林業の不振や過疎・高齢化によって森林やその公益的機能を継承してきた農山村のコミュニティは疲弊してきている。近年，高等教育において，地域の課題や問題をテーマとしたプロジェクト型学習: Project Based ...Learning（以下，PBL)が行われるようになり，森林を地域資源として活用する例も増えてきた。本研究は，社会人基礎力の12の能力要素を評価指標にPBLに参加する学生の能力伸長を測定した。その内，森林環境教育の能力伸長と類似のPBLの能力伸長を比較した結果，森林環境教育の伸長率について，「ストレスコントロール力」，次いで「創造力」，「働きかけ力」が高かったが，その要因を検証するため主成分分析を行った結果，「ふりかえりによる達成感要因」，「活動内容要因」が影響しているものと判断した。特に森林環境教育の活動内容に影響した能力伸長は，状況把握力，規律性，ストレスコントロール力で，社会人基礎力の伸長に有意に作用する能力が明らかになった。
Nucleic acid fraction (NAF) of hydrolyzed salmon milt extract has been reported to enhance both object recognition and location memories in healthy mice and promote proliferation of primary cultured ...neural stem cells (pcNSCs). NAF highly contains tri-deoxyribonucleotides, and only tri-deoxycytidine (CCC) among all 64 tri-deoxyribonucleotides significantly promotes pcNSCs proliferation although the underlying mechanisms and its proliferative effect in the brain remain unclear. The purpose of the present study was to clarify the possible mechanism and the effect on neurogenesis in vivo. Proteome analysis of the lysates of pcNSCs after treatment with CCC was first performed, showing that CCC up- and down-regulated 81 and 248 proteins, respectively. According to further KEGG pathway enrichment analysis, PI3K-Akt signaling was significantly enriched. Then, we checked expression of proteins related to Akt signaling including phosphorylated Akt (p-Akt) in pcNSCs by western blot analysis. Expression of p-Akt in pcNSCs treated with CCC was higher than that in vehicle-treated control. We also performed intrahippocampal injection of CCC in mice to examine whether or not CCC affects neurogenesis in hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG), which highly contains NSCs. Area of newborn neuron marker doublecortin-positive cells in the hippocampal DG injected with CCC was significantly higher than that in control. These results suggest that CCC has a potential to promote proliferation of NSCs in the brain, and Akt signaling is one of the possible signaling pathways involved.
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