In this article, I considered how childcare workers perceive children'sfeelings with their senses. In order to consider part of this aim, I looked at the relationship between how childcare workers who told us about children's feelings in middle voice, and her/his senses. I studied works by Bin Kimura and Masakazu Yamazaki. As a result of these studies, it was revealed that the corporeality of the one who talks about an object in middle voice is united with it. Based on this result, I think a childcare worker, who tells us about children's feelings in middle voice, senses it through the function of inter-corporeality, and she/he senses their corporeality using five senses. I think this is how children and childcare workers communicate well with each other.

  Image analysis was applied to evaluate the visual features of yukatas, aloha shirts, and kariyushi shirts with various colored patterns. The color measurements of the patterns were performed with a color scanner. L^*, a^*, b^*, C^*, and h of the CIE color system were obtained for each pixel (i,j) in the image. For color information, mean values of L^*, C^*, and h parameters for all pixels (AVE-L^*, AVE-a^*, AVE-b^*, AVE-C^*, and AVE-h) were obtained. For shape information, the angular second moment, contrast, correlation, and entropy parameters statistically extracted from gray-level distributions of color patterns were measured. The visual features were discussed in relation to similar and different properties of colored patterns. Furthermore, a forward-propagation neural network learning algorithm was applied and gave very good results in improving the accuracy of the visual evaluation system. The trained feedforward neural network model was successfully implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the application of neural networks for the classification of yukatas, aloha shirts, and kariyushi shirts of varied colored patterns.

  It is generally recognized that nutrition knowledge (NK) weakly influences healthy dietary habits, such as fruit and vegetable ingestion, although research in this area is scant in Japan. The purpose of this study is to develop an NK questionnaire for high school students in Japan and to investigate the relationship between NK and dietary habits, body mass index (BMI), and daily habits such as TV and exercise.

  The participants were 202 (99 male and 103 female) high school students in Akita Prefecture. The first 54 participants were retested to examine the reliability and validity of the questionnaire at a two-week interval. NK was assessed via 20 questions with four choices each, with one point given for correct responses and zero points for incorrect responses. The correlation coefficient between the first and second NK score was 0.750, and Cronbach's alpha was 0.529 and 0.419, respectively.

  The average NK scores were 11.3 ± 2.7 points for males and 11.8 ± 2.9 points for females, which was not statistically significant. Food frequency, BMI, and lifestyle habits were compared among four groups classified according to the NK score. There was a significant difference in the frequency of consuming milk/milk products (χ² = 21.40, p < 0.01), but statistical differences were not observed for other foods, including fruits/vegetables, BMI, and lifestyle habits. Our results and those of previous studies conducted in Japan suggest that the relationship between NK and healthy dietary habits may be difficult to demonstrate in the Japanese population.

  We compared the effects of different methods of heating sweet potatoes on the soluble dietary fiber (SDF) content, insoluble dietary fiber (IDF) content and resistant starch (RS) content, as well as the water holding capacity and adsorption ability of dietary fiber, through steaming and microwave heating. There was no difference in SDF content of sweet potatoes before and after heating for both steaming and microwave heating methods. The IDF content of raw sweet potatoes was 1.09%. After steaming, the IDF content increased significantly (p < 0.01) to 2.10%, but it was 1.29% after microwave heating, with no significant difference from that of raw sweet potatoes. The RS content of raw sweet potatoes was 0.93%, while it increased significantly (p < 0.05) to 1.89% and 1.34% after steaming and microwave heating, respectively. As the increase in IDF and RS after steaming was almost the same, the IDF that increased after steaming was thought to be RS. The water holding capacity and amaranth adsorption per gram of IDF in steamed sweet potatoes were significantly (p < 0.01) lower than those in raw and microwave heated sweet potatoes.

  This study examined the applicability of baking choux pastes in a cup. Wheat flour, wheat starch, rice flour, rice starch, and modified potato starch were used for sample preparation. Pastes were prepared by preheating from 20℃ to 98℃. A choux-like cavity was formed in all preheated samples made from wheat flour. Pastes from wheat starch and rice flour formed a cavity when pre-heated at ≥ 70℃. Pastes from rice starch and modified potato starch formed a cavity when preheated from 20℃ to 80℃ and 50℃ to 98℃, respectively. The rise in temperature was smaller when all pastes were preheated at 20℃ in a cup compared to that when baked without a cup. Therefore, baking in a cup suppressed the rise in temperature, contributing to cavity formation. The relationship between the viscosity coefficient of the paste and the maximum cavity ratio showed that the range of viscosity forming a cavity was widened by baking in a cup. These results indicate that baking pastes using various flours and starches in a cup is conducive to paste expansion and cavity formation.