The present study was conducted to investigate the influence of different lighting condition and taste stimulus on the autonomic nervous system measured by electrogastrogram (EGG). We conducted the experiment for 16-conditions (4 lighting conditions×4 taste solutions). The four lighting conditions were 200 and 1500 lx in illuminance and by 3000 and 7500K in color temperature. The four taste solutions were sweet (glucose), salty (salt), sour (acetic acid), and bitter (quinine). The subjects were healthy seven Japanese and six Chinese males. The changes of EGG normal wave ratio (EGG-NR; 2〜4.5 cpm power/1〜10 cpm power) after stimulation were compared among taste conditions. As a result, the main effect of taste was significant. EGG-NR of the sweet and the salty taste were higher than the bitter taste. Then separate analyses were conducted for Japanese and Chinese. EGG-NR for the sweet taste and the salty taste were higher than the bitter one in Japanese, but there were no difference in Chinese. We also compared EGG-NR in different lighting conditions, the main effect of color temperature was significant, but not in the illuminance. EGG-NR increased significantly in the lower color temperature.

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The aim of this research was to investigate trends in the occurrence of medication errors; namely, preparation by a pharmacist of a medicine that does not match that described on the medical script. First of all, the medication error was evaluated in terms of two categories applied to the character of the name of the medicine : the physical character (such as string length, phonologic and number of matching character in drag name) and the meaning character (such a medical property). The differences between medicines mistakenly prescribed and correctly described on the medical script were assumed as distances, and these distances were calculated in each category. These distances supposed similarity between medicines mistakenly prescribed and those described on the medical receipt. In addition, the relations between calculated distances and factors related to pharmacists, such as years of experience, were investigated. Consequently, it was found that the occurrence of medication errors depends on the length of the string; moreover, it was suggested that the possibility of influence by similarities of character, the phoneme and the medicinal effect depended on the experience of pharmacy staff. This means that the occurrence of medication error does not depend on one specific factor, and that it probability increases when certain factors are combined. Additional, the strategy of "reading" by pharmacists differ from the general it, and the strategy of pharmacists depend on the cognitive factors.

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We studied the influence of hand breaking on sharing effective mass and impact force at sideways falls, since hip fractures in elderly are mainly caused by sideways falls. When the hand contacted the ground before the great trochanter, the effective mass and impact force of the great trochanter were shared on the hand in the both case of one-hand and both-hands contacts. However, when the great trochanter contacted before the hand, the effective mass and impact force were not shared. Consequently, we suggest that hand contact before the great trochanter at sideways fall is shared the effective mass cause of impact force, and contributes to prevent the hip fracture.

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The purpose of this study was to classify the various words that are associated with pace, from the viewpoint on how humans feel when they imagine themselves at each pace. Seventeen words that express different pace were classified into four subscales by factor analysis, they were 1) negative fast, 2) positive fast, 3) positive slow and 4) negative slow. To confirm whether the difference between the paces can reflect on real movement, 142 female university students were asked to draw a single circle inside individual 1-cm squares printed on an A4 size sheet of paper at the requested pace with 1minute time limit. On completion of the task, they were asked to evaluate their feelings at the requested pace. The significant difference was obtained for the number of circles. The evaluated positive feelings were significantly lower in the fast negative in compared to the positive fast condition and positive slow condition. This result indicates that different movement paces produce different feelings, depending on what pace is chosen.

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The aim of this study was to examine physiological responses during a mental task as indices of mental workload. Electroencephalogram (EEG), heart rate variability (HRV), brain haemodynamics, and blood pressure (BP) were measured during a visual search task accompanied with short-term memory. When the difficulty of task became greater, the larger changes in beta-1 power ratio of EEG and diastolic BP were observed. Along with work execution, parasympathetic nervous activity decreased. Furthermore, beta-1 power ratio and increase in diastolic BP showed a significant correlation. In conclusion, this study suggests that beta-1 power ratio of EEG and diastolic BP are useful in the evaluation of mental workload as the degree of difficulty, and HRV might be effective to evaluate a time change of a mental workload with accomplishment of the task.

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This study examined the effects of menopause on cardiovascular reactivity to mental tasks. Three different female groups (middle-aged premenopausal, postmenopausal and young females) performed a computer-based mirror drawing task and a mental arithmetic task. Heart rate, blood pressure and heart rate variability (HRV) were used as indices of cardiovascular reactivity. Postmenopausal females demonstrated greater heart rate and blood pressure reactivity than did premenopausal females and young females during tasks. Power spectral analysis of HRV showed that the low frequency component of HRV and the LF/HF ratio were significantly higher in postmenopausal females than in premenopausal females and young females. The high frequency component of HRV was significantly lower in postmenopausal females than in premenopausal females and young females. These findings suggest that the sympathetic nervous system activity is relatively predominant in postmenopausal females compared with postmenopausal females and young females.

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In order to investigate the relationship between cardiovascular performance and daily activity in the elderly, preliminary experiments were carried out using two ambulatory monitoring systems developed by the authors' group. One system is capable of long-term monitoring of human posture in normal daily life, and the other is for non-invasively monitoring beat-by-beat cardiovascular parameters, including blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), cardiac output (CO), total peripheral resistance (Rp). Baroreceptor-cardiac reflex sensitivity (BRS) was also calculated as an index for evaluating autonomic regulatory function. The preliminary use of these systems has clearly demonstrated that simultaneous monitoring of beat-by-beat haemodynamic parameters together with data on posture could give valuable information concerning not only orthostatic hypotension, but also on circulatory response to daily physical load.

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