Inclusive education, based on the principle that all children (including those with disabilities) should receive similar education, has been recently adopted in primary and secondary schools throughout several countries. Within an inclusive education context, teachers are faced with the challenge of developing their knowledge and skills necessary to properly assess the intellectual abilities of a wide range of children. Although intelligence has been examined for over 100 years, researchers are still debating what abilities should or should not be classified as belonging to the domain of intelligence. In order to effectively apply intelligence theory and assessment methods for inclusive education, we compared traditional intelligence theory (Spearman’s two-factor model) with a more recent intelligence theory (Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory). Spearman’s theory focuses on elementary perceptual processes by using the single g factor, whereas Gardner’s theory recognizes several types of intelligence. On the basis of these reviews, we propose the utility of multiple intelligence theory for inclusive education, considering the various profiles of intelligence shown by children with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders.

Inclusive education has been recently proposed in primary and secondary educations in many countries. Children who need special education support should be educated together with typically developing children in general classes. Although many studies have examined the effectiveness of inclusive education, researchers have pointed out that some general education teachers experience problems in their relationships with children who have disabilities such as developmental disorders and intellectual disabilities. In this paper, we review teacher training programs in a Japanese university and offer suggestions to enhance teachers’ relationships with disabled children. In our discussion, we focused on adult attachment theory, which is an affective connection and interactions between self and others. First, we reviewed the importance of teachers’ relationships with disabled children. Second, we reviewed attachment theories with respect to the quality of teacher-child relationships, and lastly, we proposed that adult attachment theory is a mediator in the quality of teacher-child relationships. We proposed a direction for the application of these conceptual assumptions to the teacher-training program for inclusive education in a Japanese university.

Social discounting has been attracting attention in behavioral psychology, econophysics, and neuroeconomics. Several mathematical models have been proposed for social discounting; exponential discounting, hyperbolic discounting, a q-exponential discounting model based on Tsallis’ statistics. In order to experimentally examine the mathematical characteristics of the q-exponential social discounting models for gain and loss in humans, we estimated the parameters of the q-exponential social discounting models by assessing the points of subjective equality (indifference points) at seven social distances. We observed that gain was more steeply social-discounted than loss. Usefulness of the q-exponential social discounting model in social physics, econophysics, and cultural neuroeconomics are discussed.

Racemization of aspartic acid (Asp) residues in proteins plays an important role in the molecular biology of aging. In the widely accepted mechanism of the Asp racemization, a succinimide (SI) intermediate is the species which actually undergo the direct racemization. In the present study, a two-water-assisted mechanism of the SI racemization was computationally investigated using a model compound in which an aminosuccinyl (Asu) residue is capped with acetyl and NMe groups on the N-and C-termini, respectively. The two water molecules catalyze the enolization of the H_α-C_α-C=O portion in the Asu residue by mediating proton relay from the α-carbon atom to the carboxyl oxygen atom. After the enolization, migration of the water molecules and conformational change lead to the mirror image of the initially formed enol two-water complex, and the racemization is completed by the following ketonization. The overall activation barrier (28.2 kcal·mol^-1) corresponds to the enolization and ketonization steps, and falls within the available experimental activation energies (21.4-29.0 kcal·mol^-1). Therefore, the two-water-assisted mechanism investigated here is plausible for the in vivo and in vitro racemization reactions of the SI intermediates formed in peptides and proteins.