ABSTRACT. It was recently reported that intravenous administration of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) showed a therapeutic effect in myelocytic leukemia patients. However, we previously observed that, in serum-free conditions, polymorphonuclear leucocytes (PMNs) were killed rapidly by exposure to PMA, suggesting the possibility of serious side effects. In this study, we found that PMA-induced necrosis of PMNs was prevented by serum, suggesting the existence of a "necrosis-suppressing factor". Next we tried to identify the serum factor. The hemopexins we purified were found to suppress necrosis of PMNs in a dose-dependent fashion. Hemopexins alone could not suppress necrosis, however, as it required the coexistence of another macromolecule such as albumin. Albumin promoted the suppressive activity of hemopexins in a dose-dependent fashion. These results strongly suggest that serum hemopexins may rescue mature PMNs from necrosis in the PMA-administered leukemia patient as previously reported, resulting in avoidance of serious side effects.

The authors have conducted several studies concerning reading and listening comprehension processes of Japanese learners of English. Assuming that working memory is the crucial factor in these two types of processing, estal)lished reading and listening span tests are needed. However, so far, span tests have traditionally been conducted in a "face to face" situation. It has been impossible to gather a large number of subjects or to adapt these tests fbr pedagogical use. This paper is intended as an experiment to explore the possibility of modifying span tests for a large nurnber of subjects, i,e. fbr group tesdng. A Reading Span Test (RST) was made on a video tape, using a character generator, VTR and controller. A Listening Span Test (LST) was recorded onto a cassette mo tape, using an mo recorder. These tests vvere administered to students in a Language Laboratory room. The results are presented and some suggestions are made ahout how the results of this research can contribute to the improvement of current English teaching.

We conducted an experimental study of an English-experience program in which children regularly engaged in English-language activities in a Japanese elementary school over the course of 3 years. Three groups of children (first, third, and fifth graders upon joining the project) participated. The children engaged in Japanese and English aural digit-span tests in the first, second, and third years of the program. Results showed that the children's digit-span performance in English improved dramatically during their 3-year participation and that the increase was larger than that in Japanese. This finding was most pronounced in children in the middle group, and was discussed in terms of total exposure time to spoken English, the amount of after-school English activities, and the sensitive period hypothesis of a second language acquisition. We concluded that the English-activities program employed in this study was effective in facilitating the acquisition of phonological forms of English among Japanese students in elementary school.Key words: Short-term memory, working memory, digit span, language-familiarity effectIt has been widely accepted that large cross-language differences exist in verbal short-term memory performance, which is typically measured by the immediate serial recall of words or digits. One of the most prominent features of the cross-linguistic differences has been found in the language-familiarity effect, a phenomenon in which better immediate memory is displayed in response to linguistic materials that are familiar to participants than to those that are unfamiliar (e.g

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