The left superior longitudinal fasciculus within the primary sensory area of inferior parietal lobe plays a role in dysgraphia of kana omission within sentences

Functional neurological changes after surgery combined with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography can directly provide evidence of anatomical localization of brain function. Using these techniques, a patient with dysgraphia before surgery was analyzed at our hospital in 2011. The patient showed omission of kana within sentences before surgery, which improved after surgery. The brain tumor was relatively small and was located within the primary sensory area (S1) of the inferior parietal lobe (IPL). DTI tractography before surgery revealed compression of the branch of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) by the brain tumor. These results suggest that the left SLF within the S1 of IPL plays a role in the development of dysgraphia of kana omission within sentences.     

A Japanese logographic character frequency list for cognitive science research

This paper describes a Japanese logographic character (kanji) frequency list, which is based on an analysis of the largest recently available corpus of Japanese words and characters. This corpus comprised a full year of morning and evening editions of a major newspaper, containing more than 23 million kanji characters and more than 4,000 different kanji characters. This paper lists the 3,000 most frequent kanji characters, as well as an analysis of kanji usage and correlations between the present list and previous Japanese frequency lists. The authors believe that the present list will help researchers more accurately and efficiently control the selection of kanji characters in cognitive science research and interpret related psycholinguistic data.     

Threading dislocation with b=c+2a in 4H-SiC as determined by LACBED

The Burgers vectors of the so-called threading screw dislocations (a total of 28 dislocations) in 4H-SiC were determined by large-angle convergent-beam electron diffraction. A new type of TSD, that is, b = c + 2a dislocation, was identified. Thus, all of the four types of TSD predicted by Onda et al. [Phil. Mag. Lett. 93 (2013) p.591] were identified.     

High risk factors of hostage barricade incidents in a Japanese sample

Hostage taking incidents in which the police besiege a particular location are known as hostage barricade incidents. The first aim of the present article was to examine the process of risk assessment in hostage incidents, using a group of police officers as the sample. The second aim was to identify the risk factors involved in hostage incidents and examine the degree of concordance between the risk as assessed by the police officers and the figures obtained from the analysis of actual hostage barricade incidents. For the purpose of this study, a survey was carried out across Japan, and 45 police officers responsible for hostage negotiation responded to the questionnaires. Additionally, a sample of 116 actual hostage barricade incidents that occurred in Japan from 1970 to 2002 was utilised to examine the high risk factors involved in such cases. As per the results, a majority of the police officers (73.3%), in response to an open‐ended question, indicated that the highly excited state of the hostage takers was dangerous for the hostages. Moreover, it was demonstrated in all 116 incidents that several factors such as ‘a long siege’ tended to increase the risk of deaths, though this was very rare (n = 4). On the other hand, the proportion of injuries to the hostages was high in expressive situations such as domestic situations or suicide attempt scenarios. On the whole, the results obtained from the analyses of actual incidents were consistent with those obtained from the police officers' risk assessment in many respects. However, the correlation between the degree of risk as assessed by the police officers and the actual rate of deaths/injuries to the hostages was very low. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.