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Measures for vehicle exhaust emissions aimed at reducing either air pollution or global warming could have counterproductive effects on one another. Increasing diesel passenger vehicles, which generally have lower CO emissions than gasoline counterparts, leads to increasing particulate matter (PM) emissions, while gasoline has lower PM emissions than diesel. It is said that stringent limits on PM emission factors discourages improved CO emission factors. Without including both effects in a risk evaluation, one cannot evaluate whether the total risk is reduced or not. Hence, we evaluated representative exhaust emission measures based on risk evaluation for both air pollution and global warming. Considering consumer choice between diesel and gasoline passenger vehicles and emissions standards adopted in Japan from 1995 to 2005, we built five cases for vehicle policy evaluation. For each case, we estimated disability-adjusted life years (DALY) as an index of human health risk caused by lung cancer linked to inhalation exposure of elemental carbon in PM as well as due to global warming linked to CO. The results of our risk evaluation reveal that the case adopting the 2005 new long-term Japanese emission standard reduces the human health risk caused by lung cancer due to air pollution by 0.6 × 10 DALY, but would increase the risk due to global warming by 31.9 × 10 DALY compared with the case of adopting EURO 4, for the same conditions of passenger vehicle choice from 1995. These results suggest that the characteristics of Japanese emissions standards are mainly designed to reduce air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scheduling a project is often carried out based on the knowledge of the historical experiences. Lack of historical knowledge makes the scheduling rather difficult because appropriate implementation of various uncertainties is necessary. An example of such is restoration and decommissioning of nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, damaged by tsunami subsequently occurred after the earthquake on March 11, 2011. In this paper an innovative method of estimating the project duration is introduced by the use of the Cellular Automata (CA) and the analytical and numerical analysis will follow. The project is modelled as representation of the stochastic CA defined in a two dimensional lattice where the uncertainties are implemented as the probability factors for CA update. The method provides the estimate of various tempo properties relevant to the project such as project duration, critical path and slack time in terms of the realisation probability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examined an efficient and effective surveillance and countermeasures for equine infectious disease transmission by non-race horses in Japan from the view points of horse movements and health management practices. It states that there is a high risk of equine infectious disease transmission through horse movements as shown by qualitative evaluation of equestrian and private owner sectors. The questionnaire contained issues on location and type of horse holding, type of breed and purpose of use and inspections and vaccinations for infectious diseases.

• A state space model for real-time risk evaluation of traffic standstills in winter is proposed. • The proposed method can evaluate the high-risk environment before the occurrence of traffic standstills on winter roads. • Probe vehicle data and weather data are used for model development. • The state space approach improves the accuracy of the risk evaluation. • The model performance is evaluated by ROC curves using data from 58 real cases. A method that evaluates the risk of traffic standstills on winter roads in real time using a state space model is proposed herein. In Japan, large-scale anomaly events such as traffic standstills that cause serious road disturbances occur frequently every year because of heavy snowfall. However, if the risk of anomaly events is known in advance, appropriate preparation and management can be undertaken to prevent such events and/or alleviate their impacts on road traffic. Therefore, this study attempts to evaluate the risk of standstills based on the degraded road performance estimated from probe vehicle speeds using sequential Bayesian filtering in a state space model (SSM). The SSM comprises a system model constructed by learning historical data and a measurement model using several exogenous variables such as snowfall amounts and temperature. The risk of anomaly events is then determined as the deviation of the filtered vehicle speed by the SSM from the statistically feasible speed distribution. The validation is performed by applying the proposed model to 58 traffic-standstill cases in northern Japan, and we confirm that the model successfully evaluates risks at a reasonable level that permits the practical use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The treatment completion rate for all latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) patients in Tokyo was 83.6% in 2014: somewhat lower than the targeted goal of 85%. This study examines the association between risk factors and LTBI patients' failure to complete treatment., Methods: We collected data related to the treatment of LTBI patients who were reported to public health centers in Tokyo from January 2014 through December 2014. Data included potential risk factors affecting treatment, treatment results, and patient characteristics. We used Fisher's exact test to evaluate risk factors affecting failure to complete treatment. The failure rate was defined as the incompletion rate of treatment., Results: Of 1060 notified cases, 877 had completed treatment; 116 had not completed treatment. Of these 116 cases, failure to complete treatment in 52 cases was attributable to side effects of anti-tuberculosis drugs. Reasons other than side effects were given for 64 cases. Another 67 cases could not be followed up. In all, 941 cases were analyzed, excluding cases lost to follow-up and cases for which patients had not completed treatment because of anti-tuberculosis drug side effects. Failure rates among foreign-born patients (26.9%) were significantly much higher than those among Japan-born patients (3.9%). Statistical tests indicated no presumed potential risk factor as significant. However, "no supporter for foreign-born LTBI patients" was marginally significant., Conclusion: Only "no supporter for foreign-born LTBI patients" was found to be marginally significant. More data must be accumulated to assess the risk factors affecting LTBI treatment., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None declared., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)