The purpose of the present study was to investigate the technical requirements that are necessary to realize a systemic showering system that is both safe and practical for care providers and recipients. In addition, the present study examined physiological and subjective responses during systemic showering with regard to the special hyperthermia state, which has been shown to occur within the closed structure of the body of the showering machine. Nine male students, aged from 21 to 23 years, showered under various conditions. The dressing room and bathroom were maintained at thermoneutral (25.0°C), cool (19.5°C) or cold (14.0°C) temperatures, and relative humidity was maintained at about 60% at the start of each experiment. The physiological and subjective responses of the participants under the above and preferred showering conditions were compared. The results showed that: 1) Significant differences were confirmed in preferred water temperature and the time required for showering. 2) The effect on the mind and body functions in response to special hyperthermia state inside the showering machine was intensified as the environmental temperature declines.

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This study deals with the impression of creative occupations, e.g. artist, craftsman, artisan, designer, etc. The primary purpose of this paper is to identify the image of creative occupations in Japanese society. A second purpose is to compare the influence of two rating methods. The experiment in this investigation is the evaluation of two rating methods, the rating of each occupation (R(i):i=1, 2, …, N) by Semantic Differential technique and rating of paired presentation (R(i, j)) by the sorting method. The subjects are 81 students. First, 18 occupations of which 4 were creative were analyzed. The results given by the two rating methods were not the same. The sorting method forms three distinct groups, while the Semantic Differential technique only classified some occupations in to groups. The image of craftsmen gave different results in each method and could not be easily classified in any method. However, because many subjects have the same impression of craftsmen, it is clear that the impression of craftsmen is more unique. The image of artists, designers and craftsmen is best distinguished in terms of stability of lifestyle and innovativeness.

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The effects of frequency and visibility of constituent kanji on the processing of two-kanji compound words were examined in 2 experiments to explore the nature of visual word recognition. Words comprised of 2 constituent kanji of high or low frequency were used, while their visibility was manipulated by stimulus intensity for each constituent in Experiment 1, and by whether imposing backward masking on each constituent in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, lexical decision times were longer and error rates were higher for the words whose 2 constituents were presented in different intensities than those presented in identical intensity. Error rate was also higher for the compounds comprised of high frequency left-hand and low frequency right-hand kanji than the compounds of other frequency conditions. In Experiment 2, lexical decision times were long when either one or both constituents were masked, although no differences were found among these masked conditions. Interaction analysis indicated that masking on left-hand, but not right-hand kanji caused high error rate for the words comprised of 2 low frequency constituents. These results suggest that frequency and visibility of left- and right-hand constituents have different effects on the processing of compound words.

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