A new roadmap for an age-inclusive workforce management practice and an international policies comparison.

Background: Worldwide, the worker population age is growing at an increasing rate. Consequently, government institutions and companies are being tasked to find new ways to address age-related workforce management challenges and opportunities. The development of age-friendly working environments to enhance ageing workforce inclusion and diversity has become a current management and national policy imperative. Since an ageing workforce population is a spreading worldwide trend, an identification and analysis of worker age related best practices across different countries would help the development of novel palliative paradigms and initiatives. Methods: This study proposes a new systematic research-based roadmap that aims to support executives and administrators in implementing an age-inclusive workforce management program. The roadmap integrates and builds on published literature, best practices, and international policies and initiatives that were identified, collected, and analysed by the authors. The roadmap provides a critical comparison of age-inclusive management practices and policies at three different levels of intervention: international, country, and company. Data collection and analysis was conducted simultaneously across eight countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Slovenia, and the USA. Results and conclusions: The findings of this research guide the development of a framework and roadmap to help manage the challenges and opportunities of an ageing workforce in moving towards a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient labour force.

Identification of Early Knee Osteoarthritis Based on Knee Joint Trajectory during Stair Climbing.

Patients with knee osteoarthritis show low stair climbing ability, but a diagnosis of stair performance time is not enough to identify the early stages of knee osteoarthritis. Therefore, we developed an indicator named range of the knee joint trajectory (RKJT) as a kinematic parameter to express more detailed characteristics than stair performance time. To achieve this, we used our developed "IR-Locomotion", a markerless measurement system that can track the knee joint trajectory when climbing stairs. This study aimed to test whether the RKJT effectively identifies patients with early knee osteoarthritis even after controlling stair performance time. Forty-seven adults with moderate to severe knee pain (mean age 59.2 years; 68.1% women) underwent the radiographic examination (Kellgren and Lawrence grade) of both knees and a stair climbing test on 11 stairs. The RKJT during the stair climbing test was calculated by "IR-Locomotion". A generalized linear mixed model was used to evaluate the discriminative capability of RKJT on early knee osteoarthritis (i.e., Kellgren and Lawrence grade of 1). As expected, patients with early knee osteoarthritis showed larger RKJT than non-radiographic controls (95% confidence interval: 1.007, 1.076). Notably, this finding was consistent even after adjusting stair performance time.

Effect of the area of a lithium niobate transducer on the efficiency of ultrasonic atomization driven by resonance vibration.

In recent years, individual control of one's personal environment has been drawing increasing attention due to the growing interest in health care. Wearable devices are especially useful because of their controllability regardless of location. Humidity is one of the inevitable factors in the personal environment as a preventive against infectious diseases. Although atomization devices are commonly used as a method of humidity control, at present, there are no wearable humidity control devices. Vibration of a lithium niobate (LN) device in the thickness mode is a promising piezoelectric method for miniaturization of atomization devices for humidity control. To miniaturize the atomization device, the transducer size needs to be small not so much as to decrease the atomization efficiency. However, the effect of the device area on the atomization efficiency of LN at a size suitable for mounting in wearable devices has not been studied. Here, we conducted an atomization demonstration of LN devices with different sizes to evaluate particle size and atomization efficiency. Furthermore, to reveal the relationship between vibration behavior and atomization efficiency, resonance vibration in the MHz frequency band was evaluated by the finite element method and an impedance analyzer. The results showed that the peak size of water particles atomized by each device was in the range of 3.2 to 4.2 µm, which is smaller than particles produced by typical piezoelectric ceramics. Moreover, the best LN size for efficient atomization was found to be 8 mm × 10 mm among the five LN device sizes used in experiments. From the relationship between vibration behavior and atomization efficiency, the size of the transducer was suggested to affect the vibration mode. The obtained result suggested that the LN device is suitable for small wearable nebulizer devices.

Force Plate with Simple Mechanical Springs and Separated Noncontact Sensor Elements.

This paper reports on a force plate (FP) using mechanical springs and noncontact distance sensors. The ground reaction force (GRF) is one of the factors for clarify biomechanics, and FPs are widely used to measure it. The sensor elements of conventional FPs are mainly strain gauges. Thus, the mechanical properties of FP depend on the sensor element performance. If the FP performance must change, we must redesign the FP, including changing the sensor elements. Here, we proposed an FP that uses a measuring principle based on simple springs and noncontact sensors. The shape and performance of the proposed FP are expected to change easily. As a prototype device, we designed and fabricated an FP installed with 12 springs and four sensors for human walking. A planar coil and magnet were used as the sensor elements, and the sensor output was proportional to the vertical and horizontal displacements. The FP resonance frequency was 123 Hz, which was larger than the required specification. The calibration experiments showed that vertical and horizontal forces and moments could be measured independently. The FP's resolutions were 1.9 N and 1.4 N in the anterior-posterior and vertical directions, respectively. Furthermore, the fabricated FP measured GRF similarly to the commercial FP when a human walked on the plate. These results suggest that the proposed method will be helpful for FPs with custom-made requirements.

Identification and characterization of POU class V family genes in Japanese red bellied newt, Cynops pyrrhogaster.

Mammalian Pou5f1 encodes the POU family class V (POU-V) transcription factor which is essential for the pluripotency of embryonic cells and germ cells. In vertebrates, various POU-V family genes have been identified and classified into the POU5F1 family or its paralogous POU5F3 family. In this study, we cloned two cDNAs named CpPou5f1 and CpPou5f3, which encode POU-V family proteins of the Japanese red bellied newt Cynops pyrrhogaster. In the predicted amino acid sequence encoded by CpPou5f1, the typical MAGH sequence at the N-terminus and deletion of arginine at the fifth position of POU-homeodomain were recognized, but not in the sequence encoded by CpPou5f3. Phylogenetic analysis using Clustal Omega software indicated that CpPou5f1 and CpPou5f3 are classified into the clade of the POU5F1 and POU5F3 families, respectively. In a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis, the marked gene expression of CpPou5f1 was observed during oogenesis and early development up to the tail-bud stage, whereas weak gene expression of CpPou5f3 was detected only in the early stages of oogenesis and gastrula. In adult organs, CpPou5f1 was expressed only in the ovary, while gene expression of CpPou5f3 was recognized in various organs. A regeneration experiment using larval forelimb revealed that transient gene expression of CpPou5f1 occurred at the time of wound healing, followed by gene activation of CpPou5f3 during the period of blastema formation. These results suggest that CpPou5f1 and CpPou5f3 might play different roles in embryogenesis and limb regeneration.

Complete Genome Sequences of Seven Peanut Stunt Virus Strains from Japan.

We present the complete genomic RNA sequences of seven isolates of Peanut stunt virus discovered in diseased legume plants in various regions in Japan. These sequences and the published viral sequences were compared with respect to nucleotide percentages. Their phylogenetic analysis showed that all the isolates belong to subgroup IA.

Markerless Knee Joint Position Measurement Using Depth Data during Stair Walking.

Climbing and descending stairs are demanding daily activities, and the monitoring of them may reveal the presence of musculoskeletal diseases at an early stage. A markerless system is needed to monitor such stair walking activity without mentally or physically disturbing the subject. Microsoft Kinect v2 has been used for gait monitoring, as it provides a markerless skeleton tracking function. However, few studies have used this device for stair walking monitoring, and the accuracy of its skeleton tracking function during stair walking has not been evaluated. Moreover, skeleton tracking is not likely to be suitable for estimating body joints during stair walking, as the form of the body is different from what it is when it walks on level surfaces. In this study, a new method of estimating the 3D position of the knee joint was devised that uses the depth data of Kinect v2. The accuracy of this method was compared with that of the skeleton tracking function of Kinect v2 by simultaneously measuring subjects with a 3D motion capture system. The depth data method was found to be more accurate than skeleton tracking. The mean error of the 3D Euclidian distance of the depth data method was 43.2 ± 27.5 mm, while that of the skeleton tracking was 50.4 ± 23.9 mm. This method indicates the possibility of stair walking monitoring for the early discovery of musculoskeletal diseases.