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Study abroad destinations for Japanese students, particularly those aiming to improve their English language skills, tend to focus on the "Inner Circle" (Kachru, 1992) of English-speaking countries. However, over the last two decades, Korean and Japanese-owned English language schools in the Philippines started to appear, leading to over 6,700 people from Japan going to study English in the Philippines in 2018. In this paper, I aim to document the effects and self-perceived changes that occurred as a result of studying abroad in the Philippines by drawing on a case study of 103 Japanese university students on a four-week intensive English language program. Data collection was conducted over the course of May to December 2018 by means of interviews, questionnaires, and ethnographic observations. Among the common themes that emerged was a shift in focus from grammatical form and accuracy to communication-oriented goals for learning. Such changes in beliefs toward language learning triggered by a study abroad experience can be accounted for using the concept of language ideologies (Surtees, 2016). While this study only accounts for learner impressions shortly after their return, it illustrates the potential impact of a cross-cultural experience on students' overall belief systems regarding language learning and communication.

The centrohelid heliozoan Raphidocystis contractilis has many radiating axopodia, each containing axopodial microtubules. The axopodia show rapid contraction at nearly a video rate (30 frames per second) in response to mechanical stimuli. The axopodial contraction is accompanied by cytoskeletal microtubule depolymerization, but the molecular mechanism of this phenomenon has not been elucidated. In this study, we performed de novo transcriptome sequencing of R. contractilis to identify genes involved in microtubule dynamics such as the rapid axopodial contraction. The transcriptome sequencing generated 7.15‐Gbp clean reads in total, which were assembled as 31,771 unigenes. Using the obtained gene sets, we identified several microtubule‐severing proteins which might be involved in the rapid axopodial contraction, and kinesin‐like genes that occur in gene duplication. On the other hand, some genes for microtubule motor proteins involved in the formation and motility of flagella were not found in R. contractilis, suggesting that the gene repertoire of R. contractilis reflected the morphological features of nonflagellated protists. Our transcriptome analysis provides basic information for the analysis of the molecular mechanism underlying microtubule dynamics in R. contractilis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study abroad destinations for Japanese students, particularly those aiming to improve their English language skills, tend to focus on the "Inner Circle" (Kachru, 1992) of English-speaking countries. However, over the last two decades, Korean and Japaneseowned English language schools in the Philippines started to appear, leading to over 6,700 people from Japan going to study English in the Philippines in 2018. In this paper, I aim to document the effects and self-perceived changes that occurred as a result of studying abroad in the Philippines by drawing on a case study of 103 Japanese university students on a four-week intensive English language program. Data collection was conducted over the course of May to December 2018 by means of interviews, questionnaires, and ethnographic observations. Among the common themes that emerged was a shift in focus from grammatical form and accuracy to communicationoriented goals for learning. Such changes in beliefs toward language learning triggered by a study abroad experience can be accounted for using the concept of language ideologies (Surtees, 2016). While this study only accounts for learner impressions shortly after their return, it illustrates the potential impact of a cross-cultural experience on students' overall belief systems regarding language learning and communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centrohelid Raphidocystis contractilis is a heliozoan that has many radiating axopodia, each containing a bundle of microtubules. Although the rapid contraction of the axopodia at nearly a video rate (30 frames/s) is induced by mechanical stimuli, the mechanism underlying this phenomenon in R. contractilis has not yet been elucidated. In the present study, we described for the first time an adequate immunocytochemical fixation procedure for R. contractilis and the cellular distribution of a-tubulin before and after rapid axopodial contraction. We developed a flow-through chamber equipped with a micro-syringe pump that allowed the test solution to be injected at a flow rate below the threshold required to induce rapid axopodial contraction. Next, we used this injection method for evaluating the effects of different combinations of two fixatives (paraformaldehyde or glutaraldehyde) and two buffers (phosphate buffer or PHEM) on the morphological structure of the axopodia. A low concentration of glutaraldehyde in PHEM was identified as an adequate fixative for immunocytochemistry. The distribution of a-tubulin before and after rapid axopodial contraction was examined using immunocytochemistry and confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy. Positive signals were initially detected along the extended axopodia from the tips to the bases and were distributed in a non-uniform manner within the axopodia. Conversely, after the induction of a rapid axopodial contraction, these positive signals accumulated in the peripheral region of the cell. These results indicated that axopodial microtubules disassemble into fragments and/ or tubulin subunits during rapid axopodial contraction. Therefore, we hypothesize that the mechanism of extremely rapid axopodial contraction accompanied by cytoskeletal microtubule degradation in R. contractilis involves microtubule-severing at multiple sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study abroad destinations for Japanese students, particularly those aiming to improve their English language skills, tend to focus on the "Inner Circle" (Kachru, 1992) of English-speaking countries. However, over the last two decades, Korean and Japaneseowned English language schools in the Philippines started to appear, leading to over 6,700 people from Japan going to study English in the Philippines in 2018. In this paper, I aim to document the effects and self-perceived changes that occurred as a result of studying abroad in the Philippines by drawing on a case study of 103 Japanese university students on a four-week intensive English language program. Data collection was conducted over the course of May to December 2018 by means of interviews, questionnaires, and ethnographic observations. Among the common themes that emerged was a shift in focus from grammatical form and accuracy to communicationoriented goals for learning. Such changes in beliefs toward language learning triggered by a study abroad experience can be accounted for using the concept of language ideologies (Surtees, 2016). While this study only accounts for learner impressions shortly after their return, it illustrates the potential impact of a cross-cultural experience on students' overall belief systems regarding language learning and communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]