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Objectives: Traditional variable-oriented research has shown that employee perceptions of job insecurity (JI) are associated with negative consequences, including more work-home interference, poorer health, and impaired well-being. Besides the negative consequences of high JI, particular combinations of JI perceptions may also be associated with different consequences. Taking a person-oriented approach, this study aimed to investigate (1) whether it is possible to distinguish different combinations of JI perceptions among working women and men and (2) whether such JI profiles involve different experiences of work-home interference, health, and well-being. Methods: Self-reports in questionnaires of JI, including both quantitative and qualitative threats of perceived job loss, work-home interference (WHI), health, and psychological well-being came from 1169 white-collar workers (52.4% women) in Sweden. Latent profile analysis was performed to identify JI profiles. Subsequent analyses included comparing profiles with respect to WHI, health, and well-being. Results: Four distinct JI profiles were identified: (1) Secure; quality-concerned, (2) Insecure: employment-concerned, (3) Insecure, and (4) Secure. Comparisons of cluster profiles showed significant differences in work-home interference (family-work conflict), self-rated health, and psychological well-being. Conclusions: Findings suggest that the Insecure profile may be most vulnerable to adverse consequences of perceived JI. Taken together, different JI profiles may be associated with differential experiences of work-home interference, health, and psychological well-being among working women and men. Nowstars

Non-standard employment includes a variety of contractual arrangements which deviate from permanent, open-ended, full-time work. There are several types of non-standard work, including project work, seasonal work, on-call work, solo self-employment, and temporary agency work. Non-standard workers are typically younger, have lower levels of education, and are more often women in comparison with standard employees. Despite substantial heterogeneity between different types of non-standard work, and research illustrating that the consequences may vary between contract forms, the overall picture suggests that non-standard employment is associated with more negative work-related, safety-related, and health-related outcomes than standard employment. Findings also suggest that these associations may be influenced by factors related to an individual’s preference for their employment contract or the job specifically. Non-standard employment may have implications for the individual, policy-makers, employers, and unions. There is a need for additional research focusing on disentangling various contractual arrangements and investigating how various types of non-standard workers differ in terms of demographic characteristics, work environment conditions, and consequences.

Objective Self-harm and attempted suicide are risk factors for suicide in psychiatric hospital in-patients. This study aimed to analyse the circumstances of self-harm and suicide attempts in a Japanese psychiatric hospital so as to improve management and care. Methods Incident reports of self-harm and suicide attempts during a 12.4-year period from November 2000 to March 2013 were reviewed. A descriptive analysis was conducted in terms of age, sex, and diagnosis of patients, as well as level, ward, situations, and causes of incidents. Results During the study period, 90 cases of self-harm and attempted suicide involving 58 patients were reported. The rate of self-harm and suicide attempts was 0.05 per 1000 patient-days. The types of selfharm and suicide attempts included hanging (n = 25), wrist cutting (n = 19), ingestion of foreign objects (n = 17), and others (n = 29). The single case of completed suicide involved hanging, in a patient with schizophrenia. Among 55 patients with relevant data, the most common clinical diagnosis was mood disorder (41.8%), followed by schizophrenia (36.4%). Mood disorder was 3.5 times as prevalent in females as in males (14 vs. 4). Fourteen patients with mood disorder (n = 8) or schizophrenia (n = 6) were repeatedly involved in 46 of 89 cases of self-harm or attempted suicide; 11 were female. One woman with mood disorder attempted suicide 9 times within the same year. The top 3 management and care factors related to self-harm and suicide attempts were failure to adhere to preventive procedures (28%), insufficient therapeutic communication (28%), and difficulty in predicting suicide (20%). Conclusion Self-harm and suicide attempts at this psychiatric hospital occurred at a rate of 0.05 per 1000 patient-days between late 2000 and early 2013. Efforts are needed to increase compliance with suicide prevention procedures and therapeutic communication, so as to improve management and care of psychiatric in-patients and prevent them from committing suicide.

Current transport at p-diamond Schottky contacts under reverse bias operation was investigated. Reverse current transport modes of several types were observed depending on the bias voltage range: thermionic emission (TE) associated with the image force barrier lowering was dominant in the lower voltage range of 1 MV cm−1, which indic...

An experimental investigation was conducted to examine the fretting fatigue behavior of physical vapor deposition-coated CrN film deposited on Ti - 6Al - 4V specimens contacted on both sides with pads of the same material. Behavior against the CrN -coated specimens was characterized through the determination of fretting fatigue strength up to 107 cycles. Fretting damage of specimen surface was characterized by SEM and surface profilometer. The experimental results from the S – N tests indicate that the CrN coating is effective to improve the fretting fatigue strength until about 106 cycles, but over 106 cycles, the strength is lower than that of uncoated specimens. The enhanced fretting fatigue resistance can be attributed to the improved hardness of the CrN film due to change of bias voltage during the film deposition. It has also been concluded that below and about 106 cycles, there is smaller influence of bias voltage on fatigue strength, whereas, over 106 cycles, fatigue strength is clearly changed by bias voltage as well as contact pressure.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the leading causes of blindness among older adults in developed countries and also in Japan. Previous research suggests that AMD is etiologically a complex disease, caused by multiple genes and environmental factors. Association studies have identified that a complement factor H gene (CFH) variant is a major risk factor for AMD in Caucasians. However, we and two other groups have reported no association between CFH and AMD in the Japanese population. Recent studies have suggested that LOC387715 on chromosome 10q26 may be the second major risk loci for AMD in Caucasians. In this study, we examined the association between LOC387715 and AMD in Japanese, and our results show that polymorphism of the LOC387715 gene is associated with AMD in Japanese as well as in Caucasians. Our data show a disease odds ratio of 6.20 (95% CI: 2.87-13.40) conferred by homozygosity for risk alleles at LOC387715 compared with the non-risk genotype. A polymorphism of LOC387715 gene is associated with AMD in the Japanese population.

Multiple-charged Kr ions have been studied using monochromatized synchrotron radiation combined with a coincidence technique. The multiple-charged ions formed through ionization of the inner sub-shells were detected by a time-of-flight mass analyser and the photoelectrons emitted from those orbitals were observed by a cylindrical mirror electron energy analyser. The coincidence measurement between the energy-selected photoelectron and the photoion specified the individual multiple ionization channels of Kr. The Kr 3d ionization produces doubly and triply charged ions. The Kr 3p ionization mainly yields triply charged Kr ions via M23M45N23 Coster–Kronig decays, and the M23M45N1 decays generate considerably quadruply charged ions. The 3s ionization significantly produces quadruply charged ions via super-Coster–Kronig decays with successive Auger transitions.

Out-of-plane nuclear motion stimulated in the core-excited state and symmetry breaking due to this nuclear motion have been investigated for B Is excitation in the BF3 molecule by a combination of three different experimental methods: angle-resolved ion-yield spectroscopy, vibrationally resolved resonant Auger electron spectroscopy and quadruple-ion coincidence momentum-imaging technique. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Multiply charged Xe ions produced through photoionization of a 3d electron have been measured using the coincidence technique. The coincidence measurement between the energy-selected Auger electron and ions specifies the individual Auger decay channels for the various multiply charged ions. It has been found that only quadruply charged ions are formed through the Auger decays of M45N45N45 type. The M45N23N45 Auger decays predominantly yield Xe5+. These findings indicate that most Xe ions produced through the initial M45 Auger transitions turn into the highest charge state between energetically accessible states through subsequent successive Auger decays. However, in the M45N1N45 and M45N23N23 decays the intensity ratio of Xe5+ with Xe6+ depends on the energy level of the Auger final states. The highly charged ions, Xe7+ and Xe8+, are produced through the initial Auger shake processes from the 3d hole states. Dedicated to the distinguished contributions to soft x-ray photochemistry research by Professor Inosuke Koyano of the Himeji Institute of Technology on the occasion of his 65th birthday.

Clostridium difficile infection control strategies require an understanding of its epidemiology. In this study, we analysed the toxin genotypes of 130 non-duplicate clinical isolates of C. difficile from a university hospital in Tokyo, Japan. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and eBURST analysis were performed for these isolates and nine strains previously analysed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) ribotyping. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) were determined for six antibiotics, and the bacterial resistance mechanisms were investigated. Ninety-five toxigenic strains (73%), including seven tcdA-negative, tcdB-positive and cdtA/cdtB-negative strains (A(-)B(+)CDT(-)) and three A(+)B(+)CDT(+) strains, and 35 (27%) non-toxigenic strains, were classified into 23 and 12 sequence types, respectively. Of these, sequence type (ST)17 (21.8%) was the most predominant. MLST and eBURST analysis showed that 139 strains belonged to seven groups and singletons, and most A(+)B(+)CDT(-) strains (98%, 89/91) were classified into group 1. All isolates were susceptible to metronidazole, vancomycin and meropenem; the ceftriaxone, clindamycin and ciprofloxacin resistance rates were 49, 59 and 99%, respectively. Resistance rates to ceftriaxone and clindamycin were higher in toxigenic strains than in non-toxigenic strains (P 0.001). All ST17 and ST81 strains were resistant to these antibiotics. The clindamycin- and fluoroquinolone-resistant strains carried erm(B) and mutations in GyrA and/or GyrB, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first MLST-based study of the molecular epidemiology of toxigenic and non-toxigenic strains in Japan, providing evidence that non-toxigenic and toxigenic strains exhibit high genetic diversity and that toxigenic strains are more likely than non-toxigenic strains to exhibit multidrug resistance.

A high precision atomic polarimeter system for the use in beam-foil spectroscopy experiments with a few keV/amu heavy-ion beams has been developed. The polarimeter measures the circular polarization of fluorescences from the beam ion in-flight after the beam-foil interaction. The present system has two identical such polarimeters in both sides of the beam axis to reduce the systematic errors such due to the fluctuations of beam current, background and so on. A successful use of an ultrathin carbon foil (1.5 μg/cm^2), which was durable for several hours against a few hundred nA beam irradiation, enabled the beam-foil experiments with such low energy heavy-ion beams. A performance test of the polarimeter system was carried out in the tilted foil experiments with a 1.7 keV/amu ^N + beam. The atomic polarization was observed for the transition 1s^22s^22p3p ^1D → 1s^22s^22p3p ^1P, whose fluorescence wavelength is 399.5 nm, in the N+ ion (N II). The polarization was approximately -2% for the tilt angle of -40° and showed monotone increasing with increasing tilt angle up to + 2% for + 40°. The polarization at 0° was (0.002±0.25)%, which is highly consistent with the expected polarization of 0%. This result indicates the high reliability of the present polarimeter system. This is the first tilted-foil experiment at such low beam energy. The present experimental technique will be very useful for studies of the polarization mechanism of the beam-foil interaction.

The magnetic moment and electric quadrupole moment of a neutron-rich nucleus 18 N have been determined by the β-NMR method, taking advantage of the fragment spin polarization induced in the intermediate-energy projectile fragmentation reaction. To assure the existence of a sufficient polarization prior to the resonance search, a scheme of polarization measurement by means of an adiabatic field rotation has been developed and successfully incorporated in the β-NMR experiment. From the observed resonance in a Pt stopper the magnetic moment for the 18 N ground state has been determined to be |μ|=0.3279±0.0013μN. The 18 N fragments have also been implanted in a single crystal Mg stopper, and from the observed quadrupole frequency |eqQ/h|=73.2±1.4 kHz, the electric quadrupole moment |Q|=12.3±1.2 mb has been deduced. The obtained μ and Q are compared with shell model calculations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach to detecting obstacles using a single camera mounted on a vehicle when the vehicle is backing or turning round at an intersection at a low speed. Using restrictions among feature point locations and their optical flows in geometrically converted top-view images, ground-movement information can be estimated. Our approach compensates for the ground movement between consecutive top-view images using the estimated ground-movement information and computes the difference image between the previous compensated top-view image and the current top-view image. Finally, a new angle histogram-based algorithm is processed to extract obstacle regions using the difference image. The actual in-vehicle experimental results show that our proposed approach has tolerance for various changing illumination conditions and different road textures.

We are proceeding with the development of a multi-processor version of a traffic simulator. Windows multi-display feature resembles our system in the point that multi-displays are used. So we made performance comparison between them. Finally we verified our multi-processor version is almost two times faster than Windows multi-display feature in the case of two displays.

Poly(methylaloxane) ( 1 ), prepared by hydrolytic polymerization of trimethyl-aluminium (TMA), was reacted with isopropanol (IP) to obtain poly(isopropoxylaloxane) ( 2 ). This was further reacted with propionic acid (PA) to prepare poly[(propionyloxy) aloxanel ( 3 ), with various ratios of PA ligands. By gasmetry of the methane produced in the reaction, as well as by the 1 H NMR spectroscopy of the products, both 1 and 2 were found to contain less reactive terminal A1Me and AlOH groups. For 3 , the unit structure and molecular weight were controlled by the PA/TMA ratio reacted. The 27 A1 NMR spectra of these products revealed that the coordination states of the aluminium atoms are different, depending on the O/A1 atomic ratio in the products. In the case of 1 , which has a low O/A1 ratio, the aluminium atoms are penta-coordinated, while in 2 and 3 hexa-coordination is involved. Based on these data the structures of poly(aloxanes) ( 1 – 3 ) are discussed.

Surface oxide layers formed on gas-evaporated Si and Ge microcrystals as small as 100A were investigated by means of infrared spectroscopy, high-resolution electron microscopy and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy. It is shown that 20A-thick native oxide layers in the form of SiOx with x=∼1.2 are first formed on the surfaces of Si microcrystals. When the microcrystals are annealed in air at 400°C, the composition x increases up to 2, but the oxide thickness remains almost the same. The evolution of the oxide occurs in the first 15min of annealing and saturates afterwards. This implies that stable oxide layers (SiO2) can successfully be obtained by annealing at relatively low temperatures. Results obtained for Ge microcrystals are qualitatively the same and indicate that stable oxide coatings can be obtained by annealing at 300°C for 30min.

In this paper, distributed-axis technology is applied to high-speed scanning electron microscopy for large scale inspection and metrology of nanostructures. Simulated results indicate that each aperture in the retarding electrode must be kept to less than 0.1mm diameter to avoid extra aberrations and that extra slots be provided to accommodate the spread in the trajectories of the secondary electrons with different energies (up to 10eV)4. Experimental verification of these simulated results is underway.

We have studied maintaining mechanism of the contacts arc discharge. In our experiment, the arc duration ta, metallic phase arc duration tm, and transition ratio from metallic to gaseous phase arc G were experimentally studied in Ag, AgCu and AgSnO2 breaking contacts. Experiments were carried out under the variation of source voltage E (12, 24, 36, 48 V), closed contact current Io (0.4 - 6 A). As a result, the gaseous phase transition was not occurred in E=24 V or less. In addition, gaseous phase transition boundary closed contact current (at which G=50 %) of AgSnO2 was smaller than that of Ag and AgCu contacts. It was clarified that the Io which ta and tm increases rapidly is corresponding to the transition boundary from metallic to gaseous phase arc.

Preparation for direct measurement of 12C+4He→16O+γ reaction at stellar energy has been made in Kyushu University tandem laboratory (KUTL) since 1914. We plan to measure the reaction at Ecm = 2.4–0.7 MeV where the cross section is estimated to be 60 nbarn–1pbarn. Many instrumental developments have been made for a 12C beam, a windowless helium gas target, 16O detection, background reduction. We started the measurement in 2006.

Purpose To describe a case of persistent hypotony after an otherwise successful vitreous surgery for epiretinal membrane, in which ciliochoroidal detachment was detected by ultrasound biomicroscopy but not by ophthalmoscopy. Method We used ultrasound biomicroscopy to determine the cause of persistent postoperative hypotony. Results Ultrasound biomicroscopy clearly disclosed ciliochoroidal detachment. In an attempt to resolve ciliochoroidal detachment, we performed vitrectomy and fluid-gas exchange combined with diathermy around the sites of sclerotomy. Postoperatively, the regression of ciliochoroidal detachment was confirmed by ultrasound biomicroscopy. Conclusions Using ultrasound biomicroscopy, we were able to visualize ciliochoroidal detachment and its regression clearly, which we had not observed during ophthalmoscopy.

We demonstrate a heterojunction diode (HJD) fabricated with p + -type polycrystalline silicon on an n - -type epitaxial layer of 4H-SiC. The HJD achieved extremely low Von and high reverse blocking voltage compared with a SiC Schottky barrier diode (SBD). The HJD shows good diode characteristics for temperatures ranging up to 200°C. Measured switching characteristics of the HJD exhibit almost zero reverse recovery similar to that of the SBD.

The glucose sensor (width: 3 mm) was constructed by immobilizing glucose oxidase (GOD) with glutaraldehyde solution onto the sensitive area of the film-type oxygen electrode. The oxygen electrode was fabricated by sealing KCI electrolyte solution in a reaction cell with metal-weldable film and gas-permeable membrane which was coated with Pt working electrode and Ag/AgCl counter/reference electrode by microfabrication techniques such as sputtering, photolithography process, etc. The sensor behavior was evaluated using standard glucose solutions in a batch measurement system with a computer-controlled potentiostat at a reduction potential of -700 mV vs. Ag/AgCl. The sensor device has thinner and flexible structure. The sensor was possible to be used for measuring glucose from 0.02 to 0.98 mmol/l (coefficient of correlation: 0.999), including the reported concentration of tear glucose in normal (0.14 mmol/l).

An ohmic contact in semiconductor devices consists of an electrode (metal) and a semiconductor, and it plays an important role in current injection and ejection. Because a voltage drop at the contact increases the power loss and deteriorates the device performance, the contact resistance must be negligible relative to the total resistance of the device (its on-resistance) [1]. Contacts through which a high-density current flows horizontally must have the lowest resistivity possible because their effective contact area is very small due to current crowding at the contact edges [2]. Source contacts in vertical DMOSFETs are one example of such contacts. Increasing the size of the contact area to make it larger than that of the effective area does not reduce contact resistance. The only way to minimize contact resistance is to reduce the specific contact resistivity, ρC, itself. High-power and high-frequency SiC devices need horizontal contacts with a ρC in the range of 10−6 Ωcm2 or lower [3].

Angle-resolved resonant Auger-electron spectroscopy has been carried out on the nitrogen molecule at selected photon energies around 419 eV, where a 1s core electron and two valence electrons are promoted into the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital 1pi(g). Significant enhancement of a specific band, which cannot be disentangled in direct photoionization, is observed at a binding energy of 37.6 eV, with a value of the anisotropy parameter beta much smaller than 2. We assign this new band to the transition to a doubly excited cationic state of N-2, in which two of the excited valence electrons remain in the 1pi(g) orbital, proposing a "double spectator" type decay mechanism. This observation shows how to preferentially probe multiply excited configurations of cations using multiple resonant excitation. (Less)

Given a Petri net PN=(P, T, E), a siphon is a set S of places such that the set of input transitions to S is included in the set of output transitions from S. Concerning minimal siphons containing a specified set of places, the paper shows several NP-completeness results of and a branch-and-bound method of extracting such one minimal siphon, as well as a method of enumerating all such ones containing a given place.

Recently, demand for mobile computing environments has been increasing greatly, and easy access from remote sites has become desirable. To meet this requirement, NTT has proposed a "Logical Office" service, which enables terminal plug & play, multiprotocol, and ubiquitous communication. NTT has already done some Logical Office service experiments, in LAN and Internet environments, which focused on the service offered in the early stages. The paper investigates our proposed Logical Office service over international ATM networks, which focuses on the future stage international ATM test beds between Japan and the US, provided by AT&T, KDD, and NTT, are used for this experiment. It was verified that the Logical Office service worked correctly in the international ATM environments, and that it provided sufficiently practical performance even there.

An algorithm for automatic component placement that reduces electromagnetic (EM) noise from digital printed circuit boards is presented. First, the components are divided into groups by using a rule-based expert system along with a circuit's netlist and parts list. Then, the grouped components are placed by using a novel placement algorithm called "EMI balance placement." Finally, components that have a net length restriction are placed. To show the validity of the algorithm, the layout result of the proposed method for the main board of a multimedia equipment is compared with that of the conventional method.

Image retrieval systems have often used color and texture features successfully, but shape features have not been as successful, largely because of the difficulty of specifying them. Traditional image segmentation algorithms tend in many cases to produce results that users find unsatisfactory as either representations of the image or as components of an interpretation of the image. We have found, however, that it is possible to take advantage of the inaccuracy of segmentation to help achieve generality in a query and thus improve recall. Ultimately, the success of these systems will depend on an effective interaction between the user and the system. In order to support this interaction, we are exploring means by which users can specify multiple segmentations for a query image and then edit and annotate the segmentation in order to more accurately express a specific query.

Symmetry-resolved excitation spectra have been measured for the Renner-Teller pair states A1 and B1 split from the core-excited C 1s 21 2pu state in CO2. A vibrational progression with the spacings of 145 meV is found in both the A1 and B1 spectra at different energies and assigned to the symmetric stretching mode caused in the B1 linear state, with the help of ab initio calculations. Appearance of the vibrations in the A1 spectrum is interpreted as due to nonadiabatic coupling between the A1 and B1 states via the bending motion. Remarkable progress has been achieved in the development of the synchrotron radiation sources and the soft x-ray monochromators in the past decade. Nowadays one can record the excitation spectrum of free molecules in the vicinity of the K edges of the light elements with the photon bandwidth narrower than the natural lifetime width of the core-excited state and thus see the detailed structures which reflect the molecular vibrations in the core-excited state [1‐3].

Symmetry-resolved excitation spectra have been measured for the Renner-Teller pair states A(1) and B(1) split from the core-excited C 1s(-1)2 pi(u) state in CO(2). A vibrational progression with the spacings of approximately 145 meV is found in both the A(1) and B(1) spectra at different energies and assigned to the symmetric stretching mode caused in the B(1) linear state, with the help of ab initio calculations. Appearance of the vibrations in the A(1) spectrum is interpreted as due to non-adiabatic coupling between the A(1) and B(1) states via the bending motion.

Disclosure of medical records to patients has been assessed, but the influence of disclosure on medical care has not been well researched. To address this situation, this study was conducted to test three hypotheses: 1) doctors think that the disclosure can influence medical care, 2) whether doctors think disclosure can influence medical care depends on how they rank medical records (for example, as evidence for diagnosis and treatment, a process to reach a diagnosis, a tool to communicate with other medical staff, etc), and on whether they think medical record disclosure could change the content of the record. Questionnaires were sent to 881 doctors who work at two hospitals affiliated with N Medical School and K Medical University.Four hundred eighty-eight doctors responded. The findings related to the hypotheses were as follows: 1) Those who answered that the disclosure could have an influence on medical care were 49.1% of the total. 2) There was no relation between how doctors ranked medical records and whether they thought disclosure could influence medical care. 3) Doctors who answered that there were things that they would not be able to write if medical records were disclosed accounted for 73.5% of the total. These doctors answered "yes" significantly higher to the question that the disclosure could influence medical care than others (Odds 3.6, P0.01). Doctors who thought they would not be able to enter the diagnosis, the name of the disease for insurance, self-evaluation, information that could be judged and subjective information answered that disclosure could influence on medical care (P0.05). It was assumed that disclosure of medical records to patients could change the content of the medical records and that could influence medical care. How to deal with information will become an important issue if records are disclosed.

The ideal inpatient environment would be one in which patient stress and anxiety are alleviated, but current inpatient hospital settings often do not seem to take this fact into consideration. To date, the effects of the actual hospital environment itself on patients is poorly understood. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the types of psychological and physiological changes that people undergo in response to being placed in an inpatient setting.Ten healthy volunteers were admitted to an intensive-care unit (ICU) for 4 days and 3 nights. The psychological and physiological changes before and after admission were examined. A qualitative assessment was also performed.Most healthy individuals at times develop feelings of depression, which can be measured by the Profile of Mood States and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (P.05). In this study, participants' fatigue and confusion increased (P.05) and vigor decreased (P.01) as measured by the Profile of Mood States. There was also an increase in the General Health Questionnaire scores (P.01). However, no significant physiological effects were apparent, as measured by peripheral lymphocyte counts, natural killer cells activity, and urinary 17-kerosteroid and 17-hydroxycorticosteroid levels. Subjects often engaged in introspection during hospitalization and often had a negative attitude towards the hospital environment.The findings of increased feelings of depression attributable solely to being in an ICU setting are inconsistent with the type of environment generally considered necessary to alleviate patient anxiety and tension in a critical-care-ward environment. The negative perception of this environment strongly suggests room for improvement. Efforts in this regard should focus on improving the five senses, particularly sight, sound, and taste within the ICU.

It has been reported that the general public has the impression that many of the homeless people have alcoholic problems, and that these problems make their life problems worse. While there has been some research on this subject, most of them focus on the people who use public or private services. So, this study was conducted to investigate the alcoholic problems focused on the homeless people who were around Shibuya station. An investigation covering the questions about their job, company, sleeping style, amount of alcohol taken per day, CAGE and blood examination was compiled using questionnaires. The results were compared with people who are not homeless people and among homeless people. There were forty-nine homeless people who responded to the questionnaire and 34 homeless people who responded to the blood examination. The mean age of the homeless people was 53.1 years and no significant difference was seen between the homeless and the control. About 46% of the homeless reported that they do not drink. Sixteen per cent of the homeless respondents answered positively to the CAGE, No difference was found in having past history of liver dysfunction and in blood examination between them. There was a tendency that the amount of alcohol increases when the homeless have company. The level of gamma GTP increased significantly according to the amount of alcohol (p0.05). This study can be valued because of the attempt to focus not on the homeless who use services but on the homeless who stayed in the city. But the number of the targeted homeless people was small and there was selection bias that is not easy to be excluded in this type of research. Further studies on the impact of alcohol etc. should be developed to improve their lives.

The oral absorption of FK506 in solid dispersion formulation was studied in rats. The obtained area under the concentration versus time curve (AUC) increased in a nonlinear fashion with a small dose-dependent increase in the peak blood concentrations (Cmax). The peak concentration time (Tmax) was observed within 30 min after administration in all dosing groups (1-10 mg/kg) with or without feeding, whereas the oral absorption of FK506 was reduced to about 50% by gavage at a dose of 1 mg/kg. Participation of first-pass elimination was suggested by comparing the blood levels after infusion via the portal vein with those after infusion via the femoral vein. Further, in an in vitro stability study and an in situ loop absorption study, FK506 was fairly stable in the gastrointestinal juice and was absorbed predominantly from the upper part of the small intestine.

We have conducted preliminary experiments to prove the vacuum-shielding effect using an Al-Cu double-foil (both Al and Cu foils are 1 mm × 1 mm × 10 μmt) target with a vacuum-gap. Particle-in-cell simulation results have shown that the double-cone confines the electrons for hundreds of femtoseconds by the sheath electric field inside the vacuum-gap [T. Nakamura, et al., Phys. Plasmas 14, 103105 (2007)]. Cu-Kα intensity decreased with the vacuum-gap, i.e., the number of fast electrons that reached the Cu foil decreased with the gap. In the stack measurement, the number of electrons detected in the target surface direction increased with the gap. These results indicate that when the double-cone target is used, fast electrons created by an ignition laser can be reflected from the vacuum-gap, move along the cone surface, and be transferred towards the cone tip.