Otsuma Women's University

About: Otsuma Women's University is a education organization based out in Tokyo, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Differential scanning calorimetry & Population. The organization has 422 authors who have published 913 publications receiving 12796 citations. The organization is also known as: Otsuma-Joshi-Daigaku.

Spatial covariation of fish population vital rates in a stream network

Abstract: Animal populations are spatially structured in heterogeneous landscapes, in which local patches with differing vital rates are connected by dispersal of individuals to varying degrees. Although there is evidence that vital rates differ among local populations, much less is understood about how vital rates covary among local patches in spatially heterogeneous landscapes. In this study, we conducted a nine-year annual mark–recapture survey to characterize spatial covariation of survival and growth for two Japanese native salmonids, white-spotted charr Salvelinus leucomaenis japonicus and red-spotted masu salmon Oncorhynchus masou ishikawae, in a headwater stream network composed of distinctly different tributary and mainstem habitats. Spatial structure of survival and growth differed by species and age class, but results provided support for negative covariation between vital rates, where survival was higher in the tributary habitat but growth was higher in the mainstem habitat. Thus, neither habitat was apparently more important than the other, and local habitats with complementary vital rates may make this spatially structured population less vulnerable to environmental change (i.e. portfolio effect). Despite the spatial structure of vital rates and possibilities that fish can exploit spatially distributed resources, movement of fish was limited due partly to a series of low-head dams that prevented upstream movement of fish in the study area. This study shows that spatial structure of vital rates can be complex and depend on species and age class, and this knowledge is likely paramount to elucidating dynamics of spatially structured populations.

Factors Affecting Hits in Japanese Popular Music

Abstract: This article explores the hit chart period of Japanese popular music between January and March in 1990 and in 2004, using the survival model, and examines the factors involved in producing a hit. First, the results showed that fame of the artist, ties with other media, and compilation albums featuring several artists prolonged the hits chart period. Second, the music's survival period on the charts was shorter in 2004 than in 1990. This means that more titles appeared on the charts in 2004.

Healthy diet assessment mechanism based on fuzzy markup language for Japanese food

Abstract: Owing to the change of our lifestyle, more people suffer from chronic diseases, such as obesity or diabetes. Making improvements in terms of diet and physical activity is helpful for people to reduce the risk of suffering from these chronic diseases. This paper presents a healthy diet assessment mechanism based on fuzzy markup language (FML) for Japanese food. This mechanism is based on the dietary standard, food exchange list (FEL), published by the Japan Diabetes Society, to assess one person's dietary healthy level according to his/her personal profile, his/her daily physical activity, and how balanced he/she consumes food items. We use FML to describe the knowledge base and the rule base of the constructed fuzzy logic system. Additionally, ontology stores the necessary knowledge base and rule base of the adopted fuzzy inference mechanism. The proposed mechanism operates as follows: (i) Dieticians first define the nutrient facts of the collected food items. (ii) The involved subjects record their personal information, eaten food items, and daily physical activity. Through the constructed FML-based personal profile ontology, the estimated energy requirement and the estimated unit requirement for each food group are obtained after inference. (iii) Finally, one-day dietary healthy level is inferred by the proposed fuzzy inference mechanism. From the experimental results, the proposed mechanism is feasible to apply to Japanese dietary assessment. In the future, we will integrate with genetic learning algorithm and collect more subjects' records to further improve the performance.

The influence of exercise intensity on sweating efficiency of the whole body in a mild thermal condition

Abstract: To investigate whether the exercise intensity affects sweating efficiency (eta sw) during exercise under mild environmental conditions, six healthy males, aged 22 +/- 2 years, performed three bicycle ergometer exercises at varying intensities (73W: Ex-1, 103W: Ex-2 and 133W: Ex-3) for 40 min under the conditions of 25 degrees C room temperature, 50% relative humidity and 0.3-0.4 m s-1 wind velocity. Heart rate, oxygen consumption, rectal temperature (Tre), mean skin temperature (Tsk; 4 skin sites) and total sweat rate were determined intermittently throughout the experiments. Moreover, heat loss by evaporation (E), radiation (R), convection (C) and eta sw were calculated using the heat balance equations. The findings concerning thermoregulatory parameters under the three experimental conditions were summarized as follows: (1) the higher the exercise intensity, the larger the values of Tre and Tsk at the end of exercise and E, R and C during exercise (2) the mean values +/- SE of eta sw were 55.4 +/- 5.1, 63.2 +/- 5.2 and 58.5 +/- 1.9% for Ex-1, Ex-2 and Ex-3, respectively. The results suggest that exercise intensity would have no effect on eta sw in this mild thermal environment.