Life cycle assessment on automotive bumper: Scenario analysis based on End-of-Life vehicle recycling system in Japan.

In the last three decades, the increased use of plastics is rapidly becoming a global environmental issue, resulting in growing landfills, pollution of surrounding atmosphere, and possible greenhouse effect. The automotive industry, as a major demander of plastic materials, is starting to take responsibility on sustainable actions. Japan, as the world's top tier car manufacturing and dealing country, has been taking attempts to the proper dealings of used auto-plastic.

Estimation of End-of-Life Hybrid Vehicle number in Japan considering secondhand vehicle exportation.

Hybrid Vehicle (HV) is becoming more and more popular around the world in recent years. Japan is the biggest HV market presently, the sales of HV is actually increasing faster than the government has predicted. Meanwhile, a huge amount of End-of-Life HV will emerge in the future, and since HV consumes more rare metal (cobalt and nickel, etc.

Multiple abdominal granuloma caused by spilled gallstones with imaging findings that mimic malignancy.

Multiple abdominal granulomas caused by spilled gallstones during a laparoscopic cholecystectomy are a rare complication. The images of the granuloma mimicked malignancy.

Effectiveness of diagnostic paracentesis and ascites analysis for suspected strangulation obstruction.

Strangulation obstruction is a surgical emergency, but its accurate diagnosis and timely surgical treatment are still matters of debate. We conducted a prospective observational study. We performed diagnostic paracentesis preoperatively for patients with suspected strangulation obstruction or, if that was impossible, we obtained ascites at the time of laparotomy.