Input and output budgets of radiocesium concerning the forest floor in the mountain forest of Fukushima released from the TEPCO's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident.

Estimations of radiocesium input and output concerning the forest floor within a mountain forest region have been conducted in the north and central part of the Abukuma Mountains of Fukushima, northeast Japan, after a 2-3 year period following the TEPCO Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident. The radiocesium input and output associated with surface washoff, throughfall, stemflow, and litterfall processes at experimental plots installed on the forest floor of evergreen Japanese cedars and deciduous Konara oaks have been monitored. Despite the high output potential in the mountainous forest of Fukushima, the results at both monitoring locations show the radiocesium input to be 4-50 times higher than the output during the summer monsoon in Fukushima.

The transfer of radiocesium from the bark to the stemflow of chestnut trees (Castanea crenata) contaminated by radionuclides from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident.

We report on the behavior of radiocesium in tree bark and its transfer into the stemflows of chestnut trees in a forest in the Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. In stems that were present at the time of the accident, the radiocesium concentration of the bark was found to be approximately 10 times that of the wood. The average (137)Cs concentration of the dissolved fraction (<0.

Pipette aspiration technique for the measurement of nonlinear and anisotropic mechanical properties of blood vessel walls under biaxial stretch.

A pipette aspiration technique was proposed for the measurement of nonlinear mechanical properties of arteries under biaxial stretching. A cross-shaped specimen of porcine thoracic aorta whose principal axes corresponded with the axial and circumferential directions of the aortic walls was excised. The intraluminal surface of the specimen was aspirated with a circular cross-sectioned glass pipette while the specimen was stretching in the axial and circumferential directions in 10% increments.

Local elastic modulus of atherosclerotic lesions of rabbit thoracic aortas measured by pipette aspiration method.

Changes in mechanical properties of arteries during atherogenesis remain controversial. One of the reasons could be that they have been evaluated with parameters measured in a whole vessel, although the lesions are localized. The local elastic modulus of atherosclerotic lesions was measured by the pipette aspiration method in thoracic aortas of rabbits fed a cholesterol diet for 8, 16, 24 and 28 weeks.