Japan has entered an era of a super-aging population, and given the importance of oral nutrition, the need to evaluate swallowing function has increased. Herein, we contribute to continued developments in evaluating eating and swallowing functions by describing current videoendoscopy (VE) usage and trends to evaluate and diagnose causes of dysphagia. In all, 100 patients (58 men and 42 women; mean age: 79 years) with suspected dysphagia were enrolled; 15 of these were re-examinations. Examinations were conducted according to the Japanese Society of Dysphagia Rehabilitation VE examination guidelines for swallowing. In this study, several patients (77.8 %) with poor vocalization and a saliva reservoir were unable to eat. While evaluating the relationship between aspiration and pharyngeal or laryngeal influx, we found that when pharyngeal and laryngeal influx were present, the risk of aspiration was high. Some patients (38.9 %) were able to eat despite lacking a cough reflex; thus, the absence of a cough reflex does not necessarily equate to an inability to eat, even in patients unable to ingest nutrition orally. One case could ingest nutrition, even with no cough reflex. The 6-month survival rate after the examination of patients on nil per os status was 57.1 %, specifically in patients unable to ingest nutrition orally. These results suggest that decreased eating and swallowing functions indicate a poor prognosis for the patient's quality of life, as eating and swallowing require smooth passage in the oral phase. Therefore, actively requesting a dental intervention and oral rehabilitation is important for a patient presenting these issues.

Fe3Si/FeSi2/Fe3Si trilayered junctions were prepared on Si(111) by facing targets direct-current sputtering combined with a mask method, and spin valve signals in current-perpendicular-to-plane (CPP) geometry was investigated for the change of the magnetization alignment. The shape of magnetization curves evidently exhibited that an antiparallel alignment is realized owing to a difference in the coercive force between the top and bottom Fe3Si layers. The electrical resistance was alternately changed for the formation of parallel and antiparallel alignments with the magnetic field. The spin valve signals in the Fe3Si/FeSi2/Fe3Si trilayered junctions were experimentally demonstrated.

We study collective phenomena of self-propagating particles using the nonlinear Kramers equation. A solitary wave state appears from an instability of the spatially uniform ordered state with nonzero average velocity. Two solitary waves with different heights merge into a larger solitary wave. An approximate solution of the solitary wave is constructed using a self-consistent method. The phase transition to the solitary wave state is either first-order or second-order, depending on the control parameters.

Current-perpendicular-to-plane structural Fe3Si/FeSi2/Fe3Si trilayered junctions were prepared on Si(111) by facing targets direct-current sputtering combined with a mask method. The shape of magnetization curves evidently exhibited that an antiparallel alignment is realized owing to a difference in the coercive force between the top and bottom Fe3Si layers. In addition, it was demonstrated that the antiparallel alignment in the wide range of applied magnetic field can be realized by forming a crossover structure, which is owing to an enhanced difference in the effective magnetic field between the top and bottom Fe3Si layers aligned perpendicularly to each other.

Electronic states of ions in lead-free perovskite-type dielectric oxides have been investigated with a first-principle cluster calculation. For this calculation a double-perovskite cluster model based upon the simple cubic ABO3 was used; A and B are both the cations, and O is the oxygen anion. Systematic variations of ionic species for A and B, and lengths of the model cube edge were given to the model. Results of charge transfers of the ions show that their magnitudes depend on the edge length; the lager length leads to the higher transfer magnitude. This tendency implies spatial tolerance of the ions to the clusters, and are expected to correlate with electric polarizability and dipole reversibility of this kind of oxides. The density of states and the overlap population indicate that the higher cation valence causes the higher covalency of the anions. Considering all results together provides us an idea to obtain lead-free high-performance ferroelectrics, as high as the lead-based solid solutions.