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When a scholarly monograph is made available in both print and electronic formats, which format will users prefer? This study analyzed monograph usage data from three university presses in the University of Toronto Libraries' collections, comparing print and ebook usage patterns of identical titles. The goal was to examine format preferences and determine whether there are differences in usage across subject disciplines or publishers. The study showed that although in many cases users preferred one format over another, they used books in both formats. If a subject was popular, usage tended to be high for both formats, and if unpopular, low for both formats. The data also indicated that there were some noticeable differences in ebook usage for particular subjects, and the authors concluded that format does matter and therefore it is desirable for libraries to provide both formats if possible. The study also highlighted how critical metadata are in promoting the use of electronic resources. If there were no ebook metadata within the library catalog, the ebook usage was low. This analysis adds to a growing body of literature in user preferences on book formats that can assist libraries in making better-informed decisions in collection building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a case in which an emergency medical services (EMS) crew was called for a precipitous breech delivery with fetal head entrapment that was unrelieved following standard prehospital interventions and eventually resulted in neonatal cardiac arrest and death. Although this is a rare occurrence, EMS responders must have adequate training and guidelines on how to assist with vaginal delivery of breech presentation and how to appropriately manage fetal head entrapment in the field. There is little literature to provide guidance but it appears that standard EMS teaching does not represent current best obstetrical practice. We review the available literature, make expert recommendations, and provide a sample new treatment guideline for basic life support, advanced life support, and EMS physician response. Key words: prehospital; fetal head entrapment; breech delivery [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan continues to be in the vanguard of human–robot communication and, since 2007, the state has actively promoted the virtues of a robot-dependent society and lifestyle. Nationwide surveys suggest that Japanese citizens are more comfortable sharing living and working environments with robots than with foreign caretakers and migrant workers. As their population continues to shrink and age faster than in other postindustrial nation-states, Japanese are banking on the robotics industry to reinvigorate the economy and to preserve the country's alleged ethnic homogeneity. These initiatives are paralleled by a growing support among some roboticists and politicians to confer citizenship on robots. The Japanese state has a problematic record on human rights, especially toward ethnic minorities and non-Japanese residents who have lived and worked in Japan for many generations. The possibility of robots acquiring civil status ahead of flesh-and-blood humans raises profound questions about the nature of citizenship and human rights. Already the idea of robots having evolved beyond consideration as “property” and acquiring legal status as sentient beings with “rights” is shaping developments in artificial intelligence and robotics outside of Japan, including in the United States. What does the pursuit in Japan of interdependence between humans and robots forecast about new approaches to and configurations of civil society and attendant rights there and in other technologically advanced postindustrial societies? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As cochlear implantation (CI) becomes the treatment of choice for many children with severe-profound sensori-neural hearing loss, more children with significant additional special needs become CI recipients. By the end of 2011 3.1% of the children with cochlear implants attending the National Cochlear Implant Programme in Ireland also had a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). This paper presents a review of the outcomes for these children, with an emphasis on processor use and mode of communication. A more detailed case study for one particular child is also outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, citizenship is based on the principle of jus sanguinis. Naturalized citizenship is a possibility, but there is a tacit understanding at large that really real, or “pure,” Japaneseness is qualified (and circumscribed) by “blood” (chi, ketsu). Blood, in this sense, is understood as an active agent responsible for catalyzing an ethos, or a national-cultural identity. For many Japanese today, blood is understood in terms of blood type, which, despite its controversial serological history, prevails as a popular mode of horoscopy, match-making, and personality analysis. I interrogate the compelling fiction of something called “Japanese blood”—a multi-authored “hemato-narrative” that has been nurtured and sustained for more than a century. To this end, I assemble a comprehensive account of the constructive and deconstructive aspects of blood and blood type that considers the cuteness industry, eugenics, blood donation, and national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What has distinguished anthropology from the other social sciences is an immersion in sustained fieldwork, itself premised on different kinds and levels of lived and shared experiences, usually with hitherto strangers in another culture in an often distant geographical location. In 2005 the U.S. Department of Defense inaugurated the experimental Human Terrain System, which embeds social scientists with combat brigades to enhance “operational effectiveness” and, supposedly, to reduce civilian casualties. A consensus is emerging among concerned anthropologists that ethnographic fieldwork abroad and within a broad spectrum of military activities and actors can, and must, be employed to challenge the U.S. Army's alarmingly naive concept of “weaponizing culture.” The constituent essays in this thematic collection on the vicissitudes of the relationship between war and anthropology take up and complicate the premises of this challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan accounts for nearly 52 percent of the world's share of operational robots and leads the postindustrial world in the development of humanoid robots designed and marketed specifically to enhance and augment human society. Innovation 25, Prime Minister Abe's visionary blueprint for remaking Japanese society by 2025, with the aim of reversing the declining birthrate and accommodating the rapidly aging population, emphasizes the central role that household robots will play in stabilizing core institutions, like the family. In addition to exploring the cultural logic behind the development of autonomous, intelligent, evolutionary humanoid robots, I argue that new bio-and robot technologies are being deployed to reify old or "traditional" values, such as the patriarchal extended family and sociopolitical conservatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the unsettling history behind the concept of "East Asian bioethics," a term coined in the mid 1990s, and raises questions about processes of history-making (and -unmaking) in bioethical debates. A barometer of sociopolitical attitudes and orientations, bioethics poses reflexive questions about cultural, national, and global identity. The century-old janusian relationship between eugenics and bioethics continues to inform the popular perception of the nature and future of postmodern Japan, which since the mid 1990s has been shaped by an asymmetrical and ahistorical celebration of pan-Asianism. The bioethical dilemma posed and produced by a politics of renewal and strategic "dehistoricization," together with "reasianization," is introduced and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In fin-de-siècle Japan, the ideal of "eugenic modernity," or the application of scientific concepts and methods as a means to constitute both the nation and its constituent subjects (New Japanese), crystallized in the space of imperialism. Three of the main themes explored are the application of eugenic principles to make connections between biology, kinship, and the plasticity of the human body; to contemporize historical stigmas; and to promote "pure-bloodedness" and "ethnic-national endogamy" as cultural ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface for the article titled "Politics and Pitfalls of Japan Ethnography: Reflexibility, Responsibility, and Anthropological Ethics," which appeared in the December 2007 issue of "Critical Asian Studies" is presented.