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Background: The evaluation of transition readiness is indispensable for long-term follow-ups of adolescent patients with childhood-onset chronic diseases (CCD). We developed a Japanese version of the TRANSITION-Q (TRANSITION-Q-J) and used it to assess Japanese patients with CCD., Methods: The TRANSITION-Q-J was developed through forward and backward translations followed by cognitive interviews with five adolescent patients. The field test was conducted with 125 adolescent patients, and a retest was conducted with 113 adolescent patients., Results: Confirmatory factor analysis supported the two-factor analysis model including F1 (communication and self-management) and F2 (examination behavior). Sufficient internal consistency and test-retest reliability were demonstrated among the total 14 items, F1, and F2 (Cronbach's α > 0.80, intraclass correlation coefficient > 0.85). Convergent and discriminant validity for the 14 items and F1 were acceptable; however, F2 did not correlate significantly with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Independent Consciousness Scale. Regarding known-groups validity, the older group had a significantly higher mean TRANSITION-Q-J score (50.05) than the younger group (43.28; P = 0.04). The same results were found for both F1 and F2., Conclusions: The TRANSITION-Q-J for adolescent patients with CCD was developed and its reliability and validity were verified. This scale is easy to administer. In addition to being a tool for transition period support, it could be used to verify effective factors and in program outcome evaluation, including intervention studies., (© 2020 Japan Pediatric Society.)

The Functionality Appreciation Scale (FAS; Alleva et al., 2017) is a widely adopted measure to assess appreciation for one's body and its capacity. In this study, we performed a psychometric validation of the Japanese translation of the FAS. Participants included an online sample of 750 Japanese individuals (20-70 years old), who completed the FAS and other previously validated measures of body appreciation, intuitive eating, gratitude, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Moreover, the survey was conducted twice, 3 weeks apart, to determine test-retest reliability. Exploratory factor analyses replicated the unidimensional factor structure of the FAS, which was also verified by the confirmatory factor analysis. FAS scores had gender invariance, and demonstrated good internal consistency and test-retest reliability over the 3-week period. In addition, further analyzes indicated adequate construct, and incremental validity. These findings indicate that the Japanese version of FAS demonstrates good psychometric properties, and can be used to examine the importance of functionality appreciation for enhancing positive body image and healthy eating., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Chii, the Japanese term for 'lichen', is widely used in contemporary East Asia. However, precisely when and by whom this term was first used to refer to lichen is not known. In addition, Japanese botanists from the 1880s to the 1950s had doubts regarding whether Chii was an accurate translation of lichen, given that Chii originally referred to moss that grows on the ground, whereas most species of lichens grow on barks of trees or on rocks. In this paper, the author shows that Li Shanlan and A. Williamson et al., in the late Qing dynasty of China, first used the term Chii to refer to lichen in Zhiwuxue, published in 1858. In Japan, Tanaka Yoshio, who was influenced by Zhiwuxue, first used the term Chii in 1872. However, further investigations led to the discovery that ITO Keisuke translated lichen as Risen in 1829. In 1836, UDAGAWA Yoan also translated lichen as Risen by using a different kanji (Chinese character) to represent sen. In 1888, in his article, MIYOSHI Manabu suggested a new equivalent term, Kisoukin, to refer to lichen (algae-parasitized fungi). In the article, he proposed the term Kyosei as the Japanese translation of symbiosis. Ever since the late 1880s, Kyosei has been used as the Japanese biological term for symbiosis.

In this paper, through a detailed comparison between a translated book on nursing and its original American source, I examine the position of nursing in the mentality of a Japanese doctor at the beginning of the Meiji Era. In 1877, Dr. Yunei Ota published a translated version of a book on nursing titled "Kango-Kokoroe." The original book, titled "A Universal Formulary, 3rd. Edition," was written by R. E. Griffith and published in 1873. Further, I show that Yunei Ota translated a part of its introduction. These two books differ in terms of their target audiences and purposes for publication. From the viewpoint of the doctor-nurse relationship, Yunei Ota described his unique mentality in his translation; that is, he stressed the importance of nursing by stating that nurses were for doctors as wings were for birds. This mentality was rarely found in the original American book. Moreover, Yunei Ota did not make a literal translation; instead, he selected, added, and deleted contents from the book in keeping with a practical standpoint. Yunei Ota recognized that nursing was an indispensable part of medical treatment and he advocated the necessity of nursing education before systematic nursing education had been established in Japan.

The paper inquired into the situation of spread and influence of a distinguished physician of the Yuan dynasty, Hua Shou's medical books in Japan. Nippon editions of Hua Shou's medical books had been investigated. The conditions that Hua Shou's medical books were translated, annotated, studied by Japanese medical workers before Meiji, and the role of Hua Shou's medical books played on the medical education in Japan was also discussed.

The goal of cross-language voice conversion is to preserve the speech characteristics of one speaker when that speaker's speech is translated and used to synthesize speech in another language. In this paper, two preliminary studies, i.e., a statistical analysis of spectrum differences in different languages and the first attempt at a cross-language voice conversion, are reported. Speech uttered by a bilingual speaker is analyzed to examine spectrum difference between English and Japanese. Experimental results are (1) the codebook size for mixed speech from English and Japanese should be almost twice the codebook size of either English or Japanese; (2) although many code vectors occurred in both English and Japanese, some have a tendency to predominate in one language or the other; (3) code vectors that predominantly occurred in English are contained in the phonemes /r/, /ae/, /f/, /s/, and code vectors that predominantly occurred in Japanese are contained in /i/, /u/, /N/; and (4) judged from listening tests, listeners cannot reliably indicate the distinction between English speech decoded by a Japanese codebook and English speech decoded by an English codebook. A voice conversion algorithm based on codebook mapping was applied to cross-language voice conversion, and its performance was somewhat less effective than for voice conversion in the same language.