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This paper is written about the transformation of children's playing spaces in one neighborhood in Tokyo (Taishido district in Setagaya ward). As part of an action research project that was initiated in 1981 and followed up in 2005, play maps were created for residents of four generations. In exploring historical changes in the town that have affected the play of children, we found many unwelcome patterns of change that have the effect of decreasing nature spaces, limiting communication between children, and even decreasing children's play outdoors. On a positive note, this action research illustrated an effective approach for engaging people of different generations and encouraging them to pay more attention to environmental changes that have an impact on children's play and to take actions to improve the neighborhood for and with children. This paper is meant to contribute to our understanding of children's environment issues, an area that has roots in several disciplines, including human development, environmental psychology, geography, urban planning, architecture, and landscape architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To investigate mortality, cause of death, and risk factors related to mortality in Japanese patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods: The IORRA cohort is a large observational cohort established in 2000 at the Institute of Rheumatology, Tokyo Women's Medical University. Essentially, all RA patients were registered and clinical parameters were assessed biannually. For patients who failed to participate in subsequent surveys, simple queries were mailed to confirm survival. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated and mortality risk factors were analysed using a Cox proportional hazard model. Results: We analysed 7926 patients (81.9% females; mean age 56.3 ± 13.1 years; mean disease duration 8.5 ± 8.3 years) with RA who enrolled in IORRA from October 2000 to April 2007. During the observational period (35 443.0 person-years), 289 deaths were reported. Major causes of death included malignancies (24.2%), respiratory involvement (24.2%) including pneumonia (12.1%) and interstitial lung disease (ILD) (11.1%), cerebrovascular disease (8.0%), and myocardial infarction (7.6%). As death was not confirmed in all patients, the SMR was deduced to be between 1.46 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.32-1.60] and 1.90 (95% CI 1.75-2.07) for all patients, between 1.45 (95% CI 1.22-1.70) and 1.70 (95% CI 1.45-1.97) for men, and between 1.46 (95% CI, 1.29-1.65) and 2.02 (95% CI 1.82-2.24) for women. Factors associated with increased mortality included male gender, older age, worse physical disability, positive rheumatoid factor (RF), corticosteroid use, and presence of ILD. Conclusion: The mortality of Japanese RA patients is comparable to that in previous reports from western countries, even though the causes of death were significantly different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]