Diabetes is a lifestyle disease, and its prevention and treatment are extremely important. Since Hoku243 presents fewer short-branched glucans and more long chains in the amylopectin starch, its starch is resistant to gelatinization and the boiled rice grains are non-sticky and brittle. The prevention of abrupt increases in postprandial blood glucose level (BGL) after consumption of Hoku243 (produced by high pressure treatment (HPT) after soaking in unsalted rice koji miso) was investigated in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. The BGL at 90 min and area under the curve (AUC) for 120 min after eating were significantly lower in SD rats fed Hoku243 than those in rats fed the control diet, consisting of Koshihikari rice (1% or 5% level). The addition of glucose, glutamic acid, and dietary fibers by soaking in an unsalted rice koji miso (unsalted miso) suspension made the boiled rice tasty and harder. After HPT, the texture of the boiled rice grains became harder, but sticky, which made the rice acceptable in terms of palatability and bio-functional in terms of digestion delay. It is now possible to produce palatable and bio-functional boiled rice grains by HPT and soaking in unsalted miso.Key words: amylose-extender mutant rice, high-pressure-treatment, unsalted rice koji miso Corresponding author (Tel./Fax. +81 25 262 6360,. Abbreviations: Ae mutants, amylose extender mutants of rice; AUC, the blood glucose response curve (area under curve); BGL, blood glucose level; GI, glycemic index; HPT, high pressure treatment; Hoku243, Hokurikukona243; RS, resistant starch; SD rats, SpragueDawley rats; unsalted miso, unsalted rice koji miso.

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When we touch a human body, the flesh yields to our touch and we feel a sensation of softness. In virtual training systems for medical procedures such as palpation, the display of softness at the fingertips is essential. This paper proposes a softness-display device using a flexible sheet, and we present the concept of softness display at multiple fingers by combining the developed softness-display device and a multi-fingered haptic interface robot consisting of a five-fingered hand and an arm. Further, we carried out several experiments, the results of which show the validity of the proposed system and its great potential.

The effectiveness of line-and-space (L&S) textures grooved onto stainless-steel SUS 304 plates for improving hydrophobic properties was investigated. The textures were grooved using a scan-projection exposure system with a gradient-index lens array as a projection lens and wet chemical etching in ferric chloride aqueous solution. The lithography system was applied because it was developed for printing rough patterns of larger than 15 μm in a large exposure field of 50 mm square. On the other hand, it was expected that textured protrusions with considerably sharper peaks might be formed by the undercut phenomenon during wet etching. When the contact angles of 2 μl pure-water droplets which had been dropped down onto 20 μm L&S textures were measured, it was found that contact angles measured by observing a droplet from the L&S direction were larger than those measured from the direction perpendicular to the L&S, and contact angles were changeable by grooving textures of different sizes.