More on mobility and sedentism: Changes in adaptation from Upper Paleolithic to Incipient Jomon, Tanegashima Island, southern Japan.

Sedentism is an adaptive alternative in human societies which is often associated with the emergence of complex societies in the Holocene. To elucidate the factors and processes of the emergence of sedentary societies, continuous accumulation of case studies based on robust evidence from across the world is required. Given abundant archaeological and geological evidence from the late Pleistocene to early Holocene, Tanegashima Island, situated in the southern Japanese Archipelago of the northwestern Pacific Rim, has significant potential to unravel factors and processes of sedentism.

Analysing head and trunk motion in the judo osoto-gari technique: relationship to sweeping-leg velocity.

Background: Osoto-gari is a leg throw technique that primarily relies on the hip extension to initiate the sweeping motion of the leg. A high sweep contact velocity is a crucial factor in efficiently executing this technique. While some literature emphasises whole-body coordination in the leg-sweeping action, the roles of trunk and head motion remain unclear.

A Clinical Prediction Rule for Predicting the Health-related Quality of Life after 5 Months in Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis Undergoing Conservative Treatment.

Objective: This study aimed to derive a clinical prediction rule (CPR) that can predict changes in health-related quality of life at 5 months for patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) undergoing conservative treatment.

Methods: Patients with KOA receiving physical therapy and exercise therapy at an outpatient clinic were included in this study. The basic characteristics, medical information, and motor function test results were recorded at baseline.

Universal kinetic description for the thermal dehydration of sodium carbonate monohydrate powder across different temperatures and water vapor pressures.

The thermal dehydration of sodium carbonate monohydrate (SC-MH) exhibits kinetic characteristics that are typical of the thermal decomposition of solids with a reversible nature. One of the characteristics is the physico-geometrical constraints of the reaction due to the heterogeneous reaction feature. Another factor is the considerable impact of the atmospheric and self-generated water vapor on the kinetics.

Betagenin ameliorates diabetes by inducing insulin secretion and β-cell proliferation.

Recent success with the use of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor analogs and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors for the treatment of patients with diabetes has highlighted the role of the intestine as an endocrine organ. Gut-derived hormones, including GLP-1, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), and ghrelin, have important roles in the control of energy metabolism and food intake, and are associated with the metabolic syndrome. In this study, we isolated and identified a new intestine-derived hormone, betagenin, and showed that it stimulates insulin secretion and β-cell proliferation and suppresses β-cell apoptosis.

The role of beta band phase resetting in audio-visual temporal order judgment.

Unlabelled: The integration of auditory and visual stimuli is essential for effective language processing and social perception. The present study aimed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying audio-visual (A-V) integration by investigating the temporal dynamics of multisensory regions in the human brain. Specifically, we evaluated inter-trial coherence (ITC), a neural index indicative of phase resetting, through scalp electroencephalography (EEG) while participants performed a temporal-order judgment task that involved auditory (beep, A) and visual (flash, V) stimuli.

Economic impact of resignation due to miscarriage: A survey of patients with recurrent pregnancy loss and pregnant women in Japan.

Sporadic early miscarriages occur primarily due to embryonic aneuploidy. There is no evidence showing that stress is a direct cause of miscarriage. Yet, despite this, a national US survey and a Japanese survey found that many people mistakenly attributed miscarriage to the mental state or behavior of the women.

Glucosamine Inhibits the Proliferation of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells by Eliciting Apoptosis, Autophagy, and the Anti-Warburg Effect.

Although glucosamine (GlcN) exhibits antitumor effects, its mechanism of action remains controversial. Additionally, its impact on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is not well understood. This study aimed to investigate the antitumor effects of GlcN and its underlying mechanism in a mouse HCC cell line, Hepa1-6.

Effect of virtual interactions through avatar agents on the joint Simon effect.

The joint Simon effect refers to inhibitory responses to spatially competing stimuli during a complementary task. This effect has been considered to be influenced by the social factors of a partner: sharing stimulus-action representation. According to this account, virtual interactions through their avatars would produce the joint Simon effect even when the partner did not physically exist in the same space because the avatars are intentional agents.

Impact of partial occlusion of the face on multisensory emotion perception: Comparison of pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic.

We perceive and understand others' emotional states from multisensory information such as facial expressions and vocal cues. However, such cues are not always available or clear. Can partial loss of visual cues affect multisensory emotion perception? In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the widespread use of face masks, which can reduce some facial cues used in emotion perception.

Brain Abnormalities During Self-Referential Task in Subthreshold Depression: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.

Background and aim Subthreshold depression is a potential risk factor for major depressive disorder. Although the neurobiological mechanism underlying major depressive disorder is well-established, the mechanism underlying subthreshold depression has not yet been fully elucidated. We investigated the characteristics of brain abnormalities in participants with subthreshold depression using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) owing to its portability.

Electroencephalography-guided transcranial direct current stimulation improves picture-naming performance.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potential method for improving verbal function by stimulating Broca's area. Previous studies have shown the effectiveness of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to optimize the stimulation site, but it is unclear whether similar optimization can be achieved using scalp electroencephalography (EEG). Here, we investigated whether tDCS targeting a brain area identified by EEG can improve verbalization performance during a picture-naming task.

The complete chloroplast genome of (Violaceae), an endemic species of the snowy region in Japan.

, a perennial herb in subsection , is endemic to the snowy mountainous regions on the Sea of Japan side of Japan. Its complete chloroplast genome was 156,056 bp in length, comprising one large single-copy region (86,407 bp), one small single-copy region (17,301 bp), and two inverted repeat regions (27,174 bp each). It contained 111 unique genes, including 77 protein-coding genes, 30 transfer RNA genes, and 4 ribosomal RNA genes.

The manipulation of top-down interpretation as one's symptomatic body reduces the sense of body ownership.

Sense of body ownership has been studied using rubber hand illusion (RHI) and full-body illusion (FBI). It has recently become clear that consciously interpreting a fake body as one's own in a top-down manner influences these body illusions. Furthermore, a study interestingly found that the influence of top-down interpretation was moderated by the degree of depersonalization, which was a symptom of a lack of sense of body ownership.

Temporal dynamics of activation and suppression in a spatial Stroop task: A distribution analysis on gaze and arrow targets.

Directional judgments of an arrow became slower when the direction and location were incongruent in a spatial Stroop task (i.e., a standard congruency effect).

Association between elementary and middle school children with mixed/foreign parents and influenza vaccination in Japan.

Background: The number of children with foreign parents is increasing in Japan; however, the percentage of these children receiving the recommended annual influenza vaccination, which must be paid for voluntarily, may be quite low. Socioeconomic status may influence voluntary vaccination decisions. This study explored the association between elementary and middle school children with mixed (either of the parents was non-Japanese) /foreign parents (both parents were non-Japanese) and influenza vaccination in Japan, stratified by household income and maternal education.

Development of a perceived eHealth literacy scale for individuals with serious mental illness: A cross-sectional study.

Background: The development of an electronic health literacy scale for the population with serious mental illness (SMI) is needed due to individuals' characteristics.

Aim: Develop a graphic-based perceived electronic health literacy scale for SMI (GP-eHLS-SMI).

Design: A cross-section study.

Consumption of Sodium and Its Ratio to Potassium in Relation to All-Cause, Cause-Specific, and Premature Noncommunicable Disease Mortality in Middle-Aged Japanese Adults: A Prospective Cohort Study.

Background: Reducing premature noncommunicable disease (NCD) mortality is a global challenge. Sodium is thought to increase risk of NCDs via an effect of salt per se or high-salt foods on hypertension-induced cardiovascular disease (CVD) and gastrointestinal cancer. Further, relative risk of CVD is reportedly more closely associated with sodium-to-potassium ratio than that with sodium alone.

Beyond consciousness: Ethical, legal, and social issues in human brain organoid research and application.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the ethical, legal and social issues in human brain organoid research, with a view to different types of research and applications: in vitro research, transplantation into non-human animals, and biocomputing. Despite the academic and societal attention on the possibility that human brain organoids may be conscious, we have identified diverse issues in human brain organoid research and applications. To guide the complex terrain of human brain organoid research and applications, a multidisciplinary approach that integrates ethical, legal, and social perspectives is essential.

Validity of a self-administered food frequency questionnaire for genomic and omics research among pregnant women: the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project Birth and Three-Generation Cohort Study.

Background: The Tohoku Medical Megabank Project has initiated the Birth and Three-Generation Cohort Study (TMM BirThree Cohort Study) including genomic and omics investigations, and conducted a self-administered food frequency questionnaire with the response option "constitutionally unable to eat or drink it" for individual food items (TMM-FFQ) for pregnant women. This study evaluated the validity of the TMM-FFQ among pregnant women.

Methods: Participants comprised 122 pregnant women aged ≥20 years residing in Miyagi Prefecture who completed weighed food records (WFRs) for 3 days as reference intake and the TMM-FFQ during mid-pregnancy.

The more random people's preference judgments are, the more they explore in gambling tasks.

Background: The decision-making process has been investigated separately in the context of externally guided decision-making (EDM, e.g., a gambling task) and internally guided decision-making (IDM, e.

Voluntary blinks and eye-widenings, but not spontaneous blinks, facilitate perceptual alternation during continuous flash suppression.

The fact that blinks occur more often than necessary for ocular lubrication has led to the proposal that blinks are involved in altering some aspects of visual cognition. Previous studies have suggested that blinking can modulate the alternation of different visual interpretations of the same stimulus, that is, perceptual alternation in multistable perception. This study investigated whether and how different types of blinks, spontaneous and voluntary, interact with perceptual alternation in a multistable perception paradigm called continuous flash suppression.