• Maintaining appropriate amount of physical activity is essential for health and disease prevention. Gait is the most common type of physical activity in everyday life. Monitoring the amount of physical activity in everyday lives may benefit mainly those who are at threat of metabolic syndrome and overweight. Towards better estimation of the amount of physical activity utilizing wearable sensors, we focused on taking running and walking economy into account. The relationship between step length and oxygen uptake was first determined. Step length estimation with moderate accuracy was accomplished using acceleration signals during walking. Step length was then taken into energy expenditure calculation as one of the variables.

Together with the basic version of the current locomotion monitoring system capable of counting staircase climbing up & down, we managed to upgrade our locomotion monitoring system into 3 dimensional.

• Tocotrienol, one of vitamin E, has recovered by the conventional method with molecular distillation from deodrizer distillate discharged from the oil refining processes. However, tocotrienol easily loses its activity due to its low thermal stability, so that its recovery ratio and purity were extremely low. We proposed a novel method to selectively recover tocotrienol by adsorption/desorption using anion-exchange resin at 50 degree C. Tocotrienol is retained on the resin by ion-exchange reaction, and then released and recoverd from the resin by other ion-exchange reaction. Prior to the adsorption/desorption, free fatty acid, a major component of the feed, should be removed by esterification using cation-exchange resin at 50 degree C.

This innovative technology succeeds in solving the serious problems in the current tocotrienol production, the large weight loss due to the thermal decomposition and large amount of remaining impurities. This technology applies to the production of not only tocotrienol but also tocopherol as bioactive compounds s in food chemicals.

• The Smart Aging International Research Center (SAIRC) was founded on 1 October 2009. This Center proposes the creation of a new field to produce well-rounded personnel who have gained “totally comprehensive intelligence” from their experience, in order to cope with various problems associated with the diverse and complex super-aging society. To this end, the Center will promote interdisciplinary cooperative research, international collaborative research projects, and research collaborations with industry, as well as disseminate and exchange information by holding international conferences and symposia.　 The SAIRC is designed to develop an approach for maintaining and improving brain and mental health in a diverse and complex society from the standpoints of brain science, with the aim of maintaining and improving brain functions; cognitive neuroscience and psychology, with the aim of maintaining a healthy and tranquil state of mind at each aging stage; and philosophy, phenomenology and ethics that provide a radical reconsideration of the concept of the “mind.” We welcome collaborative researches with companies, and academic consultations.

• "Features"
• High-resolution imaging of biological tissue is non-invasively obtained with high frequency ultrasound. We have developed some ultrasound microscope systems which realized the resolution of 15-micron with 100 MHz and resolution to visualize a single cell with GHz range ultrasound. Ultrasonic imaging provides not only tissue morphology but also information on tissue elasticity. Recently, we have developed a real-time three-dimensional photoacoustic imaging system for visualization of subcutaneous micro vasculature and oxygen saturation.
• "Targeted Application(s)/Industry"
• High frequency ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging is repeatedly and non-invasively applied for early diagnosis of atherosclerosis, skin aging and tissue metabolism. They are useful for efficacy assessment of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. High frequency ultrasound is also applied in the industrial areas where thickness measurement of opaque film or bilayer thin coating with the precision of 0.1 micron is required.

• We have revealed relationships among brain structure, brain function, lifestyle, genetic factor, and cognitive function using brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) database. The goal of our project is to prevent several diseases and disorders such as dementia by performing personalized medicine using the large brain MRI database.

Our research is related with several industrial fields such as food, sleep, and other lifestyle industries. In addition, our research is also related with medical field such as preventing medicine and brain check-up.