the Γ-form distribution analogous to the geometric could be applied with thorough fitness to the capture frequency in order to estimate the whole populations. The fact that the estimates are reliable, being not at any rate underestimates, was further confirmed by the result of a follow-up work conducted by means of the removal method with wider trap-spacing which brought forth distinct underestimation chiefly referable to unexposure to traps of the partial populations. The subject of unexposure was discussed by laying stress on the relation between minimum range length and trap-spacing. Contribution from JIBP-PT No. 88, carried out by the grant from the expenditure of Education Department to the specific study on “Dynamics of Biosphere”.     

Aging in Rural Japan—Limitations in the Current Social Care Policy

Owing to equal and increased opportunities for education and employment, today's trend in Japanese marriages is characterized by late and less frequent marriage. This paper discusses unavoidable diversity in rural families to point out the anticipated consequences of aging in rural areas and to discuss limitations in current public social care policies. Specifically, the averaged proportion of never-married and single persons at ages 45 to 49 and 50 to 54 in legally recognized depopulated cities, towns, and villages in Japan is calculated to illustrate the expected diversity in families in rural depopulated areas. It also illustrates the need for future studies to develop better social care policies for increasing numbers of single caregivers and single elders.     

Factors affecting children’s judgement of culturally deviant acts: findings from an international school in Japan

This study explored the relationship between perceptions of culturally deviant acts and multicultural experiences of elementary-school children attending an international school in Japan. Findings indicated that children judged a Japanese harsher than a foreigner, irrespective of the children’s age. It was also found that younger children were more susceptible to cultural factors such as their own experience abroad and mother’s activities, which encouraged the formation of less stereotypical images of foreigners.     

Redefining the Moral Responsibilities for Food Safety: The Case of Red Meat in New Zealand*

Abstract Food safety governance is shaped by social relationships among the state, the industry, and the public in the food system in a given country. This paper examines the contestation among actors in New Zealand's red meat chain over the implementation of the Animal Product Act of 1999 (APA), which became a cornerstone in the reform of food safety governance. The discussion focuses on the APA's impact on three types of social relations in the red meat chain, those between: (a) the state and the industry; (b) consumers and citizens; and (c) New Zealand and “offshore.” This paper argues that food safety governance is an important element of the moral economy in a given country and poses both policy and ethical challenges in balancing conflicting needs between the global and local agrofood systems.     

The informational basis of the theory of fair allocation

The theory of fair allocation is often favourably contrasted with the social choice theory in the search for escape routes from Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Its success is commonly attributed to the fact that it is modest in its goal vis-à-vis social choice theory, since it does not aspire for a full-fledged ordering of options, and settles with a subset of ‘fair’ options. We show that its success may rather be attributable to a broadened informational basis thereof. To substantiate this claim, we compare the informational basis of the theory of fair allocation with the informational requirements of social choice theory.This paper is derived from a part of an earlier draft of our paper entitled ‘Informational requirements for social choice in economic environments’. The authors thank A. Trannoy, an associate editor and three referees for comments, and participants at seminars in University of Cergy-Pontoise, University of Rochester, Hitotsubashi University, and Waseda University, and the 5th International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare in Alicante. Financial support from the Ministry of Education of Japan through Grant-in-Aid No. 10045010 (‘Economic Institutions and Social Norms: Evolution and Transformation’) and the 21st Century Center of Excellence Project on the Normative Evaluation and Social Choice of Contemporary Economic Systems is gratefully acknowledged.     

The Other‐Race Effect in Infancy: Evidence Using a Morphing Technique

Human adults are more accurate at discriminating faces from their own race than faces from another race. This other‐race effect (ORE) has been characterized as a reflection of face processing specialization arising from differential experience with own‐race faces. We examined whether 3.5‐month‐old infants exhibit ORE using morphed faces on which adults had displayed a crossover ORE (i.e., Caucasians performed better on Caucasian faces and Asians performed better on Asian faces). In this experiment, Caucasian infants who had grown up in a predominantly Caucasian environment discriminated 100% Caucasian faces from 70% Caucasian/30% Asian morphed faces but failed to discriminate between the corresponding 100% Asian and 70% Asian/30% Caucasian faces. Thus, 3.5‐month‐olds exhibited evidence of ORE. These results indicate that at least by 3.5 months of age, infants have attained enough face processing expertise to process familiar‐race faces in a different manner than unfamiliar‐race faces.