Kochi Prefecture is noted for its high mortality rate attributable to degenerative diseases. Among them, cardiovascular disease takes the heaviest toll of lives.In quest of risk factors associated with the scourge, we probed into its possible relations with lipid in the blood, specifically with total serum cholesterol levels. At the same time, we took note of nutritional aspects.Our study found that the cardiovascular death rate has a negative correlation to total serum cholesterol levels and that the subjects who scored low total cholesterol values were exceedingly ill-fed as compared with ordinary people.This finding suggests that, in Kochi Prefecture, the lowering of total serum cholesterol levels triggered off by unbalanced nutritional conditions may increase the chance of succumbing to car-diovascular disease.
This research proposes a quantification method for tactile evaluation by hierarchically classify tactile sensations into three groups named low-order of tactile sensation (LTS), high-order of tactile sensation (HTS) and desired tactile sensation (DTS). A sensory evaluation was conducted and factor analysis was performed to extract the common potential factors in each group. Next, multiple regression analysis was used to determine and examine the relationship between LTS-HTS, and HTS-DTS. Then, multiple physical quantities for quantification were measured. After that, the LTS factors were quantified by using the measured physical quantities. As a result, DTS adjectives were also quantified. Lastly, a verification test was conducted and the result showed that the proposed method may possibly evaluate unknown samples' tactile sensation from measured physical quantities.
In the textile industry, fabric hand is one of the crucial aspects that influence the value of fabric. However, the judgement of fabric hand may vary across subjects. Thus, this study proposes to group the subjects based on their evaluation of fabric hand, and the tactile sensations that are dominantly related to fabric hand are investigated. First, a sensory evaluation of eight knitted fabric samples was carried out using 14 verbal expressions of tactile sensation. These 14 verbal expressions were hierarchically classified into three stages which were called as low-order of tactile sensation, high-order of tactile sensation and lastly, fabric hand. After grouping the subjects by using cluster analysis, a principal component analysis was conducted in each stage of tactile sensation to gather the strong correlations of the verbal expressions. Then, the correlations between principal components of each stage were determined by multiple regression analysis. As a result, the study showed that the subjects could be mainly grouped into two. The former group expressed fabric hand as good when the fabric is soft and moist. On the other hand, the latter group defined good fabric hand when the fabric is silky and smooth.
Introducing tactile sensation to robotic system is one of the biggest challenges for robotic researchers. Since several sensations such as audio, visual, force and kinetic sensation have already been installed in robotic systems, tactile sensation may bring a next breakthrough for intelligent systems. Hence, this study proposes a new idea of tactile sensor for robotic systems using a cosmetic powder brush. That is, the brush is used in our system as a tracing element against an object. The vibration during the brush traces an object is measured using a piezoelectric vibration sensor which is attached to the base of brush's bristles. Tracing experiments are conducted with 9 samples of underclothes' fabrics and a paper. Vibration data obtained shows distinct differences between the samples. This may suggest that the cosmetic powder brush could be used as a tracing element of tactile sensor because it can distinguishes a slight difference of texture of objects.
