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Summary: Background: Periodic point prevalence surveys (PPSs) provide a method for assessing changes in healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial use over time. Following the introduction of an antimicrobial stewardship programme at Nagoya University Hospital (Aichi, Japan) a five-year PPS study was performed to highlight any epidemiological changes. Methods: One-day PPSs were performed annually in July at Nagoya University Hospital. Data on patient characteristics, medical devices, active HAIs and antimicrobial use were collected using a standard data-collection form. Results: A total of 4339 patients were included. Over the five-year study period the median patient age was 62 years, median duration of hospital admission was nine days, 9% of patients had an HAI and 35.2% received at least one antimicrobial. Overall there were 406 HAIs (95% confidence interval, 369–447) with surgical site infection, pneumonia and febrile neutropenia occurring most frequently. Enterobacterales were the most common pathogens (N = 78, 28.6%) and 32.1% were third-generation cephalosporin-resistant. Meropenem was the most frequently prescribed antimicrobial for HAIs. Surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis changed drastically, with shorter durations and a marked reduction in oral cephalosporin use. However, antimicrobials for medical prophylaxis gradually increased. Conclusions: This five-year PPS study shows consistent data for patient background, HAIs and causative pathogens and highlights changes in antimicrobial use during the era of the National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance. To describe the epidemiology of Japanese hospitals by PPS, multicentre PPSs including in community hospitals should be performed annually.

We study the three-flavor Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model with various regularization procedures. We perform parameter fitting in each regularization and apply the obtained parameter sets to evaluate various physical quantities, several light meson masses, decay constant and the topological susceptibility. The model parameters are adopted even at very high cutoff scale compare to the hadronic scale to study the asymptotic behavior of the model. It is found that all the regularization methods except for the dimensional one actually lead reliable physical predictions for the kaon decay constant, sigma meson mass and topological susceptibility without restricting the ultra-violet cutoff below the hadronic scale.

We study the regularization dependence on meson properties and the phase diagram of quark matter by using the two flavor Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model. The model also has the parameter dependence in each regularization, so we explicitly give the model parameters for some sets of the input observables, then investigate its effect on the phase diagram. We find that the location or the existence of the critical end point highly depends on the regularization methods and the model parameters. Then we think that regularization and parameters are carefully considered when one investigates the QCD critical end point in the effective model studies.

A high-acceleration-gradient linear accelerator (LINAC) for an x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) offers the advantages of a short accelerator length and low construction costs. In addition, the high pulse repetition rate of the LINAC, which can drive multiple x-ray beam lines, provides additional user opportunities for experiments involving XFEL. A C-band disk-loaded-type accelerating structure was developed to achieve a high acceleration gradient of >50 MV/m and an rf-pulse repetition rate of 120 pps, which is twice as high as that of the XFEL facility, SACLA (60 pps). The structure has a quasiconstant gradient and a traveling wave type with an accelerating mode of TM01−2π/3. To reduce the surface electric fields, we employed a cross section with an ellipsoidal curvature around an iris aperture. The accelerating structure was manufactured for SACLA. High-power rf conditioning was conducted to investigate its performance. Owing to the conditioning, the acceleration gradient reached a value of more than 50.1 MV/m. The structure was operated without any serious issues at a repetition rate of 120 pps. The accelerating structures were installed in the dedicated accelerator for EUV-FEL at SACLA beam line-1. Finally, we obtained accelerated electron beams with the structures operated at an acceleration gradient of 41.4 MV/m.

An electron linac using a C-band rf frequency, 5.712 GHz, has enabled us to obtain an acceleration gradient of more than 35 MV/m reliably. A C-band accelerator system has been developed and constructed for the compact x-ray FEL facility, SACLA, in order to fit within the available site length at SPring-8, and to reduce construction costs. An accelerator unit consists of two 1.8 m-long accelerator structures, a cavity-type rf pulse compressor and a 50 MW pulsed klystron. In order to achieve a compact rf source and to obtain extremely stable rf fields in the accelerator structures, an oil-filled, high-voltage pulse modulator combined with an extremely stable, inverter-type, high voltage charger was developed. SACLA uses 64 sets of these accelerator units in order to achieve a final beam energy of 8.5 GeV. After rf conditioning for 1 700 hours, the maximum acceleration gradient achieved was 38 MV/m. The typical trip rate for each accelerator unit at 35 MV/m and 30 pps is about once per day. Dark current from the accelerator structures is less than 5 pC, which causes a negligible effect on the beam monitors. The phase and amplitude stability of the rf fields were measured to be 0.03 degree and 0.01% rms, respectively, which is sufficient for the XFEL operation of SACLA. Since the first beam commissioning in 2011, the C-band accelerator has demonstrated fairly stable performance under continuous operation for 20 000 hours.

A high-voltage pulsed electron gun has been developed for the low-emittance injector system of the x-ray free electron laser (FEL) project at SPring-8. A single-crystal CeB_{6} cathode was chosen as a thermionic emitter because of its excellent emission properties, i.e., smooth surface, high emission density, uniform emission density, and high resistance to contamination. A gun voltage of -500 kV was determined as a compromise between the need for suppressing emittance growth and reducing the risks of high-voltage arcing. We have succeeded in producing a 500 keV beam with 1 A peak current and 3 μs width. We have also measured the beam emittance by means of the double-slit method and obtained an extremely low emittance of 1.1π mm mrad (normalized, rms). These results are very promising for the x-ray FEL. In this paper, we describe the design and basic performance of the CeB_{6} electron gun, and report the emittance measurement experiments.

The first ITER toroidal field coil structures (TFCS) have been successfully completed by the Japan Domestic Agency with the solving of major technical challenges, and further fabrication is ongoing. There were five major challenges for the TFCS fabrication. This paper describes these challenges and the solutions established during fabrication and how to implement to the ITER TFCS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]