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In device-aided therapy (DAT) for Parkinson’s disease (PD), factors such as device-related adverse effects, psychological and lifestyle changes, and specific disease progression can affect the quality of life (QoL) of patients with advanced PD. However, there is no existing QoL scale that includes the effects of therapeutic devices. From a semi-structured interview with patients with PD undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), we extracted the content of utterances that were thought to affect the QoL and created a draft questionnaire consisting of 113 items. This questionnaire was administered to 54 other patients undergoing DBS, whose data were examined for reliability and validity by factor analysis, and finally, a 24-item PD QoL questionnaire for patients on DAT (PDQ-DAT) was developed. Presently, the PDQ-DAT is the only scale that can assess the QoL of patients on DAT, including the influence treatment devices have on them. In the future, it might be used to help in shared decision-making in medicine by incorporating the patient’s sense of burden and values in the selection of treatment methods.

BACKGROUND The use of international telemedicine conferences for doctor-to-doctor education has expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure health and safety. Previous studies have shown that administrative tasks are an obstacle to promoting international telemedicine conferences but have not clarified what kind of system is needed to alleviate this burden. The Asia-Pacific Advanced Network Medical Working Group (APAN-MWG) is an international telemedicine network that had connected 1,171 medical institutions and 3,653 members as of 21 July 2021. APAN-MWG has supported international telemedicine conferences since 2005, and a program management system was implemented in 2014. OBJECTIVE The present study clarifies the content of the organisers' tasks and evaluates the APAN-MWG management system through a survey of conference program organisers. METHODS We developed a system named med-hok for managing conference programs, international medical institutions and members. We investigated all event programs planned using med-hok by program organisers from 3 June 2015 to 21 July 2021. The target data were 64 conference programs in 12 different series hosted by 13 program organisers. The effectiveness of med-hok was evaluated using a four-point Likert scale (very good, good, poor, and very poor). The User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) was used to assess the user experience. RESULTS The survey response rate of the program organisers, who hosted 11 different program series in 7 Asian countries, was 92% (12/13). The administrative tasks for managing programs were primarily handled by physicians (67%, 8/12) followed by technicians (17%, 2/12). The average program scope encompassed 7 countries, 10 institutions and 44 members. The largest program comprised 194 members from 49 institutions in 25 countries and was managed by physicians and a technician. The majority of program organisers (8/12, 67%) indicated that verifying member information was the most burdensome aspect of organising the teleconferences. Over 90% of respondents positively evaluated med-hok in the following areas: “Confirmation of institution information”, “Confirmation of member information”, “Confirmation of technical information”, “Maintaining the latest status of the program”, “Announcing and publicising the event”, and “Formatting and correcting misspellings”. The user experience was rated positively in all aspects (attractiveness, 1.47; practical quality, 1.50; and hedonic quality, 0.95). CONCLUSIONS Unlike large academic conferences, many of the tasks of organising casual international telemedicine conferences are handled by physicians and technicians with no operating funds or staff. It was found that the proposed system helps program organisers in managing participants and publishing the latest information. It is recommended that international telemedicine networks implement an administrative support system to conduct efficient program operations.

We demonstrated the quantitative evaluation of optical characteristics especially modal power distribution at a connection between graded-index (GI) plastic optical fibers (POFs) when an axial shift occurs. The results show promising evaluation characteristics in future in-vehicle optical communication components.

Technical issues with videoconferencing can often disturb the learning process of international remote medical education. In this study, a system to share technical information among technical support staffs and accelerate their collaboration was developed and evaluated for the purpose of preventing technical issues. The system design incorporates two types of websites. The first site enables each institution to share their technical information. The second site enables the chief engineer to browse the shared information and provide tailored technical direction. The system was evaluated via online questionnaires and online interviews. The first site enables each institution to document their technical environments by visually choosing elements. Pictograms are displayed on the second site for the chief engineer to offer suitable technical direction. The result of questionnaires and interviews were positive. The system contributes to sharing technical information more easily and helps technical staff use the collective information to improve connectivity testing.

Introduction: With ongoing development of technology, and especially amid the current COVID-19 pandemic, there is rapidly increasing need for remote communications, including in the field of medical education. This study aimed to evaluate our telemedicine activities between Japan and Indonesia. Methods: We retrospectively analysed the data acquired for the period 2010–2019 inclusive, looking at number of programmes, content, participating sites, and videoconferencing systems. We also digitally sent questionnaires to attendees to request their evaluation of image quality and programmes. Results: There were a total 135 programmes, with 29 participating institutions in Indonesia. The number of programmes increased rapidly in 2017, following a rapid increase of participating sites in 2016. Programmes included endoscopy (50 programmes, 37%), neurology (25, 19%), and dentistry (12, 9%). Between 5 and 10 sites connected with 81 programmes (60% of all), and more than 10 sites with 33 (24%). The most commonly used videoconferencing system was Vidyo (108, 80%), followed by Zoom (15, 11%). Participating institutions were located among 19 cities on the five major islands. Image quality received a favourable evaluation from 98% (504/516) of questionnaire respondents, with 100% (400/400) holding a favourable view of the programmes. Conclusion: Remote medical education expanded in Indonesia in the 10 years under review. This expansion is expected to continue to foster more specialists and it is anticipated to improve medical care nationwide.

International education programs that use videoconferencing (VC) are common now and many are being implemented in the medical field. Irrespective of the value of the content, the learning process can be disrupted when technical quality of VC is compromised. In this study, a participatory design (PD) was used with focus group discussion between technical support staff to determine and classify the causes of technical issues in international remote medical education by VC. As a result, a quality of experience (QoE) -based framework was developed based on the technical issues raised. User behavior and three factors (context, human and system factors) influence technical errors, either preventing or creating difficulties, and affecting each other. For future prototyping of the PD process, it is suggested to have a flexible and specific operational procedure which considers variables of engineers’ background.

Background: International clinical teleconferencing connecting hospitals contributes to the standardisation of medical care. Introduction: The perception that participating in international teleconferences is easy while hosting and coordinating them is difficult has limited the expansion of these kinds of programmes. We evaluated the effectiveness of a Train-the-Trainer (TtT) programme on hosting international multiparty teleconferences targeted at hospital engineers. Methods: From 2015 to 2017, 20 engineers and physicians from 17 institutions in 10 countries participated in Kyushu University Hospital’s TtT programme. Hands-on training and hosting a Training Report Conference (TRC) were conducted. The impact of the programme was assessed using questionnaires about the participants’ confidence, perception of barriers, and teleconference activity before and one year after the training period. Results: The mean training period was 16.7 days (median, 19 days). Twelve TRCs were hosted by trainees connecting 56 institutions in 11 countries. All participants gave positive evaluations of the overall programme, 19 (95%) "very good" and 1 (5%) "good", and the trainers 9 (90%) "very good" and 1 (10%) "good"). Following the TtT programme, the mean number of trainee-hosted events increased significantly (0.8 to 1.3, p

In this study, we attempt to identify the presence of surface defects (SDs) at an n-type GaN surface after high-temperature growth and gain insight into their intrinsic features. To this end, first, we carefully investigate n-type GaN samples with different surface etching depths. Low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectra reveal that SDs are most likely nitrogen vacancies (VN) and/or VN-related point defects intensively distributed within ∼100 nm from the n-type GaN surface after a high-temperature growth. We investigate the effect of SDs on the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of green light-emitting diodes (LEDs) by preparing GaInN-based green LEDs employing a surface-etched n-type GaN, which exhibits a prominent enhancement of the PL efficiency with an increase in the etching depth. This effect is attributable to the reduced non-radiative recombination centers in multiple-quantum-well active regions because the SDs near the n-type GaN surface are removed by etching. We discuss strategies of in situ engineering on SDs to further improve the IQE in GaInN-based green LEDs on the basis of the results presented in this study.

When two and more stimuli are arranged in the space, an illusion such as phantom sensation and apparent movement appear in the sense of touch. The foundation research to build a system for presenting two-dimensional information by using phantom sensation and apparent movement is done in this research. When apparent movement is used, information in the direction can be expressed between two elements of tactile stimulus in two-dimensional vector information. In this report, the authors propose the technique of information expression using three elements for tactile stimulus that the apparent movement is used with the phantom sensation together. By this technique, two-dimensional vector information can be expressed by three elements of tactile stimulus. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 91(12): 29–38, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10000

The new video coding standard H.264/AVC offers major improvements in the coding efficiency and flexible mapping to transport layers. It consists of a video coding layer (VCL) and a network abstraction layer(NAL). The VCL carries out the coding, and the NAL encapsulates data from the VCL in a manner where transmission over a broad variety of transport layers is readily enabled. Since no security features are offered, an authentication scheme to authenticate the sender and data integrity is needed. In this paper we propose SANAL, a stream authentication scheme for H.264/AVC. Unlike existing schemes that carry out authentication procedures at the packet level, authentication procedures in SANAL are carried out at the NAL level. This makes it possible to set priorities to H.264/AVC-specific data without interfering with the H.264/AVC features. We implemented a SANAL prototype and carried out comparative evaluations on playout rate, communication overhead, and process load. The evaluation results show that the playout rate is improved by 40% compared to existing schemes.

Real-time streaming services are attracting attention. However, an adversary can compromise the safety of these services in ways such as data tampering, spoofing, and repudiation. In this paper we propose a real-time Stream Authentication scheme for Video streams called SAVe. Each packet in the stream is authenticated to correspond to the packet loss seen in UDP-based streaming. The amount of redundancy distributed to each frame is also adjusted according to the importance of each frame, to take account of the special characteristics of video such as differences in importance of and dependencies between frames. Since temporal and spatial compression techniques are adopted for video stream encoding, SAVe is efficient in terms of making important frames robust to packet loss. The simulation results show that the authentication rate is on average approximately equivalent to that of previously proposed schemes. An improvement of 50% in the playing rate over previously proposed schemes can be seen when the packet loss rate is 20%.

AMS is commonly used in radioisotope analysis because it can detect isotopes down to levels of 10-15 by abundance, but applications for trace element analysis are few. Therefore, we propose a new kind of AMS for trace element analysis using a linear accelerator (LINAC), an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source (ECRIS), and calibration methods with PIXE analysis. Abundance ratios of each element measured by PIXE are applied to create distribution charts of particles and charge states, and these charts are used for quantitative analysis. We report the concepts behind our AMS and calibration methods in this paper.

マウス腓腹筋の腱束および腱膜部における筋腱移行部の微細構造について検索を行った。腱東部の筋原線維と膠原線維の間には指状陥入構造による連結の形態を特徴とした。膠原線維側には基底膜を，筋原線維側には筋形質膜を認め，筋節の末端(Z線)のアクチンフィラメントが筋形質膜に接合していた。腱膜部では突起状の腱束が腱膜より鋭角に出現し，腱東部と同様の連結構造を示した。筋線維は筋の長軸方向に対し多様な角度で斜走し，腱束の接合がみられ，腓腹筋は抗重力筋として筋の収縮変位に乏しいが，最大張力発生に有利な筋デザインであることを示唆した。

パーキンソニズムの姿勢反応障害は日常生活（ADL）の障害をきたし，転倒の誘因ともなっている。そこで我々はパーキンソニズムの立位姿勢反応障害の推定とその特徴の検討を目的に，後方外乱によるPostural Stress Testを施行した。後方外乱刺激には，1.0%体重量による60cmの落下エネルギーを用い，刺激直後の前後重心動揺を経時的に測定を行った。加えて，20秒間の静止立位の重心動揺測定も行った。対象はパーキンソニズム10例および健常者10例で，結果はパーキンソニズムのADL障害の重度化に伴って，後方外乱刺激から平衡反応までの潜時時間は遅延し，この時の後方重心移動距離も延長した。パーキンソニズムの姿勢反応障害の特徴は，静止時のS.D-Areaでなく，後方外乱によるPostural Stress Testに対しての反応を示唆し，臨床評価にその有用性を明らかにした。

For the dinical application of the Sensory Organization Test (SOT) in the Equi test system devised by L.M. Nashner, for the purpose of evaluating equilibrium function in the standing posture, we have conducted a basic analysis on SOT and prepared SOT databases. The subjects in this study were 19 healthy males and 26 healthy females between 20 to 85 years of age (average age: 46). We studied the characteristics of the sensory organization function of integrating vestibular sense information and inaccurate postural information in healthy persons by changing the sway gain of postural information input from bodily sense and visual sense, and by monitoring changes in equilibrium function due to aging. The results of this study, show that for elderly persons and patients with equilibrium function disorder, the condition of 1.0 sway gain (disturbance intensity), results in heavy psychological and physiological burdens and a danger of falling. Therefore we considered the optimum amount of disturbance stimulation to be 0.75 sway gain in all age groups. SOT using external disturbance stimulation caused by postural deviation reflected the aging alteration of equilibrium function, and it is a useful examination method for evaluating equilibrium disorder and the clinical conditions of elderly persons.

The present study was conducted to determine effects of oxidative stress on mitochondrial genome caused by disuse atrophy of skeletal muscles by hindlimbs suspension. We used rats as subjects, and produced hypokinesia by hindlimbs’ (tail) suspension. With electron microscopy, confirming previous results, we found mitochondrial swelling, accompanied by blurred matrix changes in the soleus muscle. Surprisingly, in these muscles, we were able to detect two types of large-scale deletions (about 3.9 and 5.2 kb) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) by the polymerase chain reaction. Our study showed that hypokinesia for two weeks caused not only oxidative damage to the histology of skeletal muscular mitochondoria and but also deletion of mtDNA. Situated close to the energy-generating system, mtDNA is susceptible to oxidative stress and is likely to generate mutations.

Using exercise echocardiography (M-mode method) with a supine-position leg ergometer, we examined cardiovascular responses and the contractile wall movement and pumping function of the left ventricle in healthy male subjects. Under a moderate exercise load equivalent to the optimum exercise intensity, it is necessary to fully understand changes in PRP and systolic blood pressure to accurately estimate myocardial oxygen demand. Decreases in the telediastolic and telesystolic volumes of the left ventricle, especially a marked decrease in the telesystolic volume, led to differences between the two volumes, resulting in an increased EF. There was a high correlation between changes in PRP and EF during exercise. Although exercise echocardiography requires complex measurement techniques, it is very useful in physiotherapy for risk control in cardiac rehabilitation.

In this paper, we focus on forwarding obstruction attacks in structured overlay networks, and evaluate the impacts of the attacks through computer simulations, and finally propose countermeasures. One countermeasure is duplicating the network, and we show the improvement in the successful search rate. Also by examining the network in biased forwarding situations, the existence of nodes handling most of the search queries is verified. Approximately 80% of all search queries reaches a Hub node by the third hop in the search route.

Although H.264/AVC offers major improvements in the coding efficiency and "network friendliness" in terms of flexible mapping to transport layers, it does not offer any security features. Authentication schemes to ensure data integrity and sender authentication for H.264/AVC streams are therefore needed. Existing stream authentication schemes carry out authentication at a packet level and thus take away the flexibility of H.264/AVC. We propose SANAL, a stream authentication scheme which carries out authentication procedures at the Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) to make it possible to handle H.264/AVC-specific data without interfering with the H.264/AVC features. We implemented a SANAL prototype and carried out comparative evaluations on playout rate and communication overhead. We show an improvement of about 40% in the playout rate compared to existing schemes.

In this paper, we propose SAVe, a real-time stream authentication scheme for video streams. Each packet in the stream is authenticated to correspond to packet loss seen in UDP-based streaming. Since temporal and spatial compression techniques are adopted for video stream encoding, there are differences in the importance and dependencies between frames. Therefore, to take the characteristics special to video into consideration, in SAVe the amount of redundancy distributed to each frame is adjusted according to the importance of each frame. Simulation results show that SAVe improves the playing rate 50% compared to previously proposed schemes

In this paper, an efficient log authentication scheme for forensic computing is proposed. To conduct reliable forensic computing, it is required that the logs as digital evidences be verified. To verify them, digital signatures issued by authorities are needed. However, if many logging hosts connect to the server that issues the signatures, the traffic of the server will increase. Therefore, the authors proposed an efficient log authentication scheme for forensic computing. The scheme reduces the traffic of the sign server, which signs the logs of the logging hosts, by using distributed Merkle tree algorithm among the logging hosts. The scheme's effectiveness was shown through evaluation experiments.

In this paper, we propose a secure logging scheme for Forensic Computing. Forensic Computing is the process conducted to identify the method of an attack and intruders in the case of system compromise. In Forensic Computing, trustworthy logs admissible for court are needed. Moreover, since the log contains various confidential information, the confidentiality of the log must be preserved. Our scheme achieves the integrity of logs and fine-grained access control for logs with small overhead size using the signature tree and Forward Integrity.

In this paper, we propose an authentication scheme considering privacy aimed for JPEG images. A picture from a surveillance camera must be authenticated when submitted to a third party, such as a legal organization, courts and so on. On one hand, privacy of objects in the picture must be considered. Therefore, mosaic and masking must be performed to the picture if needed. Our scheme authenticate JPEG picture, where parts are processed by mosaic and masking. Our scheme uses Merkle tree and Sandhu tree and achieves small overhead size needed to authenticate the processed picture.

Alpha-globin genes in crab-eating macaques were found to be triplicated at high frequencies according to restriction-enzyme comparisons. The frequencies of triplicated alpha-globin genes in macaques originally from Malaysia and Indonesia were 0.432 and 0.275, respectively, while no triplication was found in individuals from either the Philippines or northern and central Thailand. Quadruplicated alpha-globin genes were also observed, at frequencies of 0.045 (Malaysia), 0.075 (Indonesia), and 0.021 (the Philippines). A single locus was detected in only one of 40 chromosomes from Indonesia (frequency 0.025).

application/pdf, 論文(Article), グループでソフトウェアシステムを開発する場合、開発者間のコミュニ-ケーションを通した協調作業を支援するツールが有効である[1]。また開発工程における各種のプロダクトやプロセスの再利用を促進するために、データベースを核とした開発基盤を構築することが望まれる。そこで過去の成果物の再利用、開発ツールや開発方法の利用を支援できるような開発環境のシステムアーキテクチャを提案する。本研究では、この環境を協調開発支援に適用するための基盤を示したうえで、既に提案したソフトシステム方法論に基づくドメイン分析手法[2]を支援するグループ開発環境を適用例としてあげる。

application/pdf, 論文(Article), GUIを持つソフトウェアアプリケーションの開発に適した方法論の一つとして、Smalltalkに端を発するMVCモデルが挙げられる。MVCモデルはアプリケーション本体とユーザインタフェースを分離できるという利点を持ち、そのためMVCモデルを基底とした、ユーザインタフェース開発支援環境・ツールが数多く構築されている。ここでは、まずGUIを構築する際のMVCモデルについて述べ、つぎに、そのMVCモデルを発展させた我々のユーザインタフェースモデルとその開発支援環境について述べる。

application/pdf, 論文(Article)

DNA fingerprints were studied in non-human primates including three species of Old World monkeys and one species of hominoid, using tandem repeats of a 28-base-pair sequence downstream of the human c-Ha-ras-1 oncogene as a probe. We observed Southern hybridization patterns consisting of multiple hypervariable DNA fragments, which were specific to each of the individuals examined. These results indicate that DNA fingerprinting is a powerful tool for identification of individuals among non-human primates, as is the case in man.

We have cloned five human immunoglobulin gamma genes from a fetal liver gene library. Four of them encode the known human immunoglobulin gamma chains gamma 1, gamma 2, gamma 3 and gamma 4. A fifth gamma gene seems to be a pseudogene. Nucleotide sequence determination demonstrates that the gamma 3 gene contains four separate hinge exons. Comparison of these hinge exons with those of the other gamma genes indicates that the first hinge exon is homologous to that of the pseudogene, and that the other three hinge exons are homologous to that of the gamma 1 gene, suggesting that the gamma 3 gene ancestor is a hybrid gene created by unequal crossing-over between the ancestral gamma 1 and psi gamma genes. Amplification of the gamma 1-type hinge exon probably followed to complete the gamma 3 gene. This hypothesis inevitably postulates the gene order 5'-gamma 1-gamma 3-psi gamma-3'. Cloning of overlapping chromosomal segments demonstrates that the gamma 2 gene is located 19 kb 5' to the gamma 4 gene. These analyses indicate that the human gamma-gene family has evolved by several types of DNA rearrangemet, including duplication of a complete gene; duplication of a hinge exon; and reassortment of exons by unequal cross-over between two adjacent genes.

We have determined the complete organization of the mouse CH gene family, which is comprised of the 8 CH genes in the order 5’-JH-6.5kb-Cμ-4.5kb-Cδ-55kb-Cγ3-34kb-Cγ1-21kb-Cγ2b-15kb-Cγ2a-14kb-Ce-12kb-Cα-3’. The S regions, which contain characteristic tandemly repeated unit sequences, are located 5’ to each CH gene except for the Cδ gene. There are at least two types of repetitive sequences dispersed in this 200 kb region. No pseudogenes are present. The arrangements of the CH genes in BALB/c and C57BL mice are similar, but the lengths of the S regions vary. The basic structures of all the CH genes are similar in that coding sequences are interrupted at the junctions of the domains and the hinge regions. Comparison of the nucleotide sequences of the CH genes revealed that sequence segments have been exchanged among members of the CH gene family. Cloning and characterization of human Cγ genes, i.e. Cγ1, Cγ2, Cγ3, Cγ4 and φCγ, indicate that the human Cγ gene family evolved by dynamic DNA rearrangements, including gene duplication, exon duplication, and exon reassortment by unequal crossing-over. A human pseudo-epsilon gene (Ce3) is a processed gene that has completely spliced out introns. The presence of movable genetic elements surrounding the Ce3 gene suggests that the Ce gene evolved by a translocation mechanism. Although S-S recombination has been shown to take place in myelomas and hybridomas secreting a large amount of immunoglobulin, analyses of the CH gene organization in normal spleen B cells bearing immunoglobulin on their surface suggest that RNA splicing may be responsible for the first step in class switching, followed by S-S recombination. The nucleotide sequences of S regions contain short common sequences, TGGG(G) and (G)AGCT. Comparison of nucleotide sequences surrounding recombination sites revealed common sequences TGAG and TGGG. A sister chromatid exchange model was proposed to explain deletion of CH genes accompanying S-S recombination. We have found that the S region serves as a preferred recombination site in E.coli extracts.

Cloning of the overlapping DNA fragments together with Southern hybridization experiments showed the organization of the human C epsilon and C alpha gene cluster as 5'-C epsilon 2-14 kilobases-C alpha 1----C epsilon 1-13 kilobases-C alpha 2-3'. Comparison of the nucleotide sequences of the C epsilon 1 and C epsilon 2 genes revealed that four deletions have taken place in the C epsilon 2 gene and its flanking regions. The three deleted regions in the 5' side of the C epsilon 2 gene are partially filled with shorter inserted sequences. One of them has removed the CH1 and CH2 exons and a portion of the epsilon switch (S epsilon) region. The S epsilon region and the CH4 exon still retain the functional structures, whereas the CH3 exon has been inactivated by deleting its 5' intervening sequence necessary for splicing. The tetranucleotide T-G-G-G (or T-G-G-C), which is usually found in close proximity of the class-switch recombination sites in mouse myelomas, is located 5' to the three deletion sites. The results imply that the mechanism responsible for the heavy chain class-switch recombination might be relevant to the evolutionary mechanism of creation of the truncated C epsilon 2 gene. The other deletion in the 3' flanking region of the C epsilon 2 gene may be due to slipped mispairing of the short direct repeat (C-C-C-C-C) at both ends.