Search

The primary purpose of this study is to quantitatively clarify the effect of worker attributes on break behaviours, consciousness, and wellness in office environments. No studies have systematically examined how worker attributes including organizational climate influence break behaviours and consciousness, and how break behaviours and consciousness affect wellness. This study revealed the following points. 1. Organizational climate has an influence on break behaviours and consciousness and wellness. 2. Break behaviours and consciousness have an influence on break satisfaction and wellness. In summary, organizational climate is important to improve the wellness of workers. In addition, an office environment that induces various actions is also important at the same time.

“Proactive, interactive, and authentic learning” has been emphasized in Japanese education, and the consideration of school facilities that can realize such learning has become an urgent issue. In this study, we focused on students’ learning motivation, extracted 12 elements from all school environments as factors that contribute to the improvement of learning motivation, and explored the relationship between the school environment and learning motivation. A questionnaire survey of two junior high schools was conducted to measure subjective evaluations of the school environment and learning motivation. And we performed the univariate analysis using correlation analysis and logistic regression analysis. The results showed correlations between the environmental elements of classroom design, creative space, and peace of mind, and learning motivation. In particular, the total score of school environment correlated more strongly with learning motivation than the other environmental factors. The results also suggested that the elements of the school environment may lead to higher learning motivation through 4 factors for improving learning motivation and other factors. It is necessary to clarify the relationship between school environment and learning motivation through more structural analysis in the future.

The purpose of this study is a discussion on the multifaceted utilization of indoor positioning systems such as building facility control, use situation grasping, and operational analysis in offices. Thermopile human sensors have been come into practical use by MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) technology and are becoming widespread. In this report, the accuracy of presence / absence and human count detection for a thermopile human sensor was verified and discussed possibility of use according to the purpose in the office.

A three-dimensional probe is mounted on a specialized gear measuring machine whose measurement target is limited on the working flanks. The newly developed measuring machine has a coordinate measuring mechanism, aiming to be a highly versatile and relatively inexpensive measuring machine. According to our previous research, in addition to the working tooth surface, shape data of the root, bottom and tip profiles can be acquired with a single measurement operation. However, the target object for which this developed method has been applied was only the external cylindrical gear. In this paper, we applied and expanded the development method to the internal cylindrical gear and the evaluation of the axial displacement in the same cross-sectional scanning of the internal helical gear are performed.

There is uncertainty about heating temperature of final heat treatment and its effect on microstructure of Japanese sword, since the temperature is controlled entirely by experiences and skills of the swordsmith. This study proposed a novel approach to clarify how heating temperature affects prior-austenite microstructure of a Japanese sword. A fragment of the sword was normalized at 800°C to recover its initial microstructure. Specimens were cut and quenched, after being reheated at temperatures from 740 to 860°C with increment step of 20°C. Their prior-austenite microstructure was reconstructed from martensite by using our newly developed automatic reconstruction method. In normalized microstructure of the sword, coarse pearlite islands of 0.70–0.76 mass% C steel were found within a fine ferrite-pearlite matrix of 0.52–0.56 mass% C steel. The prior-austenite grains of the medium C matrix remained fine (11.6 - 15.1 μm) over the temperature range, while abnormal coarse grains (73.9 - 123.7 μm) developed from high C islands in the specimens reheated above 780°C. The prior-austenite microstructure of the original sword was closely similar to that of the specimen reheated at 760°C. It was able to estimate the heating temperature of the original sword to be approximately 760 ± 10°C.

The expression of the cytokine genes in human spleen was studied using reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method capable of detecting low levels of mRNA. Total RNA was prepared from human spleen by acid guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform (AGPC) method. cDNA was synthesized by M-MLV RTase using oligo (dT)16 primer, and amplified using the oligonucleotide primers specific for IL-1 alpha, IL-1 beta, IL-2, IL-3, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, IL-9, TNF-alpha, IFN-alpha, IFN-beta and IFN-gamma by PCR method. Although IL-1 beta, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, TNF-alpha, IFN-alpha and IFN-gamma mRNA were detected in all the samples tested, IL-3 and IFN-beta mRNA was not detected at all. These results suggest that many kinds of cytokines may be produced constitutionally in human spleen, and its pattern of cytokine production was similar to that in mice.