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Over the years, American students consistently have ranked below those from Finland, Canada, Japan, and at least a dozen other industrialized nations on international tests of mathematics, science, and reading. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has done nothing to close this gap. And the authors suspect that the law may be making matters worse. In part, because NCLB has narrowed the curriculum so that most students are not acquiring the broad base of knowledge they need to succeed as they advance through school. While American students are spending endless hours preparing to take tests of their basic reading and math skills, their peers in high-performing nations are reading poetry and novels, conducting experiments in chemistry and physics, making music, and studying important historical issues. The U.S. is the only leading industrialized nation that considers the mastery of basic skills to be the goal of K-12 education. The nations that consistently outrank it on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) deliver a comprehensive, content-rich education to their young citizens. What the authors have learned from their study is that the best nations do what is best for their students and that means building a great education system, not just attempting to prepare them for the labor market.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including the adoption of Australia of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for listed companies, accounting for goodwill, and the financial system of Japan.

The article presents an essay that examines whether Japanese religious and ethical traditions are relevant to international moral issues. The Japanese behavior and thought have been difficult to grasp for those who are not well acquainted with the society. Someone who is not a member of the society would find no clear, easily recognizable principles in the working of Japanese society. Rather than religion, philosophical principles or political ideology, the Japanese follow the subtle, instinctive rules and moods of the society. Therefore, Japanese religious and ethical traditions are often unclear and not talked about.

This study was undertaken to examine young women's and men's orientations toward love in three very different cultures: Japan (N = 223), Russia (N = 401), and the United States (N = 1,043). The love variables examined were: frequency of lore experiences, attachment types, love styles, love as a basis for marriage, romantic attitudes, and predictors of falling in love. Many cultural differences were found in the love variables, but the effect of culture was not always in the expected direction. We also examined how the pattern of gender differences in love variables differed across the three societies. Some of the gender differences and similarities found in previous love research and also in the U.S. sample of this study were not replicated in the Japanese and/or Russian samples. We discuss the importance of studying love and other aspects of close relationships with data collected from more than one culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies token resistance to sexual intercourse and consent to unwanted intercourse among college students in the United States, Russia and Japan. One form of sexual miscommunication of sexual intent is to say no to sexual intercourse while meaning yes. There are a number of reasons why women might pretend to be less interested in sexual intercourse than they really are. This form of sexual miscommunication is important to study because the act of consenting to unwanted sex may, in some cases, be a form of nonviolent sexual coercion. Sexual values at the cultural level are supported by institutions such as schools, family, and religion, which in turn are related to the sexual attitudes and norms held by groups and individuals within the society. Cultural variation in socialization practices related to sexual permissiveness and gender equality in sexuality is likely to be related to values of collectivism and individualism. It seems reasonable to predict that couples will be less free to engage in direct and honest communication in societies that grant more power and sexual rights to men than to women than in societies that grant equal privileges to men and women.

Climatic and oceanographic processes in the Pacific Ocean have global implications. Reliable sedimentary proxies in this region are thus necessary to understand the magnitude of past climate variability. Radiolarian assemblages are of particular relevance in some regions of the Pacific Ocean where other proxies are either poorly preserved or are biased towards a specific season. Previously published radiolarian-based transfer functions in the Pacific Ocean did not cover some regions, such as the Western Pacific marginal seas or high-latitude Southwestern Pacific. Filling these gaps in sample distribution and using a thorough methodology for finding the most important variable for radiolarian assemblages in surface sediment are both essential steps in quantitative studies. In this study, we use published radiolarian census counts from 801 core-tops distributed across the Pacific Ocean, to investigate which environmental factors drive the assemblages. We harmonized taxonomically the modern microfossil dataset, and using multivariate statistical analyses, we determined that sea surface temperature at 10 m (SST10) is the most important variable influencing the changes observed in the radiolarian assemblages. The calibration method weighted-mean modern analogue technique with five analogs (WMAT-K5) corrected for autocorrelation using a cut-off distance of 500 km, showed a performance of R2 cv = 0.83; RMSEP = 3.8 °C. This calibration method was then applied to taxonomically harmonized radiolarian census counts from 31 cores located in the Bering Sea, Western Pacific marginal seas, and Southwest and Eastern Equatorial Pacific, with some of these records covering at least the last 165 ka. We assessed the analogue quality and significance of the downcore SST10 reconstructions in all of them. We found that temperatures at 10 and 200 m were the most significant variables for the fossil assemblages. Finally, we compare the temperature reconstructions to previously published radiolarian-based SST estimates for the same cores, or to other SST records based on other methodologies. We find some differences between our new temperature estimates compared to existing ones, in particular in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. Comparison to other methods in the Japan and Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk show that radiolarian-based reconstructions provide robust temperature estimates compared to biogeochemical methods, which showed SST overestimation during glacial periods. • New radiolarian calibration dataset with 801 core-tops samples in the Pacific Ocean. • Sea surface temperature at 10 m is the main driver for the radiolarian assemblages. • Application of the radiolarian transfer function in 31 downcore radiolarian records. • In high latitude regions, sub-surface temperatures at 200 m are also significant. • Some regions show diverging radiolarian-based temperatures compared to alkenones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has profoundly affected the mental health of both infected and uninfected people. Although most psychiatric disorders have highly overlapping genetic and pathogenic backgrounds, most studies investigating the impact of the pandemic have examined only single psychiatric disorders. It is necessary to examine longitudinal trajectories of factors that modulate psychiatric states across multiple dimensions. About 2274 Japanese citizens participated in online surveys presented in December 2019 (before the pandemic), August 2020, Dec 2020, and April 2021. These surveys included nine questionnaires on psychiatric symptoms, such as depression and anxiety. Multidimensional psychiatric time-series data were then decomposed into four principal components. We used generalized linear models to identify modulating factors for the effects of the pandemic on these components. The four principal components can be interpreted as a general psychiatric burden, social withdrawal, alcohol-related problems, and depression/anxiety. Principal components associated with general psychiatric burden and depression/anxiety peaked during the initial phase of the pandemic. They were further exacerbated by the economic burden the pandemic imposed. In contrast, principal components associated with social withdrawal showed a delayed peak, with human relationships as an important risk modulating factor. In addition, being female was a risk factor shared across all components. Our results show that COVID-19 has imposed a large and varied burden on the Japanese population since the commencement of the pandemic. Although components related to the general psychiatric burden remained elevated, peak intensities differed between components related to depression/anxiety and those related to social withdrawal. These results underline the importance of using flexible monitoring and mitigation strategies for mental problems, according to the phase of the pandemic., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Recently, the expansion of an intronic AAGGG repeat in the replication factor C subunit 1 (RFC1) gene was reported to cause cerebellar ataxia, neuropathy, vestibular areflexia syndrome (CANVAS). In Europeans, the expansion accounted for 22% of sporadic patients with late-onset ataxia. We genotyped 37 Japanese patients comprising 25 familial (autosomal recessive or undecided transmission) and 12 sporadic ones with late-onset ataxia. We found intronic repeat expansions in RFC1 in three (12%) of the familial patients and one (8.5%) of the sporadic ones. Although our cohort study was small, the disease frequency in Japanese patients with CANVAS might be lower than that in European ones. In addition, we found biallelic ACAGG repeat expansion in one patient, indicating ACAGG repeat expansion might cause CANVAS. Clinically, we found one patient with sleep apnea syndrome, which has not been reported previously. Thus, this study might expand the clinical and genetic spectrum of CANVAS.