In July 2005, the United Nations special rapporteur on discrimination and racism, Doudou Diene, went on a nine-day tour of Japan and talked to minority groups, antidiscrimination campaigners and government and police officials around the country. After releasing his preliminary findings to the press last year, Diene handed the completed 23-page report based on his research to the UN Commission on Human Rights in January. [Doudou Diene Report]

From the centre of empire, the map of the rest of the world is largely blank, assumed either to be “just like us” and hence boring, or alternatively “not like us” and hence of marginal interest. Either way, the rest of the world is of little concern to those at the centre, at least until ugly blotches of “trouble spots” crack the surface glaze of imperial narcissism.

On July 1, 1946, less than a year after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States resumed nuclear testing in the Pacific. In March, 1954 the US forced the 166 inhabitants of Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, part of the United Nations Trust Territory that was among the spoils of victory in world War II, to leave their home island. On July 1, 1954 it conducted the first full-scale test of a Hydrogen Bomb at Bikini. The blast is estimated at 15 megatons, that is the equivalent of 15 million tons of TNT, one thousand times as powerful as the bomb exploded at Hiroshima. The Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5, sailing well beyond the zone demarcated by US authorities for the test, was covered with white ashes, later recognized as radioactive coral dust. The next day all 23 crew members suffered from headache, nausea, diarrhea and other symptoms from exposure to radioactivity. The symptoms were more acute among inhabitants of Longelap Atoll, 180 kilometers East of Bikini and other atolls. On September 23, the Lucky Dragon's chief radio operator died of jaundice, diagnosed as having been complicated by radioactivity. In Japan, the incident sparked a national petition campaign to ban nuclear weapons led by a women's group in Suginami Ward, Tokyo. The twenty million signatures that it collected within months provided a springboard for a national and international anti-nuclear movement. In August 1955 the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs convened in Hiroshima, the first in a series of annual meetings that became the center of the antinuclear movement. This series of articles, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Bikini test, records the fate of the crew members, the fishing communities that were their homes, and their impact on the subsequent treatment of atomic victims in Japan.

[Japan Focus introduction: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo recently added another entry to the long, sorry chapter of official Japanese war-crime denials when he said that there was no coercion of the so-called comfort-women by the imperial military “in the narrow sense of the word.” On March 1, an historic day in the history of Korean resistance to Japanese colonial rule, he said: “The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion.”

In the course of a forty-five year career, Honda Katsuichi has established himself as one of Japan's, and the world's, premier investigative journalists and authors. Hailing from a mountain village in Shinshu (Nagano) and an avid mountain climber throughout his life, Honda's interests extended from nature and the environment to the politics of colonialism and war, with the Vietnam War as a critical moment in his development. In writing for the Asahi Shimbun and in a series of best-selling books, Honda has addressed the most controversial contemporary and historical issues confronting Japan as well as the United States and others. Most famously, he “broke” the Nanjing Massacre story in Japan thirty-four years after the event with first-hand interview reportage from China. His reportage and his book, Nankin Daigyakusatsu, published in English as The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame inspired a generation of Japanese, Chinese and international researchers who have excavated the Nanjing Massacre. It also touched off fierce polemics in the form of a Nanjing Massacre denial literature.

The Diene Report of 2005 represents an instance in which an international organization investigated Japanese official treatment of minority communities in Japan in relation to international standards, and their findings strongly supported the Ainu activists. The United Nations sent Doudou Diene, their Special Rapporteur, to Japan to look into discrimination and racism. Diene's report harshly criticized the racism that exists in Japan and suggested that improved measures are necessary to protect the Ainu and other minorities there. This article is a response to his report by five Japanese individuals who have long been committed to countering discrimination and racism in the country. Four of the five contributors agree with the overall content of the Diene report and provide further information. They see the report as a small but positive impetus that will help the 21st century activism that further counters discrimination and racism in Japan. On the other hand, William Wetherall criticizes the report as seriously flawed, because he thinks it misunderstands the main aspects of the issue.

Twins lag behind singletons in their early psychomotor development, but little is known about how chorionicity affects this difference. We compared early psychomotor development in singletons, monochorionic (MC) twins and dichorionic (DC) twins. Our longitudinal data from the Japan Environment and Children’s Study (JECS; see Appendix) included 98,042 singletons, 577 MC twins and 1051 DC twins representing the general Japanese population. Chorionicity was evaluated by ultrasound images and complemented by postnatal pathological examinations. Five domains of psychomotor development were evaluated at 6 time points from 6 months to 3 years of age using the Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ-3). The data were analyzed using linear regression models. Twins lagged behind singletons in all areas of psychomotor development during infancy. This gap decreased over time but was still noticeable at 3 years of age. More than half of this difference was attributed to twins having lower birth weight and being born earlier in gestation. MC twins showed slightly delayed development compared to DC twins, but this difference was minor compared to the overall gap between twins and singletons. Twins delay singletons in their early psychomotor development, and this delay is not specific to MC twinning.

We evaluated the secondary COVID-19 incidence among uninfected hospitalized patients after nosocomial COVID-19 exposure. An exposure source of SARS-CoV-2 was hospitalized patients or healthcare personnel (HCP) newly diagnosed as having COVID-19. Patients exposed to a COVID-19-infected patient in a shared room more frequently developed COVID-19 than those exposed to an infected HCP.

Inspired by a result in T. H. Colding. (16). Acta. Math. 209(2) (2012), 229-263 [16] of Colding, the present paper studies the Green function $G$ on a non-parabolic $\operatorname {RCD}(0,\,N)$ space $(X,\, \mathsf {d},\, \mathfrak {m})$ for some finite $N>2$. Defining $\mathsf {b}_x=G(x,\, \cdot )^{\frac {1}{2-N}}$ for a point $x \in X$, which plays a role of a smoothed distance function from $x$, we prove that the gradient $|\nabla \mathsf {b}_x|$ has the canonical pointwise representative with the sharp upper bound in terms of the $N$-volume density $\nu _x=\lim _{r\to 0^+}\frac {\mathfrak {m} (B_r(x))}{r^N}$ of $\mathfrak {m}$ at $x$;

\[ |\nabla \mathsf{b}_x|(y) \le \left(N(N-2)\nu_x\right)^{\frac{1}{N-2}}, \quad \text{for any }y \in X \setminus \{x\}. \]

$y \in X \setminus \{x\}$

$N$

$\operatorname {RCD}(N-2,\, N-1)$

$x$

$N$

$N$

$\mathbb {R}^N$

$\operatorname {RCD}(0,\,N)$

The reactivity and stability of the edge faces of swelling clay minerals can be altered by layer charge and the stacking structure; however, these effects are poorly understood due to experimental limitations. The structure and stability of the montmorillonite {110}, {010}, {100}, and {130} edge faces with a layer charge of either y = 0.50 or y = 0.33 (e−/Si4O10) were investigated using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory. Stacked- and single-layer models were tested and compared to understand the effect of stacking on the stability of montmorillonite edge faces. Most stacked layers stabilize the edge faces by creating hydrogen bonds between the layers; therefore, the surface energy of the layers in the stacked-layer model is lower than in the single-layer model. This indicates that the estimates of edge face surface energy should consider the swelling conditions. Negative surface energies were calculated for these edge faces in the presence of chemisorbed water molecules. A high layer charge of 0.50 reduced the surface energy relative to that of the low layer charge of 0.33. The isomorphic substitution of Mg for Al increased the stability of interlayer Na ion positions, which were stable in the trigonal ring next to the Mg ions. The lowest surface energies of the {010} and {130} edge faces were characterized by the presence of Mg ions on edge faces, which had a strong cation adsorption site due to the local negative charge of the edges. The coordination numbers of O atoms around cations adsorbed to these edge faces were small in comparison to interlayers without water.

We evaluated the impact of carbapenem shortage on antimicrobial practice and patient outcome at a tertiary care center. During the shortage, hospital antimicrobial practice could be safely managed through additional antimicrobial stewardship measures including treatment guidance and mandatory preauthorization. Antimicrobial shortage may present a unique opportunity for promoting antimicrobial stewardship.

Phenotypic variation is the result of gene expression based on complex interaction between genetic and environmental factors. It is well known that genetic and environmental factors influence gene expression, but our understanding of their relative importance remains limited. To obtain a hint for the understanding of their contributions, we took advantage of monozygotic twins, as they share genetic and shared environmental factors but differ in nonshared factors, such as environmental differences and stochastic factors. In this study, we performed cap analysis of gene expression on three pairs of twins and clustered each individual based on their expression profiles of annotated genes. The dendrogram of annotated gene transcripts showed a monophyletic clade for each twin pair. We also analyzed the expression of retrotransposons, such as human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) and long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs), given their abundance in the genome. Clustering analyses demonstrated that HERV and LINE expression diverged even within monozygotic twin pairs. Thus, HERVs and LINEs are more susceptible to nonshared factors than annotated genes. Motif analysis of differentially expressed annotated genes suggests that specificity protein/Krüppel-like factor family transcription factors are involved in the expression divergence of annotated gene influenced by nonshared factors. Collectively, our findings suggest that expressions of annotated genes and retrotransposons are differently regulated, and that the expression of retrotransposons is more susceptible to nonshared factors than annotated genes.

The persistence of seed-dispersing animals in degraded habitats could be critical for ensuring the long-term conservation value and restoration of forests. This is particularly important in Southeast Asia, where > 70% of the remaining forest areas are within 1 km of a forest edge, and many are degraded (e.g. logged). We synthesized information on the habitat associations of the binturong Arctictis binturong, a large, semi-arboreal, frugivorous civet and one of the most important seed dispersers in the region, especially for figs (Ficus spp). We adopted a multiscale approach by employing ensemble species distribution modelling from presence-only records, assessing landscape-scale variation in detection rates in published camera-trap studies and using hierarchical occupancy modelling to assess local (i.e. within-landscape) patterns observed from 20 new camera-trap surveys. Contrary to prior reports that binturongs are strongly associated with intact forests, the species was equally present in degraded forests and near forest edges where sufficient forest cover was maintained (> 40% forest cover within a 20-km radius). The species also tolerates moderate incursions of oil palm plantations (< 20% of the area within a 20-km radius covered by oil palm plantations). The relative resilience of binturongs to habitat degradation could be in part because of behavioural adaptations towards increased nocturnal activity. These results support the notion that key seed dispersers can persist and maintain their ecological function in degraded forests.