Objectives: Domestic squalor (DS) is related to physical problems, living alone, problems for their family and neighbors, and mental illness, the most common of which is dementia. Early intervention for DS is important; however, Methods to detect and treat older adults with DS remain unclear. This study aimed to clarify the Methods of early intervention in older adults with DS.

Methods: The Initial-phase Intensive Support Team for Dementia (IPIST) is a multidisciplinary outreach team that provides intensive initial assessment and support for people living at home with suspected dementia in Japan. We distributed a questionnaire to 50 IPISTs that had reported experience of dealing with many complex cases’’ in our previous nationwide survey, asking them to provide detailed information on two complex cases’’ that were extremely difficult to approach or link to medical or long-term care. The questionnaire consisted of questions regarding sociodemographic characteristics, clinical assessments, referral sources, and reasons for complexity. We compared the results of the questionnaire between cases with and without DS (DS+ vs. DS-) and between cases with DS who lived alone and those who lived with family (DS+ living alone vs. DS+ living withfamily).

Results: We received responses from 33 IPISTs and collected data from 70 complex cases. DS was selected as the reason for complexity in 24 cases. Fourteen DS+ cases lived alone. DS+ cases referred by the family (8.3%) were significantly fewer than DS- cases (54.3%). In DS+ cases, the most common referral sources were neighbors and welfare commissioners. The proportion of cases having self-neglect were significantly more in DS+ (87.5%) than in DS- (13.0%). DS+ cases living alone were significantly younger (mean ± SD; 72.9 ± 7.3) than those living with family (80.0 ± 6.7). Family members living with DS+ cases also had issues including mental illness or maltreatment.

Conclusions: This study revealed that most older adults with DS experience self-neglect and a lack of supportive family members. A comprehensive approach to both older adults with DS and their families is important for early intervention, and therefore IPISTs that have a multidisciplinary team with an outreach function would be useful.

The current study aimed to investigate the effects of ageing on oral immunity using β-defensin (DEFB) 1/2 as a marker and evaluate the effects of curcumin (CUR) on these processes. The study sample included thirty male C57BL/6J mice divided into three groups based on the treatment method used. The young control (YC) and old control (OC) groups received 0·5 % methylcellulose-400 (CUR vehicle) orally for 5 days, whereas the CUR group of older mice received a CUR solution suspended in 0·5 % methylcellulose-400 (dose: 3·0 mg/kg body). DEFB1/2 and immune indicator levels were measured in the saliva and salivary glands post-treatment. The saliva volume and protein content were significantly reduced in the OC group compared with the YC group. CUR administration restored these parameters, decreased DEFB1 expression in the salivary gland and increased DEFB1/2 secretion and DEFB2 expression. These findings were supported by epigenetic gene regulation and partial cytokine activation from changes in WD40 repeat protein 5, TNF alpha and IL-1beta. CUR can partially restore age-related changes in oral immune responses and promote oral health, thereby preventing frailty in the older population through a nutritional therapeutic pathway.

A decline in social functioning is a hallmark of dementia and is associated with worsening cognitive impairment, various behavioral and psychological symptoms, and caregiver burden. Since the feeling of loneliness is related to social function decline in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia, care for the social isolation that can cause loneliness is considered important in Japan, where the number of older people living alone is increasing.

In addition to dementia, late-onset psychosis is also known to be affected by loneliness and social isolation. Psychosis that develops after age 60 and does not involve organic or affective disorders is defined as very late-onset schizophrenia-like psychosis (VLOSLP) and is known to be different in quality from psychosis that develops at a younger age. Social isolation has been reported as one of risk factors of VLOSLP, and although people with VLOSLP are independent in daily life, their social functioning is impaired in a way that is different from dementia due to their abnormalities in the content of thinking. Therefore, social isolation and decline of social functioning are also major problems for VLOSLP. Longitudinally, people with VLOSLP are more likely than the general older population to progress to dementia including Lewy body disease and Alzheimer’s disease subtypes. With the increasing importance of early diagnosis and intervention of these neurodegenerative diseases, identification and intervention of people with VLOSLP is a challenging but important topic.

We are now investigating the use of robots with communication capabilities aiming to improve loneliness and social isolation of older people living alone with MCI, mild dementia and VLOSLP. On the other hand, we have found that loneliness in MCI and mild dementia does not necessarily correlate with social isolation status, such as living alone, indicating that loneliness and social isolation among older people requires further research.

Because inorganic nanosheets, such as clay minerals, are anisotropic, the manipulation of nanosheet orientation is an important challenge in order to realize future functional materials. In the present study, a novel methodology for nanosheet manipulation using laser radiation pressure is proposed. When a linearly polarized laser beam was used to irradiate a niobate (Nb6O174-) nanosheet colloid, the nanosheet was trapped at the focal point so that the in-plane direction of the nanosheet was oriented parallel to the propagation direction of the incident laser beam so as to minimize the scattering force. In addition, the trapped nanosheet was aligned along the polarization direction of the linearly polarized laser beam.

Although chronic pain (CP) is classified as inflammatory or non-inflammatory, the involvement of fatty acid intake in this process has not yet been examined in detail. Therefore, the present study investigated whether the relationship between CP and fatty acid intake differs between high and low C-reactive protein (CRP) levels in middle-aged and elderly individuals in the Shika study. One-thousand and seven males and 1216 females with mean ages of 68⋅78 and 69⋅65 years, respectively, participated in the present study. CRP was quantified by blood sampling from participants who responded to a CP questionnaire. The brief-type self-administered diet history questionnaire (BDHQ) was used to assess fatty acid intake. Interactions were observed between CP and CRP on monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and eicosadienoic acid in a two-way analysis of covariance adjusted for sex, age, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, current smoking and drinking status, and BMI. MUFA (OR 1⋅359) and eicosadienoic acid (OR 1⋅072) were identified as significant independent variables for CP in a multiple logistic regression analysis, but only in the low CRP group. Only a high intake of MUFA and eicosadienoic acid was associated with chronic neck/shoulder/upper limb pain without elevated CRP. In psychogenic and neuropathic pain without elevated CRP, an increased intake of MUFA and eicosadienoic acid, a family member of n-6 fatty acids, appears to affect CP. Further longitudinal studies are needed to elucidate this relationship.

Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on the dietary habits of the Japanese population have shown that an effect rs671 allele was inversely associated with fish consumption, whereas it was directly associated with coffee consumption. Although meat is a major source of protein and fat in the diet, whether genetic factors that influence meat-eating habits in healthy populations are unknown. This study aimed to conduct a GWAS to find genetic variations that affect meat consumption in a Japanese population. We analysed GWAS data using 14 076 participants from the Japan Multi-Institutional Collaborative Cohort (J-MICC) study. We used a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire to estimate food intake that was validated previously. Association of the imputed variants with total meat consumption per 1000 kcal energy was performed by linear regression analysis with adjustments for age, sex, and principal component analysis components 1–10. We found that no genetic variant, including rs671, was associated with meat consumption. The previously reported single nucleotide polymorphisms that were associated with meat consumption in samples of European ancestry could not be replicated in our J-MICC data. In conclusion, significant genetic factors that affect meat consumption were not observed in a Japanese population.

Dietary intake modification is important for the treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD); however, little is known about the association between dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins and kidney function based on gender difference. We examined the relationship of dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins with decreased kidney function according to gender in Japanese subjects. This population-based, cross-sectional study included 936 Japanese participants with the age of 40 years or older. A validated brief self-administered diet history questionnaire was used to measure dietary intakes of vitamin E and its four isoforms, vitamin A and vitamin C. Decreased kidney function was defined as estimated glomerular filtration rate <60 ml/min/1·73 m2. A total of 498 (53·2 %) of the study participants were women. Mean age was 62·4 ± 11·3 years. Overall, 157 subjects met the criteria of decreased kidney function. In the fully adjusted model, a high vitamin E intake is inversely associated with decreased kidney function in women (odds ratio, 0·886; 95 % confidence interval, 0·786–0·998), whereas vitamin E intake was not associated with decreased kidney function (odds ratio, 0·931; 95 % confidence interval, 0·811–1·069) in men. No significant association between dietary intake of vitamins A and C and decreased kidney function was observed in women and men. Higher dietary intake of vitamin E was inversely associated with decreased kidney function in middle-aged and older women, and the result may provide insight into the more tailored dietary approaches to prevent CKD.

Sample geometry effects on mechanical strengths of gold micro-cantilevers are evaluated by a micro-bending test. Six micro-cantilevers with the same length of 50 μm are prepared, and the width and the thickness are varied to examine individual effects on the yield stress. The yield stress increases from 428 to 519 MPa when the thickness decreases from 11.1 to 6.0 μm. No obvious dependency is observed when varying the width. The results reveal that the thickness and the width each has a different influence on the yield stresses of micro-cantilevers evaluated by the bending test, which is the sample geometry effect.

In this paper, we formulate and prove a duality for cohomology of curves over perfect fields of positive characteristic with coefficients in Néron models of abelian varieties. This is a global function field version of the author’s previous work on local duality and Grothendieck’s duality conjecture. It generalizes the perfectness of the Cassels–Tate pairing in the finite base field case. The proof uses the local duality mentioned above, Artin–Milne’s global finite flat duality, the nondegeneracy of the height pairing and finiteness of crystalline cohomology. All these ingredients are organized under the formalism of the rational étale site developed earlier.

The surface conditions of the inland ice sheet in east Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, are derived from the NOAA-7 AVHRR data received at Syowa Station and then compared with the ground observations which were collected in November 1984 along a 243 km long traverse route at altitudes ranging from 2700 to 3400 m a.s.l. The variations in the AVHRR data are well related to the distribution of glazed surfaces. The areas with lower albedo, higher surface temperature, lower ratio of channel 2/channel 1, and lower T4-T5 coincide with the areas where a glazed surface has developed. This result is attributed to the fact that the glazed surface is composed of a multi-layered ice crust and that its radiative and thermal properties are closer to ice than to snow. The present study shows that the NOAA AVHRR data are useful for distinguishing bare ice, glazed surfaces, and snow surfaces of the Antarctic ice sheet.