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In addressing the challenge of assessing healthy brain aging across diverse interventions, this study introduces the use of MRI-derived Brain Healthcare Quotients (BHQ) for comprehensive evaluation. We analyzed BHQ changes in 319 participants aged 24-69, who were allocated into dietary (collagen peptide, euglena, matcha, isohumulone, xanthophyll) and physical activity (hand massage with lavender oil, handwriting, office stretching, pink lens, clinical art) groups, alongside a control group, over a month. These interventions were specifically chosen to test the efficacy of varying health strategies on brain health, measured through BHQ indices: GM-BHQ for gray matter volume, and FA-BHQ for white matter integrity. Notably, significant improvements in FA-BHQ were observed in the collagen peptide group, with marginal increases in the hand massage and office stretching groups. These findings highlight BHQ's potential as a sensitive tool for detecting brain health changes, offering evidence that low-intensity, easily implemented interventions can have beneficial effects on brain health. Moreover, BHQ allows for the systematic evaluation of such interventions using standard statistical approaches, suggesting its value in future brain healthcare research.

In Japan, the community-based comprehensive care system is an important initiative. The purpose of this study was to understand COVID-19-related lifestyle changes experienced by older adults who lived in communities and used day-care services. Using a qualitative inductive research method, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 older adults who used day-care services in Kyoto City, which assessed lifestyle changes before and after the spread of COVID-19 during March-April 2021. The extracted lifestyle change codes were classified into six categories and 16 subcategories. The data revealed that older adults felt socially isolated and experienced multiple changes in their lives, including limited leisure activities, changes in roles, decreased interpersonal interaction with family and acquaintances, poor diet and sleep quality, and reduced attention to personal appearance and grooming. The findings suggest that during COVID-19, older adults had difficulty adapting to the various changes in their lives and showed a decline in physical and mental functioning. Thus, it is important for day-care facilities to create sustainable spaces in response to the various care needs of community-dwelling older adults whose lifestyles have changed as a result of the COVID-19 situation.

With the recent development of nanotechnology, enhancement of the stability of nanomaterials is becoming ever more important for their practical applications. We studied the silica-coating of Cu nanoparticles and the enhanced stability of silica-coated Cu nanoparticles to oxidation. The metallic nanoparticles are easily oxidized and agglomerated compared with the bulk metals because the nanoparticles possess large specific surfaces. The Cu nanoparticle is one of the most difficult nanoparticles to be handled due to its absence of the oxidation stability. In the synthesis of silica-coated Cu nanoparticles via a sol-gel process using tetraethyl orthosilicate, the addition of NH3 as a catalyst of sol-gel reaction yielded homogeneous silica-coating. However, a large amount of Cu nanoparticles is instantly dissolved by forming complex ions in a NH3 solution during and before the silica-coating process. This is the difficulty in the silica-coating of Cu nanoparticles. In the present work, the dissolution behavior of Cu nanoparticles was electrochemically examined. This electrochemistry-based optimization of reducing power of a reaction bath enabled us to synthesize the silica-coated Cu nanoparticle via a consecutive liquid-phase reaction which requires only basic equipment and involves no separate centrifuging or extraction step. Cu nanoparticles coated by silica shells had the remarkable stability even in the presence of a strong oxidizing agent. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the highly stable Cu nanoparticles can be applied to a red pigment using a unique red color of Cu nanoparticles because of its surface plasmon resonance., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)