People often refer to as a chemical fiber allergy, where chemical fiber induces itching and/or skin-reddening onto skin by a direct contact. The chemical substances contained in chemical fiber are thought to provoke contact dermatitis, and a dermatologist recommends to wear cotton for the patients with contact dermatitis. However, no direct offending substance for contact dermatitis is found among the chemical substances contained in chemical fiber. We assess the influence of wearing cotton and polyester with respect to contact dermatitis by examining the skin condition of two groups of the subjects composed of young female students (aged from 20 to 22 years old) with healthy skin and with allergic dermatitis, respectively. The appearance of contact dermatitis is more often noted in summer and winter, and sweat and dryness are thought to be a main cause to induce contact dermatitis. The itching and skin-reddening were observed on the skin scraping against the cloth (neck or chest) and the bending part (elbow and knee) getting wet with sweat. The subjects with allergic dermatitis were found to have lower skin water amount, lower skin oily amount and lower skin elasticity than the subjects with healthy skin. The sweat collected from the subjects with allergic dermatitis exhibited a higher pH value than that collected from the healthy subjects, and also contained more histamine (an itching component). Chosen cotton and polyester as a stimulant, the influence of the material was examined by wearing T-shirts made of those materials. The results show that cotton induces less itching and skin-reddening than polyester with the thickness is the same, but thinner polyester exhibits better performance than cotton in this respect.

　The purpose of this paper is to investigate the trends in the studies of geo-park in China, through analyzing research papers related to geo-park in literature list of geo-park China, 1989~2015 (312papers). This study identified the overall trends among the research papers from the results obtained through summarizing and analyzing them. The first, From quantity and research field to analyze the papers. Then analysis on the trends of geo-park studies .

　This is a report of “An interdisciplinary study for solving the problems in the Asia-Pacific region” (Principal Investigator: Shigeki Matsumura), Interdisciplinary Research Project 2016 of the Institute of Human Culture Studies (IHCS) at Otsuma Women’s University. In this study, Shigeki Matsumura, Rio Sunami, and Izumi Takao visited the School of Social Development and Public Policy (SSDPP) at Fudan University to hold a round-table to talk about “The Present Circumstances of Chinese Society and Chinese Sociology” with Professor Hu Shoujun and Associate Professor Xu Ke on March 13, 2017. This article describes the point of argument of the talk. Since Sunami and Takao had taken notes at the talk, and Matsumura put together their notes and adjusted, Matsumura takes full responsibility for this article.

　Communicative competence is a concept introduced by Hymes and discussed and redefined by many scholars. Hymes’ original idea was that speakers of a language must have more than grammatical competence in order to be able to communicate effectively in a language. The framework of communicative competence in communicative language use includes four components; grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. The author begins by considering the notion of discourse competence as a concept that accounts for the knowledge elements and skills employed by academic writers. In this article, the author discusses aspects of the development of academic English skills in the development of text structure and organization, lexical cohesion, and grammatical cohesion (conjunction) in the EFL class in Japan.

　Bibliographic report on “ Shin-ban Eiri Hougen-Monoghatari Heiji-Monogatari ”. In the “ Hougen-Monoghatari ” and “ Heiji-Monogatari ” books (denpon), it is a denpon titled “popular edition” (rufubon) and although it’s value as a text cannot said to be high, it is important to investigate the various ways in which it was appreciated because the rufubon were widely disseminated and had great influence on the arts. This paper provides bibliographic information on this primary material.