Miyazaki International College

SummaryIt is generally accepted that kelp populations have a metapopulation structure. Most zoospores settle near to their parent individual, and infrequent but long‐distance dispersal of zoospores contributes to gene flow between local populations. Population genetic analysis of single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping by MIG‐seq (i.e. multiplexed inter‐simple sequence repeats genotyping by sequencing) was performed on the dominant kelp, Eisenia bicyclis, in two areas: Kitsunezaki (a sheltered area) and Shimoda (an exposed site). Regional scale analysis of genetic structure was conducted at six sites in Kitsunezaki and three sites in Shimoda. When viewed on a regional scale based on the inbreeding coefficient within the local population, the inbreeding ratio was higher in Shimoda than in Kitsunezaki, probably as a result of the limited vertical zonal distribution in the exposed environment. Vertically wide distribution in the sheltered environment apparently enabled frequent crossing among individuals in Kitsunezaki. By contrast, when viewed on a local scale based on the pairwise kinship coefficient (FST) between populations, gene flow among local populations in Shimoda occurred over a wide area, but was limited in Kitsunezaki. In Shimoda, genetic exchange between local populations, even if inbreeding is locally active, is likely to support metapopulation maintenance and rapid recovery of local populations. In Kitsunezaki, however, genetic exchange among local populations is limited within few 100 m, and the metapopulation structure will decline in the long term because of inbreeding depression. Local dispersal distance of zoospores was investigated based on parent–offspring analysis in the Kitsunezaki population, which revealed that zoospores mainly settled within 5 m of their parent. However, some zoospores traveled over 27 m within the 4 × 30 m study area. The present study shows the importance of examination at different spatial scales when investigating zoospore dispersal of laminarialean kelps.

Why "Challenging the Conventions"?Ellen: The shared global story of 2020-23 challenged many assumptions about teaching and learning, as the pandemic forced us to embrace online teaching under emergency remote conditions, study abroad was cancelled, Brexit, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the January 6 assault on the Capitol all acted together to undermine the pristine image of hegemonic English-speaking countries.Meanwhile, AI resources for translation and text creation were developing in ways that would change students' perceived needs and profoundly impact the way we do teaching and learning.Back in 2020, it felt, for me at least, as if the era was challenging us.In ELT, there have been numerous attempts to identify trends such as "the multilingual turn" or "the narrative turn," but it was very hard to say which way things would turn at the time in November 2020 when I first met Aya in a Learner Development SIG forum online.Recently I've been jokingly referring to this as the "Everything-Everywhere-All-At-Once Turn" (after the 2022 movie by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) to express something of the confusion and complexity of that moment, when we could see "everything" online, but we could not actually go anywhere nor predict when that moment would be over.Now in December 2023, it might seem to be business as usual in many contexts, but it's probably true to say that the experience of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) has affected teaching and learning in profound ways, even if we don't fully realise it yet. How we met each other and discovered the theme for LDJ7Ellen: When I heard Aya's presentation about dilemmas and trajectories in adolescents' language learning, at the Learner Development Forum at JALT2020, I was fascinated by the new questions she was asking and her lightning-quick way of making connections between theory and practice.So in the summer of 2021, I approached her to ask if she would be interested in putting forward a proposal for Issue 7 of The Learner Development Journal (LDJ7).Aya asked Ryo Moriya to join us, as Ryo was also curious about emotions, life trajectories, and research methods which attempt to capture both the subtleties of individual experience and the connection to a larger picture.

The preservative qualities of individual ionic compounds on the infectivity of T4 virions were elucidated. T4 virions were immersed in quasi-pure ionic solutions prior to the adsorption process, and the pfu values of these were measured following the conventional method. In neutral ionic solutions, the minimum and the optimum concentrations for preservative qualities were corresponded with the results obtained from the multi-ionic media/buffers. In acid and alkali solutions, phages show tolerances at a pH range of 5-11 in multi-ionic media/buffers. T4 virions show no tolerance in quasi-pure acid, neutral and weak alkaline conditions. The preservative quality of T4 virions was jumped up in over 10-1 mM OH- solution, equivalent to pH value over 10, which is corresponding to the pKa of the deprotonation of the DNA bases G and T. Infectivity was lost below 10-1 mM OH- and higher than 10 mM OH-. These results implicate the maintaining of infectivity of a virion may need the flexibility of the intra-capsid DNA by deprotonation.

Mathematics and particularly computational thinking skills are important. Effective mathematics education is key to this, which is why it's important to ensure that skills are being effectively taught to and learned by children in school. Few studies clarify the state of children's mathematical abilities in developing countries and Dr Koji Watanabe, Miyazaki International College, Japan, wants to improve the situation. To do this, he will first establish a clear understanding of the current situation surrounding mathematics material in developing countries and then move onto creating educational materials, including effective teaching materials, implementing educational practices and evaluating their effects. Ultimately, this will help inform mathematics education policies and improve mathematics education. A recognition of the importance of quantity is at the heart of the teaching materials and educational practices that Watanabe is developing as he believes that academic achievement can be improved through a focus on numbers alongside a focus on quantity. To measure childrens' academic achievement and understanding, Watanabe and the team are employing quantitative and qualitative methods, interviews and analysis. This includes the creation of tests using test theory, interviews and analysis of the mathematics education curricula and textbooks to improve validity.

Joachim Häberlen’s Citizens and Refugees is a critique of Germany’s immigration regime and of its highly touted welcoming culture (Willkommenskultur). Häberlen, writing both as a professional historian and as a volunteer working with refugees since 2015, has produced an eminently readable book that utilizes an eclectic array of sources: interviews, text messaging and social media posts. A major problem that motivated the author is the pervasive humanitarian gaze of German officials and volunteers, which reduces refugees to mere objects of compassion. By recounting their lives before becoming refugees, their journeys and their struggles and successes in Germany, Häberlen demonstrates that refugees are subjects with agency. This book is a highly original and important contribution to the rapidly expanding field of German migration studies, and to the critical scholarship on human rights and humanitarianism. The book is organized in four parts, with an introduction and a brief epilogue. The first two parts, ‘Where Stories Begin’ and ‘Becoming Refugees’, are primarily a work of recovery. The road to becoming refugees for Sabrina, Zaki, Reza or Mariana did not start with their arrival in Europe. Häberlen takes the reader back to Afghanistan and Syria. He relates stories of persecution and privation, but also of self-empowerment: the young woman who became the head of a UN-sponsored women’s centre in Afghanistan or the young man who joined demonstrations to replace the Assad regime with a democratic alternative in Syria. They were citizens before becoming refugees. Their exile was the result of advocating for women’s rights, debating the prevalent legal system, or speaking up about government abuses. In short, acts of citizenship that most Germans take for granted turned Afghan and Syrian citizens into social pariahs and/or enemies of the state. At the same time, Häberlen is careful to explain that not everyone has political reasons for fleeing. Motivations ranging from self-realization, career opportunities and material well-being matter just as much. Dismantling the objectified ‘needy refugee’ entails paying attention to the kaleidoscopic and contingent path towards exile.

Bi- or multilateral sharing of resources in jointly operated logistics, infrastructure and programmes can help achieve more effective use of expensive equipment and capacities and thus reduce the costs in polar research. This report examines a selection of the existing and planned multilateral operations in the Arctic and the Antarctic using the experience gained from earlier joint cooperation networks. The selection of 4 pilot studies covers both Arctic and Antarctic research and logistics and are relatively large scale with several countries involved in the cooperation. The studies are the basis for demonstrating how bilateral or multilateral cooperation in joint research programmes and operations can provide added value to European Polar research and allow the more efficient use of resources. Each case describes the parties involved, historical background, the methodology and development, the added value and the benefits in scientific terms, logistics and the European dimension, as well as a proposal for translation to other polar spaces with a European perspective.

One of the key missions of the Polifonia project is to build and interlink knowledge graphs of European musical cultural heritage. These interconnected music knowledge graphs act as a data backbone for the project. This deliverable is centred around one of the ten Polifonia pilots: INTERLINK. The INTERLINK pilot is not bound to a specific institutional dataset, collection or use case; but rather summarises the common needs of all pilots of representing their data as music knowledge graphs, and finding meaningful connections among them. Existing work in the relevant areas of knowledge engineering, knowledge graph construction, and knowledge graph interlinking is promising but presents a number of pitfalls in its direct application to Polifonia from the point of view of achieving this knowledge graph building and interlinking: (a) existing knowledge engineering methodologies do not account for “in-between” knowledge graph construction processes that are not fully distributed nor local; (b) in an integrated vision of European musical cultural heritage through knowledge graphs, both musical content and its ’context’ or metadata need to co-exist; and (c) no current techniques address the issue of finding missing links between different music knowledge graphs at scale, accounting for this co-existence of musical content and context in the same knowledge graph. This deliverable describes our efforts, particularly gathered in Polifonia’s WP2 and Task T2.3, in addressing these challenges, delivering: (a) a scalable methodology for knowledge graph construction that is well suited for the project and sits in-between the two classic extremes of ontology engineering; (b) a music knowledge graph construction framework that leverages modules of the Polifonia Ontology Network and the SPARQL Anything tool; and (c) a music knowledge graph interlinking framework, based on both heuristics and neural network-based link prediction through music knowledge graph embeddings. The latter two are evaluated in two different use-cases, the ChoCo-KG chord annotation knowledge graph, and the MIDI2vec music knowledge graph interlinking method, with encouraging results.

Abstract In response to unfavorable environmental conditions, some Drosera species in the northern hemisphere do not open their flowers but form bud‐like flowers. The bud‐like flowers exhibit pseudo‐cleistogamous behavior and produce similar numbers of seeds as open flowers. However, it is not clear how common this type of reproduction is in the genus Drosera. In this study, we examined the effects of flowering (opening flowers/forming bud‐like flowers) and pollinator visitation on seed production in Drosera makinoi and D. toyoakensis, two endemic species in Japan. D. makinoi and D. toyoakensis plants did not open 20%–40% chasmogamous flowers to form bud‐like flowers. The numbers of mature seeds produced by bud‐like flowers were significantly lower than those produced by open flowers (0%–2% of open flowers). In D. makinoi, the percentage of bud‐like flowers correlated negatively with the seed production per plant, suggesting that the production of bud‐like flowers decreased the lifetime reproductive success. In both D. makinoi and D. toyoakensis, pollinator‐excluded flowers produced similar numbers of seeds as control flowers. Our results suggest that pseudo‐cleistogamy does not occur in D. makinoi and D. toyoakensis, and they produce seeds without pollinator visits once flowers open.