The Japanese Labor Movement and Institutional Reform

This paper traces the evolution of the Japanese labor movement's stance toward institutional change from the early post-World War II era to the present. It argues that, like most labor movements, the Japanese movement began as a movement that promoted the wholesale reconstruction of national political economic institutions. However, over time, its role vis-à-vis institutional change shifted. By the 1970's, rather than being a force devoted to precipitating wholesale institutional change, the Japanese labor movement shifted to a stance of active defense of institutional status quo in both industrial relations and the Japanese political economy writ large. Recently, however, the movement is showing signs that it may be altering its stance once again. I use the concept of "social contract" to make sense of these shifts in the labor movement's stance toward institutional change. I argue that the earlier shift from that of promoting institutional change to a defense of the status quo can be understood to be a byproduct of the establishment of a social contract acceptable to organized labor that was forged between business, labor and government. The recent initial steps toward an alteration in that stance, in turn, is argued to be a consequence of a perceived breakdown of that social contract precipitated by Japan's prolonged recession of the 1990s and increased international competitive pressures.Japan; institutional change; unions; industrial relations; social contract; political economy.

Impact of Population Aging on Japanese International Travel to 2025

In this paper we forecast Japanese international travel to 2025. In addition, to the usual economic variables, our model also captured both populations again and cohort effects on Japanese travel abroad. We predict the number of future Japanese overseas trips for males and females separately by five-year age groups and in five-year increments. We conclude that the Japanese will continue to travel abroad in increasing numbers but population aging will dramatically slow overall future Japanese overseas travel. While the number of "senior" travelers is predicted to increase sharply, we foresee fewer overseas trips taken by Japanese, especially among women, in the 20s and early 30s age groups. Finally, we examine the responses of the industry and the public sector in Japan to implications of a rapidly aging population on future international travel.

The plastic ear and perceptual relearning in auditory spatial perception

The auditory system of adult listeners has been shown to accommodate to altered spectral cues to sound location which presumably provides the basis for recalibration to changes in the shape of the ear over a life time. Here we review the role of auditory and non-auditory inputs to the perception of sound location and consider a range of recent experiments looking at the role of non-auditory inputs in the process of accommodation to these altered spectral cues. A number of studies have used small ear moulds to modify the spectral cues that result in significant degradation in localization performance. Following chronic exposure (10-60 days) performance recovers to some extent and recent work has demonstrated that this occurs for both audio-visual and audio-only regions of space. This begs the questions as to the teacher signal for this remarkable functional plasticity in the adult nervous system. Following a brief review of influence of the motor state in auditory localisation, we consider the potential role of auditory-motor learning in the perceptual recalibration of the spectral cues. Several recent studies have considered how multi-modal and sensory-motor feedback might influence accommodation to altered spectral cues produced by ear moulds or through virtual auditory space stimulation using non-individualised spectral cues. The work with ear moulds demonstrates that a relatively short period of training involving sensory-motor feedback (5 – 10 days) significantly improved both the rate and extent of accommodation to altered spectral cues. This has significant implications not only for the mechanisms by which this complex sensory information is encoded to provide a spatial code but also for adaptive training to altered auditory inputs. The review concludes by considering the implications for rehabilitative training with hearing aids and cochlear prosthesis

Five key institutional change areas for adopting a social learning methodology with CCAFS and the CGIAR system: a synthesis paper

The CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is co-constructing a strategy for Climate Change Communication and Social Learning (CCSL). Not to be confused with the general CCAFS Communication Strategy for disseminating materials and raising profile etc, CCSL is about an attempt to fundamentally change how CGIAR scientists and the communities they work with and for, communicate their shared knowledge and experience and learn together. It is about ensuring a relevant and dynamic transformative change that truly recognises the needs of communities facing the harsh realities of climate change today not just in 50 years time

New error measures and methods for realizing protein graphs from distance data

The interval Distance Geometry Problem (iDGP) consists in finding a realization in $\mathbb{R}^K$ of a simple undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ with nonnegative intervals assigned to the edges in such a way that, for each edge, the Euclidean distance between the realization of the adjacent vertices is within the edge interval bounds. In this paper, we focus on the application to the conformation of proteins in space, which is a basic step in determining protein function: given interval estimations of some of the inter-atomic distances, find their shape. Among different families of methods for accomplishing this task, we look at mathematical programming based methods, which are well suited for dealing with intervals. The basic question we want to answer is: what is the best such method for the problem? The most meaningful error measure for evaluating solution quality is the coordinate root mean square deviation. We first introduce a new error measure which addresses a particular feature of protein backbones, i.e. many partial reflections also yield acceptable backbones. We then present a set of new and existing quadratic and semidefinite programming formulations of this problem, and a set of new and existing methods for solving these formulations. Finally, we perform a computational evaluation of all the feasible solver$+$formulation combinations according to new and existing error measures, finding that the best methodology is a new heuristic method based on multiplicative weights updates

Like Family: Rights of Nonmarried Cohabitational Partners in Loss of Consortium Actions

The organization of family life in American society has changed dramatically in recent decades. Changing societal morals and increases in divorce rates mean that fewer households are organized around the traditional nuclear family model. Courts have struggled to understand and classify these alternative family arrangements, and most have denied recovery in actions for loss of consortium by nontnarried cohabitants. This Note argues that changes in related areas of law and in the loss of consortium doctrine itself indicate that nonrnarried cohabitants should be allowed to recover. Specifically, jtalicial understanding of the purpose of loss of consortium recovery has shifted, and nonnaarried cohabitants have been allowed to recover in closely analogous actions such as negligent infliction of emotional distress. This Note proposes adoption of a standard similar to the one employed in negligent infliction of emotional distress actions. Such a standard provides a framework to determine whether damage to a relationship is severe enough to be compensable, while still providing adequate safeguards to prevent a wave of frivolous suits