Assessment of Urinary Cotinine as a Marker of Nicotine Absorption from Tobacco Leaves: A Study on Tobacco Farmers in Malaysia: Mayumi Onuki, et al. Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo—To assess dermal absorption of nicotine from tobacco leaves in relation to Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS), urinary cotinine concentrations were measured in 80 male tobacco‐growing farmers and in 40 healthy males (controls) who did not handle wet tobacco leaves in Kelantan, Malaysia. Among non‐smokers, urinary cotinine levels in farmers were significantly higher than those of controls; farmers with urinary cotinine of 50 ng/ml/m2 or above showed eye symptoms more frequently than those below this level (p<0.05). Farmers who did not wear protective equipment had subjective symptoms more frequently than those who used the equipment (p<0.05); some of these symptoms were seen more frequently in organophosphate (Tamaron) users than in non‐users. As tobacco farmers evidence a risk of nicotine poisoning from tobacco leaves, assessment including GTS together with effects of pesticides will be necessary.

We examined the effects of pesticides on the central and peripheral nervous system in the setting of a tobacco farm at a developing country. Maximal motor and sensory nerve conduction velocities (MCV and SCV, respectively) in the median, sural and tibial nerves, postural sway, and brain-evoked potentials (auditory event-related and visual-evoked potentials) were measured in 80 male tobacco farmers and age-and sex-matched 40 controls in Kelantan, Malaysia. Median SCV (finger-wrist) in farmers using Delsen (mancozeb, dithiocarbamate fungicide), who showed significant decrease of serum cholinesterase activities, were significantly lower compared with the controls. Sural SCV in farmers using Fastac (α α α α α-cypermethrin, pyrethroid insecticide) and median MCV (elbowwrist) in farmers using Tamex (butralin, dinitroaniline herbicide) were significantly slowed compared with their respective controls. In Delsen (mancozeb, dithiocarbamate) users, the power of postural sway of 0-1 Hz was significantly larger than that in the controls both in the anterior-posterior direction with eyes open and in the right-left direction with eyes closed. The former type of sway was also significantly increased in Tamaron (methamidophos, organophosphorus insecticide) users. In conclusion, nerve conduction velocities and postural sway seem to be sensitive indicators of the effects of pesticides on the central and peripheral nervous system.

Quasicrystals have emerged as a new class of solid-state materials that have long-range order without periodicity, exhibiting rotational symmetries that are disallowed for periodic crystals in most cases. To date, hundreds of new quasicrystals have been found, leading to the discovery of many new and exciting phenomena. However, the pace of the discovery of new quasicrystals has slowed in recent years, largely owing to the lack of clear guiding principles for the synthesis of new quasicrystals. Here, we show that the discovery of new quasicrystals can be accelerated with a simple machine learning workflow. With a list of the chemical compositions of known quasicrystals, approximant crystals, and ordinary crystals, we trained a prediction model to solve the three-class classification task and evaluated its predictability compared to the observed phase diagrams of ternary aluminum systems. The validation experiments strongly support the superior predictive power of machine learning, with the precision and recall of the phase prediction task reaching approximately 0.793 and 0.714, respectively. Furthermore, analyzing the input--output relationships black-boxed into the model, we identified nontrivial empirical equations interpretable by humans that describe conditions necessary for quasicrystal formation.

Conversion Materials" have recently attracted the attention of many researchers, and also have been investigated very actively. The Thermoelectrics Society of Japan was established on April 1st, 2004. Since the predecessor group of the society started in 1994, research activity on thermoelectrics in Japan has increased very rapidly. The Editorial Committee of the Thermoelectrics Society of Japan has participated in the joint editing of Materials Transactions in July 2004. This special issue was planned by the society following the first special issue of Vol. 46, No. 7 (2005) of Materials Transactions, which was published in commemoration of the establishment of the society. In this seventh issue, 5 papers covering the various thermoelectric materials are included.