• Title/Summary/Keyword: ubiquitous systems

Search Result 1,096, Processing Time 0.025 seconds

Plans for the Integrated Operation of Intelligent Service Facilities (지능화시설의 통합운영 방안)

  • YIM, Du-Hyun;PARK, Jeong-Woo;NAM, Kwang-Woo
    • Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
    • /
    • v.20 no.1
    • /
    • pp.127-136
    • /
    • 2017
  • U-City laws are divided into three categories: intellectual laws, information superhighway laws, and integrated operation center laws. Previous studies have suggested that efficient infrastructure operation and management is necessary in Ubiquitous-City (U-City). However, infrastructure is often interpreted differently by different laws. The purpose of this study was to plan for the integrated operation of intelligent service facilities by comprehensively analyzing the law system of domestic intelligent service facilities and problems in operation and management based on this critical mind. For this, present conditions and problems of intelligent service facilities were found through interviews with people who are in charge of the law system and other practitioners. The necessity of integrated use, including city information generated from intelligent service facilities and installment locations, has been demonstrated. Government ministries and local governments have established various information systems using ICT and U-City laws that specify integrated management and operation, but do not clearly specify definitions for the specific responsibility and authority for main agents participating in facility operation. A system is needed to smoothly mediate the relevant divisions so that they can use installed equipment simultaneously for efficient operation in generating city information. This objective of this study was to prepare a unitary law system for efficient installment and management of intelligent service facilities by establishing a logically linked relationship among the relevant laws and regulations. This will provide a foundation for a management system that has an integrated linkage of intelligent service facilities.

Development of a Real-Time Control & Management System with In-Vitro Diagnostic Medical Device for Dengue Fever (실시간 뎅기열 관리를 위한 관제시스템 개발)

  • Changsun, Ahn;Yongho, Park;Jungdae, Moon;Jongchan, Park;Youngkon, Seo;Allen, Sohn;Yoonjong, Choi;Yanghwa, Ha;Bongsu, Jung;Youngjoo, Kim
    • KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
    • /
    • v.12 no.2
    • /
    • pp.77-84
    • /
    • 2023
  • Dengue virus transmission is a viral infection disease between humans and Aedes mosquitoes. Dengue is ubiquitous throughout the tropics and subtropical zones, where 1/3 of the global population live. The weather in Korea is also changing to subtropical weather, resulting in increased vulnerable Korean population to dengue virus transmission. It is important to control and prevent the dengue risk with track-recording & monitoring system. It is also required to have the control system to treat and monitor dengue patients with various cases such as regions, ages, genders according to the track-record of the disease. In this paper, we developed a Dengue Control & Prevention System, which can monitor and control dengue outbreaks in real-time with in-vitro diagnostic devices. Dengue Control & Prevention System is composed of in-vitro diagnostic device, which is a fluorescent immunoassay, and real-time monitoring system. In the future, we expect that our Dengue Control & Prevention System can be upgraded to have various disease information from Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency for government policies and diseases control in Korea.

Changes of Autonomous Nerves Activities after the Gyorae Gotjawal Forest Bathing (곶자왈휴양림 삼림욕 후 자율신경 활성의 변화)

  • Sin, Bangsik;Lee, Keun Kwang
    • Journal of Naturopathy
    • /
    • v.7 no.2
    • /
    • pp.39-46
    • /
    • 2018
  • Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of the subjects after visiting the Gyorae forest on the activity of the autonomic nervous system. Methods: Before and after the forest bath, it was measured using a ubiquitous machine. Results: After the bath there was no significant difference in the sympathetic nerve activity (LF) of the control group, but the difference was significant in the experimental group by increasing (p<.038), and in the variance analysis, there was a significant difference between the groups (p<.014), between pre-and post-bath (p<.026), and also between the groups and pre-and post-bath (p<.018). The changes in parasympathetic activity (HF) were not significant in both the control and experimental. In the LF/HF ratio, the experimental group was significantly increased, and in the analysis of variance, there was also significant difference between group and before and after bath (p<.04). Mean pulse rate in the experimental group was a significant increase after bath (p<.026). In the change of pulse standard deviation, the value of the control and the experimental groups by variance analysis was a significant difference between the groups (p<.014). There was no difference between the mean values of the control and the experimental groups in the change of mean heart rate deviation. Conclusions: The autonomic nervous systems were activated after Gyorae forest bathing, where may be useful place for healing.

  • PDF

Context Prediction Using Right and Wrong Patterns to Improve Sequential Matching Performance for More Accurate Dynamic Context-Aware Recommendation (보다 정확한 동적 상황인식 추천을 위해 정확 및 오류 패턴을 활용하여 순차적 매칭 성능이 개선된 상황 예측 방법)

  • Kwon, Oh-Byung
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.19 no.3
    • /
    • pp.51-67
    • /
    • 2009
  • Developing an agile recommender system for nomadic users has been regarded as a promising application in mobile and ubiquitous settings. To increase the quality of personalized recommendation in terms of accuracy and elapsed time, estimating future context of the user in a correct way is highly crucial. Traditionally, time series analysis and Makovian process have been adopted for such forecasting. However, these methods are not adequate in predicting context data, only because most of context data are represented as nominal scale. To resolve these limitations, the alignment-prediction algorithm has been suggested for context prediction, especially for future context from the low-level context. Recently, an ontological approach has been proposed for guided context prediction without context history. However, due to variety of context information, acquiring sufficient context prediction knowledge a priori is not easy in most of service domains. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a novel context prediction methodology, which does not require a priori knowledge, and to increase accuracy and decrease elapsed time for service response. To do so, we have newly developed pattern-based context prediction approach. First of ail, a set of individual rules is derived from each context attribute using context history. Then a pattern consisted of results from reasoning individual rules, is developed for pattern learning. If at least one context property matches, say R, then regard the pattern as right. If the pattern is new, add right pattern, set the value of mismatched properties = 0, freq = 1 and w(R, 1). Otherwise, increase the frequency of the matched right pattern by 1 and then set w(R,freq). After finishing training, if the frequency is greater than a threshold value, then save the right pattern in knowledge base. On the other hand, if at least one context property matches, say W, then regard the pattern as wrong. If the pattern is new, modify the result into wrong answer, add right pattern, and set frequency to 1 and w(W, 1). Or, increase the matched wrong pattern's frequency by 1 and then set w(W, freq). After finishing training, if the frequency value is greater than a threshold level, then save the wrong pattern on the knowledge basis. Then, context prediction is performed with combinatorial rules as follows: first, identify current context. Second, find matched patterns from right patterns. If there is no pattern matched, then find a matching pattern from wrong patterns. If a matching pattern is not found, then choose one context property whose predictability is higher than that of any other properties. To show the feasibility of the methodology proposed in this paper, we collected actual context history from the travelers who had visited the largest amusement park in Korea. As a result, 400 context records were collected in 2009. Then we randomly selected 70% of the records as training data. The rest were selected as testing data. To examine the performance of the methodology, prediction accuracy and elapsed time were chosen as measures. We compared the performance with case-based reasoning and voting methods. Through a simulation test, we conclude that our methodology is clearly better than CBR and voting methods in terms of accuracy and elapsed time. This shows that the methodology is relatively valid and scalable. As a second round of the experiment, we compared a full model to a partial model. A full model indicates that right and wrong patterns are used for reasoning the future context. On the other hand, a partial model means that the reasoning is performed only with right patterns, which is generally adopted in the legacy alignment-prediction method. It turned out that a full model is better than a partial model in terms of the accuracy while partial model is better when considering elapsed time. As a last experiment, we took into our consideration potential privacy problems that might arise among the users. To mediate such concern, we excluded such context properties as date of tour and user profiles such as gender and age. The outcome shows that preserving privacy is endurable. Contributions of this paper are as follows: First, academically, we have improved sequential matching methods to predict accuracy and service time by considering individual rules of each context property and learning from wrong patterns. Second, the proposed method is found to be quite effective for privacy preserving applications, which are frequently required by B2C context-aware services; the privacy preserving system applying the proposed method successfully can also decrease elapsed time. Hence, the method is very practical in establishing privacy preserving context-aware services. Our future research issues taking into account some limitations in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, user acceptance or usability will be tested with actual users in order to prove the value of the prototype system. Second, we will apply the proposed method to more general application domains as this paper focused on tourism in amusement park.

Dynamic Decision Making using Social Context based on Ontology (상황 온톨로지를 이용한 동적 의사결정시스템)

  • Kim, Hyun-Woo;Sohn, M.-Ye;Lee, Hyun-Jung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.17 no.3
    • /
    • pp.43-61
    • /
    • 2011
  • In this research, we propose a dynamic decision making using social context based on ontology. Dynamic adaptation is adopted for the high qualified decision making, which is defined as creation of proper information using contexts depending on decision maker's state of affairs in ubiquitous computing environment. Thereby, the context for the dynamic adaptation is classified as a static, dynamic and social context. Static context contains personal explicit information like demographic data. Dynamic context like weather or traffic information is provided by external information service provider. Finally, social context implies much more implicit knowledge such as social relationship than the other two-type context, but it is not easy to extract any implied tacit knowledge as well as generalized rules from the information. So, it was not easy for the social context to apply into dynamic adaptation. In this light, we tried the social context into the dynamic adaptation to generate context-appropriate personalized information. It is necessary to build modeling methodology to adopt dynamic adaptation using the context. The proposed context modeling used ontology and cases which are best to represent tacit and unstructured knowledge such as social context. Case-based reasoning and constraint satisfaction problem is applied into the dynamic decision making system for the dynamic adaption. Case-based reasoning is used case to represent the context including social, dynamic and static and to extract personalized knowledge from the personalized case-base. Constraint satisfaction problem is used when the selected case through the case-based reasoning needs dynamic adaptation, since it is usual to adapt the selected case because context can be changed timely according to environment status. The case-base reasoning adopts problem context for effective representation of static, dynamic and social context, which use a case structure with index and solution and problem ontology of decision maker. The case is stored in case-base as a repository of a decision maker's personal experience and knowledge. The constraint satisfaction problem use solution ontology which is extracted from collective intelligence which is generalized from solutions of decision makers. The solution ontology is retrieved to find proper solution depending on the decision maker's context when it is necessary. At the same time, dynamic adaptation is applied to adapt the selected case using solution ontology. The decision making process is comprised of following steps. First, whenever the system aware new context, the system converses the context into problem context ontology with case structure. Any context is defined by a case with a formal knowledge representation structure. Thereby, social context as implicit knowledge is also represented a formal form like a case. In addition, for the context modeling, ontology is also adopted. Second, we select a proper case as a decision making solution from decision maker's personal case-base. We convince that the selected case should be the best case depending on context related to decision maker's current status as well as decision maker's requirements. However, it is possible to change the environment and context around the decision maker and it is necessary to adapt the selected case. Third, if the selected case is not available or the decision maker doesn't satisfy according to the newly arrived context, then constraint satisfaction problem and solution ontology is applied to derive new solution for the decision maker. The constraint satisfaction problem uses to the previously selected case to adopt and solution ontology. The verification of the proposed methodology is processed by searching a meeting place according to the decision maker's requirements and context, the extracted solution shows the satisfaction depending on meeting purpose.

An Exploratory Study on Measuring Brand Image from a Network Perspective (네트워크 관점에서 바라본 브랜드 이미지 측정에 대한 탐색적 연구)

  • Jung, Sangyoon;Chang, Jung Ah;Rho, Sangkyu
    • The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
    • /
    • v.25 no.4
    • /
    • pp.33-60
    • /
    • 2020
  • Along with the rapid advance in internet technologies, ubiquitous mobile device usage has enabled consumers to access real-time information and increased interaction with others through various social media. Consumers can now get information more easily when making purchase decisions, and these changes are affecting the brand landscape. In a digitally connected world, brand image is not communicated to the consumers one-sidedly. Rather, with consumers' growing influence, it is a result of co-creation where consumers have an active role in building brand image. This explains a reality where people no longer purchase products just because they know the brand or because it is a famous brand. However, there has been little discussion on the matter, and many practitioners still rely on the traditional measures of brand indicators. The goal of this research is to present the limitations of traditional definition and measurement of brand and brand image, and propose a more direct and adequate measure that reflects the nature of a connected world. Inspired by the proverb, "A man is known by the company he keeps," the proposed measurement offers insight to the position of brand (or brand image) through co-purchased product networks. This paper suggests a framework of network analysis that clusters brands of cosmetics by the frequency of other products purchased together. This is done by analyzing product networks of a brand extracted from actual purchase data on Amazon.com. This is a more direct approach, compared to past measures where consumers' intention or cognitive aspects are examined through survey. The practical implication is that our research attempts to close the gap between brand indicators and actual purchase behavior. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper extends the traditional conceptualization of brand image to a network perspective that reflects the nature of a digitally connected society.

The Effect of the Context Awareness Value on the Smartphone Adopter' Advertising Attitude (스마트폰광고 이용자의 광고태도에 영향을 미치는 상황인지가치에 관한 연구)

  • Yang, Chang-Gyu;Lee, Eui-Bang;Huang, Yunchu
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.19 no.3
    • /
    • pp.73-91
    • /
    • 2013
  • Advertising market has been facing new challenges due to dramatic change in advertising channels and the advent of innovative media such as mobile devices. Recent research related to mobile devices is mainly focused on the fact that mobile devices could identify users'physical location in real-time, and this sheds light on how location-based technology is utilized to achieve competitive advantage in advertising market. With the introduction of smartphone, the functionality of smartphone has become much more diverse and context awareness is one of the areas that require further study. This work analyses the influence of context awareness value resulted from the transformation of advertising channel in mobile communication market, and our research result reflects recent trend in advertising market environment which is not considered in previous studies. Many constructs has intensively been studied in the context of advertising channel in traditional marketing environment, and entertainment, irritation and information are considered to be the most widely accepted variables that has positive relationship with advertising value. Also, in smartphone advertisement, four main dimensions of context awareness value are recognized: identification, activity, timing and location. In this study, we assume that these four constructs has positive relationship with context awareness value. Finally, we propose that advertising value and context awareness value positively influence smartphone advertising attitude. Partial Least Squares (PLS) structural model is used in our theoretical research model to test proposed hypotheses. A well designed survey is conducted for college students in Korea, and reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity of constructs and measurement indicators are carefully evaluated and the results show that reliability and validity are confirmed according to predefined statistical criteria. Goodness-of-fit of our research model is also supported. In summary, the results collectively suggest good measurement properties for the proposed research model. The research outcomes are as follows. First, information has positive impact on advertising value while entertainment and irritation have no significant impact. Information, entertainment and irritation together account for 38.8% of advertising value. Second, along with the change in advertising market due to the advent of smartphone, activity, timing and location have positive impact on context awareness value while identification has no significant impact. In addition, identification, activity, location and time together account for 46.3% of context awareness value. Third, advertising value and context awareness value both positively influence smartphone advertising attitude, and these two constructs explain 31.7% of the variability of smartphone advertising attitude. The theoretical implication of our research is as follows. First, the influence of entertainment and irritation is reduced which are known to be crucial factors according to previous studies related to advertising value, while the influence of information is increased. It indicates that smartphone users are not likely interested in entertaining effect of smartphone advertisement, and are insensitive to the inconvenience due to smartphone advertisement. Second, in today' ubiquitous computing environment, it is effective to provide differentiated advertising service by utilizing smartphone users'context awareness values such as identification, activity, timing and location in order to achieve competitive business advantage in advertising market. For practical implications, enterprises should provide valuable and useful information that might attract smartphone users by adopting differentiation strategy as smartphone users are sensitive to the information provided via smartphone. Also enterprises not only provide useful information but also recognize and utilize smarphone users' unique characteristics and behaviors by increasing context awareness values. In summary, our result implies that smartphone advertisement should be optimized by considering the needed information of smartphone users in order to maximize advertisement effect.

Electronic Roll Book using Electronic Bracelet.Child Safe-Guarding Device System (전자 팔찌를 이용한 전자 출석부.어린이 보호 장치 시스템)

  • Moon, Seung-Jin;Kim, Tae-Nam;Kim, Pan-Su
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.17 no.4
    • /
    • pp.143-155
    • /
    • 2011
  • Lately electronic tagging policy for the sexual offenders was introduced in order to reduce and prevent sexual offences. However, most sexual offences against children happening these days are committed by the tagged offenders whose identities have been released. So, for the crime prevention, we need measures with which we could minimize the suffers more promptly and actively. This paper suggests a new system to relieve the sexual abuse related anxiety of the children and solve the problems that electronic bracelet has. Existing bracelets are only worn by serious criminals, and it's only for risk management and positioning, there is no way to protect the children who are the potential victims of sexual abuse and there actually happened some cases. So we suggest also letting the students(children) wear the LBS(Location Based Service) and USN(Ubiquitous Sensor Network) technology based electronic bracelets to monitor and figure out dangerous situations intelligently, so that we could prevent sexual offences against children beforehand, and while a crime is happening, we could judge the situation of the crime intelligently and take swift action to minimize the suffer. And by checking students' attendance and position, guardians could know where their children are in real time and could protect the children from not only sexual offences but also violent crimes against children like kidnapping. The overall system is like follows : RFID Tag for children monitors the approach of offenders. While an offender's RFID tag is approaching, it will transmit the situation and position as the first warning message to the control center and the guardians. When the offender is going far away, it turns to monitoring mode, and if the tag of the child or the offender is taken off or the child and offender stay at one position for 3~5 minutes or longer, then it will consider this as a dangerous situation, then transmit the emergency situations and position as the second warning message to the control center and the guardians, and ask for the dispatch of police to prevent the crime at the initial stage. The RFID module of criminals' electronic bracelets is RFID TAG, and the RFID module for the children is RFID receiver(reader), so wherever the offenders are, if an offender is at a place within 20m from a child, RFID module for children will transmit the situation every certain periods to the control center by the automatic response of the receiver. As for the positioning module, outdoors GPS or mobile communications module(CELL module)is used and UWB, WI-FI based module is used indoors. The sensor is set under the purpose of making it possible to measure the position coordinates even indoors, so that one could send his real time situation and position to the server of central control center. By using the RFID electronic roll book system of educational institutions and safety system installed at home, children's position and situation can be checked. When the child leaves for school, attendance can be checked through the electronic roll book, and when school is over the information is sent to the guardians. And using RFID access control turnstiles installed at the apartment or entrance of the house, the arrival of the children could be checked and the information is transmitted to the guardians. If the student is absent or didn't arrive at home, the information of the child is sent to the central control center from the electronic roll book or access control turnstiles, and look for the position of the child's electronic bracelet using GPS or mobile communications module, then send the information to the guardians and teacher so that they could report to the police immediately if necessary. Central management and control system is built under the purpose of monitoring dangerous situations and guardians' checking. It saves the warning and pattern data to figure out the areas with dangerous situation, and could help introduce crime prevention systems like CCTV with the highest priority. And by DB establishment personal data could be saved, the frequency of first and second warnings made, the terminal ID of the specific child and offender, warning made position, situation (like approaching, taken off of the electronic bracelet, same position for a certain time) and so on could be recorded, and the data is going to be used for preventing crimes. Even though we've already introduced electronic tagging to prevent recurrence of child sexual offences, but the crimes continuously occur. So I suggest this system to prevent crimes beforehand concerning the children's safety. If we make electronic bracelets easy to use and carry, and set the price reasonably so that many children can use, then lots of criminals could be prevented and we can protect the children easily. By preventing criminals before happening, it is going to be a helpful system for our safe life.

A Real-Time Stock Market Prediction Using Knowledge Accumulation (지식 누적을 이용한 실시간 주식시장 예측)

  • Kim, Jin-Hwa;Hong, Kwang-Hun;Min, Jin-Young
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.17 no.4
    • /
    • pp.109-130
    • /
    • 2011
  • One of the major problems in the area of data mining is the size of the data, as most data set has huge volume these days. Streams of data are normally accumulated into data storages or databases. Transactions in internet, mobile devices and ubiquitous environment produce streams of data continuously. Some data set are just buried un-used inside huge data storage due to its huge size. Some data set is quickly lost as soon as it is created as it is not saved due to many reasons. How to use this large size data and to use data on stream efficiently are challenging questions in the study of data mining. Stream data is a data set that is accumulated to the data storage from a data source continuously. The size of this data set, in many cases, becomes increasingly large over time. To mine information from this massive data, it takes too many resources such as storage, money and time. These unique characteristics of the stream data make it difficult and expensive to store all the stream data sets accumulated over time. Otherwise, if one uses only recent or partial of data to mine information or pattern, there can be losses of valuable information, which can be useful. To avoid these problems, this study suggests a method efficiently accumulates information or patterns in the form of rule set over time. A rule set is mined from a data set in stream and this rule set is accumulated into a master rule set storage, which is also a model for real-time decision making. One of the main advantages of this method is that it takes much smaller storage space compared to the traditional method, which saves the whole data set. Another advantage of using this method is that the accumulated rule set is used as a prediction model. Prompt response to the request from users is possible anytime as the rule set is ready anytime to be used to make decisions. This makes real-time decision making possible, which is the greatest advantage of this method. Based on theories of ensemble approaches, combination of many different models can produce better prediction model in performance. The consolidated rule set actually covers all the data set while the traditional sampling approach only covers part of the whole data set. This study uses a stock market data that has a heterogeneous data set as the characteristic of data varies over time. The indexes in stock market data can fluctuate in different situations whenever there is an event influencing the stock market index. Therefore the variance of the values in each variable is large compared to that of the homogeneous data set. Prediction with heterogeneous data set is naturally much more difficult, compared to that of homogeneous data set as it is more difficult to predict in unpredictable situation. This study tests two general mining approaches and compare prediction performances of these two suggested methods with the method we suggest in this study. The first approach is inducing a rule set from the recent data set to predict new data set. The seocnd one is inducing a rule set from all the data which have been accumulated from the beginning every time one has to predict new data set. We found neither of these two is as good as the method of accumulated rule set in its performance. Furthermore, the study shows experiments with different prediction models. The first approach is building a prediction model only with more important rule sets and the second approach is the method using all the rule sets by assigning weights on the rules based on their performance. The second approach shows better performance compared to the first one. The experiments also show that the suggested method in this study can be an efficient approach for mining information and pattern with stream data. This method has a limitation of bounding its application to stock market data. More dynamic real-time steam data set is desirable for the application of this method. There is also another problem in this study. When the number of rules is increasing over time, it has to manage special rules such as redundant rules or conflicting rules efficiently.

Lead Pollution and Lead Poisoning among Children in China

  • Zheng, Yuxin
    • Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Health Society Conference
    • /
    • 2003.06a
    • /
    • pp.24-25
    • /
    • 2003
  • Lead is ubiquitous in the human environment as a result of industrialization. China's rapid industrialization and traffic growth have increased the potential for lead emissions. Lead poisoning in children is one of the most common public health problems today, and it is entirely preventable. Children are more vulnerable to lead pollution and lead in their bodies can affect their nervous, circulatory, and digestive systems. Children are exposed to lead from different sources (such as paint, gasoline, and solder) and through different pathways (such as air, food, water, dust, and soil). Although all children are exposed to some lead from food, air, dust, and soil, some children are exposed to high dose sources of lead. Significant sources of lead for China's children include industrial emissions (often close to housing and schools), leaded gasoline, and occupational exposure that occurs when parents wear lead-contaminated clothing home from work, burning of coal for home heat and cooking, contaminated food, and some traditional medicines. To assess the blood lead level in children in China, a large-scale study was conducted in 19 cities among 9 provinces during 1997 to 2000. There were 6502 children, aged 3-5 years, were recruited in the study The result indicates that the mean blood lead level was 8.83ug/dl 3-5 year old living in city area. The mean blood lead level of boys was higher than that of girls (9.1l ug/dl vs 8.73ug/dl). Almost 30 percent childrens blood lead level exceeded 10ug/dl. The average blood lead level was higher than that of in 1985 (8.83ug/dl vs 8.lug/dl). An epidemiological study was carried on the children living around the cottage industries recycling the lead from battery. Nine hundreds fifty nine children, aged 5-12 years, living in lead polluted villages where the lead smelters located near the residential area and 207 control children live in unpolluted area were recruited in the study. The lead levels in air, soil, drinking water and crops were measured. The blood lead and ZnPP level were tested for all subjects. The results show that the local environment was polluted. The lead levels both in the air and crops were much higher than that of in control area. In the polluted area, the average blood level was 49.6ug/dl (rang 19.5-89.3ug/dl). Whereas, in the unpolluted area, the average blood level was 12.4ug/dl (rang 4.6-24.8ug/dl). This study indicates that in some countryside area, some cottage industries induce seriously lead pollution and cause children health problem. For the introducing of unleaded gasoline in some large cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, the blood lead level showed a declined trend since 1997. By 2000, the use of leaded gasoline in motor vehicles has been prohibited in China. The most recent data available show that levels of lead in blood among children in Shanghai decreased from 8.3ug/dl in 1997 to 7.6ug/dl in 1999. The prevalence rate of children lead poisoning (blood lead >10ug/dl) was also decreased from 37.8% to 24.8%. In children living in downtown area, the blood lead level reduced dramatically. To explore the relationship between gene polymorphisms and individual susceptibility of lead poisoning, a molecular epidemiological study was conducted among children living in lead polluted environment. The result showed that the subjects with ALAD2 allele has higher ZPP level, and the subjects with VDR B allele has larger head circumference than only with b allele. In the present study, we demonstrated that ALAD genotypes modify lead effects on heme metabolism and VDR gene variants influence the skull development in highly exposed children. The polymorphism of ALAD and VDR genes might be the molecular inherited factor modifying the susceptibility of lead poisoning. Recently, Chinese government pays more attention to lead pollution and lead poisoning in children problem. The leaded gasoline was prohibited used in motor vehicles since 2000. The government has decided to have a clampdown on the high-polluted lead smelters for recycling the lead from battery in countryside. It is hopeful that the risk of lead poisoning in children will be decreased in the further

  • PDF