• Maritime Security
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.215-240
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• 2020

In 2017, the U.S. DARPA coined 'mosaic warfare' as a new way of warfighting. According to the Timothy Grayson, director of DARPA's Strategic Technologies Office, mosaic warfare is a "system of system" approach to warfghting designed around compatible "tiles" of capabilities, rather than uniquely shaped "puzzle pieces" that must be fitted into a specific slot in a battle plan in order for it to work. Prior to cover mosaic warfare theory and recent development, it deals analyze its background and several premises for better understanding. The U.S. DoD officials might acknowledge the current its forces vulnerability to the China's A2/AD assets. Furthermore, the U.S. seeks to complete military superiority even in other nation's territorial domains including sea and air. Given its rapid combat restoration capability and less manpower casualty, the U.S. would be able to ready to endure war of attrition that requires massive resources. The core concept of mosaic warfare is a "decision centric warfare". To embody this idea, it create adaptability for U.S. forces and complexity or uncertainty for the enemy through the rapid composition and recomposition of a more disag g reg ated U.S. military force using human command and machine control. This allows providing more options to friendly forces and collapse adversary's OODA loop eventually. Adaptable kill web, composable force packages, A.I., and context-centric C3 architecture are crucial elements to implement and carry out mosaic warfare. Recently, CSBA showed an compelling assessment of mosaic warfare simulation. In this wargame, there was a significant differences between traditional and mosaic teams. Mosaic team was able to mount more simultaneous actions, creating additional complexity to adversaries and overwhelming their decision-making with less friendly force's human casualty. It increase the speed of the U.S. force's decision-making, enabling commanders to better employ tempo. Consequently, this article finds out and suggests implications for Korea armed forces. First of all, it needs to examine and develop 'mosaic warfare' in terms of our security circumstance. In response to future warfare, reviewing overall force structure and architecture is required which is able to compose force element regardless domain. In regards to insufficient defense resources and budget, "choice" and "concentration" are also essential. It needs to have eyes on the neighboring countries' development of future war concept carefully.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

This study aims to investigate changes in the demand for ship officers in response to changes in the shipping industry environment in which Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) emerge according to the application of the fourth industrial revolution technology to ships, and it looks into changes in the skill of ship officer. It also analyzes and proposes a plan for nurturing ship officers accordingly. As a result of the degree of recognition and AHP analysis, this study suggests that a new training system is required because the current training and education system may cover the job competencies of emergency response, caution and danger navigation, general sailing, cargo handling, seaworthiness maintenance, emergency response, and ship maintenance and management, but tasks such as remote control, monitoring diagnosis, device management capability, and big data analysis require competency for unmanned and shore-based control. By evaluating the importance of change factors in the duties of ship officers in Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships, this study provides information on ship officer educational institutions' response strategies for nurturing ship officers and prioritization of resource allocation, etc. The importance of these factors was compared and evaluated to suggest changes in the duties of ship officers and methods of nurturing ship officers according to the introduction of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships. It is expected that the findings of this study will be meaningful as it systematically derives the duties and competency factors of ship officers of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships from a practical point of view and analyzed the perception level of each relevant expert to diagnose expert-level responses to the introduction of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.5-9
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• 1976

The categories of national health problems may be mainly divided into health promotion, problems of diseases, and population-economic problems which are indirectly related to health. Of them, the problems of diseases will be exclusively dealt with this speech. Rurality and Disease Problems There are many differences between rural and urban areas. In general, indicators of rurality are small size of towns, dispersion of the population, remoteness from urban centers, inadequacy of public transportation, poor communication, inadequate sanitation, poor housing, poverty, little education lack of health personnels and facilities, and in-accessibility to health services. The influence of such conditions creates, directly or indirectly, many problems of diseases in the rural areas. Those art the occurrence of preventable diseases, deterioration and prolongation of illness due to loss of chance to get early treatment, decreased or prolonged labour force loss, unnecessary death, doubling of medical cost, and economic loss. Some Considerations of Innovative Approach The followings art some considerations of innovative approaches to the problems of diseases in the rural Korea. 1. It would be essential goal of the innovative approaches that the damage and economic loss due to diseases will be maintained to minimum level by minimizing the absolute amount of the diseases, and by moderating the fee for medical cares. The goal of the minimization of the disease amount may be achieved by preventive services and early treatment, and the goal of moderating the medical fee may be achieved by lowering the prime cost and by adjusting the medical fees to reasonable level. 2. Community health service or community medicine will be adopted as a innovative means to disease problems. In this case, a community is defined as an unit area where supply and utilization of primary service activities can be accomplished within a day. The essential nature o the community health service should be such activities as health promotion, preventive measures, medical care, and rehabilitation performing efficiently through the organized efforts of the residents in a community. Each service activity should cover all members of the residents in a community in its plan and performance. The cooperation of the community peoples in one of the essential elements for success of the service program, The motivations of their cooperative mood may be activated through several ways: when the participation of the residents in service program of especially the direct participation of organized cooperation of the area leaders art achieved through a means of health education: when the residents get actual experience of having received the benefit of good quality services; and when the health personnels being armed with an idealism that they art working in the areas to help health problems of the residents, maintain good human relationships with them. For the success of a community health service program, a personnel who is in charge of leadership and has an able, a sincere and a steady characters seems to be required in a community. The government should lead and support the community health service programs of the nation under the basis of results appeared in the demonstrative programs so as to be carried out the programs efficiently. Moss of the health problems may be treated properly in the community levels through suitable community health service programs but there might be some problems which art beyond their abilities to be dealt with. To solve such problems each community health service program should be under the referral systems which are connected with health centers, hospitals, and so forth. 3. An approach should be intensively groped to have a physician in each community. The shortage of physicians in rural areas is world-wide problem and so is the Korean situation. In the past the government has initiated a system of area-limited physician, coercion, and a small scale of scholarship program with unsatisfactory results. But there might be ways of achieving the goal by intervice, broadened, and continuous approaches. There will be several ways of approach to motivate the physicians to be settled in a rural community. They are, for examples, to expos the students to the community health service programs during training, to be run community health service programs by every health or medical schools and other main medical facilities, communication activities and advertisement, desire of community peoples to invite a physician, scholarship program, payment of satisfactory level, fulfilment of military obligation in case of a future draft, economic growth and development of rural communities, sufficiency of health and medical facilities, provision of proper medical care system, coercion, and so forth. And, hopefully, more useful reference data on the motivations may be available when a survey be conducted to the physicians who are presently engaging in the rural community levels. 4. In communities where the availability of a physician is difficult, a trial to use physician extenders, under certain conditions, may be considered. The reason is that it would be beneficial for the health of the residents to give them the remedies of primary medical care through the extenders rather than to leave their medical problems out of management. The followings are the conditions to be considered when the physician extenders are used: their positions will be prescribed as a temporary one instead of permanent one so as to allow easy replacement of the position with a physician applicant; the extender will be under periodic direction and supervision of a physician, and also referral channel will be provided: legal constraints will be placed upon the extenders primary care practice, and the physician extenders will used only under the public medical care system. 5. For the balanced health care delivery, a greater investment to the rural areas is needed to compensate weak points of a rurality. The characteristics of a rurality has been already mentioned. The objective of balanced service for rural communities to level up that of urban areas will be hard to achieve without greater efforts and supports. For example, rural communities need mobile powers more than urban areas, communication network is extremely necessary at health delivery facilities in rural areas as well as the need of urban areas, health and medical facilities in rural areas should be provided more substantially than those of urban areas to minimize, in a sense, the amount of patient consultation and request of laboratory specimens through referral system of which procedures are more troublesome in rural areas, and more intensive control measures against communicable diseases are needed in rural areas where greater numbers of cases are occurred under the poor sanitary conditions.

• Proceedings of the KSEEG Conference
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• 2001.05b
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• pp.42-63
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• 2001

The detail survey on the Songsanri tomb site including the Muryong royal tomb was carried out during the period from May 1 , 1996 to April 30, 1997. A quantitative analysis was tried to find changes of tomb itself since the excavation. Main subjects of the survey are to find out the cause of infiltration of rain water and groundwater into the tomb and the tomb site, monitoring of the movement of tomb structure and safety, removal method of the algae inside the tomb, and air controlling system to solve high humidity condition and dew inside the tomb. For these purposes, detail survery inside and outside the tombs using a electronic distance meter and small airplane, monitoring of temperature and humidity, geophysical exploration including electrical resistivity, geomagnetic, gravity and georadar methods, drilling, measurement of physical and chemical properties of drill core and measurement of groundwater permeability were conducted. We found that the center of the subsurface tomb and the center of soil mound on ground are different 4.5 meter and 5 meter for the 5th tomb and 7th tomb, respectively. The fact has caused unequal stress on the tomb structure. In the 7th tomb (the Muryong royal tomb), 435 bricks were broken out of 6025 bricks in 1972, but 1072 bricks are broken in 1996. The break rate has been increased about 250% for just 24 years. The break rate increased about 290% in the 6th tomb. The situation in 1996 is the result for just 24 years while the situation in 1972 was the result for about 1450 years. Status of breaking of bircks represents that a severe problem is undergoing. The eastern wall of the Muryong royal tomb is moving toward inside the tomb with the rate of 2.95 mm/myr in rainy season and 1.52 mm/myr in dry season. The frontal wall shows biggest movement in the 7th tomb having a rate of 2.05 mm/myr toward the passage way. The 6th tomb shows biggest movement among the three tombs having the rate of 7.44mm/myr and 3.61mm/myr toward east for the high break rate of bricks in the 6th tomb. Georadar section of the shallow soil layer represents several faults in the top soil layer of the 5th tomb and 7th tomb. Raninwater flew through faults tnto the tomb and nearby ground and high water content in nearby ground resulted in low resistance and high humidity inside tombs. High humidity inside tomb made a good condition for algae living with high temperature and moderate light source. The 6th tomb is most severe situation and the 7th tomb is the second in terms of algae living. Artificial change of the tomb environment since the excavation, infiltration of rain water and groundwater into the tombsite and bad drainage system had resulted in dangerous status for the tomb structure. Main cause for many problems including breaking of bricks, movement of tomb walls and algae living is infiltration of rainwater and groundwater into the tomb site. Therefore, protection of the tomb site from high water content should be carried out at first. Waterproofing method includes a cover system over the tomvsith using geotextile, clay layer and geomembrane and a deep trench which is 2 meter down to the base of the 5th tomb at the north of the tomv site. Decrease and balancing of soil weight above the tomb are also needed for the sfety of tomb structures. For the algae living inside tombs, we recommend to spray K101 which developed in this study on the surface of wall and then, exposure to ultraviolet light sources for 24 hours. Air controlling system should be changed to a constant temperature and humidity system for the 6th tomb and the 7th tomb. It seems to much better to place the system at frontal room and to ciculate cold air inside tombs to solve dew problem. Above mentioned preservation methods are suggested to give least changes to tomb site and to solve the most fundmental problems. Repairing should be planned in order and some special cares are needed for the safety of tombs in reparing work. Finally, a monitoring system measuring tilting of tomb walls, water content, groundwater level, temperature and humidity is required to monitor and to evaluate the repairing work.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.307-319
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• 2009

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology has been regarded as one of the most possible and practical option to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) and consequently to mitigate the climate change. Korean government also have started a 10-year R&D project on $CO_2$ storage in sea-bed geological structure including gas field and deep saline aquifer since 2005. Various relevant researches are carried out to cover the initial survey of suitable geological structure storage site, monitoring of the stored $CO_2$ behavior, basic design of $CO_2$ transport and storage process and the risk assessment and management related to $CO_2$ leakage from engineered and geological processes. Leakage of $CO_2$ to the marine environment can change the chemistry of seawater including the pH and carbonate composition and also influence adversely on the diverse living organisms in ecosystems. Recently, IMO (International Maritime Organization) have developed the risk assessment and management framework for the $CO_2$ sequestration in sub-seabed geological structures (CS-SSGS) and considered the sequestration as a waste management option to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. This framework for CS-SSGS aims to provide generic guidance to the Contracting Parties to the London Convention and Protocol, in order to characterize the risks to the marine environment from CS-SSGS on a site-specific basis and also to collect the necessary information to develop a management strategy to address uncertainties and any residual risks. The environmental risk assessment (ERA) plan for $CO_2$ storage work should include site selection and characterization, exposure assessment with probable leak scenario, risk assessment from direct and in-direct impact to the living organisms and risk management strategy. Domestic trial of the $CO_2$ capture and sequestration in to the marine geologic formation also should be accomplished through risk management with specified ERA approaches based on the IMO framework. The risk assessment procedure for $CO_2$ marine storage should contain the following components; 1) prediction of leakage probabilities with the reliable leakage scenarios from both engineered and geological part, 2) understanding on physio-chemical fate of $CO_2$ in marine environment especially for the candidate sites, 3) exposure assessment methods for various receptors in marine environments, 4) database production on the toxic effect of $CO_2$ to the ecologically and economically important species, and finally 5) development of surveillance procedures on the environmental changes with adequate monitoring techniques.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.25-34
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• 2020

Land use in watersheds has been shown to be a major driving factor in determining the status of the water quality of streams. In this light, scientists have been investigating the roles of riparian vegetation on the relationships between land use in watersheds and the associated stream water quality. Numerous studies reported that riparian vegetation could alleviate the adverse effects caused by land use in watersheds and on stream water quality through various hydrological, biochemical and ecological mechanisms. However, this concept has been criticized as the true effects of riparian vegetation must be assessed by comprehensive models that mimic real environmental settings. This study aimed to estimate a comprehensive structural equation model integrating topography, land use, and characteristics of riparian vegetation. We used water quality data from the Nakdong River system monitored under the National Aquatic Ecosystem Monitoring Program (NAEMP) of the Korean Ministry of Environment (MOE). Also, riparian vegetation data and land use data were extracted from the Land Use/Land Cover map (LULC) produced by the MOE. The number of structural equation models (SEMs) were estimated in Amos of IBM SPSS. Study results revealed that land use was determined by elevation, and developed areas within a watershed significantly increased the concentration of Total Nitrogen (TN) in streams and LDI in riparian vegetation. On the contrary, developed areas significantly reduced LPI and PLAND. At the same time, PLAND and LDI significantly reduced the concentration of TN in streams. Thus, it was clear that developed areas in watersheds had both a direct and an indirect impact on the concentration of TN in streams, and spatial pattern and the amount of vegetation of riparian vegetation could significantly alleviate the negative impacts of developed areas on TN concentration in streams. To enhance stream water quality, reducing developed areas in a watershed is critical for long-term watershed management plans, restoration patterns for riparian vegetation could be immediately implemented since riparian areas were less developed than most other watersheds.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.57-72
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• 2018

Time series analysis of tower flux measurement can be used to build quantitative evidence for the achievement of climate-smart agriculture (CSA). In this study, we have assessed the first objective of CSA (regarding ecosystem productivity and efficiency) for rice paddy-dominated heterogeneous farmland. A set of quantitative indicators were evaluated by analysing the time series data of carbon, water and energy fluxes over the Haenam farmland site in Korea (HFK) during the rice growing seasons from 2003 to 2015. Four different varieties of rice were cultivated during the study period in chronological order of Dongjin No. 1 (2003-2008), Nampyung (2009), Onnuri (2010-2011), and Saenuri (2012-2015). Overall at HFK, gross primary productivity (GPP) ranged from 800 to $944g\;C\;m^{-2}$, water use efficiency (WUE) ranged from 1.91 to $2.80g\;C\;kg\;H_2O^{-1}$, carbon uptake efficiency (CUE) ranged from 1.06 to 1.34, and light use efficiency (LUE) ranged from 0.99 to $1.55g\;C\;MJ^{-1}$. Among the four rice varieties, Dongjin No. 1-dominated HFK showed the highest productivity with higher WUE and LUE, but comparable CUE. Considering the heterogeneous vegetation cover at HFK, a rule of thumb comparison suggested that the productivity of Dongjin No1-dominated HFK was comparable to those of monoculture rice paddies in Asia, whereas HFK was more efficient in water use and less efficient in carbon uptake. Saenuri-dominated HFK also produced high productivity but with the growing season length longer than Dongjin No.1. Although the latter showed better traits for CSA, farmers cultivate Saenuri because of higher pest resistance (associated with adaptability and resilience). This emphasizes the need for the evaluation of other two objectives of CSA (i.e. system resilience and greenhouse gas mitigation) for complete assessment at HFK, which is currently in progress.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.47-56
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• 2018

Providing high-quality meteorological observation data at sites that represent actual farming environments is essential for useful agrometeorological services. The Automated Agricultural Observing System (AAOS) of the Korean Meteorological Administration, however, has been deployed on lawns rather than actual farm land. In this study, we show the inaccuracies that arise in AAOS data by analyzing temporal and vertical variation and by comparing them with data recorded by the National Center for AgroMeteorology (NCAM) tower that is located at an actual farming site near the AAOS tower. The analyzed data were gathered in August and October (before and after harvest time, respectively). Observed air temperature and water vapor pressure were lower at AAOS than at NCAM tower before and after harvest time. Observed reflected shortwave radiation tended to be higher at AAOS than at NCAM tower. Soil variables showed bigger differences than meteorological observation variables. In August, observed soil temperature was lower at NCAM tower than at AAOS with smaller diurnal changes due to irrigation. The soil moisture observed at NCAM tower continuously maintained its saturation state, while the one at AAOS showed a decreasing trend, following an increase after rainfall. The trend changed in October. Observed soil temperature at NCAM showed similar daily means with higher diurnal changes than at AAOS. The soil moisture observed at NCAM was continuously higher, but both AAOS and NCAM showed similar trends. The above results indicate that the data gathered at the AAOS are inaccurate, and that ground surface cover and farming activities evoke considerable differences within the respective meteorological and soil environments. We propose to shift the equipment from lawn areas to actual farming sites such as rice paddies, farms and orchards, so that the gathered data are representative of the actual agrometeorological observations.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.191-210
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• 2014

As mobile devices that can be connected to the Internet have spread and networking has become possible whenever/wherever, the Internet has become central in the dissemination and consumption of news. Accordingly, the ways news is gathered, disseminated, and consumed have changed greatly. In the traditional news media such as magazines and newspapers, expert editors determined what events were worthy of deploying their staffs or freelancers to cover and what stories from newswires or other sources would be printed. Furthermore, they determined how these stories would be displayed in their publications in terms of page placement, space allocation, type sizes, photographs, and other graphic elements. In turn, readers-news consumers-judged the importance of news not only by its subject and content, but also through subsidiary information such as its location and how it was displayed. Their judgments reflected their acceptance of an assumption that these expert editors had the knowledge and ability not only to serve as gatekeepers in determining what news was valuable and important but also how to rank its value and importance. As such, news assembled, dispensed, and consumed in this manner can be said to be expert-based recommended news. However, in the era of Internet news, the role of expert editors as gatekeepers has been greatly diminished. Many Internet news sites offer a huge volume of news on diverse topics from many media companies, thereby eliminating in many cases the gatekeeper role of expert editors. One result has been to turn news users from passive receptacles into activists who search for news that reflects their interests or tastes. To solve the problem of an overload of information and enhance the efficiency of news users' searches, Internet news sites have introduced numerous recommendation techniques. Recommendations based on popularity constitute one of the most frequently used of these techniques. This popularity-based approach shows a list of those news items that have been read and shared by many people, based on users' behavior such as clicks, evaluations, and sharing. "most-viewed list," "most-replied list," and "real-time issue" found on news sites belong to this system. Given that collective intelligence serves as the premise of these popularity-based recommendations, popularity-based news recommendations would be considered highly important because stories that have been read and shared by many people are presumably more likely to be better than those preferred by only a few people. However, these recommendations may reflect a popularity bias because stories judged likely to be more popular have been placed where they will be most noticeable. As a result, such stories are more likely to be continuously exposed and included in popularity-based recommended news lists. Popular news stories cannot be said to be necessarily those that are most important to readers. Given that many people use popularity-based recommended news and that the popularity-based recommendation approach greatly affects patterns of news use, a review of whether popularity-based news recommendations actually reflect important news can be said to be an indispensable procedure. Therefore, in this study, popularity-based news recommendations of an Internet news portal was compared with top placements of news in printed newspapers, and news users' judgments of which stories were personally and socially important were analyzed. The study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, content analyses were used to compare the content of the popularity-based news recommendations of an Internet news site with those of the expert-based news recommendations of printed newspapers. Five days of news stories were collected. "most-viewed list" of the Naver portal site were used as the popularity-based recommendations; the expert-based recommendations were represented by the top pieces of news from five major daily newspapers-the Chosun Ilbo, the JoongAng Ilbo, the Dong-A Daily News, the Hankyoreh Shinmun, and the Kyunghyang Shinmun. In the second stage, along with the news stories collected in the first stage, some Internet news stories and some news stories from printed newspapers that the Internet and the newspapers did not have in common were randomly extracted and used in online questionnaire surveys that asked the importance of these selected news stories. According to our analysis, only 10.81% of the popularity-based news recommendations were similar in content with the expert-based news judgments. Therefore, the content of popularity-based news recommendations appears to be quite different from the content of expert-based recommendations. The differences in importance between these two groups of news stories were analyzed, and the results indicated that whereas the two groups did not differ significantly in their recommendations of stories of personal importance, the expert-based recommendations ranked higher in social importance. This study has importance for theory in its examination of popularity-based news recommendations from the two theoretical viewpoints of collective intelligence and popularity bias and by its use of both qualitative (content analysis) and quantitative methods (questionnaires). It also sheds light on the differences in the role of media channels that fulfill an agenda-setting function and Internet news sites that treat news from the viewpoint of markets.

• Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Health Society Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.45-72
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• 2005

C. neoformans-associated cryptococcosis is primarily a disease of immunocompromised persons, has a world-wide distribution, and is often spread by pigeons in the urban environment. In contrast, C. gattii causes infection in normal hosts, has only been described in tropical and semi-tropical areas of the world, and has a unique niche in river gum Eucalyptus trees. Cryptococcosis is acquired through inhalation of the yeast propagules from the environment. C. gattii has been identified as the cause of an emerging infectious disease centered on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. No cases of C. gattii-disease were diagnosed prior to 1999; the current incidence rate is 36 cases per million population. A search was initiated in 2001 to find the ecological niche of this basidiomycetous yeast. C. gaftii was found in the environment in treed areas of Vancouver Island. The highest percentage of colonized-tree clusters were found around central Vancouver Island, with decreasing rates of colonization to the north and south. Climate, soil and vegetation cover of this area, called the Coastal Douglas fir biogeoclimatic zone, is unique to British Columbia and Canada. The concentration of airborne C. gattii was highest in the dry summer months, and lowest during late fall, winter, and early spring, months which have heavy rainfall. The study of the emerging colonization of this organism and subsequent cases of environmentally acquired disease will be informative in planning public health management of new routes of exposure to exotic agents in areas impacted by changing climate and land use patterns. Cryptococcosis is an infection associated with an encapsulated, basidiomycetous yeast Cryptococcus neoformans. The route of entry for this organism is through the lungs, with possible systemic spread via the circulatory system to the brain and meninges. There are four cryptococcal serogroups associated with disease in humans and animals, distinguished by capsular polysaccharide antigens. Cryptococcus neoformans: variety grubii (serotype A), variety neoformans (serotype D), and variety gattii (serotypes B and C) (Franzot et at. 1999). C. neoformans variety gattii has recently been elevated to species status, C. gattii. C. neoformans val. grubii and var. neoformans have a world-wide distribution, and are particularly associated with soil and weathered bird droppings. In contrast, C. gattii (CG) is not associated with bird excrement, is primarily found in tropical and subtropical climates, and has a restricted environmental niche associated with specific tree species. (Ellis & Pfiffer 1990) Ellis and Pfeiffer theorize that, as a basidiomycete, CG requires an association with a tree in order to become pathogenic to mammals. In Australia, CG has been found to be associated with five species of Eucalypts, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, E. tereticornis, E. blakelyi, E. gomphocephala, and E. rudis. Eucalypts, although originally native to Australia, now have a world-wide distribution. CG has been found associated with imported eucalypts in India, California, Brazil, and Egypt. In addition, in Brazil and Columbia, where eucalypts have been naturalized, native trees have been shown to harbour CG (Callejas et al. 1998; Montenegro et al. 2000). In British Columbia, Canada, since the beginning of 1999, there have been 120 confirmed cases of cryptococcal mycoses associated with CG in humans, including 4 fatalities (data from British Columbia Centre for Disease Control), and over 200 cases in animal pets in BC (data from Central Laboratory for Veterinarians). What is remarkable about the BC outbreak of C. gattii-cryptococcosis is that all of the cases have been residents of, or visitors to, a narrow area along the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, BC, from the tip of the island in the south (Victoria) to Courtenay on the north-central island as illustrated in Figure 1. Of the first 38 human cases, 58% were male with a mean age of 59.7 years (range 20 - 82): 36 cases (95%) were Caucasian. Ten cases (26%) presented with meningitis, the remainder presented with respiratory symptoms. Cultures recovered from cases of cryptococcosis associated with the outbreak were typed as serogroup B, which is specific to CG (Bartlett et al. 2003). This was the first reported outbreak of CVG in Canada, or indeed, the world. Where infection with CG is endemic, for example, Australia, the incidence of cryptococcosis ranges from 1.8 - 4.7 per million between the southern and northern states (Sorrell 2001). However, the overall incidence of cryptococcosis in immunocompenent individuals has been estimated at 0.2 per million population per year (Kwon-Chung et al. 1984). The population of Vancouver Island is approximately 720,000,consequently, even if the organism were endemic, one would expect a maximum of 0.15 cases of cryptococcal disease annually.