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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher educational institutions worldwide switched to emergency distance learning in early 2020. The less structured environment of distance learning forced students to regulate their learning and motivation more independently. According to self-determination theory (SDT), satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and social relatedness affects intrinsic motivation, which in turn relates to more active or passive learning behavior. As the social context plays a major role for basic need satisfaction, distance learning may impair basic need satisfaction and thus intrinsic motivation and learning behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between basic need satisfaction and procrastination and persistence in the context of emergency distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-sectional study. We also investigated the mediating role of intrinsic motivation in this relationship. Furthermore, to test the universal importance of SDT for intrinsic motivation and learning behavior under these circumstances in different countries, we collected data in Europe, Asia and North America. A total of N = 15,462 participants from Albania, Austria, China, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Kosovo, Lithuania, Poland, Malta, North Macedonia, Romania, Sweden, and the US answered questions regarding perceived competence, autonomy, social relatedness, intrinsic motivation, procrastination, persistence, and sociodemographic background. Our results support SDT’s claim of universality regarding the relation between basic psychological need fulfilment, intrinsic motivation, procrastination, and persistence. However, whereas perceived competence had the highest direct effect on procrastination and persistence, social relatedness was mainly influential via intrinsic motivation.

Chapter 4 focuses on the impact of manga on children. Visual media such as manga, anime, and games are very popular among children not only in Japan, but also in other countries. Although such pop cultures have achieved widespread popularity worldwide, little is known about their impact on children. In particular, positive aspects are not well discussed. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the significance of their popularity and possible impact on children. This chapter discusses the following three points: 1) the reason children are devoted to manga, 2) impact of manga on children, and 3) positive use of manga to prevent traditional/cyber bullying and other Internet-related problems. Although the most popular view of manga tends to be negative regarding the impact on child readers, we challenge this view by investigating the potential of using manga to positively influence children’s well-being. This chapter discusses the recent history of manga, its current situation, and the possibility of introducing a new usage of manga to positively impact children.

In this paper, we describe the support system for job-hunting students to learn job-hunting related terms by using an eBook and a chat system. Job-hunting process is very unique and complicated in Japan. Job-hunting students face difficulties in many phases. Many job-hunting related terms are not used in daily conversation and very new to them. Therefore, it is necessary to support them to learn them. The objectives of this study are (1) to clarify whether there is a positive correlation between active involvement of eBook learning and test performance and (2) to clarify whether the use of our chat system was effective in learning job-hunting related terms. The result of the evaluation showed that as for (1), there was no statistically significant correlation between the two factors. However when focusing on the international students, the correlation coefficient increased. It was aligned with the fact that this system was originally designed to support international students. As for (2), when the comparison was made between with and without InCircle delivery, there was no statistically significant difference between them in terms of Pre- and Post-test improvement. However the students gave the high score when they were asked its helpfulness. The score implies that the students were satisfied with its helpfulness.

北米にいる講師が大阪にいる受講生にリアルタイムで講義をする形式の遠隔授業にスマートフォン対応授業支援アプリを導入した．その方法と効果について双方向性コミュニケーションの観点から議論した．いくつかの授業支援システムを組み合わせることにより，講師と受講生間のコミュニケーションが向上し，学習環境が改善された．, Bidirectional communications are crucial to distance courses where an instructor in North America gives a lecture to students in Japan. Implementation of a new smartphone compatible learning support system better assists bidirectional communications on a video conference system. Combination of multiple learning support systems creates a better learning environment, and provides more tools for the instructor and students to communicate naturally.

This paper is focused on the three-day Course Design Workshop for faculty at Osaka University. This workshop has been organized by the university’s Teaching and Learning Support Center from 2013. We describe the achievements of and problems experienced by this program. According to the results of a questionnaire taken by participants, overall satisfaction with this workshop is high. It was seen as an opportunity to not only reflect on their practice but also develop concrete action plans for improvement of teaching and courses. However, it was also found that this program made it difficult to build lasting relationships between participants. It is necessary to support a community of participants who can communicate with each other. Next, we intend to conduct a follow-up survey to compare the results for these participants with those for participants in two other course design workshops. A comparison of educational effects by participants’ levels of teaching experience may also help us provide a program that meets the needs of each participant.

Background: “Children with severe motor and intellectual disabilities” refers to children with markedly limited activity due to severe overlapping of physical and intellectual disabilities. The physical and mental burden placed on families raising severely disabled children, particularly the primary caregivers, is great in home settings. For families to effectively utilize services and over-come child rearing problems, the families themselves need the “strength” to cooperate with others for the purpose of raising a severely disabled child. The ultimate goal of family support is to enable such families to achieve satisfaction and self-growth in child rearing. Methods: We used a questionnaire to survey 75 primary caregivers to empirically elucidate the empowerment and positive feelings towards child rearing of families raising children with severe motor and intellectual disabilities and the related factors. The t-test and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient were used to examine the association with bivariates. A multiple regression analysis was conducted for empowerment and positive feelings. Results: Results revealed that life events, livelihood, awareness of social support and the child’s sleep problems were factors related to empowerment. Of these, awareness of social support from outside of the family was found to contribute the most to empowerment. Furthermore, improvement and maintenance of positive feelings towards child rearing reaffirmed the existence of empowerment in addition to reducing negative feelings towards child rearing and ensuring social support. Conclusions: Raising children with severe motor and intellectual disabilities requires specialist knowledge and skills. Support from professionals to empower the entire family is therefore important in order to strengthen positive feelings towards child rearing.

This paper suggests the use of comics, or so-called manga, to support the selfdevelopment of youth. Through the usage of manga, both informational and emotional support for young people would be provided. This paper intended to create a support program that used manga for the self-development of youth. To this end, I discussed the following issues. First, through studies on the difficulties faced during a young man's self-development, I discussed the necessity of supporting the self-development of youth, and then developed an argument for supporting these youth. Second, I reviewed relevant research on self-development in recent studies related to manga, and then discussed the impact of manga on self-development. When both manga and the self are regarded as a narrative, we can regard the process of self-development as one of self-narrative development. Third, I examined the benefits and drawbacks of the use of manga in selfdevelopment, through analyses of cases, which then suggested that manga is highly suitable to supporting the self-development of youth. Finally, I suggested a selfdevelopment support program that used manga, and then described its concrete procedure.

We describe a Japanese brother and sister with Martsolf syndrome. They had short stature, severe mental retardation, cataract, hypogonadism, craniofacial dysmorphism, and bone and joint symptoms including scoliosis, lax finger joints, and talipes valgus. Previously undescribed findings included proximal femoral epiphyseal dysplasia reminiscent of Legg-Calve-Perthes disease in both patients, and Klippel-Feil malformation and osteopathia striata in one patient. Brain MRI showed mild frontal and temporal lobe atrophy, and mild ventricular enlargement. Severe GH deficiency was demonstrated after insulin tolerance and glucagon/propranolol tolerance tests. No responses to serum LH and FSH after a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) test suggested secondary hypogonadism, that is, hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, due to hypothalamus-pituitary axis insufficiency in both patients.

This study investigated the people who greatly influence young people, and the reason why they were influenced. Both good (=exemplar) and bad (=person who serves as an example of how not to behave) examples were investigated. The participants consisted of 206 university students (M=119, F=87, mean age=21.4yrs). In the questionnaires, both good and bad examples were selected from familiar people (e.g., parents, friends, teachers, neighbors, etc.) and among people who were known through the media (e.g., TV personalities, fictitious characters, baseball players, historical characters, etc.). The main results were as follows: (1) among familiar people, the parent of the same sex was the most influential person for young people; (2) among famous people and fictitious characters, TV personalities and comic book heroes had a great influence on young people; (3) fewer bad examples were enumerated than good examples; and (4) the reason why young people were influenced was because influential person was a person of character or had a special talent. The findings suggest that both familiar and unfamiliar people and even fictitious characters have a great influence on the personality development of young people., この論文は国立情報学研究所の学術雑誌公開支援事業により電子化されました。

Critical illness polyneuropathy (CIP) is a sensorimotor polyneuropathy recognized in adult intensive care patients with sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction and only a few cases have been reported in children. Here we report a 13-year-old Japanese boy with CIP that developed during the course of encephalopathy. Two months after the onset of encephalopathy, he developed tetraplegia although consciousness had already recovered. Deep tendon reflex was absent. MRI of the brain and spinal cord was normal and no abnormality in the cerebrospinal fluid was detected. Motor and sensory nerve conduction velocities of the lower limbs and somatosensory evoked potential could not be detected. The motor activity subsequently showed gradual recovery, although standing and walking could not be achieved. Sural nerve biopsy performed 3 years after the onset showed severe reduction of the number of myelinated large-diameter fibers, thin myelin in almost all fibers and cluster formation of myelinated small-diameter fibers, indicating primary axonal degeneration with regeneration. We report here for the first time the neuropathological changes in peripheral nerves during the chronic stage of CIP in children.

Schimke immuno-osseous dysplasia (SIOD) is a rare autosomal recessive spondylo-epiphyseal dysplasia. The characteristic features of SIOD include 1) short stature with hyperpigmented macules and an unusual facies, 2) proteinuria with progressive renal failure, 3) lymphopenia with recurrent infections, and 4) cerebral ischaemia. Although 25 patients have been reported with this disorder, the clinical course and phenotype of SIOD are not well characterized. This report summarizes the clinical findings, course and treatment of reported patients and includes 14 additional patients with SIOD. We emphasize the high incidence of cerebral ischaemia and ocular abnormalities, define the high incidence of thyroid dysfunction and blood cytopenia, and confirm the absence of effective and durable medical therapies.Schimke immuno-osseous dysplasia is a multi-system autosomal recessive disorder with variable expression that affects the skeletal, renal, immune, vascular, and haematopoietic systems. Medical therapy is limited especially for more severely affected individuals.

To determine the usefulness of quantitative measurement of bone atrophy in the diagnosis and the long-term follow-up of patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). The bone-sparing effect of a 5-hydroxytriptamine (5-HT2) antagonist was also studied. Bone mass was measured by computerized micro-densitometry at the middle position of the second metacarpal. The effect of repeated stellate ganglion blocks (SGBs) three times per week with mepivacaine (n = 11), administration of a 5-HT2 antagonist (sarpogrelate hydrochloride, 300 mg a daypo) (n = 12), and combined therapy (n = 10) were compared by micro-densitometry and conventional visual analogue scale (VAS) for analgesia after three months of treatment. In CRPS patients, metacarpal index (cortical bone thickness), maximum bone density (cortical bone density), minimum bone density (trabecular bone density), and average bone density were reduced on the affected side (14.1%, 12.1%, 25.0% and 19.3% respectively). The rate of reduction in bone mass correlated with the duration of the disease (P < 0.05). Therapy with the 5-HT2 receptor antagonist (with or without repeated SGBs) decreased pain intensity (from 6.10 to 3.81 with SGB, from 6.30 to 2.91 without SGB, respectively;P < 0.01) and bone atrophy evaluated by micro-densitometry (P < 0.05). In contrast, repeated SGBs alone reduced pain intensity (from 6.30 to 2.91;P < 0.01) but did not ameliorate bone atrophy. Bone micro-densitometry is useful in the assessment and follow-up of CRPS and for evaluation of treatment. The 5-HT2 antagonist, sarpogrelate hydrochloride, is a promising treatment for CRPS patients.

We studied the prevalence and clinical courses of patients with unprovoked seizures aged 0–14 years in Kurayoshi, Japan, from January 1–December 31, 1993. We reviewed the medical records of four hospitals, which covered most of the pediatric patients with neurologic problems in the area. The number of patients who received any form of medical care due to unprovoked seizures was 86 (4.61/1000). Of the 60 patients in whom it was more than 2 years from the onset, 49 (82%) had been seizure-free for more than 1 year. Eleven of the 86 patients did not become seizure-free despite more than 2 years of antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment, and nine of these 11 patients had neurologic abnormalities. The number of patients with idiopathic or cryptogenic epilepsies and unprovoked seizures was 49. Of the 33 patients who underwent more than 2 years of treatment, all except one had been seizure-free for more than 1 year. Seven children were of unclassified epilepsies characterized by normal interictal electroencephalogram (EEG) findings, generalized clinical seizures, no underlying neurologic condition, and an early age of onset (i.e., before 4 years of age). Therefore, there could be benign epileptic syndromes in the first 4 years.

骨粗鬆症に対しては疼痛管理とともに, 骨量の減少を抑えることが重要となる。疼痛に関して漢方薬投与群 (48例) と非ステロイド系消炎鎮痛剤投与群 (18例) の比較を行った。両群間の比較では4週までは差はないものの, 8週・12週では, 漢方薬投与群の方が有意に疼痛の改善を示した。次いで, 長期にわたって漢方薬を投与された症例の中で, 症例数の多かった桂枝加朮附湯と牛車腎気丸の2剤に関して骨量を検討した。桂枝加朮附湯投与群は20例, 牛車腎気丸投与群は12例となった。骨量は DIP (Digital Image Processing) 法で初診時, 3, 6, 9ヶ月後に測定した。また比較・対照として, 約10ヶ月の間治療を受けなかった症例を無治療群 (11例) とした。対照群では約10ヶ月の間で骨量は有意な減少を認めた。桂枝加朮附湯投与群のMCIは全期間を通じて初診時との有意な差は認められなかった。m-BMDの初診時との比較では3, 9ヶ月後において有意な増加を認めた。牛車腎気丸投与群のMCIおよびm-BMD値はどちらも全期間を通じて初診時との比較で有意差は認められなかった。桂枝加朮附湯は骨粗鬆症患者の骨量の減少を抑制し, むしろ改善効果が示された。牛車腎気丸も初診時の骨量を維持した。