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ABSTRACTYokohama city has developed facilities to dry and granulate digested sludge, and has been producing and selling sludge fertilizer since 1977. Concurrently, investigations have been carried out on the continuous use of sludge fertilizer with respect to its nutrient value and the influence of heavy metals.Four types of fertilizer and eight types of crop were used in the test. The nutrient values and other aspects were compared statistically for assessment.It was found that (a) sludge fertilizer had the same nutrient value as organic fertilizer, (b) there was minimal transfer of heavy metals from sludge to crops, and (c) sludge fertilizer could be used continuously over a long period.

This study considers the risk of a natural hazard-induced disaster occurring during a pandemic, such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and develops the idea of utilizing a shopping street with disaster-proof buildings as a temporary evacuation shelter by incorporating countermeasures against the spread of infectious diseases. Using a case study of a shopping street in Kobe, Japan, we estimate shelter capacity by considering the requirement of 6 m2 of space allotted for each person. The shelter can accommodate 1194 evacuees and provide them with food and drinks for one day, even in the worst case of lifeline disruption. This study proposes a method of designing shelter space, and demonstrates how non-homogeneous and noncontinuous spaces within shopping street buildings can be applied to prevent the spread of infection, through the classification of evacuee types and use of space and facilities designated for each type. The study further examines the liability issue of secondary infection at the shelter with reference to civic law and the roles of government in developing a distributed evacuation framework.

This study considers the risk of a natural hazard-induced disaster occurring during a pandemic, such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and develops the idea of utilizing a shopping street with disaster-proof buildings as a temporary evacuation shelter by incorporating countermeasures against the spread of infectious diseases. Using a case study of a shopping street in Kobe, Japan, we estimate shelter capacity by considering the requirement of 6 m2 of space allotted for each person. The shelter can accommodate 1194 evacuees and provide them with food and drinks for one day, even in the worst case of lifeline disruption. This study proposes a method of designing shelter space, and demonstrates how non-homogeneous and noncontinuous spaces within shopping street buildings can be applied to prevent the spread of infection, through the classification of evacuee types and use of space and facilities designated for each type. The study further examines the liability issue of secondary infection at the shelter with reference to civic law and the roles of government in developing a distributed evacuation framework.

The Japanese government is seeking to establish a community health program for the management of polypharmacy in elderly patients. To explore a community-based screening strategy for polypharmacy, this study examined the extent to which certain chronic diseases are strongly associated with polypharmacy among community-dwelling elderly adults in Japan. We used anonymized health insurance claims data from all beneficiaries aged 75 years and older in Tokyo, who received outpatient care between May 2014 and August 2014. We obtained the data from the Tokyo Metropolitan Association of Medical Care Services for Older Senior Citizens. The insurance program universally covers all citizens aged 75 years or older. The data included 134 categories of prescribed drugs and seven chronic diseases: hypertension, dyslipidemia, insomnia, osteoarthritis, diabetes, dementia, and depression. Polypharmacy was defined as the prescription of at least five drugs during a 4-month period. We estimated age- and sex-adjusted odds ratio (OR) for each chronic disease, using multivariate logistic regression analysis. The prevalence of polypharmacy among the beneficiaries (n = 1,308,412) was 34.4%. The prevalence was the highest among octogenarians (37.8%), followed by that among those aged 75–79 years (32.0%), nonagenarians (27.9%), and centenarians (10.9%). We found that the highest OR of having polypharmacy was 4.98 for diabetes (p < 0.001), followed by 4.75 for depression (p < 0.001); the lowest OR was 1.65 for dementia (p < 0.001). These findings emphasize the importance of identifying individual diseases to screen for polypharmacy among community-dwelling elderly patients.

Thermoelectric effects have been applied to power generators and temperature sensors that convert waste heat into electricity. The effects, however, have been limited to electrons to occur, and inevitably disappear at low temperatures due to electronic entropy quenching. Here, we report thermoelectric generation caused by nuclear spins in a solid: nuclear-spin Seebeck effect. The sample is a magnetically ordered material MnCO3 having a large nuclear spin (I = 5/2) of 55Mn nuclei and strong hyperfine coupling, with a Pt contact. In the system, we observe low-temperature thermoelectric signals down to 100 mK due to nuclear-spin excitation. Our theoretical calculation in which interfacial Korringa process is taken into consideration quantitatively reproduces the results. The nuclear thermoelectric effect demonstrated here offers a way for exploring thermoelectric science and technologies at ultralow temperatures ; This work was supported by JST ERATO "Spin Quantum Rectification Project" (JPMJER1402), JST CREST (JPMJCR20C1 and JPMJCR20T2), JSPS KAKENHI (JP19H05600, JP19K21031, JP20H02599, JP20K22476, and JP20K15160), MEXT [Innovative Area "Nano Spin Conversion Science" (JP26103005)], and Daikin Industries, Ltd. The work at UCLA was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award number DE-SC0012190. K.O. acknowledges support from GP-Spin at Tohoku University. R.R. acknowledges support from the European Commission through the project 734187-SPICOLOST (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2016), the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program through the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions grant agreement SPEC number 894006 and the Spanish Ministry of Science (RYC 2019-026915-I) ; SI