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Japanese students' lack of English writing skills has been a long-standing problem. It not only originates from students' lack of grammatical knowledge and vocabulary, but also from the availability of fewer opportunities to write essays in English. Further, the current standards for evaluating the essays written by Japanese beginner-level learners in English are not established sufficiently, resulting in a heavy grading burden on the teachers. This study establishes an evaluation standard to assess the English essays written by Japanese beginner-level English learners. An "analytic scoring" is conducted for each essay, involving criteria ranging from level 1 to 4, while another group of evaluators perform a "holistic scoring", judging the quality based on their overall impression, on a scale from 1 to 4. The reliability and validity of the "analytic scoring" are established through the correlation analysis of both evaluations. Text mining is used to analyze the explanation of reasons provided by the holistic scoring evaluators to the highest-rated essays and identify the factors determining the quality of English writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Transposon-mediated transgenesis is an excellent method for creating stable transgenic lines and insertional mutants. In the chordate Ciona intestinalis, Minos is the only transposon that has been used as the tool for germline transformation. Adding another transposon system in this organism enables us to conduct genetic techniques which can only be realized with the use of two transposons. Results: In the present study, we found that another Tc1/ mariner superfamily transposon, sleeping beauty (SB), retains sufficient activity for germline transformation of C. intestinalis. SB shows efficiencies of germline transformation, insertion into gene coding regions, and enhancer detection comparable to those of Minos. We have developed a system for the remobilization of SB copies in the C. intestinalis genome by using transgenic lines expressing SB transposase in the germ cells. With this system, we examined the manner of SB mobilization in the C. intestinalis genome. SB shows intrachromosomal transposition more frequently than Minos. Conclusions: SB-based germline transformation and the establishment of a new method that uses its frequent intrachromosomal transposition will result in breakthroughs in genetic approaches that use C. intestinalis together with Minos. Developmental Dynamics 242:30-43, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important way to keep transgenic and mutant lines of the ascidian Ciona intestinalis, a model system for e.g. genetic functions, in laboratories is via culturing systems. Here we report a disease of C. intestinalis observed in an inland culturing system. The disease, called 'long feces syndrome,' is expressed in affected animals by the following characteristic symptoms of the digestive system: (1) excretion of long and thin feces, (2) pale color of the stomach, and (3) congestion of the digestive tube by digested material. Severely diseased animals usually die within a week after the first symptoms occur, implying a high risk of this disease for ascidian culturing systems. The digestive tubes of the diseased animals are occupied by the gregarine apicomplexan parasite Lankesteria ascidiae, suggesting that large-scale infection by this parasite is the cause of long feces syndrome.