Characterizations of elderly recipient of home-care and their caregivers. A questionnaire survey of elderly members of a health insurance union

The characteristics of elderly being cared for at home and their caregivers were analyzed based on a questionnaire about health and care for the elderly. We also assessed the problems of home care in view of activities of daily living (ADL) of the home-care recipient. Subjects were members of a health insurance union or their families and ages were more than 65 years old. Results were as follows; 1. The total number of released questionnaires was 5,472, of which responses totally 2,567 (46.9%) were received. Frequencies of the elderly at home without care, at home with care, and in hospitals or nursing home were 86.3%, 9.6% and 4.1%, respectively. 2. We categorized the home care recipient according to their ADL and analyzed their status. The frequency of using health care equipment for home care was significantly higher in the low ADL groups than in the high ADL groups. Caregivers in low ADL groups felt much more care burden than those in high ADL groups. 3. There was a tendency for differences in the use of community welfare services such as visiting nurses or short-stay between the home care recipient with dementia (group D) and the bedfast home care recipient (group C). Approximately 30% of caregivers in group D wanted to transfer the care of the elderly to hospitals or nursing home. 4. In Tokyo and nearby prefectures, there was a highly frequency that main caregivers were recipients' children. In the rural prefecture it was more frequent that the main caregiver was recipients' wife or husband only.     

Effects of loading mode and water chemistry on stress corrosion crack growth behavior of 316L HAZ and weld metal materials in high temperature pure water

The stress corrosion cracking (SCC) growth rates of 316L weld heat-affected zone (HAZ) and weld metal materials in high temperature pure water at 288 °C were measured using contoured double cantilever beam (CDCB) specimens and an alternating current potential drop (ACPD) in situ crack-length monitoring system. The effects of loading mode and dissolved oxygen and hydrogen on crack growth rate (CGR) were experimentally quantified. Typical intergranular SCC was found in the HAZ specimen and interdendritic SCC was identified in the weld metal specimen. The HAZ specimen and the weld metal specimen showed quite a similar response to the applied loading modes and the water chemistry, even though their absolute CGR values were different. The crack growth rates under trapezoidal loading were moderately higher than those under constant loading by several tenths percent. Switching the water chemistry from the oxygen-bearing water to the hydrogen-bearing water drastically decreased the electrochemical potential and the crack growth rate, and vice versa. A time-lag period for crack growth was observed after switching the water chemistry back to the oxygen-bearing water, where the crack growth rate was low even the dissolved oxygen concentration and the electrochemical potential had become high. Strain hardening and the resultant uneven distribution of deformation contribute to the enhanced intergranular SCC growth behavior in the HAZ area. The crack growth kinetics is analyzed based on the deformation/oxidation interaction at the crack tip, considering the importance of the electric-charge transfer, mass transport kinetics and the crack tip strain rate.     

220,000‐r/min, 2‐kW PM motor drive for turbocharger

This paper describes an ultrahigh‐speed permanent‐magnet synchronous motor drive, which is embedded in a turbocharger of an internal‐combustion engine. The electrical drive makes it possible to enhance output power of the turbocharger in a motoring mode and to retrieve combustion energy from exhaust gas in a regenerating mode. Computer simulations and experimental tests are conducted to examine various operation characteristics of a prototype. The experimental data demonstrate 220,000‐r/min operation at 2.2‐kW inverter output power, in good agreement with the simulation results and proving the feasibility of the proposed system. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 161(3): 31–40, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20408     

A 0.5-V MTCMOS/SIMOX logic gate

This paper proposes a multithreshold CMOS (MTCMOS) circuit that uses SIMOX process technology. This MTCMOS/SIMOX circuit combines fully depleted low-threshold CMOS logic gates and partially depleted high-threshold power-switch transistors. The low-threshold CMOS gates have a large noise margin for fluctuations in operating temperature in addition to high-speed operation at the low supply voltage of 0.5 V. The high-threshold power-switch transistor in which the body is connected to the gate through the reverse-diode makes it possible to obtain large channel conductance in the active mode without any increase of the leakage current in the sleep mode. The effectiveness of the MTCMOS/SIMOX circuit is confirmed by an evaluation of a gate-chain test element group (TEG) and an experimental 0.5-V, 40-MHz, 16-b ALU, which were designed and fabricated with 0.25-μm MTCMOS/SIMOX technology     

Effects of ventilation and pleural effusion on measurements of airway thermal volume and blood flow in dog lungs

We studied the effects of ventilation and pleural effusion on measurements of airway thermal volume (ATV) and pulmonary blood flow (PBF) by using the airway gas thermometry method of V. B. Serikov, M. S. Rumm, K. Kambara, M. I. Bootomo, A. R. Osmack, and N. C. Staub (J. Appl. Physiol. 72: 944-953, 1992) in 39 anesthetized dogs with or without lung edema or pleural effusion. To examine the differential effects of increased-pressure and increased-permeability lung edema on accuracy and sensitivity of ATV and PBF, two models of lung edema were induced by intravenous infusion of a Dextran 70 solution and alloxan monohydrate, respectively. Dogs were hyperventilated for 3 min by using a wide range of minute ventilation (VE) to produce two steady-state conditions of airway temperature. Higher levels of VE increased an estimated amount of ATV. The ATV produced by hyperventilation at VE values of 559, 158, and 72 ml.min-1.kg-1 was consistent with the gravimetric total lung mass, the blood-free wet lung weight, and the extravascular lung water volume, respectively. The coefficient of lung thermal conductivity, a practical index of the rate of heat conduction through tissue from lung vessels, was related to the ratio of the decrease in expired air temperature to VE, and estimated PBF was consistent with the thermodilution cardiac output. Pleural effusion had little effect on measurements of ATV and PBF. However, ATV and PBF showed increased variation in dogs with dextran-induced lung edema.     

A new anthracycline antibiotic, IT-62-B, converts the morphology of ras-transformed cells back to normal: taxonomy, fermentation, isolation, structure elucidation and biological characterization

beta-(2-Hydroxyethoxy)-5 alpha-cholest-8(14)-en-15-one, a synthetic inhibitor of cholesterol biosynthesis, was shown to exhibit a high affinity to oxysterol binding protein. This was proved by ultracentrifugation of the protein fraction from rabbit liver in the presence of the 3H-labeled inhibitor, 3 beta-(2-hydroxy-2-[3H]ethoxy)-5 alpha-cholest-8(14)-en-15-one, or by the substitution of the [3H]-25-hydroxycholesterol in its complex with the oxysterol binding protein. In human hepatoma Hep G2 cells, the inhibitor decreased activity of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl CoA reductase [ID50 (2.7 +/- 0.7) x 10(-5) M] and was transformed into 3 beta-[2-(9-Z-octadecenoyloxy)ethoxy]-5 alpha-cholest-8(14)-en-15-one.     

12.5-gb/s direct Modulation up to 115/spl deg/C in 1.3-/spl mu/m InGaAlAs-MQW RWG DFB lasers with notch-free grating structure

Direct modulation at 12.5 Gb/s of 1.3-/spl mu/m InGaAlAs distributed feedback (DFB) ridge waveguide (RWG) lasers with low-resistance notch-free gratings running up to 115/spl deg/C is experimentally demonstrated. It was achieved by the combination of the high differential gain of an InGaAlAs MQW active layer, high characteristic temperature of RWG structure, and low-resistance notch-free grating. Moreover, successful transmission of 10-Gb/s modulated signals over 30-km standard single-mode fiber was achieved with the laser running at up to 115/spl deg/C. These results confirm the suitability of this type of laser for use as the cost-effective light source in 12.5-Gb/s and 10-Gb/s datacom applications.     

Influence of different fluoride containing electrolytes on the formation of self-organized titania nanotubes by Ti anodization

The formation of self-organized porous titania nanotubes is achieved by electrochemical anodization under specific experimental conditions. In present work, the formation of porous titania nanotubes on titanium substrates is investigated in several SO₄²⁻/F⁻ based electrolytes. The presence of some non-porous layers covering the porous layers and accompanying the pore growth is observed. We discuss in details the influence of different electrolyte composition on the structure of self-organized porous layers, investigate the conditions for ideal pore growth. SEM investigations and XRD, AES and EDX surface analyses are carried out to characterize the self-organized porous layers. The results show that using SO₄²⁻/F⁻ electrolytes with different cations can drastically influence the final morphology of the self-organized porous nanotubes. We furthermore show that the nanotubes consist of TiO₂ and that they remain unchanged when annealed.     

Impact of Shear Strain and Quantum Confinement on $ langlehbox{110}rangle$ Channel nMOSFET With High-Stress CESL

In this paper, we propose a new analytical electron mobility model in strained Si inversion layers suitable for implementation in a drift-diffusion simulator. Using our new model, a numerical study in conjunction with comprehensive bending experiments has demonstrated that (100)-Si has the optimum channel direction along <110> in terms of the device performance of strained 65-nm-node nMOSFETs with contact etch stop layer and that both the shear-strain component and the quantum confinement effect are key factors in contributing to this superiority.