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The aim of this study is to evaluate the current status of child health in deprived areas of the Philippines and to investigate the influence of poverty on health outcomes. Children and parents belonging to a preschool leaning center in Malabon city participated in this study over a five-year period. A questionnaire survey answered by parents concerning characteristics, child-rearing anxieties, and hygiene was undertaken. Kaup index was measured and medical checkups were performed by Japanese medical staff. The ratio of underweight children was 0%-3.8%, while those with obesity were 2.4%-7.7%. The ratio of students with dental caries was 54.8%-74.4%. Parents had various child-rearing anxieties. Poverty affected the Kaup index, caries, and hygiene. It is suggested that children in deprived areas had problems of nutrition, earwax plugs, caries, and hygiene and there might be an influence from poverty on health outcomes.

Descriptive observational studies showed upward jumps in secular European perinatal mortality trends after Chernobyl. The question arises whether the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident entailed similar phenomena in Japan. For 47 prefectures representing 15.2 million births from 2001 to 2014, the Japanese government provides monthly statistics on 69,171 cases of perinatal death of the fetus or the newborn after 22 weeks of pregnancy to 7 days after birth. Employing change-point methodology for detecting alterations in longitudinal data, we analyzed time trends in perinatal mortality in the Japanese prefectures stratified by exposure to estimate and test potential increases in perinatal death proportions after Fukushima possibly associated with the earthquake, the tsunami, or the estimated radiation exposure. Areas with moderate to high levels of radiation were compared with less exposed and unaffected areas, as were highly contaminated areas hit versus untroubled by the earthquake and the tsunami. Ten months after the earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent nuclear accident, perinatal mortality in 6 severely contaminated prefectures jumped up from January 2012 onward: jump odds ratio 1.156; 95% confidence interval (1.061, 1.259), P-value 0.0009. There were slight increases in areas with moderate levels of contamination and no increases in the rest of Japan. In severely contaminated areas, the increases of perinatal mortality 10 months after Fukushima were essentially independent of the numbers of dead and missing due to the earthquake and the tsunami. Perinatal mortality in areas contaminated with radioactive substances started to increase 10 months after the nuclear accident relative to the prevailing and stable secular downward trend. These results are consistent with findings in Europe after Chernobyl. Since observational studies as the one presented here may suggest but cannot prove causality because of unknown and uncontrolled factors or confounders, intensified research in various scientific disciplines is urgently needed to better qualify and quantify the association of natural and artificial environmental radiation with detrimental genetic health effects at the population level.

To design new scintillating materials, it is very important to understand detailed information about the events, which occurred during the excitation and emission processes under the ionizing radiation excitation. We developed a streak camera system equipped with picosecond pulsed X-ray source to observe time- and wavelength-resolved scintillation events. In this report, we test the performance of this new system using several types of scintillators including bulk oxide/halide crystals, transparent ceramics, plastics and powders. For all samples, the results were consistent with those reported previously. The results demonstrated that the developed system is suitable for evaluation of the scintillation properties.

These instructions provide guidelines for preparing manuscripts for submission to the Conference Record (CR) of the 2010 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference. If you are using Microsoft Word 6.0 or later to prepare your manuscript, you should use this document as a template. Define all symbols used in the abstract. Do not cite references in the abstract.

Bright and dark spots noise phenomena observed on the phosphor screen output of framing streak tube with Fiber Optic Plate (FOP) output window have been investigated and the mechanism of these phenomena has been attributed to undesirable accumulation of charge on the FOP because of nonuniformity of FOP resistance. In order to solve these noise problems, the transparent conductive layer (ITO) was inserted between the FOP and phosphor screen. It was shown that bright and dark spot noises were completely eliminated by this method. In addition to this improvement, the conversion gain of the phosphor was also shown to be improved. The improvement of conversion gain and spatial resolution were about 1.5 approximately 2.0 times compared to conventional values. This method could be effectively applied to all kinds of imaging devices with FOP in which the high quality of the image intensification is most important.© (1993) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

To observe time and wavelength-resolved scintillation events, picosecond pulse X-ray excited streak camera system is developed. The wavelength range spreads from vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) to near infrared region (110–900 nm) and the instrumental response function is around 80 ps. This work describes the principle of the newly developed instrument and the first performance test using BaF2 single crystal scintillator. Core valence luminescence of BaF2 peaking around 190 and 220 nm is clearly detected by our system, and the decay time turned out to be of 0.7 ns. These results are consistent with literature and confirm that our system properly works.