Rapid detection of virulence factors of pathogens is important in diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases． Certain strains of Staphylococcus a ureus express either or both of two related， but immunologically distinct， exfo－ liative toxins （ETA and ETB）． These toxins cause staphylococcal scalded－skin syndrome （SSSS）． We describe here the development of a real－time PCR detection method for the genes for ETA and ETB． We believe this method is useful for rapid and reliable identification of ET producing S． aureus．
This study investigated Japanese characteristics of attitude to disclosure of information to cancer patients , in order to find Japanese style of informed consent, comparing it with those of Germans. Ordinary people and students in Japan and Germany answered a questionnaire about themselves and Results are as follows: 1 ) Though most Germans and Japanese demanded disclosure to both themselves and family, some Japanese demanded disclosure to themselves but not it to 2) German students think of family as the same as German ordinary people, but Japanese do not. 3) The reason of disclosure for themselves is I have to prepare to death in the case of Japanese, and reliance in the case of Germans. 4 ) Reasons of closure to family in Japanese were considering family's shock and their mental suffering over family. The fact that Japanese have a tendency towards disclosure, compared with Germans, suggests that Japanese have strong defense mechanism of denying disclosure to family and one of the Japanese style of disclosure is hiding the truth.
We developed a video－on－demand （VOD） system for the education of basic nursing skills． The purpose of this video material was to improve students’ understanding of tbe proper nursing skills by finding mistakes in the video images． As a result of using the present VOD system， we suggested that （1）VOD encourages students’ motivation for learning nursing skills and （2）VOD can be utilized as a materials center by accumulating many images of nursing skills．
