• Title/Summary/Keyword: Health security

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The Geopolitics of Humanitarian Assistance to North Korea under International Sanctions (대북 제재와 인도적 원조의 지정학)

  • Lee, Jong-Woon
    • Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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    • v.22 no.4
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    • pp.405-421
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    • 2019
  • International aid to North Korea remains far below the humanitarian needs of vulnerable people. This paper examines the trajectory of international humanitarian assistance to North Korea over the last two decades with the focus on its decline in the context of the country's nuclear standoff and corresponding stringent sanctions. In so doing, the paper addresses major problems associated with North Korea's reception of foreign aid and operational constraints placed on humanitarian activities in the country. It shows that humanitarian assistance to North Korea has been largely shaped by geopolitical dynamics. A survey of UN reports and statistics also suggests a shifting trend in recent international aid to North Korea. The decline of aid and multiple operational obstacles faced by humanitarian organizations, for instance, have led to a fall in agricultural support and a proportional rise in health and related services. While UN Security Council resolutions include an exemption provision, humanitarian assistance to North Korea has been constrained by stringent sanctions, which have led to adverse consequences for the civilian population. In this regard, the paper suggests some policy directions for international aid to North Korea amidst negotiations over denuclearization, while stressing an urgent need to address the negative impact of sanctions on vulnerable groups in the country.

Comparison on the Time series of Housing Viewpoint of University Student (대학생 주거관의 시계열적 비교)

A Comparative Study on the Housing Viewpoint between Korean and Chinese University Students (한.중 대학생의 주거관에 대한 비교 연구)

  • An, Ok-Hee;Jo, Oung-Mi;Hao, Jia
    • Journal of the Korean housing association
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.121-129
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    • 2009
  • Today, we are living while interchanging with various countries in multilateral measures and residential culture have been changed while interchanging in the same manner. In order to become an internationally recognized residential environment designer in this environment, we must understand the housing viewpoint of residents in that country first. Therefore, this study is intended to obtain the useful materials for residential environment design of Korea and China by comparing the housing viewpoint between Chinese students studying in Korea and Korean students. A survey using questionnaire was conducted on 205 Korean students and 193 Chinese students (Chinese race) from Y University on a random sampling basis. The result of survey is as follows. First, as both Korean and Chinese university students have a similar tendency on previous house type, current house type, and desired house type, it can be understood that they are similar each other in the experience and preference of house type. Second, Korean and Chinese university students consider and as the most important functions of residence, but Chinese university students consider more functions of residence than Korean students. And, both Korean and Chinese students consider a living room as the most important space among housing spaces, but Chinese consider a private room more importantly than Korean. Third, Chinese university students have stronger desire to possess houses, and desire to purchase houses with larger and more rooms at earlier time than Korean university students. Fourth, when selecting the house, Chinese university students give a higher consideration in terms such as , , , , and than Korean university students. Fifth, satisfaction level of Korean students on current houses was average as a whole, and most Chinese students were generally satisfied with their houses. Sixth, as both of Korean and Chinese university students have higher level of consideration in the items such as safety>, , , , , , , , , , and compared to the level of satisfaction, thoughtful consideration should be given to those items in housing planning.

A study on needs of women in labour to have family participation during the labour process (산부의 가족분만참여 요구)

  • Kim, Hea-Sook;Choi, Yun-Soon;Chang, Soon-Bok;Jun, Eun-Mi;Chung, Chae-Weon
    • 모자간호학회지
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.38-48
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    • 1993
  • This study was done to suggest modification in the present hospital policy for Labour and Delivery which separates women in labour from their families. The design for study was a descriptive study. The number of subjects consisted of 82 postpartum women who had delivered within 12 hours and for whom there were no complications either for the mothers or for the newborns. Data collection was done with a structured questionnaire which was analyzed using frequencies and percentiles. The results of this study are as follows : 1. Most of subjects (90.2%) wanted their family to participate in the labour process. Husband were chosen as the primary participant(79.3%). The number of subjects who wanted their family to support them through the whole labour process (35.4%) was the highest, followed by, during labour(32.9%), as contrasted to, during delivery (1.2%). 2. Support from husband during pregnancy ranged from 55.6%-87.6% for all items. Primary support was from husband during the pregnancy. 3. The subjects wanted support from their families in labour by way of encouraging(84.1%), consolidating(81.7%), changing position(43.9%), maintaining relaxation(35.4%) and helping with respiration control (29.3%). The results showed higher support on the emotional level than the physical and informational level (26.8%). 4. The subjects answered that they expected that participation by their family during the labour process would have the effect of increasing security for the women in labour(79.3%), providing a better relationship between the family and the women in labour (57.3%) and the newborns(34.1%), and making for an easier labour courses (23.2%). 5. The priority of family members that the subjects wanted support from was, the husband, mother and mother-in-law in that order. It can be concluded that nurses help to maintain a management policy in the maternity setting which ignores the needs of the women in labour. If consideration is to be given to these subjects, future programs should include participation by the family in the labour process.

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Trends in Survival of Childhood Cancers in a University Hospital, Northeast Thailand, 1993-2012

  • Wongmeerit, Phunnipit;Suwanrungruang, Krittika;Jetsrisuparb, Arunee;Komvilaisak, Patcharee;Wiangnon, Surapon
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.17 no.7
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    • pp.3515-3519
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    • 2016
  • Background: In Thailand, a national treatment protocol for childhood leukemia and lymphoma (LL) was implemented in 2006. Access to treatment has also improved with the National Health Security system. Since these innovations, survival of childhood LL has not been fully described. Materials and Methods: Trends and survival of children under 15 with childhood cancers diagnosed between 1993 and 2012 were investigated using the hospital-based data from the Khon Kaen Cancer Registry, Srinagarind Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. Childhood cancers were classified into 12 diagnostic groups, according to the ICCC based on the histology of the cancer. Survival rates were described by period, depending on the treatment protocol. For leukemias and lymphomas, survival was assessed for 3 periods (1993-99, 2000-5, 2006-12) while for solid tumors it was for 2 periods (before and after 2000). The impacts of sex, age, use of the national protocol, and catchment area on leukemia and lymphoma were evaluated. Overall survival was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method while the Cox proportional hazard model was used for multivariate analysis. Trends were calculated using the R program. Results: A total of 2,343 childhood cancer cases were included. Survival for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) from 1993-9, 2000-5, and 2006-12 improved significantly (43.7%, 64.6%, and 69.9%). This was to a lesser extent true for acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia (ANLL) (28.1%, 42.0%, and 42.2%). Survival of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) also improved significantly (44%, 65.5%, and 86.8%) but not for Hodgkin disease (HD) (30.1%, 66.1%, and 70.6%). According to multivariate analysis, significant risk factors associated with poor survival in the ALL group were age under 1 and over 10 years, while not using the national protocol had hazard ratios (HR) of 1.6, 1.3, and 2.3 respectively. In NHL, only non-use of national protocols was a risk factor (HR 3.9). In ANLL and HD, none of the factors influenced survival. Survival of solid tumors (liver tumors, retinoblastomas) were significantly increased compared to after and before 2000 while survival for CNS tumors, neuroblastoma and bone tumors was not changed. Conclusions: The survival of childhood cancer in Thailand has markedly improved. Since implementation of national protocols, this is particularly the case for ALL and NHL. These results may be generalizable for the whole country.

Monitoring of On-Line Nutrition Information-Analysis of Meta Data (인터넷 영양정보의 모니터링-메타데이터의 분석)

  • 강혜경;강명희;유경혜;이선영
    • Journal of Nutrition and Health
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    • v.37 no.8
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    • pp.688-700
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    • 2004
  • This study was conducted to analyze how appropriate the on-line nutrition information was externally as a web information. Four-hundred-ninety-seven web sites from 5 internet search engines (Yahoo, Empas, Nate, Hanmir, Naver) were selected on the basis of April 25th, 2004. The skillful personnels monitored them about 8 evaluating categories: clarity, purpose, authority, durability, advertisement, privacy and/or security, responsibility, and contents. Forty percent of the selected web sites were operated by the companies which had commercial purpose like internet shopping malls and 5.6% by academies, societies, research institutions, schools/colleges and public institutions. Most of web sites (76.1 %) were managed for advertisements and sales of companies' commodities, and 32.6% had the food and nutrition information as first purpose. Ninety-three percent of web sites were targeted to healthy individuals through whole life cycle. Specifically, there were lots of web sites for the obesity which were offered by diet related companies. Of the 497 web sites, 193 mentioned the name providing the nutrition information, but only 1/3 had reliability on their specialty. As a source of nutrition information, 52.7% of web sites were using 'books of the major field' and 42.0% 'newspapers' and 23.7% 'broadcasting', respectively. Most web sites mentioned 'setting-up date' but not 'renewal date'. Thirty-six percent of web sites took '2 - 3 days' for the operators to answer the questions through the bulletin. Forty-seven percent of web sites answered' 1 - 10 questions' per 1 week, but 40.1 % of them didn't answer for a week at all. There were 118 web sites (23.7%) to record the connected frequencies and 36.0% of them put the advertisements. Around 96% of web sites mentioned feedback addresses. Among the menus of web sites, 68.0% were about self-advertisement and 64.0% about nutrition information. Each web site was scored to judge its external quality according to the operators by selecting 13 items. Web sites managed by public institution had highest scores (9.5), and lowest in private vendors', food companies' and individual web pages. Among search engines, Naver got the highest score of 7.0 and Nate the lowest one of 6.1. As it was only the pilot study, there were several limits in evaluating tools, time and monitored quantity. To make monitoring of on-line nutrition informatiions actively, standardized monitoring forms might be developed under the integrated studies.

Epigenetic Regulation of Fungal Development and Pathogenesis in the Rice Blast Fungus

  • Jeon, Junhyun
    • 한국균학회소식:학술대회논문집
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    • 2014.10a
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    • pp.11-11
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    • 2014
  • Fungal pathogens have huge impact on health and economic wellbeing of human by causing life-threatening mycoses in immune-compromised patients or by destroying crop plants. A key determinant of fungal pathogenesis is their ability to undergo developmental change in response to host or environmental factors. Genetic pathways that regulate such morphological transitions and adaptation are therefore extensively studied during the last few decades. Given that epigenetic as well as genetic components play pivotal roles in development of plants and mammals, contribution of microbial epigenetic counterparts to this morphogenetic process is intriguing yet nearly unappreciated question to date. To bridge this gap in our knowledge, we set out to investigate histone modifications among epigenetic mechanisms that possibly regulate fungal adaptation and processes involved in pathogenesis of a model plant pathogenic fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. M. oryzae is a causal agent of rice blast disease, which destroys 10 to 30% of the rice crop annually. Since the rice is the staple food for more than half of human population, the disease is a major threat to global food security. In addition to the socioeconomic impact of the disease it causes, the fungus is genetically tractable and can undergo well-defined morphological transitions including asexual spore production and appressorium (a specialized infection structure) formation in vitro, making it a model to study fungal development and pathogenicity. For functional and comparative analysis of histone modifications, a web-based database (dbHiMo) was constructed to archive and analyze histone modifying enzymes from eukaryotic species whose genome sequences are available. Histone modifying enzymes were identified applying a search pipeline built upon profile hidden Markov model (HMM) to proteomes. The database incorporates 22,169 histone-modifying enzymes identified from 342 species including 214 fungal, 33 plants, and 77 metazoan species. The dbHiMo provides users with web-based personalized data browsing and analysis tools, supporting comparative and evolutionary genomics. Based on the database entries, functional analysis of genes encoding histone acetyltransferases and histone demethylases is under way. Here I provide examples of such analyses that show how histone acetylation and methylation is implicated in regulating important aspects of fungal pathogenesis. Current analysis of histone modifying enzymes will be followed by ChIP-Seq and RNA-seq experiments to pinpoint the genes that are controlled by particular histone modifications. We anticipate that our work will provide not only the significant advances in our understanding of epigenetic mechanisms operating in microbial eukaryotes but also basis to expand our perspective on regulation of development in fungal pathogens.

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Survey on Educational Needs for Workers in Social Welfare Facilities in Jeju Special Self-Governing Province (제주특별자치도 사회복지시설종사자의 교육요구 조사)

  • Hwang, Seong-Joon
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.271-284
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    • 2020
  • The purpose of this study is to identify the educational needs among social workers in social welfare facilities in Jeju province concerning lack of knowledge, skill and attitude, and establish the systematic education for prosecuting diverse training and suggest fundamental data for designing future curriculum. The results of analyzing top 10 educational needs for the workers are as follows: firstly technics for managing crises, understanding and practice for clients (characteristics, human right, safety and health), case management (basic), counseling technique (basic), case management (advanced), counseling technique (advanced), planning and operating social welfare program, managing client response and emotional labor, improving competence for communication (between staffs and clients, etc.), and finally assessing project outcome (project plan, execution, management and assessment, etc.). Social workers in social welfare facilities in the area have highly recognized the necessity of profession centred education. However, they had low satisfaction with the diversity of profession education in the Jeju island and the systematic training courses. This survey suggests the various results concerning qualitative growth of profession education, expansion of job-centred curriculum and security of professional instructors to fulfil systematic education training for social workers.

Women and Poverty in Korea: the Feminization of Poverty? (한국의 빈곤의 여성화에 대한 실증 분석)

  • Seok, Jae-Eun
    • Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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    • v.56 no.2
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    • pp.167-194
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    • 2004
  • This paper examine the gender-poverty gap and the feminization of poverty in Korea with using data from the National Survey Household Income & Expenditure(1996, 2000) and the Urban Survey Household Income & Expenditure(1996-2002) by Korea National Statistical Office. The poverty rate in 2000 was 16.9 percent for female-head families and 7.9 percent for male-head families, which means that female-head families were 2.6 times more likely to be poor than male-head families. With examining impact of economic crisis in 1998 on gender-poverty gap, it show that both the poverty rate of female-head and male-head increase radically in peak of economic crisis, while, in the stage of recovering economy, the poverty rate of male-head families recovered mostly the level before economic crisis, but that of female-head families recover only the 2/3 level before and the 1/3 remain still under poverty. Thus gender-poverty gap appeared bigger during passing through economic crisis. With analyzing on influence factors of poverty, it appear that poverty is influenced by gender itself as well as education level, working condition which is reflected substantially characteristics of gender. Such an analysis results mean that the considering gender dimension is necessary to resolve poverty fundamentally because gender is a point intersection among family, labour market, and social security. Therefore it appears certain that to develop and adopt of women-friendly social policy is effective approach, which could resolve poverty and social problems related to social rights.

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Relationship between Prevalence of Musculoskeletal Symptoms and Occupational and Personal Factors among Street Cleaners (일부 거리환경미화원의 근골격계 증상 유병률과 직업적 및 개인적 요인의 관련성)

  • Jung, Suk-Chul;Lee, Kyung-Sun;Jung, Myung-Chul;Lee, In-Seok;JungChoi, Kyung-Hee;Bahk, Jin-Wook;Kim, Hyun-Joo
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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    • v.25 no.6
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    • pp.169-179
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    • 2010
  • The aim of this study was to investigate occupational and individual risk factors and working conditions in relation to musculoskeletal symptoms in street cleaners. Investigation was conducted through a survey of 395 male street cleaners employed by the government office in Seoul, Gyeonggi and Chung-Nam from July to August of 2009. The control group was comprised of 143 male drivers and security guards. Risk factors for musculoskeletal symptoms in street cleaners were investigated by multiple logistic regression analysis and also evaluated ergonomic risk factors by assessing working conditions of 4 street cleaners. As a result of symptom questionnaires, all of the prevalent rates of musculoskeletal symptoms in street cleaners had significantly higher results than those of the control group(p<0.05). On binary logistic regression analysis of musculoskeletal symptoms, street cleaners showed significant higher odds ratio as 18.84(95%CI: 6.56-54.12) in the arm/elbow, 10.49(95%CI: 4.29-25.65) in the hand/wrist compared to the control group. Both absence of rest breaks and exposure to ergonomic risk factors showed to be important internal risk factors of musculoskeletal symptoms among street cleaners. The exposure levels of QEC(Quick exposures checklist) in street cleaners were revealed to be higher on the shoulder/arm, wrist/hand, and neck than back, or from stress. The findings appear to show that street cleaners were high-risk group of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Therefore street cleaners require a holistic interventional strategy, including adequate arrangement of rest breaks, improvement of working tools and control of individual risk factors such as obesity and smoking.