Similarities and Differences in Interoceptive Bodily Awareness Between US-American and Japanese Cultures: A Focus-Group Study in Bicultural Japanese-Americans.

Interoceptive awareness is the conscious perception of sensations that create a sense of the physiological condition of the body. A validation study for the Japanese translation of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) surprised with a factor structure different from the original English-language version by eliminating two of eight scales. This prompted an exploration of the similarities and differences in interoceptive bodily awareness between Japanese and European Americans. Bicultural Japanese-Americans discussed concepts and experiences in the two cultures. We conducted focus groups and qualitative thematic analyses of transcribed recordings. 16 participants illustrated cross-cultural differences in interoceptive bodily awareness: switching between languages changes embodied experience; external versus internal attention focus; social expectations and body sensations; emphasis on form versus self-awareness; personal space; and mind-body relationship; context dependency of bodily awareness and self-construal. The participants explained key concepts that present challenges for a Japanese cultural adaptation of the MAIA, specifically the concept of self-regulation lost in the factor analysis. In Japanese culture, self-regulation serves the purpose of conforming to social expectations, rather than achieving an individual self-comforting sense of homeostasis. Our findings will inform the next phase of improving the MAIA's cross-cultural adaptation.

The effects of falls on the prediction of osteoporotic fractures: epidemiological cohort study.

Fall is the major risk factor of fracture that has not been included in FRAX®. Whether different age may determine the effect of falls on FRAX® is still uncertain. This epidemiological cohort study reveals that history of fall is a significant predictor of incident fracture independent of FRAX probability, especially in subjects < 75 years old. INTRODUCTION: The Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX) calculates 10-year fracture risk using 11 clinical risk factors and bone mineral density (BMD); however, it does not include fall history in its risk assessment. Here, we investigated whether fall history is an independent risk factor on fracture prediction after adjustment of FRAX scores in two age subgroups (40-75 and ≥ 75 years). METHODS: Beginning in 2009 to 2010, 1975 people (914 men) from Taiwan were followed for 6.8 ± 1.1 years by matching them with their records in the 2008-2016 National Health Insurance databank. We validated FRAX predictive accuracy with or without fall history by Cox proportional hazards regression. RESULTS: After adjusting for FRAX risk, a history of falling was still a significant predictor of major osteoporotic fractures (MOFs) (using BMD, hazard ratio [HR], 1.47; p = 0.03; without using BMD, HR, 1.54; p = 0.01). A history of recurrent falls was also a significant predictor of both incident MOFs and hip fractures. However, when the subjects were stratified based on age group, a history of falling and recurrent falls were strong predictors of MOFs and hip fractures in the younger but not the older subgroup. CONCLUSION: A fall history can predict incident fracture independently of FRAX probability, particularly in subjects younger than 75 years old.

Recycling and reuse of kerf-loss silicon from diamond wire sawing for photovoltaic industry.

With the rapid growth of the global photovoltaic (PV) industry, the waste from PV industry cannot be ignored, especially the solid wastes from silicon kerf loss and the used quartz crucibles from silicon casting. The silicon kerf loss during wafer sawing was nearly 160,000 tonnes and the used crucible waste was nearly 70,000 tonnes in 2017. With the transition of wafering technology from the slurry-based wire to diamond wire sawing, recycling and reuse of kerf-loss silicon have become more feasible due to the lower impurity contents. In this paper, we aimed to find a simple approach to recycle the kerf loss and identify the purity for reuse. We first analyzed the contents of the as-received kerf-loss silicon from the industry. Then, suitable acids and refining procedure were proposed. The metals, especially nickel, could be easily reduced to several ppmw, boron and phosphorous to sub-ppmw, and carbon to several hundred ppmw, while oxygen was less than 5 wt%. Although the purity of the recycled silicon was not sufficient for casting feedstock, it had a comparable purity of about 5 N with the commercial silicon nitride releasing agent and crucibles used in silicon casting for solar cells. Because the nitride crucibles could be reused a few times for casting, the used crucible waste could be significantly reduced as well.