Ecological and psychological factors in the cultural evolution of music.

The two target articles agree that processes of cultural evolution generate richness and diversity in music, but neither address this question in a focused way. We sketch one way to proceed - and hence suggest how the target articles differ not only in empirical claims, but also in their tacit, prior assumptions about the relationship between cognition and culture.

Spontaneous eye blinks during creative task correlate with divergent processing.

Creativity consists of divergent and convergent thinking, with both related to individual eye blinks at rest. To assess underlying mechanisms between eye blinks and traditional creativity tasks, we investigated the relationship between creativity performance and eye blinks at rest and during tasks. Participants performed an alternative uses and remote association task while eye blinks were recorded. Results showed that the relationship between eye blinks at rest and creativity performance was compatible with those of previous research. Interestingly, we found that the generation of ideas increased as a function of eye blink number during the alternative uses task. On the other hand, during the remote association task, accuracy was independent of eye blink number during the task, but response time increased with it. Moreover, eye blink changes in participants who responded quickly during the remote association task were different depending on their resting state eye blinks; that is, participants with many eye blinks during rest showed little increasing eye blinks and achieved solutions quickly. Positive correlations between eye blinks during creative tasks and yielding ideas on the alternative uses task and response time on the remote association task suggest that eye blinks during creativity tasks relate to divergent thinking processes such as conceptual reorganization.

Expert pianists make specific exaggerations for teaching.

Experts modulate their performance of actions for teaching purposes, performing slower and exaggerated movements when demonstrating novel actions to novices. The present study asked whether such modulations also occur during teaching performance of a music instrument, where subtle movement modulations are crucial for achieving artistic expression. While exaggerating performances of goal-directed actions outside of artistic contexts may be straightforward, it is an open question whether and how exaggeration for the purpose of teaching operates for actions that are expressive even when performed outside of a teaching context. Pianists were asked to demonstrate to students the techniques required for implementing notated expressions, compared to performing the piece without didactic intentions. Expressions in the piece concerned either articulation (i.e., legato and staccato) or dynamics (i.e., forte and piano). The pianists played either with the goal to perform the piece to an audience or with the goal to teach the respective techniques to novices. When intending to teach articulation, skilled pianists produced more exaggerated staccato. When intending to teach dynamics, they created a larger contrast between forte and piano. We found consistent results across a simple musical scale (Experiment 1) and a more naturalistic piece of music (Experiment 2). These findings show that teaching-specific action modulations generalise to expressive actions and suggest that action modulations serve to highlight the most relevant aspects of the actions to be learnt.

[Analysis of the Distribution of Community Pharmacies and Pharmacists in Miyagi Prefecture].

In Japan, the aging of the population is serious problem. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is constructing a new support system for elderly people called "Community-based integrated care system". In this system, community pharmacists are expected to play an important role as healthcare professionals for the whole community, including elderly people. Since pharmacists will be needed to manage community health in addition to their daily tasks, it is required to reassess the distribution of community pharmacies and pharmacists. In this study, we surveyed their distribution in Miyagi prefecture by using statistical data from public institutions and reevaluated the distribution to raise problems. Based on the numbers of community pharmacies and pharmacists per 1000 population in the whole Miyagi prefecture, each area was ranked to 2 categories and analyzed regarding population, aging rate and inhabitable land area. It was disclosed that the higher aging rate areas had the higher rate of category below the average of whole Miyagi prefecture, especially in the number of pharmacists. When the numbers of pharmacies and pharmacists per the inhabitable land area were used, the uneven distribution became clearer than when those per population were used. These findings suggested that it was important to characterize the areas by not only the ratios of community pharmacies and pharmacists to population numbers but also by the aging rates and inhabitable land area, which were related to the work efficiency of pharmacists and accessibility for resident to pharmacies.

Hepatitis A outbreak associated with a revolving sushi bar in Chiba, Japan: Application of molecular epidemiology.

AIM: The number of hepatitis A cases in Japan as well as in other developed countries has been progressively decreasing during the last several years. There is no universal hepatitis A vaccination program in Japan, and a hepatitis A virus (HAV) epidemic in Japan is not unlikely. In 2011, a hepatitis A outbreak associated with a revolving sushi bar occurred in Chiba, Japan. We aimed to analyze this outbreak. METHODS: Twenty-seven patients associated with this outbreak were admitted to the National Hospital Organization Chiba Medical Center. Molecular epidemiologic investigations were conducted. RESULTS: Twenty-six of the 27 patients had gone to the same revolving sushi bar, and then clinical symptoms appeared. HAV RNA was detected by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction in 23 of the 27 (85.1%) patients whose sera had tested positive for anti-HAV immunoglobulin M. All isolates from this outbreak were clustered within subgenotype IA, displaying 100% sequence homology with each other in 232 bp from all 23 patients. All isolates belong to the IA-1 sublineage, which is endemic to Japan. CONCLUSION: A revolving sushi bar was associated with a hepatitis A outbreak, and molecular epidemiological investigations proved useful.