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This study investigated trends in disaster preparedness awareness among elementary school children in Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. Questionnaire surveys conducted before, immediately after, and one month after the delivery classes revealed regional differences in children's disaster awareness.Compared to coastal areas, inland areas had relatively lower disaster awareness. Children in the coastal area of Fukushima were highly motivated to learn about disaster prevention, and their disaster risk assessment increased even after the on-site class, and remained high one month later, indicating the influence of the earthquake off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, which occurred frequently from the Great East Japan Earthquake to the present and continued to occur even after the delivery classes. The Miyagi coastal area has a high awareness of evacuation behavior in the event of a disaster, suggesting that the importance of evacuation behavior may be shared within the family due to the many past tsunami disasters. The Fukushima inland area showed a high fear of natural hazards and a tendency to lack confidence in their actions in the event of a disaster, while the Miyagi inland area showed low fear of disasters, assessed low disaster frequency, and showed low interest in family commitments. Finally, this study suggests the factors that influence the effectiveness and sustainability of disaster prevention education for children including the geographical characteristics of the region, past disaster experiences, and the number of local disaster training programs., The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)

HOBITSSIII was a 12 day (19–30 June) Wellington to Wellington RV Tangaroa voyage (TAN1607) to recover previously deployed Absolute Pressure Gauges (APGs) along the northern Hikurangi margin. APGs measure vertical displacement of the seafloor. One APG from University of Texas Institute of Geophysics, UTIG and 5 APGs from Kyoto University were recovered. Five APGs from Kyoto University were also deployed on the TAN1607 voyage and will be recovered in mid-2017. Three separate 8–12 hour GPS-Acoustic surveys were completed by Tohoku University personnel in the vicinity of 3 ocean bottom GPS-A transponders. The GPS-A surveys will be used to determine horizontal rates of motion at the offshore Hikurangi margin. Heat flow measurements were also conducted at 4 sites. Heat flow surveys add to previous measurements made on the RV Roger Revelle in May 2015. 266 km of 2.0–6.0 kHz chirp sub-bottom profiler data were acquired across the Tuaheni Landslide Complex in preparation for scientific drilling in 2017 and 2018. When TAN1607 data are added to the collective offshore geophysical datasets, they will increase the tectonic and geological knowledge of the northern Hikurangi margin.

Significant nuclear polarization of unstable {sup 170}Tm in Tm{sup 2+}:SrF{sub 2} has been achieved with optical pumping in solids. The hyperfine coupling constant of divalent {sup 170}Tm in SrF{sub 2} was thus measured for the first time in high precision with the beta-ray radiation detected magnetic resonance, thereby also determining the nuclear magnetic moment: 0.2476(16){mu}{sub {ital N}}.

We immunohistochemically examined tissue sections from patients with prion protein (PrP) polymorphism using hydrolytic autoclaving enhancement. Abnormal PrP accumulations could be classified into plaque formations (plaque-type) and the diffuse gray matter stainings including synaptic structures (synaptic-type). Insertional polymorphism, a point mutation in codon 102 or 117/129, and a polymorphism in codon 129 (Val129) result in plaque-type PrP accumulations. The patients with codon 102 mutation also have synaptic-type PrP accumulations. However, a point mutation in codon 200 did not show plaque-type accumulations, and only showed synaptic-type PrP accumulations. Likewise, sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease patients without any known mutations only have synaptic type accumulations. These results imply that the primary structures of PrP influence the phenotype of prion diseases, especially in abnormal PrP distributions of the central nervous system.

A new method, which enabled the first immunohistochemical documentation of abnormal prion protein (PrP) in all patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), was established. This method designated as "hydrolytic autoclaving" revealed punctate PrPCJD stainings around the neuronal cell bodies and dendrites in CJD brains. These punctate stainings were almost identical with that of synaptophysin, suggesting PrPCJD accumulations in the synaptic structures. Subcellular fractionation revealed that prion protein in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (PrPCJD) was most concentrated in the synaptosomal fraction. In CJD patients with a long clinical course, synaptophysin immunoreactivity decreased, and synaptic PrPCJD accumulated with a wider distribution. These results suggest that synaptic PrPCJD accumulations might be responsible for the neuronal dysfunction and degeneration in CJD.

Nuclear-spin-echo decay has been measured in the 27Al frozen core surrounding Cr3+ in ruby using optical Raman heterodyne detection. Bloembergen’s frozen-core model was directly verified by the observation of ∼1-msec dephasing times in the core compared with 60 μsec in the bulk. Observation of echoes in the ground and optically excited states of 52Cr and 53Cr allowed separation of direct and indirect Cr3+ spin-flip contributions to dephasing and hence measurement of the Cr-Cr spin-flip time. The direct dephasing time follows a square-law dependence on concentration, in accord with theory. Indirect dephasing has a square-root dependence on concentration, similar to that observed for optical echoes. Contrary to earlier studies, it is concluded that optical dephasing in ruby, in the concentration range 0.0034 to 0.05 wt. % Cr2O3, is primarily due to magnetic fluctuations produced by Cr3+ spin flipping; i.e., that indirect rather than direct dephasing is dominant., Mr. Szabo was affiliated with the National Research Council of Canada, Division of Physics when they authored this article.