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OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between maternal smoking during pregnancy and the body composition of offspring. SUBJECTS: Grade 4 elementary school children ( n =1366; boys/girls, 724/642; 9–10 years old) were enrolled in this study. All parents answered a lifestyle questionnaire, and children underwent passive smoking tests. Urinary cotinine measurement and lifestyle screening test parameters (that is, body weight, body length, body mass index (BMI), obesity index (OI), blood tests for liver function and lipid profile and questions regarding maternal smoking and lifestyle) were evaluated in terms of their relationship with maternal smoking. In addition, urinary 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) concentration was measured in 80 randomly selected children to assess its relationship with oxidative stress. RESULTS: Both BMI and OI were significantly higher in children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy than in those whose mothers never smoked (BMI: 17.2±2.7 vs 16.9±2.5 kg m –2 , P =0.016; OI: 2.7±14.3% vs 0.4±14.0%, P =0.003). The degree of elevation was positively correlated with the duration of maternal smoking. The increases in BMI and OI resulted from increased body weight and reduced height. The confounding factors—‘breakfast with family’, ‘watching television at dinner’, ‘eating and drinking before sleep’, ‘watching television for >2 h’, ‘sleep duration <8 h’ and ‘playing sports’—were statistically significant. BMI and OI were significantly high in children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy in these six confounders. On the other hand, urinary 8-OHdG concentration was negatively correlated with BMI in children who had >1.3 ng ml –1 urinary cotinine, suggesting that it may be related to basal metabolism due to oxidative stress. CONCLUSION: Maternal smoking is a risk factor for higher BMI and OI in 9- to 10-year-old children whose mothers smoke during pregnancy and may be independent of other confounding factors.

The 3 He spin filter has been developed to use pulsed neutrons effectively at J-PARC MLF. In this study, the 3 He spin filter was installed in the single crystal neutron diffractometer (BL18 SENJU) at J-PARC MLF as a polarizer of the incident beam, and Half-polarized neutron diffraction experiments were performed. The 3 He spin filter was used the ”drop-in cell” method with cells that had a relaxation time of 150 hours in the past experiments. The sample was a single crystal of Heusler crystal Cu 2 MnAl and the sample magnetic field was 0.3 T. The intensities of (111) Bragg peaks of Cu 2 MnAl were drastically changed with the polarity of the incident neutron beam, and the flipping ratio of 21.7 at 3.6 Å was observed. The experimental setup and the performance of the 3 He spin filter used in this experiment are described in detail in this paper.

Measurements of the muonic helium atom hyperfine structure (HFS) are a sensitive tool to test the theory of three-body atomic systems and bound-state quantum electrodynamics (QED) and to determine fundamental constants of the negative muon magnetic moment and mass. The world’s most intense pulsed negative muon beam at J-PARC MUSE brings an opportunity to improve previous measurements and test further CPT invariance by comparing the magnetic moments and masses of positive and negative muons. Test measurements at D-line are now in progress utilizing MuSEUM apparatus at zero field. The first results already have better accuracy than previous measurements in the 1980s. Also, the investigation of a new experimental approach to improve HFS measurements by repolarizing muonic helium atoms using a spin-exchange optical pumping (SEOP) technique was started. If successful, this would drastically improve the measurement accuracy.

Abstract The neutron lifetime has been measured by comparing the decay rate with the reaction rate of $^3$He nuclei of a pulsed neutron beam from the spallation neutron source at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC). The decay rate and the reaction rate were determined by simultaneously detecting electrons from the neutron decay and protons from the $^3$He(n,p)$^3$H reaction using a gas chamber, the working gas of which contains diluted $^3$He. The measured neutron lifetime was $898\\,\\pm\\,10\\,_{\\rm stat}\\,^{+15}_{-18}\\,_{\\rm sys}\\,$s.

We present the measured spin correlation coefficient Cy,y for p-3He elastic scattering at 100 MeV at the angles θc.m.=46.9∘–149.2∘ in the center of mass system. The experiment was performed using a 100 MeV polarized proton beam in conjunction with the polarized 3He target. Proton beams were injected to the target, and scattered protons were detected by using E-ΔE detectors which consisted of plastic and NaI(Tl) scintillators. The data are compared with rigorous numerical calculations based on realistic NN potentials as well as with the Δ-isobar excitation . The obtained results indicate that the Cy,y expands the knowledge of the nuclear interactions with Δ-isobar or those including 3NFs that are masked in nucleon-deuteron elastic scattering.

To solve the “neutron lifetime puzzle,” where measured neutron lifetimes differ depending on the measurement methods, an experiment with a pulsed neutron beam at J-PARC is in progress. In this experiment, neutrons are bunched into 40-cm lengths using a spin flip chopper (SFC), where the statistical sensitivity was limited by the aperture size of the SFC. The SFC comprises three sets of magnetic supermirrors and two resonant spin flippers. In this paper, we discuss an upgrade to enlarge the apertures of the SFC. With this upgrade, the statistics per unit time of the neutron lifetime experiment increased by a factor of 2.8, while maintaining a signal-to-noise ratio of 250–400, which is comparable to the previous one. Consequently, the time required to reach a precision of 1 s in the neutron lifetime experiment was reduced from 590 to 170 days, which is a significant reduction in time. This improvement in the statistics will also contribute to the reduction of systematic uncertainties, such as background evaluation, fostering further advancements in the neutron lifetime experiments at J-PARC.

Neutron beam monitors are regularly used in various neutron beam experiments to compare two or more sets of data taken in different experimental conditions. A neutron lifetime experiment at BL05, the NOP beamline, in J-PARC requires to monitor the initial neutron intensity with an precision of 0.1% to measure the neutron lifetime with the same accuracy. The performance of a thin 3He gas neutron beam monitor used for the experiment was studied to estimate the systematic uncertainties in the neutron lifetime measurement.

In order to improve the disappointing prognosis of adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), we applied similar induction therapy as that used for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), ie frequent administration of doxorubicin (DOX). DOX 30 mg/m(2) was administered from days 1 to 3 and from days 8 to 10 together with vincristine, prednisolone, cyclophosphamide and L-asparaginase, followed by three courses of consolidation and four courses of intensification. From December 1993 to February 1997, 285 untreated adult patients with de novo ALL were entered. Of 263 evaluable patients (age 15 to 59; median 31), 205 (78%) obtained complete remission (CR). At a median follow-up period of 63 months, the predicted 6-year overall survival (OS) rate of all patients was 33%, and disease-free survival (DFS) rate of CR patients was 30%, respectively. By multivariate analysis, favorable prognostic factors for the achievement of CR were age <40 and WBC <50 000/microl; for longer OS were age <30 and WBC <30 000/microl; and for longer DFS of CR patients were FAB L1 and ALT <50 IU/l. Among 229 patients who had adequate cytogenetic data, 51 (22%) had Philadelphia (Ph) chromosome. Ph-negative chromosome was a common favorable prognostic factor for CR, longer OS and DFS. DFS was not different between early sequential intensification (n = 48) and intermittent intensification (n = 43) during the maintenance phase. Among CR patients under 40 years old, the 6-year survival was not different between the allocated related allo-BMT group (34 patients) and the allocated chemotherapy group (108 patients). However, among patients with Ph-positive ALL, the survival of patients who actually received allo-BMT was superior to that of patients who received chemotherapy (P = 0.046).

We present a precise measurement of 3He analyzing powers for p-3He elastic scattering with the polarized 3He target at 50, 65, 70, and 100 MeV. The data at 65 and 70 MeV are compared with the theoretical predictions based on the modern nucleon-nucleon potentials. Large discrepancies between the data and the predictions are clearly seen at the angles where the 3He analyzing power takes the minimum and maximum values, which are not explained by Δ-isobar effects.

The status of the polarised neutron spectrometer constructed at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex through a collaboration between Tohoku University and KEK will be reported. In particular, the optimisation of magnetic fields to minimise neutron- beam depolarisation using the finite element method will be discussed on the basis of several simulations using the finite element method.