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Objectives: This study examines the relationship between toner exposure and its health effects in terms of biomarkers which are known to assess the damages to humans caused by toxic material exposure. Methods: The subjects were 1504 male workers aged below 50 in 2003 in a Japanese toner and photocopier manufacturing company. Personal exposure measurements, pulmonary function tests, chest X-ray examinations, biomarker measurement, and a questionnaire about respiratory symptoms were conducted. We will report about biomarker measurement in this study. Cross-sectional survey studies and a longitudinal study from 2003 to 2008 were conducted. Results: Few significant findings were associated with the toner exposure in both the cross-sectional and the longitudinal studies. The higher toner exposure concentrations did not induce effects on increasing biomarkers. Conclusion: There was no evidence of excessive inflammatory, allergic, or oxidative stress reaction in toner-handling workers as compared to non-handling workers, despite some sporadically significant findings. There are no other reports of a longitudinal epidemiological study with regard to toner exposure; this report significantly contributes to toner exposure literature. Although in the current well-controlled working environment, the toner exposure concentrations are quite low; further studies are needed to completely understand the health effects toner may have, however small they may be.

Objectives: This study uses pulmonary function tests and chest x-ray examinations to examine the relationship between toner-handling work and its health effects. Methods: The subjects were 1504 male workers in a Japanese toner and photocopier manufacturing company, in the age range from 19 to 50 years in 2003. Personal exposure measurements, pulmonary function tests, chest x-ray examinations, biomarker measurements, and a questionnaire about respiratory symptoms were conducted. The present study reports the results of pulmonary function tests and chest x-ray examinations conducted in the subjects, which includes a cross-sectional study on the toner handling and non-handling workers and a longitudinal study from 2003 to 2008. Results: Few significant findings were suspected to be caused by toner exposure found in pulmonary function indices in both the cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Any obvious fibrotic findings in chest x-ray findings related to the toner exposure could not be found out. Conclusion: No evidence of adverse effects on pulmonary function indices and chest x-rays was present in the toner-handling workers as compared to the nonspecifically exposed workers. Although the toner exposure concentration is quite low in the current well-controlled working environment, even among the toner-handling workers, we would like to continue this study in the future to verify the toner exposure health effects.

The effect of the magnetic axis shift on pressure driven MHD stability has been investigated in Heliotron DR (R=90 cm, a approximately=7 cm) in electron cyclotron heated plasmas by changing the vertical magnetic field strength. It was found that when the magnetic axis was shifted inward, strong MHD instabilities were excited and the attainable beta limits were much reduced compared to the values in the standard configuration. On the other hand, when the magnetic axis was shifted outward, the stability characteristics were basically the same as those in the standard configuration. The attainable beta values can be well explained by numerical calculations based on the STEP code for pressure driven ideal interchange instabilities. The stability dependence of the helical plasma on the position of the magnetic axis was confirmed experimentally. It was also found that a small toroidal plasma current stabilizes the MHD instabilities in all cases of magnetic axis positions. In particular, when the magnetic axis was shifted inward, the maximum beta limit could be increased up to twice the values obtained in the currentless case

A pool-cooled NbTi superconducting helical coil system (named TOKI-HB) has been fabricated as part of one of the research and development programs for the Large Helical Device (LHD). The main purpose of the construction of this device is to build an entire pool-cooled superconducting helical coil system which is large enough to be extrapolable to LHD. The helical coil has a major radius of 0.8 m and a minor radius of 0.2 m with a helical pitch number of 3. An operating current of 8.9 kA produces a maximum magnetic field of 0.75 T at the geometrical center of the poloidal cross section and 3 T at the coil surface. Basic design concepts of the TOKI-HB device are described together with some issues of the fabrication.

Helical coils of the Large Helical Device (LHD) are large scale superconducting magnets for heliotron plasma experiments. The helical coils had been cooled by saturated helium at 4.4 K, 120 kPa until 2005. An upgrade of the cooling system was carried out in 2006 in order to improve the cryogenic stability of the helical coils and then it has been possible to supply the coils with subcooled helium at 3.2 K, 120 kPa. A designed mass flow of the supplied subcooled helium is 50 g/s. The subcooled helium is generated at a heat exchanger in a saturated helium bath. A series of two centrifugal cold compressors with gas foil bearing is utilized to lower the helium pressure in the bath. The supplied helium temperature is regulated by rotational speed of the cold compressors and power of a heater in the bath. The mass flow of the supplied helium is also controlled manually by a supply valve and its surplus is evaporated by ten heaters at the outlet above the coils. In the present study, the performance of the cooli...

Applicability of 1 GW class hybrid energy transfer line of hydrogen and electricity is investigated in this report. Hydrogen refrigeration station is placed on every 10 km of the unit section. The rated current is 10 kA, and operation voltage is 100 kV (+ 50 kV and −50 kV for ground). Delivery capacity of the liquid hydrogen is 100 tons per day. The HETL consists of the SC cable, electrical insulation layer, channel for liquid hydrogen, inner corrugated tube, vacuum space for thermal insulation and outer corrugated tube. The special multi-filamentary MgB2 wire was developed to improve the Ic performance against bending strain. When the pressure of liquid hydrogen increases, boiling temperature of liquid hydrogen becomes high. Pressurization of liquid hydrogen enables to expand operation temperature region of the MgB2 cable, and to absorb the head loss of the installation route. To obtain the operation temperature from 20 K to 25 K, pressure of liquid hydrogen from 0.4 to 0.6 MPa was chosen. When the heat leak into the liquid hydrogen is 1.0 W/m (expected value), the temperature at the outlet becomes 21.8 K. It was confirmed that this HETL is one of the attractive energy transportation system which combines hydrogen fuel and SC power transmission.

application/pdf, Measurement of fluctuation in plasma is important for studying the improvement in plasma confinement by the formation of the plasma confinement potential. The density fluctuation is observed by microwaves by methods such as interferometry, reflectometry and Fraunhofer diffraction method. We have constructed a new multichannel microwave interferometer to measure the plasma density and fluctuation radial profiles in a single plasma shot. We successfully measured the time-dependent density and line-integrated density fluctuation radial profiles in a single plasma shot using the multichannel microwave interferometer. Thus, we have developed a useful tool for studying the improvement in plasma confinement by the formation of plasma confinement potential.