中山間地域の稲刈り・はぜ掛け作業の身体負担軽減

Autumn in Japan is the season of harvesting rice, the Japanese staple food. Large scale farmers can use the large harvesting machines. However, small scale farmer’s fields are often too small to use the machine. Thus they have to work with their hands. One of the hardest operations is procedure of drying rice on the rack, because they have to repeat manual labor so many times that they become exhausted . The purpose of this study is development of low burden method of drying rice procedure. Through the observations and interview, two kinds of measures are found out. One is reduction of physical movement by using some tools such as standing-chair and wheelbarrow to remove vertical motion of up and down. Another is the system to gather volunteers from the young ages to the elderly ages

シニア世代による農業ボランティアへの参加意識

One of the farmer\u27s problems in depopulated area is lack of human power to keep agriculture business. Agricultural volunteer is considered as one of the solutions of the problems in farm areas. The purpose of this study is investigation of introduction of farm volunteer by senior generation in town area. The result has shown that the senior generation in town areas is going to join the agriculture for some purposes. One is to exercise for their health. Others are getting fresh and safe foods, studying of agriculture, contribution for other people, stopping the increase of wasteland, and so on. In addition, the result has also shown that the volunteer\u27s requirements are time, close places and transports. Some of the volunteers require some consideration to their labor. Thus the matching system of farmers and volunteers is needed to build the relation among them

Use of the index of pulmonary vascular disease for predicting long-term outcome of pulmonary arterial hypertension associated with congenital heart disease

AimsLimited data exist on risk factors for the long-term outcome of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) associated with congenital heart disease (CHD-PAH). We focused on the index of pulmonary vascular disease (IPVD), an assessment system for pulmonary artery pathology specimens. The IPVD classifies pulmonary vascular lesions into four categories based on severity: (1) no intimal thickening, (2) cellular thickening of the intima, (3) fibrous thickening of the intima, and (4) destruction of the tunica media, with the overall grade expressed as an additive mean of these scores. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between IPVD and the long-term outcome of CHD-PAH.MethodsThis retrospective study examined lung pathology images of 764 patients with CHD-PAH aged <20 years whose lung specimens were submitted to the Japanese Research Institute of Pulmonary Vasculature for pulmonary pathological review between 2001 and 2020. Clinical information was collected retrospectively by each attending physician. The primary endpoint was cardiovascular death.ResultsThe 5-year, 10-year, 15-year, and 20-year cardiovascular death-free survival rates for all patients were 92.0%, 90.4%, 87.3%, and 86.1%, respectively. The group with an IPVD of ≥2.0 had significantly poorer survival than the group with an IPVD <2.0 (P = .037). The Cox proportional hazards model adjusted for the presence of congenital anomaly syndromes associated with pulmonary hypertension, and age at lung biopsy showed similar results (hazard ratio 4.46; 95% confidence interval: 1.45–13.73; P = .009).ConclusionsThe IPVD scoring system is useful for predicting the long-term outcome of CHD-PAH. For patients with an IPVD of ≥2.0, treatment strategies, including choosing palliative procedures such as pulmonary artery banding to restrict pulmonary blood flow and postponement of intracardiac repair, should be more carefully considered