A consumer cooperative association specializing in services for the elderly

Over the past 10 years, a Japanese cooperative association named Fukushi Club Seikyo (FCS) has developed a unique, non-profit business specializing in services for the elderly. It aims to promote a reciprocal support system among neighborhood community members. FCS has successively organized its active members, mainly homemakers, into workers' collectives and successfully provided various life support services at a very small charge. Their human-touch service appears in sharp contrast to bureaucratic public services and profit-making private services. The civil initiative presented by FCS suggests a potential for a community-based social service system that may guarantee quality services without raising taxes and premiums for social insurance.     

民族起源学说在20世纪中国

在20世纪中国近代国家建设和民族认同的形成过程中,民族的起源问题一直是知识分子所关注的问题。近年来不少学者注意到这一阶段的有关历史情况,但是主要关注20世纪初期,而极少与其前后时期联系探讨。至今,我们还不能确定这些学说和争论在整个20世纪中国的历史地位。对民族起源学说而言,20世纪中国的论争,第一是"外来/原住"模式向"土生=世居"模式的转化;第二是一元论和多元论反复交替的过程。在此过程中,起了关键作用的是苗族史论。在19世纪至20世纪前半期,苗族被视为中国最早的土著民族。这种"苗族原住"学说,与当年流行的"汉族西来"学说相结合,长期以来,影响了中国人的民族认同的形成,以及有关学科的发展。     

Source decomposition of changes in income inequality: the integral-based approach and its approximation by the chained Shapley-value approach

This paper proposes source decomposition of the change in income inequality between two time points using the integral-based approach (IBA) and the (chained) Shapley-value approach as its approximation. In comparison to static Shapley-value decompositions and traditional decompositions for the square of the coefficient of variation and the Gini index, the new dynamic Shapley-value approach is intuitively appealing as a decomposition procedure for changes in inequality. It is expected to yield relatively small differences among various inequality measures, essentially maintaining consistency with income source classification. Path dependency, a possible drawback of the new decompositions, is not expected to be a particular problem in the usual cases. The properties are illustrated for application to the increase in US family income inequality during 1979–1996. In this empirical study, the new decompositions showed a tendency that was clearly different from those of the existing decompositions, indicating that the proposed procedures shed new light on analysis of the causes of inequality changes. An extension to incorporate other factors such as family structure is also successful without loss of the desirable properties.     

Risk Assessment of the Carbon Nanotube Group

This study assessed the health risks via inhalation and derived the occupational exposure limit (OEL) for the carbon nanotube (CNT) group rather than individual CNT material. We devised two methods: the integration of the intratracheal instillation (IT) data with the inhalation (IH) data, and the “biaxial approach.” A four‐week IH test and IT test were performed in rats exposed to representative materials to obtain the no observed adverse effect level, based on which the OEL was derived. We used the biaxial approach to conduct a relative toxicity assessment of six types of CNTs. An OEL of 0.03 mg/m³ was selected as the criterion for the CNT group. We proposed that the OEL be limited to 15 years. We adopted adaptive management, in which the values are reviewed whenever new data are obtained. The toxicity level was found to be correlated with the Brunauer‐Emmett‐Teller (BET)‐specific surface area (BET‐SSA) of CNT, suggesting the BET‐SSA to have potential for use in toxicity estimation. We used the published exposure data and measurement results of dustiness tests to compute the risk in relation to particle size at the workplace and showed that controlling micron‐sized respirable particles was of utmost importance. Our genotoxicity studies indicated that CNT did not directly interact with genetic materials. They supported the concept that, even if CNT is genotoxic, it is secondary genotoxicity mediated via a pathway of genotoxic damage resulting from oxidative DNA attack by free radicals generated during CNT‐elicited inflammation. Secondary genotoxicity appears to involve a threshold.     

Decomposition of gini and multivariate gini indices

A new type of decomposition by population subgroup is proposed for the Gini inequality index. The decomposition satisfies the completely identical distribution (CID) condition, whereby the between-group inequality is null if and only if the distribution within each subgroup is identical to all the others. Thus, this decomposition contrasts strikingly with the subgroup decomposition of the generalized entropy measures, which satisfy the condition that the between-group inequality is null if the mean within each subgroup equals those of all the others. The new decomposition can be generalized to the distance-Gini index and the volume-Gini index, two multivariate Gini indices introduced by Koshevoy and Mosler, with some modification of the index definition and a somewhat loosened CID condition in the latter case. The source decomposition is also generalized to these multi-dimensional indices. Interaction terms appear among sources of different attributes in the decomposition for the modified volume–Gini index.

The Experimental Zone of Learning: Mapping the Dynamics of Everyday Experiment

Arguments in science and technology studies have prompted us to rethink the meaning of experimentation in the wider context of our everyday life, though its dynamics have not been fully analyzed. This article argues that the legacy of the sociocultural approach to learning, with special reference to the Becker-Lave/Wenger dialogue, provides such a clue, and hence proposes a framework—“experimental zone of learning”—for such purpose. This zone is the outcome of the dynamic interface between constraints and sociotechnical devices, and this framework enables analysis of the diversity of such conditions, as well as their longitudinal changes through time.     

Cognitive chrono-ethnography lite

Conducting field research facilitates understanding human daily activities. Cognitive Chrono-Ethnography (CCE) is a study methodology used to understand how people select actions in daily life by conducting ethnographical field research. CCE consists of measuring monitors' daily activities in a specified field and in-depth interviews using the recorded videos afterward. However, privacy issues may arise when conducting standard CCE with video recordings in a daily field. To resolve these issues, we developed a new study methodology, CCE Lite. To replace video recordings, we created pseudo-first-personview (PFPV) movies using a computer-graphic technique. The PFPV movies were used to remind the monitors of their activities. These movies replicated monitors' activities (e.g., locomotion and change in physical direction), with no human images and voices. We applied CCE Lite in a case study that involved female employees of hotels at a spa resort. In-depth interviews while showing the PFPV movies determined service schema of the employees (i.e., hospitality). Results indicated that using PFPV movies helped the employees to remember and reconstruct the situation of recorded activities.     

日本临床心理士的培养之道

日本在近二十年的临床心理士(中国称心理咨询师)培养过程中,依据心理咨询职业的独特性、广泛性和实践性特点,十分注重临床操作性。主要呈现了:起点平台高、临床实践强、课程设计合理等鲜明特点。特别是2003年提出在大学研究生院培养高度职业化的临床心理士,免去硕士论文,强化以实习为中心的新课程体系,提高临床实践能力。