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This paper examines Japanese ESL learners' perception and production of to whom and how politely one should speak and what expressions are appropriate to whom in American English. Speakers are expected to change the level of politeness, in both American English and Japanese, depending who the addressee is, but the two languages are different in how the speaker weighs factors such as age and status of the addressee and the speaker's familiarity to the in relation to others. Some of the differences between the learners and native speakers seem to he due to negative transfer, especially in terms of the age of the addressee, however others could be attributed to various possible sources as developmental and so on.

This paper presents results of three experiments that examined Japanese English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners' perception and production of to whom and how politely one should speak and what expressions are appropriate for whom in American English. Ratings were made on pictures of various types of people (teacher, professor, policeman, classmate) presented to subjects. Subjects were expected to change the level of politeness, in both American English and Japanese, depending on who the addressee was, especially as the two languages differ in how the speaker weighs factors such as age and status of the addressee and the speaker's familiarity in relation to others. Differences between the learners and native speakers seemed to be due to negative transfer, especially in terms of the age of the addressee; other differences may be attributed to various possible sources. Results indicate that the effects of second language (L2) proficiency were not always as expected. For example, advanced learners were not always closer to the native speaker than the intermediate learners in their judgement, suggesting not much difference between advanced and intermediate learners in levels of pragmatic competence. (Contains 11 references.) (Author/NAV)

A two-unnatural-base-pair system is developed for coupled transcription-translation systems with the expanded genetic code. The unnatural-base-pair studies provide valuable information for understanding the mechanisms of replication and transcription.

A study was conducted to examine the binding specificities of two bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV) Tat proteins based on a series of hybrid TARs in vivo and in vitro. The InsightII software was utilized to superimpose nuclear magnetic resonance models of the BIV TAR-peptide complex and TAR-argininamide complex. Results indicated that BIV Tat arginine-rich domain showed biases between BIV and HIV Tar sites.

Urea derivatives that were substituted with a 2‐benzylphenyl group and an alkyl group functioned as low molecular weight gelators for various organic solvents and ionic liquids. Urea derivatives with long alkyl chains were effective for the gelation of polar solvents. However, they were not suitable for the gelation of non‐polar solvents, whereas urea derivatives with short alkyl chains were effective. Ionic liquids were similar to polar solvents in that urea derivatives with long alkyl chains were the most effective gelators. The physical properties of the formed supramolecular gels were analyzed by dynamic viscoelasticity measurements using a rheometer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient, unnatural base pair between 2-amino-6-(2-thiazolyl)purine and 2-oxo(1H)pyridine was developed. This specific transcription allows the large-scale preparation of artificial RNAs and can be combined with other systems to simultaneously incorporate several different components into a transcript.

Anti-colocin E3 aptamers that were isolated by in vitro selection, using the colicin E3 C-terminal ribonnuclease domain (CRD) is presented. It concluded that the aptamers could be used as selection markers, such as anti-aminoglycoside aptamers, for the isolation of certain Escherichia coli mutants