Effects of mask fitness and worker education on the prevention of occupational dust exposure

To decrease the incidence of pneumoconiosis, we examined dust protective mask performance and its relation to pulmonary function as well as the effects of worker education on the proper wearing of masks. One hundred and seventy-eight workers from 15 factories subject to dust exposure participated in this study. All participants were interviewed to obtain relevant personal information and underwent both a mask leakage and a pulmonary function test. The mask leakage was expressed as a percentage, with under 10% leakage indicating that the dust protective mask worked efficiently. In addition, 23 workers from 2 factories were educated on how to wear masks properly. The average mask leakage was 24.3%, and 58% of workers wore ineffective masks. Though pulmonary function was almost normal, the percent vital capacity (%VC) tended to be lower depending on the mask leakage. Mask education, which was very easy and took only a short time, dramatically decreased average mask leakage from 32.1% to 10.5% (p0.001). Educating workers to wear masks properly might prevent the worsening of pulmonary function in response to dust exposure. Appropriate mask fitness by education could be useful in preventing the development of pneumoconiosis.</p

Advanced Clinical Usefulness of Ultrasonography for Diseases in Oral and Maxillofacial Regions

Various kinds of diseases may be found in the oral and maxillofacial regions and various modalities may be applied for their diagnosis, including intra-oral radiography, panoramic radiography, ultrasonography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and nuclear medicine methods such as positron emission tomography. Of these modalities, ultrasound imaging is easy to use for the detection of noninvasive and soft tissue-related diseases. Doppler ultrasound images taken in the B-mode can provide vascular information associated with the morphology of soft tissues. Thus, ultrasound imaging plays an important role in confirming the diagnosis of many kinds of diseases in such oral and maxillofacial regions as the tongue, lymph nodes, salivary glands, and masticatory muscles. In the present article, we introduce three new applications of ultrasonography: guided fine-needle aspiration, measurement of tongue cancer thickness, and diagnosis of metastasis to cervical lymph nodes

Measurement of the Branching Fraction for B->eta' K and Search for B->eta'pi+

We report measurements for two-body charmless B decays with an eta' meson in the final state. Using 11.1X10^6 BBbar pairs collected with the Belle detector, we find BF(B^+ ->eta'K^+)=(79^+12_-11 +-9)x10^-6 and BF(B^0 -> eta'K^0)=(55^+19_-16 +-8)x10^-6, where the first and second errors are statistical and systematic, respectively. No signal is observed in the mode B^+ -> eta' pi^+, and we set a 90% confidence level upper limit of BF(B^+-> eta'pi^+) eta'K^+- decays is investigated and a limit at 90% confidence level of -0.20<Acp<0.32 is obtained.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Magnetic Slow Relaxation in a Metal&#8211;Organic Framework Made of Chains of Ferromagnetically Coupled Single-Molecule Magnets

International audienceWe report the study of a Dy-based metal-organic framework (MOF) with unprecedented magnetic properties. The compound is made of nine-coordinated Dy-III magnetic building blocks (MBBs) with poor intrinsic single-molecule magnet behavior. However, the MOF architecture constrains the MBBs in a one-dimensional structure that induces a ferromagnetic coupling between them. Overall, the material shows a magnetic slow relaxation in absence of external static field and a hysteretic behavior at 0.5K. Low-temperature magnetic studies, diamagnetic doping, and ab initio calculations highlight the crucial role played by the Dy-Dy ferromagnetic interaction. Overall, we report an original magnetic object at the frontier between single-chain magnets and single-molecule magnets that host intrachain couplings that cancel quantum tunneling between the MBBs. This compound is evidence that a bottom-up approach through MOF design can induce spontaneous organization of MBBs able to produce remarkable molecular magnetic materials

A search for the K−pp bound state in the 3He(K−in-flight, n) reaction at J-PARC

We have collected the first physics data of an experimental search for the simplest kaonic nuclear bound state, " K − pp", by the 3He( K − n) reaction at J-PARC. We confirmed that our spectrometer system works as designed and observed clear peak structure composed of the quasi-elastic K − " n " → K − n and the charge-exchange K − " p " → ¯ K 0 n reactions in the forward neutron spectrum