We extracted the respiratory frequency in conscious rats from variations of blood pressure, electrocardiogram, or renal sympathetic nerve activity by means of a band-pass filter. The frequency derived from any one of these parameters corresponded to directly recorded respiratory chest movements. The method may be useful when respiration and cardiovascular parameters have to be recorded in small animals during steady state when minimal surgical intervention is crucial.

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The OPSS is an 8 stage program which was developed as a practical tool for occupational health services planning. This paper examines the theoretical aspects of the first two stages. The OPSS is a planning tool with a theoretical grounding in OHP (The practical theory of Occupational Health Planning). The target population setting has two functions. The first is to establish the physician's first-hypothesis to design a program. The other is deciding the group which has an occupational health problem in a company. The Needs Assessment helps to clarify the physician's hypothesis, which may be weak due to the limited knowledge of various demands of the employees and senior management. On the other hand, the risks and needs vary according to what kind of expert looks at a situation. To date, occupational physicians have been limited to their medical background in determining only risks and needs. However, understanding the various stakeholders in a particular environment means that any project will be more relevant to all concerned. Another limitation of the occupational physicians hypothesis can be the lack of objective data to support it. This makes it difficult to persuade senior management to sign on to a program. The Needs Assessment procedure with OHQ steps is useful in a number of ways. The Observation step allows for finding risks and needs from various situations in the company from the occupational physician's viewpoint (pre-hypothesis setting). Hearing is for understanding the subject's demands and finding common themes in the company (final hypothesis setting). Finally, the questionnaire step is for providing objectivity of these common themes and quantitative data for the next Priority Setting procedure. The BITOP (Budget, Information, Time, Order, key Person) has been proposed as a way to diagnose the structural and functional aspects of an organization's procedures. Budget tracks the financial flow through the organization, while Information identifies key information sources. Time helps to understand the reaction speeds of a company against environmental changes in the business community. Order looks at the flow of information from senior management through strategic gatekeepers. Understanding this flow helps the occupational physician to identify specific issues at various levels of the organization. Finally, key Person looks at the flow of information up through the organization, and identifies which key executives the occupational physician needs cooperation from in order for the project to be approved and successful. The above two procedures are essential tasks for insuring that an occupational physician can effectively implement a project that identifies what is necessary for the company and what the company wants to do, and works effectively within the organizational structure.

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This report focuses on the final six procedures of the 8-stage OPSS. The first two procedures were covered in an earlier report. This paper examines the theoretical underpinnings of these six procedures. In the Priority Setting procedure, three factors are compared (TCP; Time/timing, cost, and population) for the OPSS in the general community, and also those in industry. These sometimes differ, especially with respect to responsibility and implementation. TCP allows the appropriate factors to be considered for a more objective prioritization of the various factors. As discussed earlier, the first TCP is used for prioritizing occupational health problems through the Needs assessment procedure. The second TCP prioritizes the countermeasures of those problems selected in the first TCP. In the Program Design procedure, we discuss the MIO (Merit, Impact, Outcome). Merit is defined as the effectiveness of a program as viewed by the company, taking into account the managerial and social merits. Impact refers to the behavioral effectiveness and behavioral change from the viewpoint of the program designer. Outcome refers to the effectiveness of the program from the traditional medical and epidemiological viewpoint. The study goes on to discuss the relationship amongst participation level, program development, and the subject's compliance, as a means to ensure that subjects participate indirectly through both steps of OHQ. In the Presentation procedure, we summarize the flow of effective presentations in the company setting. This covers initial understanding of the target audience wants, together with what the planner wants to focus on. In this way common issues and themes can be developed. Further assistance is given with strategy formation, presentation aids, time category presentations, evaluation and feedback. In the Process and Final Evaluation procedures, we discuss the objectives, and their significance to the overall process. In the Post Project Appraisal Making procedures, the previous three procedures are strongly affected by each proceeding procedure. In OPSS, we did not include the program development step in the Program Design procedure because the development skills can be referred from behavioral sciences methodologies. In the final part of this paper, we discuss the merits of the underlying theories of behavioral sciences, which have potential to apply to the occupational health settings.

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A functional fitness test, which is composed of four tests - standing up, walking, hand working, and rope working, was applied to thirty-four elderly women (62.9±5.2 y.o.) living in O town, Fukuoka Prefecture. The functional fitness level was lower among obese women, and higher among women who were doing more physical activities, as well as those who have more subjects of pleasure in their daily life. Furthermore, there was a positive correlation between the bone density and functional fitness level. The functional fitness test has several favorable characteristics for use in the community based health education for the elderly. For example, 1) it is very easy to conduct and does not require any special pre-test training, 2) it is very safe, 3) as results directly correspond to daily activities, it is rather easy to give concrete advise regarding health promotion in daily life.

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Pneumoconiosis is a chronic inflammatory and fibrotic lung disease caused by the inhalation of many substances in various forms, of which carbon black is one of them. Workers exposure may occur during production, collection and handling of the substance as well as in many other ways. Most reports describe the effect of carbon black on the lung of human's certain changes which are typical for pneumoconiosis and changes that are suspected to become pneumoconiosis in the future. There were many studies describing carbon black pneumoconiosis from 1951 to 1994. This disease, therefore, has been considered as an occupational disease of workers exposed to carbon black in its production and usage.

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An analysis of the recent use of network news in the University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan was examined. The following points were confirmed. The number of news client machines which were connected to the news server during the research term was from 32 to 51 for each month. News groups in which articles were read the most were fj and alt. In fj news group, the most read articles were rec, jokes, os, comp, net, sci and soc. News groups in which articles were posted the most were uoeh-u and fj.

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Since hemodialysis patients are at high risk for blood-borne viral infection such as hepatitis B and C virus infection, nursing staffs of the hemodialysis units have a significant occupational exposure to blood-borne virus infection. Furtheremore, they are in danger of contacting occupational low back-pain because they have to take care of patients in a half-rising position. In addition, they may also suffer from burned-out syndrome because they have to look after all the chronic renal failure patients as well as run machines during the hemodialysis procedure. In this paper, we describe occupational danger to health of nursing staffs working in hemodialysis units.

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