Nursing students experience many stressful changes in circumstances due to various reasons such as self-supporting and nursing practice at hospital required after entrance to the university and all through the 4 years afterwards. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of the psychological stress of the nursing students who experience during the 4 years, in relation to stressors, stress response and influencing factors to stress. Using the stress self-rating scale for nursing university students, the degree of the stress in relation to other factors was analyzed on the bases of the data obtained from 103 students of K nursing university. The results suggested that the degree of stress was closely correlated to specific annual events such as the national examination of nursing which are most stressful for the students in the fourth grade. There was no difference in the scales of coping, sense of humor and social supporting among four groups based on the stress self-rating scale nor among the 4 grades. As the scales both of the stress self-rating and the stress response, the sense of self-controlling showed the high score in the fourth grade, indicating that the nursing students got accustomed to the way to analyze their situations and to cope with them properly through the experiences during the past 4 years.

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As a part of the study on the function the self-help group in chronic drinkes' recovery from the alcohol dependence, We investigated the individual property, the drinking history, the relationship with the self-help group, etc in the recovery group showing fine recovery with three years or longer of abstention from drinking and the treatment group attending alcoholism clinics. The object of this study is to discuss the difference between both groups and to clarify the factors affecting the recovery from the alcoholic dependence. The factors to achieve fine recovery from alcoholic dependence include that the problem alcohol drinking becomes apparent at the early stage and the treatment starts at the early stage. As the background, mental troubles due to alcohol in adolescence and interventions by police occurred. With regard to relationship with the self-help groups, after patients in the recovery group were introduced to the self-help groups, they join the groups and become contact visitors of them with positive attitude. Though there is social and historical backdrop, it has been cleared that the treatment group receives more public support. The relationship between the support and the recovery is a problem to be discussed hereafter.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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A purpose of this study is to examine long-term effects of breathing exercise on 11 patients with chronic respiratory failure using the FLUTTER device for more than 8 weeks. The blood gases at rest and 6-minute walk distance were compared before the breathing exercise and after 4 and 8 weeks of start of the exercise. The patients were also asked how they felt in using the device. We found a significant reduction(P<0.05)of PaCO_2 after 8 weeks in comparison with it before the exercise. However, we found no significant differences before and after the exercise in PaO_2 and pH at rest, walking distance, Borg scale, SpO_2 and pulse rate during 6-minute walk test. From these results, it is expected that continuous breathing exercise using the FLUTTER device is useful to improve hypercapnia.

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Mastoparan(MP, INLKALAALAKKIL-NH_2)is a potent stimulator of exocytosis, including the process of insulin secretion. To examine the insulinotropic effect of MP in pancreatic β-cells, we measured insulin release from isolated rat islets. MP enhanced insulin release, irrespective of the presence or absence of glucose. This enhancement was observed under a stringent extracellular Ca^<2+> -free condition and also in the presence of diazoxide, a K_<ATP> channel opener. These results suggest that K_<ATP> channel closure, which is a key step in glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, is not necessarily involved in MP-induced insulin secretion. The effect of MP on both cAMP and protein kinase pathways was also studied. MP had no effects on the elevation of intracellular cAMP content, whereas staurosporine, a PKA and PKC inhibitor, attenuated MP-stimulated insulin secretion. These suggested that the activation of PKC in β-cells is involved in MP-stimulated insulin secretion. This effect on PKC seemed to be due to the rise of intracellular Ca^<2+>. MP is known to induce the activation of phospholipase C(PLC)and the production of inositol 1, 4, 5-triphosphate(IP3), which mediates Ca^<2+> release from intracellular stores. These observations strongly suggested that MP might induce Ca^<2+> release from intracellular store, probably via activation of PLC and IP3, thereby stimulating exocytosis from the insulin secretory granules of pancreatic islets.

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Of late years, Interventional Radiology[IVR]comes into wide use rapidly. However the examination and fluoroscopy times get long relatively as a result of diversification of examination contents at the IVR, and this causes a problem of an amount of patient radiation dose. This time, we studied to reduce the radiation dose by means of wave tail cutting of the tube voltage at pulse fluoroscopy of IVR. As a result, it enabled us to reduce the radiation dose by 16-20% using the high-voltage semiconductor switch to cut the wave tail. It is important to reduce radiation dose taking into account of tube voltage wave tail at pulse fluoroscopy of IVR.

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