Language fluency often impacts on patients’ behaviors. It might affect their pathways, how they find an available psychiatric clinic, and the clinical outcomes, if they continue their treatments. Multicultural services deficiency is serious concern in Japanese psychiatric fields. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in 2014, more than two million of foreign visitors live in Japan, however, the psychiatric institutions providing multilingual services are rare and inadequate comparing the situation in Europe. The research sets the objective of analyzing the status quo in a multi-language providing psychiatric clinic, how the pathways and outcomes of language diffluent patients differ from these of the local patients. It further aims to find the significance of foreign patients, and strives the improvement of language services for non-native patients in Japanese mental health cares. The research utilized and quantitatively analyzed the retrospective research data among 900 Japanese patients and 902 non-Japanese patients, who have visited a psychiatric clinic located in Tokyo. The analysis revealed that the significant proportion of foreign patients relied on their acquaintances as their pathways, and that the lower their language levels were, the higher proportion they had this path. For the outcomes, the lower their language levels were, the higher continuity status they had. Our research suggested that two of the common ways to find a psychiatric service when local patients suffer from psychopathological maladjustments are researching Homepages and neighboring clinics, however, the foreigners with limited language abilities tended to follow the different pathways and outcome patterns.

It is thought that protoplanets formed in protoplanetary disks excite the orbital motion of the surrounding planetesimals, and the bow shocks caused by the highly excited planetesimals heat their icy component evaporating into gas. We have performed model calculations to study the evolution of molecular abundances of the evaporated icy component, which suggests sulfur-bearing molecules can be good tracers of icy planetesimal evaporation. Here we report the result of our ALMA observations of sulfur-bearing molecules towards protoplanetary disks. The lines were undetected but the obtained upper limits of the line fluxes and our model calculations give upper limits of the fractional abundances of x(H2S) < 10−11 and x(SO) < 10−10 in the outer disk. These results are consistent with the molecular abundances in comets in our Solar system.

Heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) was introduced to Japan in 2010. We investigated the impact of PCV7 on childhood community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and pneumococcal pneumonia (PP). Children aged <5 years living in Chiba city, Japan, who were admitted to hospitals were enrolled to estimate the incidence of CAP based on the mid-year population. PP was determined by the presence of Streptococcus pneumoniae in cultured blood and/or sputum samples of CAP patients. The incidence of CAP and S. pneumoniae isolated from PP patients was compared before (April 2008–March 2009) and after (April 2012–March 2013) the introduction of PCV7 immunization. The annual incidence of CAP was reduced [incidence rate ratio 0·81, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0·73–0·90]. When comparing post-vaccine with pre-vaccine periods, the odds ratio for PP incidence was 0·60 (95% CI 0·39–0·93, P = 0·024). PCV7-covered serotypes markedly decreased (66·6% in pre-vaccine vs. 15·6% in post-vaccine, P < 0·01), and serotypes 6C, 15A, 15C and 19A increased. Multidrug-resistant international clones in the pre-vaccine period (Spain6B-2/ST90, Taiwan19F-14/ST236) decreased, while Sweden15A-25/ST63 was the dominant clone in the post-vaccine period. A significant reduction in the incidence of both CAP hospitalizations and culture-confirmed PP of vaccine serotypes was observed at 2 years after PCV7 vaccination.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 – August 2, 2012.

An immunochromatographic test (ICT), using recombinant truncated P50 (P50t), for the detection of antibodies to Babesia gibsoni was developed and evaluated. Whereas all sera from specific pathogen-free dogs were clearly negative, all sera from dogs experimentally infected with B. gibsoni were clearly positive in the ICT. In addition, the ICT detected no cross-reactivity with sera from dogs experimentally infected with closely related parasites, B. canis canis, B. canis vogeli, and B. canis rossi, or with Neospora caninum, and Leishmania infantum. Sequential sera from a dog experimentally infected with B. gibsoni were tested with the ICT; it was shown that the specific antibodies are detectable as early as 6 days post-infection (p.i.) and that strong antibody responses remained until the end of the experiment (144 days p.i.). To evaluate the clinical application of the ICT, a total of 54 serum samples collected from domestic dogs that had been identified as having signs of anaemia at veterinary hospitals in Japan, were tested with the ICT, the previously established enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and with the indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT). Twenty-four of the tested samples (44·4%) were positive in both ICT and ELISA, and (51·8%) in IFAT. The concordance between ELISA and ICT was found to be 100%, and 85·7% with IFAT. Taken together, the results above suggest that the ICT using P50t is rapid, simple, accurate, and suitable for use at clinical sites for the diagnosis of B. gibsoni infection in dogs.

A description is given of the profiling of CVD grown 3C SiC on undulant (001) Si using low temperature photoluminescence (LTPL). Inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and X-ray Raman scattering (XRS) are compared for acoustical modes of 4H SiC. Schottky barrier heights are obtained for 4H and 6H SiC on different crystal faces using three different measuring techniques. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is used to display a variety of porous SiC morphologies achieved in n-type and p-type SiC.

This paper is intended to be the introduction to the “CHARACTERIZATION” section of this volume. To serve this purpose we illustrate the subject matter with new results using four distinct experimental techniques.

Atomistic microstructures of long-period superstructures in Al-rich TiAl alloys were investigated by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The multi-slice image simulation revealed that Al-atoms in Ti-rich (002) layers of the superstructures are imaged as very bright dots under appropriate observing conditions. By enhancing the contrast of the very bright dots using an image processing technique, partially ordered long-period superstructures were clearly characterized. For the short-range order state, A4B, A2B and A3B type ordered-clusters are generated in the Ti-rich (002) layers. These ordered-clusters are in contact with each other, and form local microdomains of various superstructures, such as Al5Ti3, h-Al2Ti and so on. For the Al5Ti3 and h-Al2Ti ordered states, the ordered-clusters are tiled periodically to form the Al5Ti3 or h-Al2Ti domains and characteristic anti-phase boundary structures.

The effect of dietary octacosanol, a long-chain alcohol, on lipid metabolism was investigated in rats fed on a high-fat diet for 20 d. The addition of octacosanol (10 g/kg diet) to the high-fat diet led to a significant reduction (P < 0·05) in the perirenal adipose tissue weight without decrease of the cell number, suggesting that octacosanol may suppress lipid accumulation in this tissue, whereas no effect was seen in the epididymal adipose tissue weight and in the lipid content in liver. Octacosanol supplementation decreased the serum triacylglycerol concentration, and enhanced the concentration of serum fatty acids, probably through inhibition of hepatic phosphatidate phosphohydrolase (EC 3·1·3·4). Though the activity of hormone-sensitive lipase (EC 3·1·1·3) was not influenced by octacosanol, higher activities of lipoprotein lipase (EC 3·1·1·34) in the perirenal adipose tissue and the total oxidation rate of fatty acid in muscle were observed. Lipid absorption was not affected by the inclusion of octacosanol. Thus, the present results suggest that the dietary incorporation of octacosanol into a high-fat diet affects some aspects of lipid metabolism.

The reader is kindly asked to consider this report for some sort of greatly unbalanced equilibrium between the pressure exercised by the steadily increasing flow of papers discussing the vastly extending subject of solar activity, and the equally steady pressure exercised by the editor who insists on having this report twice as short as three years ago. Therefore, some selection of the subjects and papers had to be made, a fairly severe one, since only about one third of all published papers could have been mentioned in the references, and I am well aware that almost everyone who will read the report, could suggest some improvement of the selection scheme. Nevertheless, I believe that the report as it stands, can fulfill its basic purpose, i.e. to give to the readers a general picture on the progress, which has been achieved in the field of solar activity research since the Prague meeting and on some of the research activities which are in progress at the present time.

It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the enormous help I have received from the authors of the individual sections of the Draft Report, as well as from many other members of the Commission, who have very kindly provided me, or the co-authors, with useful information on the recent progress of their work. It is necessary to add that some highly valuable comments made by V. Bumba, J. T. Jefferies, C. Sawyer, E. v. P. Smith, B. Valníček and J. M. Wilcox, have also been included in other chapters than those prepared by themselves.