Origami e kirigami: arte e cultura como recurso lúdico e educativo

We can know a people through their cultural and artistic assets. One of the many aspects of Japanese culture is origami, a fusion of the verb “oru”, which means folding, with the word “kami” meaning paper. In this communication, we describe the course “Origami and Kirigami: art and culture as a recreational and educational resource”. The course aimed to present these two oriental techniques based on paper and its potential as a source of entertainment and education, at the same time seeking to introduce cultural aspects of these arts of folding and/or cutting paper. This practice is more common than we realize, and is present in our day-to-day life when we perform actions such as folding clothes and papers, and making packages, amongst others. However, few are aware of the benefits that this folding brings to the fields of Arts, Mathematics, and Science, besides its recreational characteristics. Kirigami is a mixed technique that in addition to using folds in the paper (as in origami) also uses cuts (“kiru” – meaning, “cut”). It can be performed with heavier paper than origami, and by introducing some cuts, the paper can be folded to form the desired shape. It is a simple technique, with impressive results. We conducted eight weekly meetings, each lasting four hours, totaling 32 hours of coursework. In addition to the classes, a visit was made to the Okinawa Club in Bauru (São Paulo), where it was possible for the students of the course and the elderly group (fujinkai) of origamists of the club to exchange experiences. Finally, an exhibition was organized to display the artifacts produced by the course participants and disseminate the work of the students.

Longitudinal logbook survey designs for estimating recreational fishery catch, with application to ayu (Plecoglossus altivelis)

Longitudinal surveys of anglers or boat owners are widely used in recreational fishery management to estimate total catch over a fishing season. Survey designs with repeated measures of the same random sample over time are effective if the goal is to show statistically significant differences among point estimates for successive time intervals. However, estimators for total catch over the season that are based on longitudinal sampling will be less precise than stratified estimators based on successive independent samples. Conventional stratified variance estimators would be negatively biased if applied to such data because the samples for different time strata are not independent. We formulated new general estimators for catch rate, total catch, and respective variances that sum across time strata but also account for correlation stratum samples. A case study of the Japanese recreational fishery for ayu (Plecoglossus altivelis) showed that the conventional stratified variance estimate of total catch was about 10% of the variance estimated by our new method. Combining the catch data for each angler or boat owners throughout the season reduced the variance of the total catch estimate by about 75%. For successive independent surveys based on random independent samples, catch, and variance estimators derived from combined data would be the same as conventional stratified estimators when sample allocation is proportional to strata size. We are the first to report annual catch estimates for ayu in a Japanese river by formulating modified estimators for day-permit anglers.

Objetos lúdicos disponibilizados às crianças de 3 a 5 anos: o que encontramos na educação infantil?

The goal of this research is to identify and describe the recreational objects, or toys, children’s play and games offered by teachers from a public municipal school of early childhood education in Pederneiras, a city located inland São Paulo State. The research has started with a retrospective look of the childhood concept and of the recreational objects with in the classical era till the modernity, what has allowed to identify how to play was in history and what is its relation with education. In order to understand how the recreational objects have been seen at school we have made a survey of the oficial Brazilian documents related to the childhood education. The benchmark survey has allowed the organization of a half structured questionnaire and the Kobayashi studies (2009, 2011), was the mean used to identify and classify the recreational objects found at school. The data collected in the benchmark survey in the field remark and by the questionnaire have permitted to identify here recreational objects available by teachers in early childhood education of 3 to 5 years old children at the school mentioned and what they think about the theme, on the other hand the studies performed have allowed us to analyse the adaptation and validity of the recreational objects already found

The ornamental arts of Japan /

Some of the plates are chromolithographs, photoaquatints or carbon prints.

Effects of second language on cognition in English users of L2 Japanese

It is now established that certain cognitive processes such as categorisation are tightly linked to the concepts encoded in language. Recent studies have shown that bilinguals with languages that differ in their concepts may show a shift in their cognition towards the L2 pattern primarily as a function of their L2 proficiency. This research has so far focused predominantly on L2 users who started learning the L2 in childhood or early puberty. The current study asks whether similar effects can be found in adult L2 learners. English speakers of L2 Japanese were given an object classification task involving real physical objects, and an online classification task involving artificial novel objects. Results showed a shift towards the L2 pattern, indicating that some degree of cognitive plasticity exists even when a second language is acquired later in life. These results have implications for theories of L2 acquisition and bilingualism, and contribute towards our understanding of the nature of the relationship between language and cognition in the L2 user’s mind.

Universal ontology: attentive tracking of objects and substances across languages and over development

Previous research has demonstrated that adults are successful at visually tracking rigidly moving items, but experience great difficulties when tracking substance-like ‘‘pouring’’ items. Using a comparative approach, we investigated whether the presence/absence of the grammatical count–mass distinction influences adults and children’s ability to attentively track objects versus substances. More specifically, we aimed to explore whether the higher success at tracking rigid over substance-like items appears universally or whether speakers of classifier languages (like Japanese, not marking the object–substance distinction) are advantaged at tracking substances as compared to speakers of non-classifier languages (like Swiss German, marking the object–substance distinction). Our results supported the idea that language has no effect on low-level cognitive processes such as the attentive visual processing of objects and substances. We concluded arguing that the tendency to prioritize objects is universal and independent of specific characteristics of the language spoken.

Catalogue of a collection of oil paintings and water-color drawings by American and European artists, and of Oriental art objects, belonging to T. E. Waggaman.

Mode of access: Internet.

Simplified Chinese lacquer techniques and Nanban style decoration on Luso-Asian objects from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries

The meeting of multiple cultures and their mutual influence during the Portuguese expansion in Asia led to the emergence of different types of fusion styles in objects commissioned by the settlers, merchants, and religious orders present in Portuguese India. The east-Asian lacquer coatings of modestly sized wooden objects of various types dating from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries have been analyzed as part of the research for a doctoral thesis that aims to establish their cultural and geographical attribution within the context of the Getty Conservation Institute’s lacquer research project. Among the objects were three seventeenthcentury lacquered trays from Portuguese museums and private collections that had previously been classified as Japanese Nanban, Chinese or Ryukyuan lacquers or even as Indo-Portuguese artifacts. The materials and techniques that were identified show close similarities with Chinese techniques mentioned in historic accounts — the only existing Ming Chinese Treatise on lacquering Xiushi lu and the eighteenth-century memoirs of the Jesuit priest d’Incarville. These nearly 400-year-old artifacts are among the first lacquered objects commissioned by Europeans and probably the first of Chinese origin. Their detailed technical study contributes to international lacquer research and complements existing knowledge and perceptions of the lacquering processes that were applied in response to an early European demand for exotic items.

Experimental Infection of Culex Annulirostris, Culex Gelidus, and Aedes Vigilax With a Yellow Fever/Japanese Encephalitis Virus Vaccine Chimera (Chimerivax TM-JE)

Australian mosquitoes from which Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) has been recovered (Culex annulirostris, Culex gelidus, and Aedes vigilax) were assessed for their ability to be infected with the ChimeriVax-JE vaccine, with yellow fever vaccine virus 17D (YF 17D) from which the backbone of ChimeriVax-JE vaccine is derived and with JEV-Nakayama. None of the mosquitoes became infected after being fed orally with 6.1 log(10) plaque-forming units (PFU)/mL of ChimeriVax-JE vaccine, which is greater than the peak viremia in vaccinees (mean peak viremia = 4.8 PFU/mL, range = 0-30 PFU/mL of 0.9 days mean duration, range = 0-11 days). Some members of all three species of mosquito became infected when fed on JEV-Nakayama, but only Ae. vigilax was infected when fed on YF 17D. The results suggest that none of these three species of mosquito are likely to set up secondary cycles of transmission of ChimeriVax-JE in Australia after feeding on a viremic vaccinee.