We developed a novel non-contact monitoring system to measure the vital signs of casualties inside a moving ambulance. This system was designed to prevent exposure of patients to infectious organisms under biochemical hazard conditions. The system consists of two microwave radars: a 10-GHz respiratory-monitoring radar is positioned 20 cm away from the surface of the isolator. The 24-GHz cardiac-monitoring radar is positioned below the stretcher underneath the isolator. The subject (22.13 +/- 0.99 years) was placed inside the isolator on a stretcher in the simulated ambulance. While the ambulance was in motion at a speed of approximately 10 km/h, the heart rates determined by the cardiac-monitoring radar correlated significantly with those measured by ECG (r = 0.69, p < 0.01), and the respiratory rates derived from the respiratory-monitoring radar correlated with those measured by the respiration curves (r = 0.97, p < 0.0001). The proposed system appears promising for future on-ambulance monitoring of the vital sign of casualties exposed to toxins.

Several molecular dynamics simulations are performed, in order to clarify the atomic-scale stick-slip phenomenon which is commonly observed in the surface measurement using an atomic fine microscope (AFM). In the molecular dynamics simulations, a specimen and a slider are assumed to consist of monocrystalline copper and rigid diamond, respectively, and a Morse potential is postulated between a pair of atoms. Atomic behavior in a plane corresponding to the (111) crystal plane is simulated, dealing with a planar strain problem where the effect of the three-dimensional interatomic force and the spring constant of the AFM cantilever are also taken into consideration. Influence of the cantilever stiffness and dynamics of the specimen surface atoms on the atomic-scale stick-slip phenomenon are investigated. The simulation confirms that the atomic-scale stick-slip phenomenon can be expressed by a molecular dynamics simulation and that the stick-slip phenomenon of the surface atoms of the specimen affects the stick-slip phenomenon of the spring force. These results indicate that molecular dynamics simulation has an advantage in deciding the spring constant of cantilevers.

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