[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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In human newborns, presentation of sounds and odors under stress situations had a calming effect on behavioral and cortisol responses (Kawakami et al., 1996, 1997). In newborns of Japanese macaques, white noise presentation had a calming effect on coded behavioral responses, and lavender odor presentation had a calming effect on cortisol responses (Kawakami et al., 2002). We presented artificial apple odor/artificial milk odor to newborn Japanese macaques in a stress situation. Both odors had no calming effects on behavioral and cortisol responses. The different effects of stimuli presentation under stress situation between human and macaques were discussed.

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In the study of art, the philosophical tradition, and important assumptions within this tradition, forms the basis for psychological conceptions and cognitive models of art perception, implicit goals and approach to art-viewing, and their application to art education and viewer relations. However, the prevalent philosophical conception of art and aesthetic experience, which share the assumption that success or "cognitive mastery" drives aesthetic perception, contains fundamental flaws, which extend to, and ultimately constrain, the study and application of art. While existing conceptions explain how a viewer masters the environment, based upon prior expectations and abilities, they cannot explain how they come to perceive and be transformed by, something new; nor can they account for how this feels. Yet, it is exactly these qualities in art-perception that both philosophers and social scientists agree constitutes the unique "challenge" of art. It is necessary that this be examined, and a solution considered, building from the philosophical basis and then extended to a psychological discussion. We argue that, in opposition to success, a failure- based model, organized around the conflict between self-protection and self-transformation in the processing of discrepancy, is better able to explicitly unite cognition, emotion and physiological effect with perception and evaluation; and allows for needed discussion of perceptual and conceptual change within experience, and a needed distinction between "facile" evaluation and mastery following meta-cognitive reflection and adjustment. We explore both success and failure-based approaches and introduce conceptual and contextual aspects for a five-stage failure-based model of art-perception culminating in "Aesthetic Experience"; discuss the inter-relation of emotional and cognitive factors that may be important for objective research on art evaluation and art education; and clarify the important tie between failure, epiphany and perceptual growth in the experience of art.

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In general, red tide indicates a visual and customary name for the "phenomenon that microalgae in seawater proliferate abnormally, causing a sudden change in sea surface color." However, this is not sufficient to quantitatively understand red tide, and the definition of red tide is not clear. On the other hand, the Ise Bay is considered to have eutrophication and red tide is regularly observed in the Bay. Although the load of nutrient salts has been decreasing, the Bay is one of the areas where determining the relation between red tide and water quality control is difficult. In this study, the author established the criteria to define red tide (red tide index), applied a stepwise method to a multiple regression model, and determined a stable model that has Chl-a (red tide index) as its explanatory variable. Environmental influence was captured by the change in the coefficient of determination of the red tide index model, which implicitly indicated the influence of the Fifth Regulation of Total Pollutant Load Control.

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This paper examines (1) how the Ford Administration tried to persuade South Korea to give up obtaining the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant and their related technologies, which were one of the most sensitive among peaceful nuclear use, and (2) how the Carter Administration solved the dispute with Japan over the operation of its first reprocessing plant in Tokai-Mura. The Ford Administration found the multinational reprocessing concept as a solution to persuade South Korea to forgo its possession of reprocessing plant. In this concept, the multinational reprocessing plant was supposed to be established in territories of a more reliable nation, while the neighboring nations in sensitive areas were to be allowed to access that facility and gain the benefits in exchange for giving up its own reprocessing. The Ford administration tried to get the Japanese help to realize this concept. In the end, South Korea abandoned its reprocessing option because of the U.S. intimidation that the acquisition of reprocessing plant could have a negative impact on the U.S.-Korean bilateral security partnership. The Carter Administration, on the other hand, considered a reprocessing option uneconomic and even universally harmful in terms of proliferation risk, and so it called for a stronger effort to stop the spread of reprocessing plants. As such, the Carter Administration itself abandoned the reprocessing option domestically, while requesting the Japanese to reconsider the operation of the Tokai-Mura plant in attempt to demonstrate that it would seek the universal goal. Thus although the Carter Administration ended up giving concession to the Japanese government, the agreement was made on the condition that Japan's first reprocessing plant was to be operated on experimental basis for the first two years to obtain the technical data for the creation of the international regime to prevent the spread of sensitive technologies.

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Theory of Mind (ToM) which the ability to attribute mental states to others are important processes in social cognition. Brain imaging studies in healthy subjects have described a brain system involving medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal sulcus and temporal pole in ToM processing. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we used the picture sequencing tasks with both intentional story (ToM story) and physical story in order to allow comparison of brain activations in these two processes. Participants were ten right-handed healthy Japanese volunteers (male = 5, female = 5; mean age was 24.9 years, s.d. = 1.4). Functional images were acquired using a 1.5 T Siemens Magnetom Vision. Our results showed that the ToM story compared to the physical story revealed increased activations in bilateral superior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, and right middle frontal gyrus. Correct responses in the ToM story were associated with enhanced activations of right middle frontal gyrus, bilateral superior frontal gyrus, right orbital gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus. These activations are common to a part of results in previous brain imaging studies on ToM and social cognitive functions using various tasks. The present study suggests that social cognition in a nonverbal task is especially associated with the medial and right middle frontal function. These results have implications for our understanding of disorders characterized by impairments of social cognition which are related to making references about mental states of others, such as schizophrenia and autism.

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We know not a few industries and corporations work forest management projects for global warming mitigation as one of the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Though their impacts on Japanese natural resources conservation and regional activation are huge, they are not guaranteed any sustainability and propriety of content since these approaches belong to voluntary initiative legally. Therefore, in summarizing the actual forest management projects' present circumstances and CSR itself, I suggest that any forest management projects' subjects should be encouraged keeping "public interest" "sustainability" "regionality" under the Forest and Timber Fundamental Act (Rev.2001). With recent progress in densely populated in some large cities and depopulation in remote rural areas, forest management project as CSR is getting more significant. The industries and corporations, which could operate the majority of human and material resources, can be asked for the adequate sense of ecosystem healthy and the voluntary initiative to proceed their forest management project as CSR. On that I try to propose the legislation "Forest Management Trust and Consignment Contract Act" which offers any new forest management projects' subjects signed a long-tem contract with forest owners for well conservation stability and its reliability, and the establishment of public scheme "Agreement" with effectiveness and reliability for indirect forest management project support.

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We examined the relationship between the feeling of well-being and the duration judgments by remembering of a negative (earthquake) and non negative (social) memories for 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s elderly groups. They were asked to produce the subjective time for each event and fill out the questionnaire of feeling of well-being. The results showed that female participants in 70s, 80s elderly groups decreased the subjective time of the negative event. Moreover, as feeling of well-being declined, the subjective time of the negative event were also decreased. The results suggest that less subjective time of the negative events may lead to less forgetting of them and associate with the present negative activities and imagining negative future happenings.

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