To construct a multiple salivary biomarkers model that best reflects the influence of the olfactive stimuli of blended essential oil. The biomarkers were selected to capture the change in three systems managing human system such as salivary alpha-amylase activity for sympathetic nerve system, salivary cortisol for endocrine system, and seventeen salivary cytokines for immune system by utilizing multiplexed immunoassay. Thirteen healthy Japanese women were enrolled in the study. The saliva samples were collected at multiple sampling points before and after inhaling 2 types of blended essential oil samples and no odor (negative control). Different biological models were obtained from each blended essential oil presentations, one with IL-7 and the other with Cortisol, IL-1β, and IL-7. The receiver operating characteristic curves revealed that the later model showed fair discriminant capability (area under the curve: 0.899) of the olfactive stimulation by blended essential oil. The quantifiable relationship between olfactive stimulation and salivary biomarkers could be useful to express the psychobiologic effect induced by essential oils.

Ventricular assist device is used to treat end-stage severe heart failure. Rotary blood pumps which are widely used today, it has not pulsatile flow. On the other hand, many pulsatile pumps are installed outside the body through skin penetrations. In addition, implantable blood pumps are required a percutaneous penetration for energy transmission. Therefore, we have been developed a pulsatile ventricular assist device that can be driven percutaneously by applying magnetic coupling technology. aIn this study, we examined transcutaneous driving test during implantation and hemodynamic evaluation in animal experiments by using goat. As a result, our device had been achieved totally implanted in the subcutaneous and provided beating assistance without any percutaneous penetration. Although there was a limit to the mis-coupling of the magnets, the pump output was confirmed for blood pressure support. Our findings suggested that this system will be one candidate for cardiovascular support in the future.

The purpose of this research was to clarify the possibility of time-series and quantitative evaluation of the effects of e-sports on emotions from facial images using a recognitional model of facial expressions based on a machine learning. Training and validation data were labeled based on 7600 facial images, and recognitional models of happy, sad, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, and expressionlessness were created with facial expression analysis software. Twenty healthy adult men were enrolled to perform tennis game selected as an esports, and the facial images obtained over time and analyzed. High recognitional performance was obtained especially for the four facial expressions of happy, sad, surprise, and anger when the scores of facial expressions were evaluated from the training data using the recognitional model. A correlation was shown between sad and defeated games, and this validity was also supported by subjective evaluation when applied to a tennis game. This method might be useful as a diagnostic index of emotions in a sensory test.

In total knee arthroplasty (TKA), osteotomy is performed at a predetermined angle to the mechanical axis that passes through the centers of the hip joint and knee joint. The probability of reoperation increases when an angular error of 3[deg] or more exists in the implanted artificial knee. Hence, accurate implantation in accordance with the mechanical axis is necessary. Tamaki et al. developed a simple TKA support system version 1 (V1) to estimate mechanical axes in a simplified manner by employing a three-axis inertial sensor. However, the V1 the process. In this study, to improve usability, we developed version 2 (V2) that includes a novel function for measuring angular error by free rotation angle and adjusting at any knee position. An experiment for comparing the accuracies of the versions V1 and V2 was conducted. The obtained results indicate that although the operational degrees of freedom were increased, the angular error associated with the estimated mechanical axis is within the acceptable range of 3[deg].