Abstract: A battery module includes: a plurality of battery cells each of which has a flat shape; a plurality of elastic spacers laminated and disposed alternately with the battery cells; and a restraining member configured to restrain the battery cells and the elastic spacers in a laminating direction of the battery cells. Each of the elastic spacers has a sheet portion that extends between two adjacent battery cells and a plurality of protrusions that protrudes from one surface of the sheet portion. The protrusions are disposed at an equal interval along at least a first direction. When an interval between the protrusions in the first direction is x and a dimension of each protrusion in the first direction is y, relationships of 4 mm?y?18 mm, y?4/9x?10/3, and y?x?2 are satisfied.

Abstract: A support system for making decisions on medical treatment plans or test plans includes using a decision tree having branches that represent actions to be selected in deciding the medical treatment plans or test plans for a person to be inspected and events that may possibly occur as a result of the selected actions, and calculating expectations of the actions to be selected in accordance with occurrence probabilities with which the respective events occur and utility values which reflect intentions of the person to be inspected on the events. The occurrence probabilities of the branches are renewable in accordance with attribute information of the person to be inspected.

Abstract: A method of displaying a scattergram includes measuring a plurality of particles with a particle measuring apparatus and preparing distribution data representing a frequency distribution of the particles on a two-dimensional coordinate plane based on a pair of parameters obtained from each of the particles. Thereafter, a scattergram is displayed based on the distribution data on a color display device by allowing the coordinates of a particle to correspond to a pixel, each of the pixels being made of three fundamental color luminescent components. A luminance of each of the three fundamental color luminescent components corresponds to a frequency of the particles on the scattergram. As such, the frequencies of the particles are displayed in different colors.

Abstract: To reduce the effects of the contaminants in the measurement of microorganisms and the reduction of the time necessary for the measurement. Measurement is performed of the microorganism prior to and following culture, and the difference between the two is found. This prevents errors caused by the effect of contaminants contained in the specimens. Since the measurement of the microorganism is performed by means of a flow cytometer, the microorganisms can be measured even when the culture period is short. Moreover, the measurements are accurate, since the contaminants are not measured. Furthermore, the growth form of the microorganisms can be determined by measuring the changes in the intensity of the light emission over the duration of emission of the forward scattered light detected by means of a flow cytometer.

Abstract: An apparatus for differentiating erythrocytes in urine includes: a sheath flow cell for forming a urine specimen flow by surrounding a urine specimen with a sheath liquid, the urine specimen containing particles; a light application device for applying light to the urine specimen flow; a light detector for detecting a light signal emitted by each particle in the urine specimen flow; an identification device for identifying erythrocytes from the particles in the urine specimen flow in accordance with the detected light signal; a particle size distribution preparing device for preparing a particle size distribution diagram of the identified erythrocytes; a determining device for determining an origin of the erythrocytes in accordance with an erythrocyte size value at which an accumulated frequency of erythrocytes as counted from a smallest size in the particle size distribution diagram agrees with a preset value larger than half of a total accumulated frequency in the particle size distribution diagram; and an

Abstract: An apparatus comprises a memory for storing a characteristic pattern for each of a plurality of groups, a discriminant function defining part for selecting at random every combination of two groups of the plurality of groups stored in the memory and defining for every selected combination of two groups a two-group linear discriminant function which provides an optimal borderline bisecting the combination of two groups, a two-group discrimination result calculation part for calculating a two-group discrimination result to which a given sample is attributed for every combination of two groups using the two-group linear discriminant function defined by the discriminant function defining part, a support degree determination part for determining a support degree of the two-group discrimination result obtained by the two-group discrimination result calculation part for every combination of two-groups, and an attribution degree calculation part for calculating attribution degrees indicating to what extent the test d

Abstract: A novel method of diagnosing cerebral infarction using a neural network, wherein plural sets of data previously obtained from healthy and sick persons, each including an age, measured values of coagulo-fibrinolytic molecular markers ( e.g., D-dimer, TAT and PAP) , an index indicative of the state of cerebral infarction (e.g., 0 for healthy persons and 1 for sick persons) and the like, are repeatedly input into a neural network to let it learn the correlation of these characteristics and, thereafter, a set of data of a person to be diagnosed, including his age, measured values of the coagulo-fibrinolytic molecular markers and the like, are input in the neural network to obtain an index indicative of his state of cerebral infarction as a degree of dangerousness of cerebral infarction. This method is significantly higher in accuracy as compared with the prior art methods using the same data.

Abstract: A method of using a technique of fuzzy inference for partioning a particle size distribution diagram indicative of a relationship between particle size and its frequency of a mixture of several kinds of granular substances, such as white blood corpuscles including lymph corpuscles, monocytes and granulocytes, to define particle size regions for the respective substances. More particularly, some estimation points are selected on the abscissa of the particle size distribution diagram and some characteristic parameters are calculated at each estimation point with the corresponding frequency. A fuzzy production rule for each characteristic parameter is applied to seek an estimated value of the estimation point and the estimated values for all characteristic parameters at each estimation point are combined to obtain a composite estimated value. The estimation point corresponding to the greatest one of all resultant composite estimated values is appointed to an objective partition point.

Abstract: In the case of forming a distribution diagram based upon measured data consisting of measured values of two or more characteristics of particles and counted values thereof which are obtained by analyzing a specimen intermixedly including plural kinds of particles with a particle analyzing device, by plotting the particles in a co-ordinate system of two or more dimensions having said characteristics as its parameters, a method of collecting the measured data over a specific length of measuring time and seeking a time-related change of the distribution diagram to visually display the same, in which a space defined by the co-ordinate system is partitioned into plural domains, in the measuring time is divided into plural time intervals and the number of the particles belonging to each domain is counted for each time interval, thereby displaying the particle distribution diagram partitioned into domains on a display screen and also displaying a time-related change of the number of particles with a folded-line diag