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Although cell‐based therapy has become a promising treatment, its practice and evaluation process remain unstandardized. Therefore, Japan initiated a dual‐track regulatory framework for cell‐based therapy aiming to promote and regulate the therapies to ensure that patients can access safe and effective treatments. Influenced by such pathway, Taiwan adopted the framework and initiated its own cell‐based therapy regulation in 2018. This paper discusses how Japan has influenced Taiwan in developing regulations for cell‐based therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As of 2008, surrogacy is legal and openly practised in various places; Japan, however, has no regulations or laws regarding surrogacy. This paper reports the situation of surrogacy in Japan and in five other regions (the USA, the UK, Taiwan, Korea and France) to clarify the pros and cons of prohibiting surrogacy, along with the problems and issues relating to surrogacy compensation. Not only in a country such as France that completely prohibits surrogacy within the country, but also in a country such as the UK that allows non-commercial surrogacy, infertile couples travel overseas for the purpose of surrogacy. In addition, some couples might seek underground surrogacy if the government prohibits surrogacy. If an intended parent couple and a surrogate make an agreement among themselves and then a problem occurs, they cannot ask for support from professionals or bring a case to court, as can be observed in South Korea and Taiwan. We also conclude that there is little difference between commercial surrogacy and non-commercial surrogacy in the absence of a clear definition of ‘reasonable expenses.’ In the UK, the law does not allow surrogates to receive compensation. However, in reality, there may be little difference between the amounts paid to surrogates for profit in the US and those paid to surrogates for reasonable expenses in the UK. We conclude that the issue of surrogacy demands further discussion in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Components of physical frailty cluster into subtypes, but it remains unknown how these might be associated with age‐related functional declines and multimorbidities. This study aims to investigated associations of physical frailty subtypes with functional declines and multimorbidity in a 10 year longitudinal cohort survey. Methods: Complementary longitudinal cohort study used group‐based multitrajectory modelling to verify whether frailty subtypes discovered in Taiwan are presented in another aging cohort, then investigated associations of these subtypes with cognitive decline and multimorbidity. Participants aged ≥50 years were recruited from the third to sixth waves (May 2002 to July 2010) of the National Institute for Longevity Sciences‐Longitudinal Study of Aging, in Japan. People with incomplete data, pre‐frail/frail status before their index wave, and those with incomplete data or who died during follow‐up, were excluded. Group‐based trajectory analysis denoted five established physical frailty criteria as time‐varying binary variables in each wave during follow‐up. Incident frailty was classified as mobility subtype (weakness/slowness), non‐mobility subtype (weight loss/exhaustion), or low physical activity subtype. General linear modelling investigated associations of these frailty subtypes with activities of daily living, digit symbol substitution test (DSST) and Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) at 2 year follow‐up. Results: We identified four longitudinal trajectories of physical frailty, which corroborated the distinct subtypes we discovered previously. Among 940 eligible participants, 38.0% were robust, 18.4% had mobility subtype frailty, 20.7% non‐mobility subtype, and 20.1% low physical activity subtype. People with mobility subtype frailty were older than those with other frailty subtypes or robust status and had higher prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure. In the multivariable‐adjusted general linear models, mobility‐subtype frailty was associated with a significantly lower DSST score (point estimate −2.28, P = 0.03) and higher CCI (point estimate 0.82, P < 0.01) than the other groups. Conclusions: Mobility‐subtype frailty was associated with functional declines and progression of multimorbidity; the long‐term effects of physical frailty subtypes deserve further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the three United Nations drug conventions have served as the basis for member states' obligations and international cooperation on drug control. However, the emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPSs) poses a new risk to public health and a challenge to drug policy because of their unknown toxicological effects and easy modification of chemical structures to shun legal control. So far, there is no international consensus on legislative control of NPSs. Therefore, we compared the legislative management on NPS control among Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Drug‐related information was obtained from the authorities of these three countries. The results indicate that despite geographic proximity and similar legal attitudes toward illegal drug use, the legislative criteria, and responses for NPS control in these three countries were quite different. Ketamine has been the major used NPS in Taiwan but seldom found in South Korea and Japan. The difference in the number of controlled NPSs in Taiwan (91) and South Korea (245) might be due to the implementation of temporary designation systems and analog controls in South Korea. The recent surge of newly controlled NPSs in Japan was because of the promulgation of designated drug regulation and subsequent control of "dangerous drugs." Although NPS use has become a potential social and medical problem among these three countries, the outcomes of NPS legislation control remain to be scrutinized. To minimize harm from NPS use, development of legislative mechanism(s) on NPS scheduling is the first step for early identification and control of NPS problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolutionary origin of periodical mass‐flowering plants (shortly periodical plants), exhibiting periodical mass flowering and death immediately after flowering, has not been demonstrated. Within the genus Strobilanthes (Acanthaceae), which includes more than 50 periodical species, Strobilanthes flexicaulis on Okinawa Island, Japan, flowers gregariously every 6 years. We investigated the life history of S. flexicaulis in other regions and that of closely related species together with their molecular phylogeny to reveal the evolutionary origin of periodical mass flowering. S. flexicaulis on Taiwan Island was found to be a polycarpic perennial with no mass flowering and, in the Yaeyama Islands, Japan, a monocarpic perennial with no mass flowering. Molecular phylogenetic analyses indicated that a polycarpic perennial was the ancestral state in this whole group including S. flexicaulis and the closely related species. No distinctive genetic differentiation was found in S. flexicaulis among all three life histories (polycarpic perennial, monocarpic perennial, and periodical plant). These results suggest that among S. flexicaulis, the periodical mass flowering on Okinawa Island had evolved from the polycarpic perennial on Taiwan Island via the monocarpic perennial in the Yaeyama Islands. Thus, the evolution of life histories could have taken at the level of local populations within a species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redistributive land reforms implemented in post-WWII Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have often been considered a substantial stimulus for these countries' subsequent economic growth. Before the reforms, there were a small number of large landlords and many small tenant cultivators, but after the reforms, tenancy effectively disappeared. This article assesses the impact of reforms on structural change and income per capita, and shows that reforms were responsible for at least half of the actual reallocation of labor out of agriculture in each of these countries in the aftermath of the reforms. By contrast, their impact on income per capita was small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childbearing behavior in East Asian countries has changed rapidly during the past half century from an average of five to seven children per family, to replacement-level fertility, and subsequently to unprecedentedly low levels, the lowest in the world. This article analyzes fertility trends in Hong Kong, Japan, singapore, south Korea, and Taiwan using cohort fertility data and methods, then examines social and economic causes of the childbearing trends, and surveys policies pursued to reverse the fertility trends. Postponement of childbearing started in the 1970s with continuously fewer delayed births being 'recuperated,' which resulted in ultra-low fertility. A rapid expansion of education and employment among women in a patriarchal environment has generated a stark dilemma for women who would like to combine childbearing with a career. Policy responses have been slow, with a more serious attempt to address issues in recent years. Thus far public and private institutions are not devoting sufficient attention to generating broad social change supportive of parenting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationships between culture, individual attributes, and self-rating behavior among 1,786 university students in Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and Japan, and in doing so extended and refined the cultural relativity hypothesis. It explored the difference between vertical and horizontal individualists in self-rating behavior, and examined the mediating effects of two individual attributes, self-enhancement propensity and general self-efficacy in the relationship between individualism and self-rating behavior. The results confirmed that individualism is the cultural driver for self-rating leniency, and that the individual-level assessment of individualism is a stronger predictor of self-rating leniency than are culture-level differences. Vertical individualism was found to be positively related to self-enhancement propensity, which in turn was positively related to self-rating. Whereas, horizontal individualism was positively related to general self-efficacy, which in turn had a positive relationship with self-rating. We discuss the implications of the results for academic research and practical management. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common hypothesis has considered apparent differences in the incidence of reading disability in Asian and Western languages to be related to orthographic factors. A reading test was constructed in English, Japanese, and Chinese to assess the validity of this proposal Large samples of fifth-grade children in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States were given the test and a battery of 10 cognitive tasks Strong evidence was found that reading disabilities exist among Chinese and Japanese as well as among American children. In discriminating between groups of poor and average readers by means of the cognitive tasks, the combined effects of general information and verbal memory proved to be the most powerful predictors in Japan and Taiwan. General information and coding emerged as the most effective predictors for American children. The results cast doubt upon the crucial significance of orthography as the major factor determining the incidence of reading disabilities across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]