We have developed a wearable airbag that incorporates a fall-detection system that uses both acceleration and angular velocity signals to trigger inflation of the airbag. The fall-detection algorithm was devised using a thresholding technique with an accelerometer and gyro sensor. Sixteen subjects mimicked falls, and their acceleration waveforms were monitored. Then, we developed a fall-detection algorithm that could detect signals 300 ms before the fall. This signal was used as a trigger to inflate the airbag to a capacity of 2.4 L. Although the proposed system can help to prevent fall-related injuries, further development is needed to miniaturize the inflation system.

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The use of field desorption mass spectrometry is demonstrated not only for molecular weight determination but also for detailed structural analysis of large, underivatized natural products. Owing to cationization by small alkali salt impurities, saponins carrying one to four sugar units gave abundant quasimolecular ions. In addition, the observed sequence-specific fragment ions reflected the complete sequence of the sugar units in the oligoglycosides. This fragmentation of the oligosaccharidic moiety of the natural products was interpreted by analogy with acidic solvolysis, a mechanism well established in solution chemistry. Of particular interest was a first com­parison of the field desorption mass spectra obtained from two different commercially available instruments operated by different groups in order to give an estimate of interlaboratory reproducibility in field desorption mass spectrometry.

The mid-infrared range is an important spectrum range where materials exhibit a characteristic response corresponding to their molecular structure. A free-electron laser (FEL) is a promising candidate for a high-power light source with wavelength tunability to investigate the nonlinear response of materials. Although the self-amplification spontaneous emission (SASE) scheme is not usually adopted in the mid-infrared wavelength range, it may have advantages such as layout simplicity, the possibility of producing a single pulse, and scalability to a short-wavelength facility. To demonstrate the operation of a mid-infrared SASE FEL system in an energy recovery linac (ERL) layout, we constructed an SASE FEL setup in cERL, a test facility of the superconducting linac with the ERL configuration. Despite the adverse circumstance of space charge effects due to the given boundary condition of the facility, we successfully established the beam condition at the undulators and observed FEL emission at a wavelength of 20 μm. The results show that the layout of cERL has the potential for serving as a mid-infrared light source.

Infrared (IR) SASE-FEL emission was successfully generated for macro pulses of about 1 μs with the maximum repetition rate of 5 Hz at the cERL. In the future, high-power FEL operation will be planned to increase electron bunches drastically with energy recovery. Therefore, the dump line was redesigned and reconstructed to increase the momentum acceptance and to improve the magnet system for avoiding serious beam loss in the high power FEL operation. Furthermore, the first beam-transport study was performed by transporting the beam directly from the injector to the beam dump through the reconstructed dump line. In this paper, we present the reconstructed dump line and the beam-transport study. The new dump line can be a model for dump lines of high-power ERL-FELs.