Emodiversity evaluation of remote workers through health monitoring based on intra-day emotion sampling

IntroductionIn recent years, the widespread shift from on-site to remote work has led to a decline in employees’ mental health. Consequently, this transition to remote work poses several challenges for both employees and employers. To address these challenges, there is an urgent need for techniques to detect declining mental health in employees’ daily lives. Emotion-based health assessment, which examines emotional diversity (emodiversity) experienced in daily life, is a possible solution. However, the feasibility of emodiversity remains unclear, especially from the perspectives of its applicability to remote workers and countries other than Europe and the United States. This study investigated the association between subjective mental health decline and emotional factors, such as emodiversity, as well as physical conditions, in remote workers in Japan.MethodTo explore this association, we conducted a consecutive 14-day prospective observational experiment on 18 Japanese remote workers. This experiment comprised pre-and post-questionnaire surveys, physiological sensing, daytime emotion self-reports, and subjective health reports at end-of-day. In daytime emotion self-reports, we introduced smartphone-based experience sampling (also known as ecological momentary assessment), which is suitable for collecting context-dependent self-reports precisely in a recall bias-less manner. For 17 eligible participants (mean ± SD, 39.1 ± 9.1 years), we evaluated whether and how the psycho-physical characteristics, including emodiversity, changed on subjective mental health-declined experimental days after analyzing descriptive statistics.ResultsApproximately half of the experimental days (46.3 ± 18.9%) were conducted under remote work conditions. Our analysis showed that physical and emotional indices significantly decreased on mental health-declined days. Especially on high anxiety and depressive days, we found that emodiversity indicators significantly decreased (global emodiversity on anxiety conditions, 0.409 ± 0.173 vs. 0.366 ± 0.143, p = 0.041), and positive emotional experiences were significantly suppressed (61.5 ± 7.7 vs. 55.5 ± 6.4, p < 0.001).DiscussionOur results indicated that the concept of emodiversity can be applicable even to Japanese remote workers, whose cultural background differs from that of individuals in Europe and the United States. Emodiversity showed significant associations with emotion dysregulation-related mental health deterioration, suggesting the potential of emodiversity as useful indicators in managing such mental health deterioration among remote workers

Green and facile approach for enhancing the inherent magnetic properties of carbon nanotubes for water treatment applications

Current methods for preparing magnetic composites with carbon nanotubes (MCNT) commonly include extensive use of treatment with strong acids and result in massive losses of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In this study we explore the potential of taking advantage of the inherent magnetic properties associated with the metal (alloy or oxide) incorporated in CNTs during their production. The as-received CNTs are refined by applying a permanent magnet to a suspension of CNTs to separate the high-magnetic fraction; the low-magnetic fraction is discarded with the solvent. The collected MCNTs were characterized by a suite of 10 diffraction and spectroscopic techniques. A key discovery is that metallic nano-clusters of Fe and/or Ni located in the interior cavities of the nanotubes give MCNTs their ferromagnetic character. After refinement using our method, the MCNTs show saturation magnetizations up to 10 times that of the as-received materials. In addition, we demonstrate the ability of these MCNTs to repeatedly remove atrazine from water in a cycle of dispersion into a water sample, adsorption of the atrazine onto the MCNTs, collection by magnetic attraction and regeneration by ethanol. The resulting MCNTs show high adsorption capacities (> 40 mg-atrazine/g), high magnetic response, and straightforward regeneration. The method presented here is simpler, faster, and substantially reduces chemical waste relative to current techniques and the resulting MCNTs are promising adsorbents for organic/chemical contaminants in environmental waters

Performance of Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor Integrated Septic Tank in Treating Office Building Wastewater

This research aimed to find the effect of initial concentration and hydraulic retention time (HRT) on modified septic tank (MST) performance in treating wastewater from an office building. The synthetic wastewater used had an average COD:TN:TP ratio of 84:28:1, adjusted to office building wastewater characteristics. The experiment was executed under steady conditions using three variations of HRT (12, 24, and 36 hours) and different initial concentrations of COD (106, 252 and 432 mg COD/L), TN (35, 85 and 146 mg N/L) and TP (1.26, 3 and 5.14 mg P/L). The result showed that the MST removed 82% to 92% of COD, 41% to 60% of TN, 45% to 61% of NH4, and 39% to 55% of TP. The maximum removal was achieved at 36 h of HRT, COD:TN (3:1), and COD:TP (84:1). One-way ANOVA showed that the initial concentration and HRT had significant effects on the performance of MST (p < 0.05). This suggests that appropriate control of the initial concentration and HRT in the MST can effectively remove organics and nutrients from office building wastewater

Performance of Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor Integrated Septic Tank in Treating Office Building Wastewater

This research aimed to find the effect of initial concentration and hydraulic retention time (HRT) on modified septic tank (MST) performance in treating wastewater from an office building. The synthetic wastewater used had an average COD:TN:TP ratio of 84:28:1, adjusted to office building wastewater characteristics. The experiment was executed under steady conditions using three variations of HRT (12, 24, and 36 hours) and different initial concentrations of COD (106, 252 and 432 mg COD/L), TN (35, 85 and 146 mg N/L) and TP (1.26, 3 and 5.14 mg P/L). The result showed that the MST removed 82% to 92% of COD, 41% to 60% of TN, 45% to 61% of NH4, and 39% to 55% of TP. The maximum removal was achieved at 36 h of HRT, COD:TN (3:1), and COD:TP (84:1). One-way ANOVA showed that the initial concentration and HRT had significant effects on the performance of MST (p < 0.05). This suggests that appropriate control of the initial concentration and HRT in the MST can effectively remove organics and nutrients from office building wastewater

Effects of Sulfonylureas on Periodontopathic Bacteria-Induced Inflammation.

福岡歯科大学2019年

SUSPENDED SEDIMENT DYNAMICS CHANGES IN MEKONG RIVER BASIN: POSSIBLE IMPACTS OF DAMS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

ABSTRACT: This paper evaluates the potential impact of climate change and dams on suspended sediment (SS) dynamics in the Mekong River Basin (MRB). To this end, a distributed process-based sediment transport model was used to examine the potential impact of future climate and dams on suspended sediment dynamics changes in the MRB. Climate scenarios from two GCMs outputs together with effects of 3 existing, 5 under construction and 11 planned dams were considered in the scenario analysis. The simulation results show that the reductions in annual suspended sediment load (SSL) are likely to range from a 20 to 33%, 41 to 62%, and 71 to 81% for existing, under construction, and planned dams respectively in case of no climate change for baseline scenario (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000). Moreover, the reductions on sediment concentration (SSC) are even greater (23% to 78%) due to the potential impact of dams. In contrast, the SSL and SSC shows 40% to 92% increase in the near future (2041-2050) and 28% to 90% in the far future (2090)(2091)(2092)(2093)(2094)(2095)(2096)(2097)(2098)(2099). As the projected climate change impact of sediment varies remarkably between the different climate models, the uncertainty should be taken into account in sediment management. Overall, the changes in SSL and SSC can have a great implication for planned reservoirs and related sediment management

Variation of Heating Efficiency of Magnetically Sheared CHS Plasmas by Polarization Control of 106GHz EC-Wave

To clarify the effect of polarization on electron cyclotron heating (ECH) in magnetized plasmas, experiment controlling the polarization of injected EC-waves is carried out in Compact Helical System (CHS). In the experiment, plasmas are generated and sustained only with 106.4 GHz ECH power. Magnetic field at the magnetic axis is 1.9 T so that the wave frequency is second harmonic. The optimum direction of linear polarization for the shortest time-delay of density start-up from the start of power injection and the optimum direction for the highest electron temperature and plasma stored energy during plasma duration show clear difference. The difference is attributed to the CHS magnetic configuration with strong shear and the plasma volume expansion from magnetic axis to the last closed flux surface

Roles of 5-HT1A receptor in the expression of AMPA receptor and BDNF in developing mouse cortical neurons

The possible interactions between serotonergic and glutamatergic systems during neural development and under the pathogenesis of depression remain unclear. We now investigated roles of 5-HT1A receptor in the mRNA expression of AMPA receptor subunits (GluR1 and GluR2) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) using primary culture of cerebral cortex of mouse embryos. Neurons at embryonic day 18 were cultured for 3 days or 14 days and then treated with 5-HT1A receptor agonist (8-OH-DPAT) for 3 h or 24 h. In neurons cultured for 3 days, 8-OH-DPAT treatment for both 3 h and 24 h increased the mRNA levels of BDNF and GluR1, but not GluR2. In neurons cultured for 14 days, however, 8-OH-DPAT had no effects on these mRNA levels. Next, we examined in vivo roles of 5-HT1A receptor by administration of 8-OH-DPAT to newborn mice. Twenty-four hours after the oral administration of 8-OH-DPAT, the mRNA expression of BDNF was decreased in the frontal cortex, but had no effects on the mRNA expression of GluR1 and GluR2. Taken together, the present study suggests that 5-HT1A receptor activation modulates mRNA expression of AMPA receptor subunit and BDNF in cortical neurons, and the effects are different between in vitro and in vivo

Determination of the Major Impurity Radiators in the Reheat Mode Discharges in the Compact Helical System

Radiation brightness and impurity behaviors have been studied for reheat mode discharges in the Compact Helical System (CHS) by three different types of impurity diagnostics. Total radiation power measured by a pyroelectric detector significantly reduces after entering the reheat mode, whereas the line-averaged radiation brightness measured by an absolute extreme ultraviolet (AXUV) photodiode array increases especially for a center viewing chord due to the impurity accumulation in the plasma core. One possible reason for this opposite behavior between the two bolometric detectors is the reduced sensitivity of the AXUV photodiode for lower energy photons in vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) region. This speculation is supported by temporal evolutions of VUV spectra measured by a grazing incidence spectrometer. These results demonstrate that the comparison of three impurity diagnostics would be beneficial to the determination of the major impurity radiators and a comprehensive understanding of impurity behaviors in the reheat mode discharges

Radial Transport Characteristics of Fast Ions Due to Energetic-Particle Modes inside the Last Closed-Flux Surface in the Compact Helical System

The internal behavior of fast ions interacting with magnetohydrodynamic bursts excited by energetic ions has been experimentally investigated in the compact helical system. The resonant convective oscillation of fast ions was identified inside the last closed-flux surface during an energetic-particle mode (EPM) burst. The phase difference between the fast-ion oscillation and the EPM, indicating the coupling strength between them, remains a certain value during the EPM burst and drives an anomalous transport of fast ions