The Annals of physiological anthropology = Seiri Jinruigaku Kenkyukai kaishi最新文献

The effects of environmental temperature on transitional skin temperatures of peripheral parts of human hands and feet were examined during exercise to obtain basic information on thermal characteristics of heat transfer from human body to the environment. Very thin and fat male adults served as subjects who were in contrast regarding fat content. Their skin temperatures were undertaken by thermocouples in a climate chamber. The exercise was made using an ergometer at three stages of the chamber temperatures. The skin temperature of a fat subject's trunk was observed to be lower than that of thin subject due to the insulation of fat in the body. In compensation for less heat transfer from the trunk, the temperatures of peripheral parts of fat subject's hands and feet were higher than that of the thin subject. Moreover, the response of the temperature to the thermal load due to exercise was observed to be quicker. These kinds of variation were considered as due to the increase in blood flow through arteriovenous anastomoses, AVA. It seemed that AVA blood of the thin subject did not increase during resting condition at the environmental temperatures of 10 and 20 degrees C but was accelerated by the thermal load due to exercise. In addition, the response of AVA on the foot seemed to be delayed compared with that on the hand.

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of respiratory responses due to controlled frequency breathing (CFB) during steady state cycle ergometric exercise (50% of Peak VO2, 60rpm) and to compare their responses between long distance (L), badminton (B), Swimming (S) and untrained (C; Control) group. Twenty-two (n = 6; L, B, C.n = 4; S) female university students were forced to take CFB for 1 min every 3 min during 20 min exercise. The breathing frequencies (BR) were 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30 frequencies in a minute. They were represented by CFB10, CFB12, CFB15, CFB20 and CFB30 respectively. In addition, CFB5, and 40 were given in a separate series. Ventiratory volume (VE) decreased significantly, (P < 0.05) when BR decreased less than about 50% of normal breathing (NB), CFB15 in (B) and (C). It showed to be less than CFB12 in (S), and CFB10 in (L). According to the decrease of VE, tidal volume and O2 pulse increased during CFB10 and 15 in all groups to maintain a constant O2 consumption for a given workload. End tidal partial pressure of O2 (PETO2) significantly decreased during less than CFB15 in (B) and (C), during CFB10 in (L). PETCO2 increased during less than CFB15 in (B), less than CFB12 in (L) and (C). However in (S) during every CFB, neither PETO2 nor PETCO2 changed significantly. Talking about the main differences shown between the four groups, (S) and (L) significantly exceeded (C) in maintaining of VE during CFB. However, in consideration of a ratio of the frequency of CFB to that of NB, (L) could maintain VE against more strictly controlled of breathing than other groups. (B) showed similar tendencies as (C) about some responses. It is considered that these differences in respiratory responses to CFB may result from difference of the duration and the level of breathing control that were forced during their daily training rather than whether their breathing frequency during each exercise is high or low.

Practical saturation diving was firstly performed at high altitude in Japan in 1987. Its work was to change the screen which had covered the pipeline of a hydroelectric dam located 850 meters above sea level, the same operation had been conducted in 1992 and in 1993, 2 times each year (Total = 5 operations) after the work. The saturation dives have lasted from six to eight days on 4 occasions and 13 days (Total duration = 4075 minutes) on 1 occasion, since the initial pressurization until the end of the last decompression. In each operation, there had always been involved 3 divers. They have been compressed to an equivalent depth of 45-73m in the deck decompression chamber (DDC), briefed for work and transferred to the submersible decompression chamber (SDC), which was then submersed to 53-78m of depth. Wearing heated suit and breathing Heliox (both at the same temperature as the inside of the SDC), the divers have been locked out to perform their tasks, all monitored and supervised by the use of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The works have run uneventful and successfully until the end. The water temperature had been higher than the expected, i.e. 9-13 degrees C in all occasions. The inside conditions of the chamber had been the following: partial pressure of nitrogen was from 0.78 ATA; partial pressure of oxygen was from 0.35 to 0.40 ATA; partial pressure of carbon dioxide was less than 0.005 ATA; the inside temperature of the SDC was from 26 to 30 degrees C.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of body posture on thermal insulation of clothing. Clothing ensembles including skirts were mainly investigated. A new thermal manikin was developed for this study. This manikin was able to change her body posture without increasing or decreasing her surface area. By changing posture from standing to seated, the total thermal insulation of clothing (It) was decreased by around 1.4%. The surface thermal resistance at nude (Ia) was increased by 8%. As a result, the basic thermal insulation of clothing (Icl) was decreased by 14%. The main reason for the decrease of basic thermal insulation (Icl) when the posture of thermal manikin changes from standing to seated was the increase of Ia at nude. The total thermal insulation of clothing for each body posture (Iti), when standing and seated, were compared. The parts affected by the changed posture were abdomen, hip and thighs, and especially under the skirt of 61cm length, the knees were most affected.

To elucidate the mechanisms of adaptation to a low-energy and low-protein vegan diet, we carried out dietary surveys and nitrogen balance studies five times during one year on two women and a man who ate raw brown rice, raw green vegetables, three kinds of raw roots, fruit and salt daily. Individual subjects modified this vegan diet slightly. The mean daily energy intake of the subjects was 18, 14, and 32 kcal/kg, of body weight. The loss of body weight was about 10% of the initial level. The daily nitrogen balance was -32, -33, and -11 mg N/kg of body weight. In spite of the negative nitrogen balance, the results of routine clinical tests, initially normal, did not change with the vegan diet. Ten months after the start of the vegan diet, the subjects were given 15N urea orally. The incorporation of 15N into serum proteins suggested that these subjects could utilize urea nitrogen for body protein synthesis. The level of 15N in serum proteins was close to the level in other normal adult men on a low-protein diet with adequate energy for 2 weeks.

The change in the regional skin temperature of hand was investigated under two different clothing conditions. The skin temperatures at six points on the palm, dorsum, and middle finger of the hand, respectively, were measured by using thermister thermometers simultaneously. The measurements were performed in a climate chamber conditioned at 20 degrees C and 65% R.H.. The subjects were 10 healthy females aged between 20 and 24 years. Five out of the 10 subjects wore light clothing (ca. 0.36 clo) and the others heavy clothing (ca. 0.75 clo). They first rested sitting on a chair for 30 min in the climate chamber before the onset of measurement. The results are as follows: 1) The skin temperature of the palm was higher than that of the other parts. Data were rather scattered in the case of the middle finger. 2) The skin temperature of the middle finger dropped to about 3 degrees C within 20 min after the start of measurement. 3) The skin temperature of the middle finger was affected by the clothing condition. We imagine that the skin temperature of the middle finger closely relates to arteriovenous anastomoses (AVA) located in the finger. Clothing probably plays an important role in controlling the blood flow of the AVA vessels, and consequently the skin temperature of the middle finger changes more sensitively than other parts of the hand.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the body shape of athletes in comparison with adult non-athletes by factor analysis. The subjects were 210 male adult non-athletes and 485 male high school age and adult athletes participating in 13 different sporting events. Physique, skinfold thickness and body composition of each subject were measured. Measured values from adult non-athletes were analyzed by factor analysis, and body shape of the athletes was then analyzed according to these factors. The results are summarized as follows: 1. Four main factors, that is, body fat, mass, leg length to height ratio and length, which could explain 88.5 percent of total variance, were extracted from the measured values from adult non-athletes. 2. Similarity of body shape between sporting events was analyzed by cluster analysis. Body shape of the athletes could be classified into 3 categories: muscular and well-balanced type; rich muscular and large-built type; and rich muscular and long-torso type. Compared with adult non-athletes, male athletes had less body fat and greater mass except for long-distance runners. The present results suggested that the athletes had body shapes suitable to their sporting events.

In order to obtain data of skin temperatures experiments were carried out using three healthy young Japanese males. The subjects were exposed to each of the four environments with dry bulb temperatures of 15 degrees C, 19 degrees C, 25 degrees C and 33 degrees C. At each of these air temperatures, relative humidity and air movement were set at 50% and 0.15m/s respectively. The subjects wore only athletic shorts, seated on the meshed chair. Each subject was measured with thermisters continuously for one hour under these conditions to obtain twenty-nine regional skin temperature. The above experiments were made with one subject at a time in the test chamber. The data of skin temperatures observed were substituted into twenty-eight different weighting formulas for comparison. The present analysis revealed that the calculation from the 12-point and the 7-point skin area formulas by Hardy-DuBois showed approximate mean values of the twenty eight. Moreover, the values calculated from the formula by Nadel et al, which was weighted by skin area and thermal sensitivity, are similar to the values calculated by the formula of Mochida, which was weighted by skin area, heat transfer coefficients and thermal sensitivity. Furthermore, the authors verified that the area-mean weighting factor was derived from the Teichner's definition in which a limiting value of arithmetical mean of skin temperatures gave a value of average skin temperature.

Cumulative Fatigue Symptoms Index (CFSI) is used for workers' subjective assessment of feeling of fatigue and of symptoms. Until now, this index has been used in the analysis of members of the same occupation. The purpose of this study is to examine fatigue symptoms in workers and to assess by CFSI the effect of regular physical exercise. Study participants were an exercise group (n = 67) and a non-exercise group (n = 115) of older workers, aged from 30 to 69 years. The CFSI questionnaire was distributed to all participants and the former group (exercise) answered two descriptive questions concerning the aim and subjective effects of physical exercise. As a result, it was found that mental fatigue symptoms decreased in the exercise group even after considering the differences in managerial position, subjective senses on health and marital status which are related to degree of feelings of fatigue. Weakened vitality was significantly less in the exercise group than the non-exercise group. Therefore, we concluded that weakened vitality would be needed to be regarded on an assessment scale for effects caused by exercise. It has also been considered that we should investigate general fatigue in assessing physical fatigue relating to one's lifestyle.

We studied the relationship between dietary salt intake, urinary salt excretion, blood pressure and anthropometric measurements in 322 Japanese schoolchildren, aged between 6 and 11 years. Two surveys were carried out: one among a small group of 22 children from the 322, and one involving all 322. In the former group, both a detailed and a simplified dietary questionnaire were used, and nocturnal and 24 hr urinary salt excretion samples were collected. The latter group's survey used only the simplified questionnaire and nocturnal salt excretion measurements. The surveys from the two different groups were then compared to each other. It was found that the simplified questionnaire and nocturnal urinary samples were statistically accurate enough to be used for the purpose of this study. From the latter survey, dietary salt intake among the children was 7.5 +/- 2.7 g per day, (mean +/- SD), and 65 pupils (20%) consumed more than 10 g of salt per day. It was also found that nocturnal urinary salt excretion levels were 1.47 +/- 0.82 g per day, with 30 pupils (9.3%) registering levels of more than 2.5 g per day. There was a significant correlation between these dietary and urinary salt levels. Systolic blood pressure (SPB) among the schoolchildren showed significant correlation with age, height, weight and BMI. For diastolic blood pressure (DBP), a significant correlation was seen in age only. SBP and DBP showed little relation with either dietary salt intake or urinary salt excretion.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)