The relationships between Type A behavior pattern (TABP) and smoking and alcohol drinking habits were investigated for healthy 684 male college students (19.2±1.6 years old) who had majored the liberal arts. The subjects were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their smoking and alcohol drinking habits. The KG's Daily Life Questionnaire (Yamasaki et al., 1992) was selected to evaluate TABP tendency including elements of TABP structure, i.e., aggression-hostility (AH), hard-driving and time-urgency (HT), and speed-power (SP). The percentage of students with habitual smoking was 36.8% (n=252), and that of habitual alcohol drinking was 32.9% (n=225). The smoking and alcohol drinking habits increased gradually accompanied with the increment of age, in spite of the fact that smoking and drinking are not legally permitted until age 20. The mean of TABP scores in the male smoking group was higher than that in the non-smoking group. The scores of all the TABP structure elements except for HT scores indicated similar results. The means of TABP and its structure elements in the drinking group were higher than those in the non-drinking group. There was a tendency that the students with smoking and/or drinking habits showed higher TABP scores. These results were discussed from the point of view of TABP persons' stress.

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The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of the following three factors on visual attention : 1) The different ear to be input; the right or left ear. 2) The different auditory tasks. 3) The different cue lead-time; 200ms or 1500ms. The forms of attention focused upon were : "engagement of attention" that fixes attention to location, and "the facilitatory effect of attention" that locally accelerates visual information processing. Subjects were instructed to perform a visual task of the precueing technique (Posner, 1980) with modification. The target requiring the subject's reaction was presented asynchrony 200 or 1500 ms after the cue onset (cue lead-time). The auditory tasks were a series of tasks repeated of numerals of single or double digits and mental tasks requiring arithmetic addition of given numerals, and a clock task involving numeral-related spatial imagination. It was suggested that inputs of all auditory tasks via the left ear inhibited engagement of attention in the right and left visual fields at 200-ms cue lead-time. However, in the case of inputs via the right ear, the mental arithmetic task inhibited engagement of attention, while the clock task reduced the facilitatory effect of attention. On the whole, auditory tasks at 1500-ms cue lead-time did not exert a greater influence on visual attention than the 200-ms cue lead-time. It was suggested that visual attention tended to be easily disengaged immediately after visual orientation.

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The purposes of this study were to investigate the relationships between physical fitness, life-style and health-status, and to examine the sex differences in the healthy aged living in a community. A total of 890 people aged 60 to 89 years volunteered as subjects. Eleven performance-tests were selected. To assess life-style and health-status, a questionnaire consisting of 40 items was constructed. Cramer's association coefficient was only significant for dinner meal quantity in males and was significant for exercise-habit, intakes of protein, calcium, and vitamin, sleeping hours, and with or without bone fractures and arthritis in females. Multiple correlation coefficients between physical fitness and age-grade, life-style, and health-status were significant for both sexes (males: 0.596, females: 0.556, p<0.01). Partial correlation coefficients were high for aged-grade, sleeping hours, and receiving medical treatment for males, and for aged-grade, bicycle riding, present exercise-enforcement, sleeping hours, and subjective health feeling for females. Physical fitness showed a decreasing trend with age for both sexes. We inferred that sleeping hours and not taking medical treatment for injury and/or illness in males, and enforcement of usual moderate exercise, sleeping hours and consciousness to health in females may be related to the decline of physical fitness.

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We investigate the changes in torso body surface with upper limb movement, and employ these data for designing the new tsumeeri uniform. The areas of greatest body surface extension/contraction comprise the shoulders, dorsal area of armpit, and hip/buttock region. Based on these data, proposals are made for changes to shoulder pads, use of retention wire in the shoulders, and changes in the uniform pattern. We next evalute the new prototype by electromyogram and subjective declarations. Regarding shoulder refoems, the former suggested a reducton of muscular burden was achieved in the trapezius muscle and distal regions and the middle deltoides muscle, while the latter reported a significant improvement in tightness and ease of arm movement; i.e., the reforms proved effecyive. Regarding subtle changes in pattern design, while muscle load was reduced in the trapezius muscle and distal regions as well as the anterior deltoides muscle, no significant difference was reported by subjective declaretion.

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The authors deduced a second-order nonlinear differential equation that describes physiological tremors of a forearm from the model using a pair of antagonistic muscles. In order to show the effectiveness of this equation, acceleration of physiological tremors in dominant hands of 13 healthy aged subjects was measured, and the results were compared with those obtained by simulation using this equation. It was shown that the deduced nonlinear differential equation is effective, for the characteristic roots of characteristic equation of AR model of simulated tremor and those of measured tremor resemble well each other.

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Eight thousand and nine hundred train and subway passengers were observed in the autumn of 1999. The observers included 32 trained female college students. In 1987, we observed 7,820 people and in 1997, 5,602 people. This study was performed using the same methods. The data were compared with the past two sets of data that were collected previously (1987 and 1997). Though other items were observed, this report focuses only on the activity people did while on trains and subways. Forty point nine percent of the total number of subjects observed in 1999 were engaged in some activity. In 1997, this percentage was 32.7 %, and it was 31.9 % in 1987. Reading was the most common work-related activity. However, in 1999 the most common activities involved, cellular phone, and computers, etc., other than reading which increased to 16.9% in 1987, 28.3% in 1997, and 33.1% in 1999.

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The aim of this study is to evaluate a kind of obesity in young women whose morph is thin and have relatively greater body fat. Three hundred eighty-five young females (age: 19.5±0.3 yr, height: 158.3±5.1cm, and weight : 51.3±6.8 kg) measured height; weight; and the percentage of body fat to body weight (%fat) using the bioelectrical impedance equipment. A new index for masked obesity (MOI) was determined from body mass index (BMI, weight/height^2) and %fat. The subjects were divided into three categories related to obesity which were defined as obesity (BMI≧24 and %fat≧30%), masked obesity (BMI<24 and %fat≧30%), and masked obesity reserves (25%≦%fat<30%). In addition, the subjects were classified into five groups by %fat of evexy 5% and then the averaged BMI and %fat were fitted to a regression line in both logarithmic scales. This regression coefficient of BMI was calculated as 1.897 (r=0.99), MOI equation was resultantly %fat/BMI^1.9. The standard value of MOI became 0.081 in all subjects. Since MOI was adapted for the sujects with %fat of 30% or less, MOI values in the masked obesity group and masked obesity reserve group were higher of 0.085, 0.083, respectively. As interesting point, the half of the masked obesity reserves group in which MOI was higher than the standard value (0.081) was equivalent to the masked obesity, suggesting that about 20% of all young females was defined as the masked obesity.

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In order to clarify the relationship between gastric electrical activity and brain activity, an electrogastrogram (EGG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded and analyzed simultaneously. The amplitude rhythm derived from the EGG was investigated, in addition to the alpha wave band rhythm of the EEG. The data obtained from 20 healthy female subjects with a mean age of 22.6±3.6 under mental stress was analyzed and the following parameters were extracted; 1) EGG period, 2) EGG amplitude (A-EGG), which was estimated by the least-squares-cosine spectrum method; and 3) the percent of the EEG alpha wave band (α-EEG). In 20 subjects, the mean value of the EGG period was 20.0 ± 0.8 sec. Ten-minute rhythm both in α-EEG and in A-EGG was observed during the study, and it was especially increased during mental stress. In 11(55%) subjects, the 10-min rhythm of A-EGG and α-EEG increased simultaneously during stress testing. Brain and gastric activity are suspected of having a close relationship with the 10-min rhythm.

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