Taisho University (大正大学, Taishō daigaku) is a private university in Nishi-sugamo, Toshima, Tokyo, Japan. The predecessor of the school was founded in 1885, and it was chartered as a university in 1926.Its school precepts are based on the Tendai school of Buddhism. The concept for the university began when five doctors—Junjiro Takakusu, Masaharu Anesaki, Eun Maeda, Senshō Murakami and Masataro Sawayanagi—who were leaders of Buddhist society in Japan, proposed creating a Buddhist university union.
Background The diagnostic term schizophrenia is among the most stigmatizing labels in psychology and medicine. Public anti-stigma campaigns and efforts to replace the term with less pejorative terms have yielded mixed results. Importantly, patients' own preferences regarding diagnostic labels have been insufficiently explored. Methods In a cross-sectional online survey, 182 adults with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder anonymously completed questionnaires assessing sociodemographic variables, psychopathology (CAPE), self-stigma, and were also asked if they would prefer a different term to “schizophrenia.” Associations between label preference and clinical as well as psychosocial variables were examined using group comparisons and logistic regression. Findings A relative majority of participants preferred retaining the label “schizophrenia” (48.9%), followed by “psychosis” (23.6%; various terms containing psychosis: 37.9%). Overall, nearly three quarters endorsed either “schizophrenia” or a variant using “psychosis”. Preference for retaining “schizophrenia” was associated with lower perceived stigma from others, less prior inpatient treatment on closed wards, lower self-esteem, and higher positive symptoms. Limitations The study relied on self-report data, was cross-sectional, and included only German-speaking participants, limiting generalizability. Interpretations Most patients favored the established diagnostic terms “schizophrenia” and “psychosis” over novel alternatives. This raises the question of whether current efforts to destigmatize the disorder might instead focus on balanced scientific and media communication that highlights the possibility of positive outcomes. Interventions should address both public stigma and self-stigma, potentially drawing on lessons from the U.S. civil rights movement, which reclaimed the term “Black” and stripped it of its earlier negative connotations.
Abstract Food loss and waste (FLW) is a defining inefficiency of the global food system, with far-reaching implications for food security, climate change, and resource and environmental sustainability. In this Perspective, we review evidence from global assessments to indicate that FLW levels have not declined meaningfully despite a decade of focus on Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 to halve per capita FLW by 2030. Experience from leading countries suggests that structural constraints limit achievable reductions through prevention alone. As near-term climate mitigation windows narrow, strategies beyond prevention are required. We argue that eliminating landfill and open-dump disposal of food waste represents an immediate and scalable mitigation opportunity, because systems-based evidence demonstrates that mature recycling pathways – including composting, anaerobic digestion, and repurposing food waste as animal feed – can deliver emissions reductions of approximately 900–1150 kg CO2e per metric ton of food waste while recovering nutrients and sparing energy and land resources. We introduce a best-use framework that allocates FLW streams across recycling options based on emission mitigation potential, resource recovery, and implementation feasibility. Reframing food waste management from a prevention-dominated paradigm toward a landfill-avoidance and recycling-optimization paradigm provides a pragmatic path for near-term emissions abatement while advancing long-term sustainability objectives.
As climate change intensifies extreme rainfall, Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have gained prominence, yet engineering frameworks remain largely empirical and underdeveloped. We propose ten fundamental physical principles of river-basin flood control, grouped into runoff control and inundation-flow control: cover, root reinforcement, infiltration, evaporation and interception, storage, resistance, reverse flow and dispersion, filtering, deflection, and blocking, and we clarify their mechanisms, representative cases, and engineering significance within co-created, basin-wide risk reduction. Analyses of the 2020 Kuma River flood, complemented by evidence from the 2019 East Japan Typhoon (Hagibis) in the Zenpukuji River basin, indicate that the basin-scale runoff-regulating capacity is maintained even under record-breaking rainfall, with no evidence of reaching a plateau. To quantify this behavior, we define the spatio-temporal effective rainwater density (\(\:{\rho\:}_{ster}={V}_{e}/\:\left(A{\bullet\:T}_{fd}\right)\)), where \(\:{V}_{e}\) is the time-integrated effective rainfall, \(\:A\:i\)s the catchment area, and \(\:{T}_{fd}\) is the flood duration. On average, peak discharge tends to be lower as \(\:{\rho\:}_{ster}\) decreases; this tendency is probabilistic. Because \(\:{V}_{e}\) is an integral, lowering \(\:{\rho\:}_{ster}\) hinges on enhancing basin loss processes (infiltration, interception, evaporation) and extending \(\:{T}_{fd}\) through physical delay, providing a physical definition of “slowing the flow” and grounding hydrograph deformation in first principles. While modulating \(\:{\rho\:}_{ster}\) reduces peaks on average, it cannot completely prevent flooding under climate change. Therefore, inundation-flow control technologies that dissipate the kinetic energy of floodwaters and conveyed materials—through resistance, reverse flow and dispersion, filtering, deflection, and blocking—are essential, and their effective implementation at scale requires co-creation, a bottom-up process that builds social consensus and pragmatically redefines river-system design boundaries.
