The purpose of this study was to examine consciousness and behavior relating to mottainai (wastefulness) among first-year university students in three academic fields: environmental studies, education, and the humanities. Three important themes emerged from the results. 1) The degrees of consciousness and behavior of women were higher than those of men in all academic fields, were highest among environmental studies majors, and were related to domestic life in all academic fields. Women’’ consciousness and behavior were related to environmental education for environmental studies and education majors, but not humanities majors. 2) The degrees of consciousness and behavior of men did not differ across academic fields, were only weakly related to domestic life among education and humanities majors, and showed little relation to environmental education in all academic fields. The degrees of behavior of men were only weakly related to practical lessons in environmental education at school. 3) These results suggest the importance of an increased emphasis on environmental education, considering the observed differences across genders and academic fields.

A questionnaire survey was conducted on odors inside hospitals among directors of nursing departments, who understand their hospitals’’ overall situation, with the aim of identifying the environmental factors affecting odor awareness in hospitals. The survey was sent to 461 facilities by mail and 174 valid responses were obtained. With regard to the relationship between odor awareness and hospital environments, it indicated that the older hospitals have a higher percentage of those who are aware of odors. There is a connection between the adjustability of ventilation equipment in individual rooms and building age. Buildings that were up to 5 years old had an awareness level of less than 1, regardless of the adjustability of ventilation equipment. However, the 6 to 20-year-old buildings and buildings that were 21 years old and older had an awareness level of 1 or more when their ventilation equipment could not be adjusted in individual rooms. It is presumed that odor awareness levels increase with building age, under the condition that ventilation equipment cannot be activated flexibly after strong odors are generated, making the odors cling to hospital rooms.

The inter-hemispheric correlation between left and right human motion-sensitive middle temporal areas (MT+) is reduced significantly during visually induced motion sickness (VIMS). It is also recognized that heart rates in the nausea group are lower than in the non-nausea group before viewing VIMS-inducing movies. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the effects of physical warm-up on VIMS and Brain Activation. Participants underwent either no warm-up or a warm-up for 5 minutes of stepping exercise in advance of the visual stimulus. Participants answered the simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) before and after exposure to the movie. The changes of oxygenated hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) during the left and right posterior temporal lobe activation were recorded with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The results from the 14 participants’’ data indicate that total score, nausea score, and oculomotor score for the SSQ for the warm-up condition was significantly lower than the baseline no warm up condition. There was no significant difference in the disorientation scores for the SSQ. Compared to the baseline, the inter-hemispheric correlation of the posterior temporal lobe was significantly improved in the warm-up condition while watching the movie. In contrast, no significant differences in the oxy-Hb concentrations in the posterior temporal lobe were observed between the baseline and warm-up condition. These results suggest that increasing heart rate and blood flow in the brain could prevent VIMS symptoms.

In recent years, there are many literatures insisting that an increase in productivity of residents caused by improving the indoor environment is a cost-effective investment. The purpose of this paper is to substantiate a hypothesis that controlling airflow can improve not only thermal environment in a room, but also productivity of residents. Since the airflow affects the sensible temperature, even though the setting room temperature is raised, we consider that the use of the airflow is an incentive for improving the thermal sensation and the intellectual productivity of the building resident. We conducted subjective experiment under some different conditions of airflow and temperature with 5 university students. After that, we checked how these differences affected their performance and indoor thermal environments. As a result, based on SET^∗, we can say that airflow can significantly improve thermal environment. But, regarding student's performance, there wasn't big difference.

As a step toward the realization of a recycling society, a national survey on the use of uniforms for local government clerical workers, as well as their clothing habits and attitudes toward environmental issues, was conducted. Responses were obtained from 942 clerical workers, only 7.7% of whom wore uniforms, revealing that a large number of local governments did not use such clothing for their staff. The respondents were divided into 2 groups: those wearing uniforms and those wearing normal clothes in their workplaces, and their impressions of working while wearing a uniform and normal clothes were compared. The tendency to regard uniforms as ““enhancing the senses of unity in and belonging to the workplace, making it unnecessary to choose clothes, and reducing personal expenses”” was more marked among the former. Furthermore, on comparing the time needed to get ready to leave home for work after waking up in the morning and monthly clothing cost, the possibility of uniforms reducing such a time and cost was suggested. The rate of implementing environment-friendly clothing approaches based on the 3 principles (reduce, reuse, and recycle) was lower than that for environment-friendly PET bottle use.