Aiming to find some suggestions to develop infrastructure of welfare services for elders in Korea, this study tried to reveal the relation between demographic characteristics of communities and supply of welfare services for elders with using the latest statistical data of Korea. All the 234 communities (local government units) are covered in this study. The demographic characteristics were analyzed by cluster analysis according to the three indicators; population, percentage of elders and household size. The relation of demographic characteristics and welfare services for elders (residential care house, home help service, day service and short stay) was analyzed by some statistical tools such as parametric method; t-test, one-way-layout analysis of variance, multiple comparisons, non-parametric method; Mann-Whitney's U-test and Kruskal-Wallis test. As a result, from the three indicators, all the communities were characterized as "middle-scale city/rural," which includes "sparsely populated area/rural area" and "middle-scale cities," or "mega city," which includes "large-scale cities" and "satellite cities of metropolises." And from the further statistical analysis, it became clear that the supply of the welfare services for elders in Korea is not reflecting the demographic characteristics of each community. Based on the findings from the analysis, this thesis emphasized that it needs to reflect the demographic characteristics of each community in planning welfare service infrastructure development as a part of community-based social welfare planning and it also gave some suggestions for the community-based social welfare planning.

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One method of occupational therapy for developmental disordered children is sensory integration therapy. Sensory integration therapy was devised by J.Ayres who is an American occupational therapist, and it is recognized as one of development support means of learning for children with a learning disability, or autistic children. The theory of sensory integration therapy, it is thought there are obstacles to the sense of touch and a vestibular sensation, and a proprioceptive sensation in a background of a learning problem, and the behavior that a developmentally handicapped child shows. We expect that improvement will be seen in problems of learning and behavior by working on the sense directly in therapy. In many cases suspended equipments can be used in a theraputical playground. Vestibular sensation devices can be used for motions or movements such as rolling or turning. Playground equipment that a child can suspend from is an important information tool to evaluate an equilibrium function by function imperfection of the vestibular sensation. However, there is for the present few reports that analyze posture reaction when subjects used playground equipment quantitatively. Therefore use frequency was high in playground suspension equipment and we paid most of our attention to the horse swing that a difference in equilibrium function of a child using objects was easy to ascertain. We developed a device which can control the rolling of a swing with the PC which carried a motor driver and a motor control board, and we examined quantitative evaluation technique of equilibrium reaction with 3D motion analysis.

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The effect research articles of the sensory integration therapy (Sensory Integration Therapy. SIT) published in Japan has been reviewed. The purpose is to under-stand the current state of the effect research on SIT, and to examine the target population and the method that hopes in the effect research in the future. The search term was searched as "sensory integration" in Web version of Japana Centra Revuo Medicina. As a result, 121 articles were found. Sixty nine articles that did not do SIT, 14 editorials, five articles of conferences or articles of foreign country, six articles that the adults were made a target, four articles that the effect was not described and 10 articles that the effect was examined only by observing the actions were excluded. Thirteen remaining articles were examined. As a result, evidence of level IV and V was shown, and SIT hit "Evidence is not the recommendation as doing enough" (recommendation C). It is hoped to frame the research design for LD etc., and to be going to accumulate evidence of high level in future.

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A system of computer-based testing (CBT) for the assessment of student's basic knowledge and problem-solving ability as a means of educating physical therapists (PT) and occupational therapists (OT) was evaluated on a trial basis with 65 students and graduates of PT and OT training courses. The trial test consisted of randomly selected questions from a pool of the past PT and OT state examination questions. The CBT system was implemented using e-Learning software and answers were selected using a mouse. The average correct answer rate was 57.4% for the common questions designed to assess basic knowledge, and 71.9% (PT) and 60.7% (OT) for specialized questions designed to assess problem-solving ability. In addition, the usability of the system was determined based on the analyses of a questionnaire survey. We concluded that a fair and objective viewpoint can be introduced to the education of PT and OT students by further improving the question developments, particularly those testing specialized competency, and by validating the consistency between the CBT and the written examinations.

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In T prefecture, a collaborating system has been set up, where teachers and comedical professionals can work as a team to support children with some problems in mainstream classes, based on the results and analysis of several investigations to create a new phase in the helping process. The investigations have been conducted in the form of questionnaires, and the majority of the homeroom teachers who filled in the questionnaires express needs for various professional advice and support to help children with problems in their classes. They also indicate the urgent need for a collaborating system, which is quite different from what the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology advocated. Teachers say that the easier access for them is the Educational Administration of Municipalities, and that their need for a new system is urgent where they can work with comedical professionals. In addition, the close analysis assessed by KJ method shows that there are 8 obstructive items for setting up a collaborating system such as lack of budget or absence of access measures. As the co-medical university in this region can offer some useful means for solution to eliminate those 8 items an original type of cooperating system has been organized, with the university staff being involved. To make this system work effectively and practically, collaboration with the Board of Education in the cities, towns, and villages is necessary. Teachers and co-medical professionals need to deal with many more cases to ensure this system's further development.

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For the purpose of wide application of a proportional chamber in making a image in a medical field or in checking inner structure of material using low-energy X-rays of low dose, we have studied about operational condition of proportional tubes filled with (90% Xe, 10% CH_4) gas mixture and that filled with (90% Ar, 10% CH_4) separately. Exposing proportional tubes to X/γ (X or γ) rays from the radioactive isotopes ^<129>I and ^<241>Am, we took distributions of pulse height coming from an anode wire through NIM and CAMAC modules in which a Linux board computer CC/NET is installed as a crate controller. CC/NET was developed at KEK and TOYO to make CAMAC powerful with respect to network communication, and we newly coded software of CC/NET for data acquisition. Analyzing pulse height distributions of X/γ rays of the energy range of 7〜59keV, we found a range of suitable high voltage applied to the proportional tubes, at which spread of anode signals of mono-energetic X/γ rays is small, that is, pulse height from an anode wire is proportional to primary ionization with small spread in that range. The pulse heights of anode outputs for different gas and different energies are describes well by the Diethorn formula developed to calculate gas gain as a function of applied high voltage. We exposed the two tubes to the isotopes ^<129>I and ^<241>Am and recorded counting rates per minute, which led to a result that Xe gave about ten times more rate than that of Ar. In order to study response for minimum ionizing particle, we exposed the two tubes to β rays from ^<90>Sr (max. 2279keV). Pulse height distributions for both Xe tube ant Ar tube showed characteristic tails of Landou theory. With the knowledge for operation of the proportional tubes obtained in the present work, we will continue to study characteristics of a proportional chamber to measure 2-dimentional position of interaction point of absorbed X/γ rays with small number of anode wires.

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