When reading folktales, we suddenly realize that the thoughts and daily activities of the people who passed them down are deeply engraved in them. It is surprising to know that some of the Irish folktales are very similar to Japanese folktales, and I wondered if it means that people have been thinking alike since ancient times, or that they somehow made their way from Ireland, on the western edge of Europe, to Japan, on the eastern edge of Asia. In any case, it can be expected that it may be because the Japanese people's ancient way of living and thinking is similar in some respects to that of the Irish people, and that this may have influenced their stories. In this study, we would like to compare Irish and Japanese folktales concretely and consider the differences and similarities between them to approach the clarification of the question.

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The purpose of this study is to obtain the data for heat transfer to supercritical pressure water flowing laminar in parallel plate. One dimensional numerical simulation taking account of dependence of the variation of fluid physical properties on temperature was performed at the cross section of fully developed flow, and following results were obtained. (1) Heat transfer characteristic obtained in this study is similar to that obtained by massive thermal flow analysis. (2) Effect of cross-sectional variation of fluid physical properties, especially specific heat, to heat transfer is shown where the bulk fluid temperature is over near pseudocritical temperature. (3) Effect of variation of mass velocity to heat transfer is quite smaller than that of physical properties.

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At the time of the COVID-19 Crisis in April 2021, the author became a homeroom teacher for the first grade in National Institute of Technology (KOSEN), Kumamoto College. We feel that the classroom could not be ventilated smoothly, so we develop and install the CO2 monitor system in the classroom with electric parts on hand quickly. The knowledge required to develop a CO2 monitor system is not limited to circuits and programs. For example, reading electronic parts specifications written in English, operating development tools such as circuit board CAD and circuit simulator, and setting up a Web server to transmit CO2 data are required. After installation of the CO2 monitor system, the author presents the development story of it to students and conduct a questionnaire survey. As a result, we confirm that the CO2 monitor system has effects on the students' study motivation.

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Extremely heavy rain fell mainly in southern Kumamoto from dawn on July 4th 2020 due to a linear precipitation zone. The Meteorological Agency issued a emergency warning mainly for southern Kumamoto before dawn on July 4th. Residents were forced to evacuate from dawn. This study conducted a questionnaire survey of students of national institute of Kumamoto College to ascertain the disaster prevention awareness of Kumamoto residents of the July 2020 heavy rainfall event. The questionnaires were also provided with location information, and differences in disaster prevention awareness by region were analyzed. The results showed that despite the intensity of the torrential rainfall, there were few cases of evacuation activities, indicating the need for further improvement of disaster prevention awareness.

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Item Response Theory (IRT) has come to be used in large-scale tests such as certification exams to clearly show the pass/fail of examinees. However, for a small number of examinees, the item parameter may become negative. Then I tried to apply Bayesian statistical modeling to IRT, item parameters and ability parameters can now be obtained. And a common item design was applied to make equating the abilities of examinee of this year to last year’s scale. The IRT analysis and equating small-scale tests provide a strong grounds of an argument for credit units and quality assurance.

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This paper attempts to estimate a level of concentration focusing on temporal changes of cerebral blood flow (CBF) for Stroop color-word test which is sometimes used in psychiatric research to induce prefrontal cerebral blood flow changes reflecting cognitive functions. The CBF is measured by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) instrument and processed by time synchronous averaging. Then, the distinction of the concentration from the time synchronous averaged waveforms is also discussed.

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In a previous report, we attempted to identify the species of green laver from the Kumagawa River based on the sequence of the rbcL gene on the plastid DNA, which turned out to be one of U. linza, U. prolifera, or U. procera. Since these three species form the U. linza-procera-prolifera (LPP) clade taxonomically and have completely identical rbcL sequences, it was necessary to determine the species by using other genetic markers. In this study, the 5S rDNA spacer regions on the chromosomal DNA were sequenced as a genetic marker to identify the species of green laver from the Kumagawa River. Our samples were confirmed as U. prolifera because of its highly homologous sequence with many U. prolifera sequences on database. Furthermore, the green laver grown in the Kumagawa River was identified as a group of U. prolifera mainly distributed along both the Pacific and Japan Sea Coasts in western Japan. This is consistent with its geographic relationship.

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Fries rearrangement reaction is a rearrangement of phenolic esters for preparing hydroxyaryl ketones, but the starting phenolic esters and their precursors acyl halides are sometime unstable to isolate. As a preliminary study to apply several carboxylic acid or amino acid to Fries rearrangement, a one-pot synthesis of hydroxyaryl ketones from a simple carboxylic acid was investigated. The process is envisioned in which carboxylic acid is converted in situ to mixed acid anhydride (RCO-OTf), then to phenolic esters and finally rearranged to the hydroxyaryl ketones. A one-pot reaction using benzoic acid as the carboxylic acid in the 3:7-Tf2O/TfOH system afforded the para-product of the Fries rearrangement, 4-hydroxybenzophenone, in high yield. One hour after initiation of the reaction, phenyl benzoate was detected and then disappeared, supporting rearrangement via the phenolic ester.

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