【関西学院・2月1日】

大問１　

   The term grocer has been used in England since the 15th century to mean a wholesale trader in food and drink items. Hence, we have had the British greengrocer of fruits and vegetables and the American liquor grocery, a term still common in the  mid-19th century. Americans have been calling such establishments groceries since the 1650s, as well as other terms such as general stores, trading houses, or trading posts. The term grocery store appeared in the 1770s.  By the 1840s, enough American towns were laid out on the grid pattern for people to be talking about the corner grocery.

   Tea merchant George Huntington Hartford opened his first retail tea store in 1859 at 31 Vesey Street, New York City. In the next ten years, it became one of the most successful tea houses (a British term which appeared in 1689) and mail order tea suppliers in the country. It sold coffee and spices as well as tea. On May 10, 1869, the nation's first transcontinental railroad was completed, and Hartford, taking advantage of the nationwide excitement over it, began adding more stores. He named his expanding company The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., later known to millions as A & P. It was not until 1917, however, that the company actually spanned the nation by opening a store on the West Coast.

   Constantly increasing its line of groceries, the company grew to 29 stores by 1880, and to more than 200 stores in the 1890s. It continued to make good use of the transcontinental railroad by being the first to bring California oranges, Georgia peaches, and Texas grapefruit to middle-class American tables. Then, A&P, as a major revolution in the 1890s, introduced the cash-and-carry policy to the grocery business with big success. Thus, A&P formed the first grocery chain, though the term was not common until World War I.

   Many other grocery chains also grew from tea companies: the Jones Brothers Tea Co., established in Brooklyn in 1872, became the Grand Union. The Great Western Tea Company became Kroger's in 1902. And the Ginter Co., the John T. Conner Co., and the O'Keefe Co. joined in 1916 to become the First National Stores, often known as FINAST.

  Clarence Saunders is credited with having established the first self-service grocery  in 1916, in Memphis, Tennessee. However, there were several wait-on-yourself groceries set up in California around the same time. They were often called groceterias (after the self-service cafeteria). Saunders advertised and issued  franchises under the name of Piggly-Wiggly. Walking through a Piggly-Wiggly  turnstile' was the first widely-talked-about experience many Americans had with self-service groceries. By 1929, there were 3,000 Piggly-Wiggly self-service grocery stores in 800 cities and towns serving 2.5 million customers every day.

   Many of these stores were eventually bought by other grocery chains and became the first supermarkets, a word that became popular in the 1920s in California—though the first shopping cart was not provided until 1937. By the end of World War II, the corner grocery had all but disappeared. When Americans said grocery, it meant a large supermarket, an American word now known around the world.

(534 words)

  Last month, the public library reopened at Prichard Park in a space more than double its original size, well worth the $16.2 million investment. However, the library's weekly hours have been reduced by more than twenty percent, to 56 hours—a significant loss for the city's residents. It lacks the funding to operate the larger building and pay for additional full-time staff needed to keep to its original schedule.

   As the members of the City Council consider the city's budget over the next two weeks, they should support a proposed two-percent tax increase, which would fund some of the library's losses. Any price is a small one to pay when funding the busiest public library in the area. More than a thousand people visit the library every day, and library officials are expecting at least a twenty-percent increase in daily visits now that the building is open. Weekends are often the most convenient times for working families, especially those with children, to make library visits. But the hours on Saturday and Sunday were hardest hit during the cut.

   Many poor households do not have regular access to books, technology or wireless  Internet without the library's resources. In one residential district, six percent of the adult population has trouble reading at a high school level. Through its programs and events, the library supports efforts to improve literacy in the area. The library also holds free classes that teach basic computer skills. In general, it provides a diverse set of assets to the community—and the city needs to shoulder some of its financial burdens.

   Although other budget items are important, the new public library—which the city has already invested a lot of money in—should get much more attention. The small tax increase would not fully restore the original weekly schedule. However, City Council members should affirm their commitment to the library by also including a provision in the budget to restore the lost hours over the next two or three years. Even during tough economic times, the city needs to make funding its public library a priority rather than giving it the money that remains after all the other city departments, such as the police department or the fire department, receive their budget requests.

(377 words)

   It seems odd that a very young child—too young to read and too short to see over  countertops—would ever gladly stare down the 30-foot-tall skeleton of a two-ton  Allosaurus". Nevertheless, many scientists, including me, began our scientific careers as children doing exactly that. As a timid, suburban kid with neither talent nor promising intellect, gazing at dinosaur fossils assured me that the world was full of spectacular natural wonders.

   Through the frustrations of learning to read in first grade, I worked to memorize the long names of all the best dinosaurs so I could read the "grown-up" dinosaur books that did not even have pictures. For the first time in my life, I actually found learning to be fun and worth the effort.

   If we can find a way to inspire a deep sense of curiosity in our youth, we can attract the kids who only need a push in the right direction to start exercising their brains. We could raise a generation with a real drive to succeed in science. I have to admit that enthusiasm for dinosaurs during my childhood is mostly gone. What is arousing the scientific curiosity of children today?  We seldom need to worry about the naturally-gifted youngsters, but what about those average kids that might never learn to love exploring the universe unless they are encouraged by a dinosaur the size of a building?

   As part of a summer school program, I taught a science and mathematics class for elementary school kids. The children had a resistance toward learning. One shy girl refused to participate in any of my activities because "science is too hard and boring."    On the last day, I led the children in a frog dissection. Some children left the room holding back their lunch, while others were hysterically laughing. The most memorable part of the experience was watching the shy girl dissect her table's frog. And she asked me hundreds of good questions.

   It makes me feel sad to admit, but with our current education system, that girl is almost certainly doomed to lose interest in science. We allow bright minds to go to waste, because we fail to inspire a desire to learn within them.

   Whether it requires bringing our children to more museums or some new way of introducing them to a richer world, we need to do something. Maybe it's time to bring the dinosaurs back.

(417 words)

なんとも感想がありません。「読んだことがある」ぐらいの記憶です。　【２月２７日】

【南山・2/13】

大問１

   What would you think if you applied for a job and were told that getting the position could depend on an analysis of your handwriting? In most parts of the world, people would think that the idea was crazy. But not in France, where graphology—a method of analyzing handwriting—is used to judge potential employees, rather than personality tests which are common in many other countries. A study in 1991 found that a remarkable 91% of public and private employers in France made use of handwriting analysis. Reliable figures are difficult to obtain today, but graphologists—the people who practice graphology—say that between 50% and 75% of French companies make some use of handwriting analysis. However, those companies which utilize graphology are often unwilling to say that they do so out of fear that their views might be considered out-of-date.

   Today, roughly a thousand graphologists practice in France and training courses are well attended, even though it takes years to learn the complex rules of graphology. So why is it so popular in France? Some argue it is because the French like to analyze things deeply. Others reject modern personality tests as being too simple because they try to categorize people based on their responses to a few multiple-choice questions. Or maybe it is because French people are proud to claim that the basic idea of graphology was put forward in nineteenth-century France by a Catholic priest, Jean-Hipployte Michon, even though graphology was first mentioned in the third century BC by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. It was, however, a book published in the early twentieth century by Jean Crepieux-Jamin, a student of Michon, which clearly set out the modern system of graphology. His book, ABC of Graphology, is still popular today, and its continued use means that techniques used by twenty-first-century graphologists have barely changed for about one hundred years.

   According to Catharine Bottiau, one of France's best-known graphologists, it is wrong to think that they decide who gets a job. "Normally graphologists are consulted once a company has selected a shortlist of about five candidates. These candidates are then asked to write a letter in their own handwriting on a topic provided by us. Based upon an examination of the handwriting, we offer our advice to the company which usually confirms the impressions already collected from interviews and personality tests." Bottiau argues that the advantage of handwriting analysis is that it can highlight personality features that might not be obvious and might prove negative if the person were to be given the job.

   As for the actual process of analysis, it is a complex technique involving the study of a number of factors. These include the size, angle, slope, and shape of letters, as well as the links between letters, the space between words, pen pressure, and overall neatness of the writing. Bertram Durand, who runs an international recruitment company and spent three years training as a graphologist in New York, claims that writing reveals personality. "Graphology studies the energy that guides the hand and the message which—unconsciously as well as consciously—the person wants to express." He goes on to say, 'There's no simple way to explain our job. It uses highly specialized techniques based on psychology. Just because we can't measure its success rate using mathematics or statistics, that doesn't mean it's not an accurate tool. In all our client studies, there's a high satisfaction rate. They use it because, for them, it works extremely well."

   But what proof is there that the study of handwriting offers any understanding of a person's character? The answer—according to Laurent Begue, a professor of psychology at the University of Grenoble—is absolutely none at all. In his view, graphologists are just guessing. According to him, graphologists draw up a psychological profile of candidates using the content of a single letter to identify details of their lives and their motivations. Begue believes graphologists draw easy and obvious conclusions where they can, and then add vague generalizations that may contain some truth. He suggests that they use the same skills as people who claim to read people's minds. "Many studies over the years have shown that it's all nonsense," Begue says. "If you ask a group of graphologists to study the same piece of handwriting, they all come up with different analyses." Begue points to research which reveals that when graphologists are shown texts containing no personal information, they are poor at identifying a candidate's character.

   Bertram Durand argues that psychologists like Begue, and companies who produce and sell personality tests, criticize graphology to promote their own services. He adds: "To pretend that their so-called scientific personality tests are in some way more reliable than graphology is absolute nonsense. Two people who are totally different can easily produce the same result on a personality test, but no two people will ever have the same handwriting." Catharine Bottiau has developed a very effective response to her critics: she offers to analyze their handwriting. "They usually change their mind about graphology after the experience," she says, with a laugh.

(851 words)

http://homepage2.nifty.com/cq/20130428QReading314-answerkeys.html

大問２

 My name is Seydou Keita and I am a professional photographer. Here is my story. I was  horn and raised in Bamako, in the West African country of Mali, in 1921, the eldest of five children. My father and uncle were both hard-working men, and they were known for their skill as carpenters. It is thanks to my uncle that I learned how to make furniture at a young age. I had great admiration for my uncle, so I was very sad that he went away to Senegal to work when I was ten years old. But when he finally returned to Bamako, he brought back a camera, which he later ended up giving to me. This is how I got my start in photograph, with absolutely no training at all. Since then, I have done everything possible to be a good photographer.

   For ten years I worked both as a carpenter and a photographer. I always spent my spare time taking photos of my family. I'm afraid, though, that I got off to a rather bad start in my professional photography work. Cameras were rare in Mali at that time, so people would approach and offer me money to take their photo. Shooting photos like that in the street caused all sorts of problems because people often moved while I was taking their photo. They simply did not understand that even the slightest movement could ruin the photo. When I got the photos back from the camera store, the people in them often resembled ghosts. Some would refuse to pay me, despite the fact that I had already paid to have their photos printed. From then on, I would always insist that customers pay me in advance.

   In 1948, I opened my own studio in what was then called "New Bamako". This made a huge difference to my career as a photographer. Now, rather than having to take photos out on a busy street, I could work in a peaceful environment. Though there were other photographers in town, I had an advantage over them. My studio was located on the main street between the train station and Bamako's market, which was one of the largest markets in all of West Africa. Visitors to Bamako, many of them coming from the neighboring countries of West Africa, had to pass by my studio on their way to the market from the station. And this is how my name became known throughout West Africa.  (412 words)

 People have to make many choices throughout their lives. It goes without saying that making good choices is not always an easy matter. Consider, for example, the situation of many university students. They must carefully determine which courses to take that will help them most in their future. In addition, they also have to decide whether or not to live at home. Once university begins, students face a number of other choices, too. For example, they must decide if they want to join a club and which club best matches their interests. Some need to find a part-time job that pays an adequate wage in order to help cover their living expenses. Others want to study abroad and therefore must choose from a wide variety of programs that are available overseas. University students may be influenced by family members or friends, but in the end these choices are mostly their own.

(153 words)

なんとも，記憶にありません。ちょうど卒業式の前で，いろいろなことがあって，なんの感想も持たずに問題を解いてしまったのでしょう。【2月２８日】

【福井県立・前期】

大問１

   Boo Boo looks at me with deep brown eyes and a curious expression on his face.  The relaxing sounds of violin music can be heard and the smell of flowers is in the air.  Boo Boo normally likes to bark at visitors, but he has just had breakfast and is feeling happy.  Every morning he is taken for a walk, and is sometimes given a special ice cream made from frozen dog food.  It is not such a bad life for a homeless dog.  However, Boo Boo, a one-year-old Akita dog, is now living at London's Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, perhaps the best-known animal home in the world.  In this comfortable environment, dogs like Boo Boo tend to stay around 28 days before they are matched up with a new owner.  "There is no shortage of people walking through our doors wanting a new pet.  British people tend to have a soft spot for animals, whether they are cats, dogs, or hamsters," says the Home's director, Claire Horton.

   Nevertheless, it was not this way when the Home first opened in 1860.  In those days, dogs were certainly not kept as pets.  In fact, people still regarded them as little more than useful creatures that were good for pulling carts along the street.  Homeless dogs were also regularly killed because of the fear of disease.  Over the past century, however, our relationship with animals has changed.  Now, more and more of us are relying on animals to provide the companionship we cannot get by other means.  The reason for the rapid rise in the number of pets in Western countries over the past 40 years may be partly due to the gradual breakdown of traditional social support systems.  There has been a large increase in people living alone, combined with couples having fewer children, or none at all.  This means that we are allowing animals to fill the gap in our lives.  Increasingly, therefore, our pets have become just like family members.  As a result, we shower them with love and attention.  For instance, we buy our dogs mini brand-name jackets, take them to doga (dog yoga) classes, and let them stay at luxury hotels with special beds and a rooftop garden.  Dog-caring services have risen by 93% since 2001, and around 40% of British people openly say they love their dogs more than their relatives.

   There are a number of reasons for this transformation in our attitudes.  The idea of a dog as man's best friend became popular because books and stories about dogs began selling very well from the late 19th century.  Then, people started to keep dogs as household pets.  At the same time, Charles Darwin's research into the evolutionary process helped to develop a greater respect for animals, and so we became more kind-hearted toward them.  In addition, our emotional feeling for our pets could also be a result of life having become much easier.  People who do not have to get up at daybreak to work in the fields or bake bread generally have more time to look after their pets.  It seems that life is now more comfortable for everybody, including our pets.

   Unfortunately, there is still a need for a Battersea Dogs&Cats Home more than 150 years after it first opened.  Even now, some people continue to treat their pets badly.  A lot of pets are also left abandoned on the street because they are more expensive to look after and more difficult to handle than their owners realized.  At the same time, however, the situation at Battersea has changed considerably over the years since 1860.  An increasing number of people now take their pets there voluntarily because of changing personal circumstances in their lives.  For example, a young couple may have a new baby, or an elderly couple may have to move into a nursing home.  They can therefore no longer provide their pets with the best home possible.  As for Boo Boo, no one has yet chosen to take him home as their pet, but until someone does, he seems perfectly happy here.  In fact, as he listens to the peaceful sounds of the classical music and smells the delicate aroma of flowers, it is hard not to think that he looks, well, almost  . . .  human.

(717 words)

大問2

   Is sleep important for children?  A new study published in a well-known medical journal shows that children who do not get enough sleep have less control over their emotions and are less focused at school.  Generally, 10 to 11 hours of sleep per night is recommended for children aged 5 to 12, but are they getting enough?

   Psychologist Reut Gruber conducted a study on sleep and children's behavior.  In the study, Gruber and her team either added or took away one hour of sleep in healthy children aged 7 to 11.  They observed the children for five nights.  The aim was to see if small changes in the amount of sleep could affect a child's behavior.  Before the survey began, the children were asked to sleep the same number of hours as they normally would.  Their teachers were asked to score the children on thoughtfulness, anger, and emotional reactions.  After five nights, the teachers were asked to take the survey again.  Compared with their original scores, those who slept one hour less had worse behavior scores than those who were allowed to sleep an hour more.  Children with less sleep were more bad-tempered, frustrated, and had more troubles paying attention.  The children with more sleep showed improvement in these areas.

   Gruber chose to study the children in their homes instead of inside a laboratory because she wanted to measure how everyday changes might affect their behavior in the classroom.  "One more movie or one less game played before bed can change the way children focus and work with their teachers and classmates," says Gruber.  If less sleep leads to a drop in attention in class, children may miss out on learning and chances to be creative.  If they are easily irritated and frustrated because their bodies and brains are tired, they may not learn as much either.  Sleep, it seems, is just as important as diet and exercise in keeping children's minds and bodies healthy.

(325 words)

http://www.sp-cosmeticsurgery.com/jp/?p=2592

記録によれば4月2日が閉めきりのよう。この年は3月１３日～３月２５日までイギリス・ボーンマス，ロンドンの語学研修旅行の引率に言ってきました。それはそれはいろいろなことがあり，全く気分的に落ち着かない状況での解答。大問１はそれでも，なんとなく記憶にあります。まぁ，イギリス人とペットですから～　【4月2日】

【琉球・前期】

大問１

   Show up an hour late in Brazil, and no one cares.  But keep someone in New York City waiting for five or ten minutes, and they might get really angry at you.  The way members of a culture understand and use time reflects what is important in their society and even how they understand the world.  Social scientists have recorded wide differences in the pace of life in various countries and in how societies view time.  It is difficult to tell the difference between time and space in some cultures: the Australian Aborigines' concept of "Dreamtime" includes not only a story about how the world started but also a method for finding their way around the countryside.  However, certain views of time, such as the idea that it is acceptable for a more powerful person to keep someone of lower status waiting, cut across cultural differences and seem to be found everywhere.

   The study of time and society can be divided into the practical and the cosmological.  On the practical side, author Edward T.Hall, Jr. wrote that the rules of social time make up a "silent language" for a given culture.  The rules might not always be obvious, he stated, but "they exist in the air ...They are either familiar and comfortable or unfamiliar and wrong. "

   He described how various understandings of time can lead to problems between people from different cultures.  "A diplomat who has been kept waiting for more than half an hour by a foreign visitor needs to understand that if his visitor doesn't apologize this is not necessarily an insult," Hall wrote.  "The time system in the foreign country may be composed of different basic units, so the visitor is not as late as he may appear to us.  You must know the time system of the country to know at what point a person should say sorry. . . .  Different cultures simply place different values on time units. "

   Most cultures around the world now have watches and calendars, uniting the majority of the planet in the same general rhythm of time.  But that doesn't mean we all perceive time in the same way.  "One of the good things about studying time is that it's a wonderful way to understand culture," says Hall.  "You get answers on what cultures value and believe in.  You get a really good idea of what's important to people. "

   Hall has conducted studies in 31 countries.  In A Geography of Time, published in 1997, Hall describes how he ranked the countries by using three measures: walking speed on city sidewalks, how quickly clerks at a store could help customers, and how accurate public clocks were.  Based on these measures, he concluded that the five fastest-paced countries were Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Japan and Italy; the five slowest were Syria, El Salvador, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico.  The United States, at 16th, ranked near the middle.

   Professor Kevin Smith has examined people's understanding of time on the island of Trinidad.  Smith's 1999 book, Any Time Is Trinidad Time, refers to a commonly used phrase to excuse lateness.  In that country, Smith observes, "if you have a meeting at 6:00 in the evening, people show up at 6:45 or 7:00 and say,  'Any time is Trinidad time.' When it comes to business, however, that loose approach to time works only for people with power.  A superior worker can show up late and say "Any time is Trinidad time," but junior workers are expected to be on time.  For them, the saying goes, "Time is time." Smith adds that the tie between power and waiting time is true for many other cultures as well.

   Smith also investigated how Trinidadians value time by exploring how closely their society links time and money.  He asked rural residents and found that farmers who tell time by natural events, such as sunrise, did not recognize the phrases "time is money," "budget your time" or "time management," even though they had TV and were familiar with Western popular culture.  But tailors in the same areas were aware of such ideas.  Smith concluded that wage work altered the tailors' views of time.  'The ideas of associating time with money are not found globally," he says, "but are attached to your job and the people you work with. "

   How people manage time on a day-to-day basis often has nothing to do with how they think of time as a cultural idea.  "There are often differences between how a culture views myths about time and how they think about time in their daily lives," Smith says.  "We don't think of scientific theories of time as we go about our daily lives. "

   In some cultures, there is not a clear difference between the past, present and future.  Australian Aborigines, for instance, believe that after the first people were created, they "sang" the world into being.  They named each landscape feature and living thing, and this brought them into existence.  Even today, Aborigines believe that something does not exist unless an Aborigine "sings" it.

   Author Salim Abboud has written about time and Muslim cultures.  Muslims "always carry the past with them," claims Abboud.  "For Muslims, time includes the past, present and future, all at the same time.  The past is ever present. " Muslims seek to honor the good old days of the Prophet Muhammad's life.  "They have a particular vision of the past.  All they are doing is trying to bring back that past. "

   Abboud argues that the West has forced its ideas about time on other cultures by spreading the belief that life should become better as time passes: "If you control people's understanding of time, you also control the future.  If you think of time as an arrow, of course you think of the future as progress, going in one direction.  But different people may desire different futures. " (989 words)

   If you're a grown-up with parents, you may think it's a little bit of a problem to have to take time out of your busy life to go see them or have them over.  You may get tired of their hints that they don't get enough attention.  You may even have to listen to endless complaints or demands, not to mention those questions about how you raise your kids.

   Do you think you've got it tough? Some of your contemporaries in China would gladly trade places with you.

   That's because in the nation with the world's largest population, attending to the needs of your elderly parents is no longer entirely your decision.  It's a legal obligation.  The government has made a law requiring that children visit their parents and that their employers give the children time off to do so.  And if you fail to visit your parents at home, you might be forced to visit them in court.

   Chinese culture has long placed a heavy emphasis on respect and care for parents.  "While father and mother are alive," said the ancient philosopher Confucius, "a good son does not wander far from his parents. " But in China's fast-paced modern economy, many sons and daughters take jobs far from where they were raised, and see their parents only rarely.

   Senior citizens are not happy about that trend.  "I know the person who drafted this provision, and the first thing I told him was that it was a really nice move," Nini Wong of the Senior Citizen Society of China said.

   Americans who have not reached middle age may consider such remedies as being ridiculous.  What they may not have considered is that today's senior citizens are the baby boomers, who have long enjoyed the power that goes with numbers.  Baby boomers are used to getting their way, and they are not about to give that up just because they've gotten older.

   Could you expect any less from them? Absolutely not! The baby boomer generation pushed soft romantic melodies aside and replaced them with loud rock music from bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  They protested against the Vietnam War and ended the military draft.  They got the voting age changed from 21 to 18.  They got the legal age for drinking alcohol lowered for them— and then raised it for their kids.

   They think the world revolves around them because for two-thirds of a century, it has.  In retirement, there will not only be more seniors than ever before but these baby boomers will have even more time to spend arranging the world to their satisfaction.

   The generations that follow them have long worried about paying to keep social and medical benefits at the level these seniors have been led to expect.  But these baby boomers will not be completely satisfied with mere money.  They will expect time for visits with the children — and the grandchildren.  They will expect company for Sunday dinners, summer trips, and birthday and holiday celebrations—you can guess.

   What if they don't get what they want? Well, the Chinese have devised one option.  And if we know anything about our representatives in government, it's that they have no desire to take on a bunch of old folks with a habit of voting on Election Day.

   A couple of decades back, seniors who wanted to protect their retirement benefits earned the nickname "greedy  geezers*. " Greedy? Kids, this generation of seniors are going to shock the world. (583 words)

琉球大学は初めての担当でしたが，結構がっつりしていました。大問１は結構定番。長く入試英文を読んでれば，その常識で読めそう。大問２はおもしろいです。日本でも共通する事象で，私はそのベビーブーマー第2世代とベビーブーマーの狭間の世代。もう，学校も始まっており，かなり忙しい気分でやったのだろうと思います。【4月１５日】

【県立広島・前期】

 North America's resurgent cycling culture is maturing.  Many early adopters of the bike lifestyle are beginning a new stage in their lives.  In making the transition from youthful independence to being adults with dependents, they face a challenge their parents probably never considered: raising bike-friendly kids.  It's a challenge that goes beyond simply getting kids on bikes.

 To accommodate cycling kids means rethinking the way we design our neighborhoods, with safer streets and recreational amenities located closer to where children live.  It means a new emphasis on function over fashion for manufacturers of children's bicycles.  It certainly means that schools, employers, and businesses need to rethink the way they operate — for example, by providing more bike racks on the school grounds, lockers and showers in the workplace, and space for bike trailers at the mall parking lot.  Most of all, it means leading by example.

 When they cycle together, many parents and children develop a connection that cannot exist in an automobile.  Cycling together is a shared experience, unlike a car trip, with its inherent power differential between driver and passenger.  Nothing builds a child's self-esteem quite like trust and responsibility.  Letting your kids ride for transportation means giving them both.  And the benefits aren't all on the child's side.

 For parents, cycling with their children opens up a range of possibilities that don't exist inside a car.  It can be something as simple as a quick stop to enjoy the antics of a cheeky squirrel or mischievous crow, or the feeling of pride in a child who is pedaling hard on a tandem or trail-a-bike to make it a little easier to climb a hill.  Or it might be something farther reaching, such as the awareness of creating a new future for everyone, setting an example of self-reliance and commitment that inspires others.

 Most of all, though, it's the chance to share feelings that most people have forgotten.  A bicycle can bring out the kid in a grown-up — and give a kid a chance to show resilience and strength.  When those things happen, everybody wins.

 But how do we make them happen?  "One of the things we're finding is we need to teach kids and parents together," said Wendy Kallins, program director for Safe Routes to Schools, based in Marin County, California.  Formed in 2003, the group works to encourage the development of kid-and bike-friendly infrastructure along road systems near schools.  "One of the biggest impediments to getting kids on bikes is getting parents on bikes," added Kallins.  "For parents who are not cyclists, everything seems dangerous. "

 Some of these fears are valid.  Riders under the age of 16 accounted for 13 percent of all U.S. cycling fatalities in 2008, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, with kids between the ages of 13 and 15 cited as being particularly at risk.  However, one mother thinks we need to give kids more freedom and trust their ability to make sensible choices.  "What I always wonder," said Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids, "is, do parents think their kids are so much less competent than they were?"

 In some situations, cycling for transportation is obviously unsafe for kids, such as in exurbs where freeways and major roads are the only links between homes, schools, parks, and stores.  When children can't use bikes for getting around, however, Skenazy believes, kids and parents both lose. "Why wouldn't you want your kid to gain some independence, have some fun, get some exercise, and get themselves to school? As someone once wrote to me, there's not a prize for the most exhausted parent!"

 It wasn't always this way.  In 1969, 48 percent of American kids walked or cycled to school.  By 2009, that number had dropped to 13 percent, where it stabilized.  Thankfully, education, cycling clubs, and kids themselves are proving a powerful combination, removing fears and creating a new generation of pedal pushers.  Determined to do their part for the planet, plenty of kids see cycling as a fun way to pitch in.  Bike-friendly teachers and cycling advocacy groups are eager to support them, with clubs and bike-skills training.  In addition, gridlocked transportation networks, skyrocketing rates of childhood obesity, and climate change are further convincing the public and policy makers that getting kids on bikes is an important step toward creating sustainable and healthy communities.

 Still, the very design of our towns and cities can be a gigantic roadblock for kids who want to meet their transportation needs.  Richard Gilbert is a Toronto transportation analyst working on developing child-friendly land-use and transport-planning guidelines for cities across North America.  One of his key recommendations is to create kid-friendly routes to pools, libraries, parks, and schools so that youngsters can get places on their own.  Too often, kids can't go anywhere without the help of Mom's (or Dad's) Taxi.  (806 words)

(From C. Keam, "Biking with Kids," in A. Walker (Ed. ), On Bicycles)

4月下旬の問題。「やや難」のラベルをつけました。【4月20日】

 【電通大・前期】

大問１

Lack of diversity hurts Japan: Saito

   William H.  Saito, who moved to Tokyo from California eight years ago, has had some splendid achievements in his 41 years of life so far.

   The computer expert started his first software company at age 14, engaged in the programming business with Japan's major IT giants in the mid-1980s, developed the world's first biometric authentication standard for technologies such as fingerprint recognition, then sold his company to Microsoft Corp.  in 2004.

   He also became one of the youngest to win the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.  In 2011, the World Economic Forum, an organization known for its annual meeting of global leaders in Davos, Switzerland, selected Saito as a Young Global Leader, a title given to people under age 40 who have demonstrated their commitment to serving society.  Saito now serves as a board member of the WEE.

   One may wonder why this Los Angeles-born, internationally recognized entrepreneur came to live in Japan.

   Saito said he wanted to give back what he received from this country when he was a teenager.

   "I realized that the success and where I came to was really as a result of Japan.  Japan was the country that gave me those chances, and without Japan, I would not be where I am now," he said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.

   In the 1980s, Saito, then a high school student who already had a small computer business, used to spend summers in Tokyo interning at companies.  He learned a lot by walking around the Akihabara district of the capital and from Japan's emerging electronics industry, and made connections with people in the industry, which eventually allowed him to gain business contracts with NEC Corp. , Toshiba Corp.  and many others.

   "When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, frankly, not everything went perfectly, but these people forgave me.  They still continued the business relationships," Saito said.

   It was the time when Japan's economic strength was skyrocketing.  But since then, Japan Inc. 's strength has declined.

 "The problem with Japan right now is that people have become so conservative.  People have become so risk-averse that failure has become a bad word.  So, they end up doing nothing," said Saito, who is fluent in Japanese and English.

   Saito said that 10 to 20 years ago, there were people who gave young people like him a chance, but now, people in the early 20s do not get such opportunities and do not have hope.  "I thought this would be an opportunity to give back and create chances for the next generation. "

   So he founded InTecur KK. , a Tokyo-based technology consultancy, which invests in venture businesses and serves as an adviser to various startups and governments worldwide.

 He also teaches at several universities and provides scholarships every year to six students who want to study abroad, hoping to create "ambassadors" that link Japan to the rest of the world.

   Saito feels Japan, whose products once led the global market, is not catching up with the quick pace of innovation happening around the world now

 "If you look at audio, they went from cassette tapes to CDs, and that's how Sony got famous.  And they went from CDs to USB.  But as soon as we started using USB, now we are using the cloud.  It happens so fast," he said.

 "To make things even worse, this innovation is no longer Nagoya versus Detroit.  It's now Shinagawa versus Seoul versus Taipei versus Bangkok versus Silicon Valley.  You have all this innovation that happens at such a quick pace for multiple parts of the world," he said.

   But Saito, who advises governments including Japan and the United Arab Emirates, said Japan can be competitive again with only a little more effort because it already has the most important natural resource: intellect.

   "I call this the last mile.  This last mile is not a big deal," he said, adding that many countries have to start from creating necessary infrastructure, but Japan already has universities, a highly educated workforce and even Nobel laureates.

   Saito said he is able to prove this point because the companies he invested in became successful once they received proper direction.

 "They are smart people.  They just need direction and support to build the right team to help support that intellect," said Saito, whose book "The Team" is among those he wrote in Japanese.

In 'The Team," published in October last year, Saito talks about the importance of team-building and how Japanese organizations fail to create good teams.  He said Japan's top-down decision-making culture and seniority-based system hinders innovation, and Japan should give more chances to women and the younger generation.

   "Japan is already not diverse to begin with.  Yet, it shuns women.  It shuns young people," he said.

 According to Saito, both the Manhattan Project, a research and development program that produced the first atomic bomb, and the Apollo moon project had about 300,000 people working on each, and the average age of those people was 27.

 "'The age 27 is probably when a person is most creative, most innovative, with the most energy, yet Japan throws this away," he said.

   Saito said the WEF also sees the importance of hearing young people's voices.  And with Saito's recommendation, the organization last year created a Tokyo center where 30 influential young Japanese in their 20s selected as Global Shapers gathered for discussion, and five of them were invited to Davos last year

   "Immediately when it was forming, (WEF founder) Schwab decides to come to Japan and sees 30 people in their 20s, talking in English about what they do and how they want to change the world.  It was very impressive," he said, adding that there are now 200 such centers of Global Shapers worldwide.

 "The World Economic Forum is the premier event where you can get people who are concerned about the world and who come from multiple diverse backgrounds that represent stakeholders," said Saito, adding that Japan should learn from this community and also share its experiences ranging from disaster recovery to "Abenomics," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plans for Japan's economic recovery.

   'These are the discussions that we should not be doing with a bunch of Todai (University of Tokyo) graduates in one room wearing the same kind of suit," Saito said.

(1049 words)

Daimon, S.  (2013, January 23).  Lack of diversity hurts Japan: Saito.  The Japan Times.  Retrieved from: http://wvvwjapantirnes. cajp/news/ 2013/01/23/nationaldack-of-diversity-hurts-japan-saito/

大問２

Afraid of its own fishy reflection

   Male cichlids are mainly freshwater fish that may go after other fish who dare cross their path.  A male cichlid will even lunge if that "other fish" happens to be himself.  When some types of these cichlids see their own reflections in a mirror, they respond as aggressively as when they encounter a real fish opponent.

   A new study suggests that even though these two situations may look the same, a fish's brain actually reacts differently in each case.  Researchers from Stanford University recently studied male cichlids that fight their own reflections.  The team observed that the part of the brain associated with fear and other negative emotions becomes active when the fish fight their mirror images.

   Julie K. Desjardins,, one of the scientists who worked on the study, says it is not clear whether the research is finding "fear" — that is, the scientists are not sure that the fish are afraid of themselves.  Even if it is not fear, the fish is having a negative response, something besides the aggression it usually shows toward another fish, she told Science News.

   The study of Desjardins and Russell Femald, her colleague at Stanford, is the first to show that a fish's brain reacts differently when the fish sees its own reflection.  That does not mean, however, that the fish recognizes itself.

   Scientists use mirrors to try to study the consciousness of animals.  Previous studies have shown that elephants, dolphins and magpies (a type of bird) look into a mirror and know they see themselves, Diana Reiss told Science News.  Reiss is a scientist at Hunter College in New York City who tries to understand animal cognition.  She says not every animal knows its mirror self — monkeys and fish, for example, do not seem to recognize themselves in the minor.

   In the new study, Desjardins and Fernald did not observe a difference in the behaviors of fish going after other fish compared with fish going after their own reflections.  And when the scientists looked at hormones in the fish, they did not see a difference.  But when they looked in the fish's brain, using a technique called immediate early gene (lEG) expression, they found a difference.

   With this technique, the scientists watched particular genes in the fish that were associated with particular regions of the brain.  Measuring lEG helped the scientists to determine which areas of the brain were more active than others.  "It's a kind of fishy MRI," Desjardins told Science News.  MRI stands for magnetic resonance imaging, a tool that gives scientists an idea of what is going on inside the brain.

   When a fish went after its own reflection, the scientists found that the fish brain was especially active in a region similar to the amygdala. * In human beings and other animals, the amygdala is associated with fear and other negative emotions.

   When the male cichlids went after other fish, they did not have the same activity in their amygdala regions — showing that their brains reacted differently when they looked themselves in the fishy face.

   Using lEG expression to study fishy fear is new and unusual, but some older studies have shown similar results in other animals.  Monkeys, for example, have not been shown to recognize themselves — but they do act differently around their own reflections than they do around other monkeys.

 This experiment shows how minors can be used to study brain activity, even for animals that do not recognize themselves.  (573 words)

これが2014年度入試最後の問題。タイムスタンプによれば5月10日です。最近は「追加掲載編」というのがあるので，結構おそくまで続きます。入試問題の解答最盛期である3月中旬に日本を留守したこともあり，担当は少なめでした。また，慌ただしかったため，よく問題について，思い入れがないというか，感想がないというか，あっというまでした。【5月20日】