• Toxicological Research
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.159-166
• /
• 1990

The ability of many toxigenic fungi to invade and develop in a wide variety of raw ingredients of human diet renders human exposure to mycotoxing very difficult to avoid. Most of the energy-rich commodities, such as cereal grains, oil seeds, tree nuts, and dehydrated fruits, are susceptible to mycotoxin contamination. Mycotoxins therefare have been recognized as an important class of hazardous substances in the human food chain. Although human exposure to mycotoxins is largely through ingestion, inhalation and skin contact may also be significant under conditions other than consumption of foods. Human ingestion of mycotoxins is due to consumption of contaminated dietary ingredients and the edible tissues and products of domestic animals that have been exposed to mycotoxins in moldy feed. Large scale acute human mycotoxicoses, such as ergotism in France, alimentary toxic aleukia in Russia, yellow rice syndrome in Japan, endemic nephropathy in Balkan countries, and acute aflatoxin poisonings in India and Taiwan, have been well documented, indicating that mycotoxicosis is a global problem. In some incidents, hundreds of victims were killed and many more became seriously ill. The mycotoxins that have been implicated in the etiology of these human diseases include aflatoxins, citreoviridin, cyclopiazonic acid, ergot alkaloids, moniliformin, ochratoxin A, trichothecenes, tenuazonic acid, and zearalenone. Among these, aflatoxins have been also implicated in the etiology of human primary liver cancer in those high-incidence countries in Africa and southeast Asia. It is well recognized that cause-effect relationship between mycotoxins and human diseases is very difficult to establish, especially for the cancer connection. Careful risk assessment must be performed to determine whether a mycotoxin indeed warrants costly regulatory actions.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
• /
• v.50 no.1
• /
• pp.53-63
• /
• 2017

Purpose: This study was performed to examine motivational factors affecting sweetness preference in Korean and Japanese children. We identified meaningful variables that could be targeted to nutrition education interventions designed to overcome innate barriers and reduce sweetness preference and sweet food intake in Korean and Japanese children. Methods: Questionnaire surveys and sweetness preference test were conducted to examine variables affecting behavioral intention (BI) regarding sweetness preference. Questionnaire variables were based on the theory of planned behavior. Participants were recruited from one urban school from each country. In total, 166 children (mean age: 8.4 years) and their guardians (n = 166) participated in the study. A trained research assistant provided all children with personal guidance regarding completion of the sweetness preference test and survey questionnaire at school. The data were analyzed using Pearson's correlation coefficients, t tests, repeated measure ANOVA, and stepwise multiple regression analysis (significance level: p < 0.05). Results: Perceived behavioral control (PBC) and parenting practice were significantly associated with BI in both groups. Motivation to comply affected BI only in Japanese children, whereas affective attitude was associated with BI only in Korean children. In predicting sweetness preference, BI was associated only in Japanese children, whereas sweets consumption frequency had a significant effect in Korean children. Conclusion: The study shows similarities and differences in motivational factors, which could be considered when developing nutrition education programs in Korea and Japan. PBC and parenting practice were common factors in predicting BI. In predicting sweetness preference, BI had a significant effect on Japanese children, whereas sweets consumption frequency was the greatest contributor in Korean children.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.544-553
• /
• 2024

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: There are concerns about the adverse health effects of behavioral changes linked to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We conducted a survey to investigate changes in lifestyle habits, including exercise and eating, during the COVID-19 pandemic and their association with changes in weight. SUBJECTS/METHODS: We conducted a survey of 5,000 people in Hakui City, Japan, to assess their lifestyles and diets during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 3,992 complete responses were received. We also obtained pre- and post-pandemic health check-up data for 704 of the respondents. These health data were combined with the results of the questionnaire survey to identify factors associated with weight changes. Data were analyzed for 704 individuals. RESULTS: The mean body mass index was 22.5 ± 3.1 kg/m² for respondents whose weight did not change and 25.1 ± 2.7 kg/m² for respondents whose weight increased. The pre-pandemic mean values for abdominal circumference in females and for gamma-glutamyl transferase in males tended to be higher in those whose weight increased. Those with decreased weight tended to be older. Respondents who were already overweight were more likely to gain weight because of COVID-19-related changes in their lifestyle. In males, alcohol consumption was directly associated with weight, and in females, abdominal circumference was more important. CONCLUSION: The study found pre-pandemic overweight individuals likely gained more weight during it, with alcohol consumption being a significant factor for males. Weight loss was more crucial for those over 70, rather than weight gain.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.191-204
• /
• 2010

Recently, the CO2 emission and energy consumption have become critical global issues to decide the future of nations. Especially, the spread of IT products and the increased use of internet and web applications result in the energy consumption and CO2 emission of IT industry though information technologies drive global economic growth. EU, the United States, Japan and other developed countries are using IT related environmental regulations such as WEEE(Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), RoHS(Restriction of the use of Certain Hazardous Substance), REACH(Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of CHemicals) and EuP(Energy using Product), and have established systematic green business/IT strategies to enhance the competitiveness of IT industry. For example, the Japan government proposed the "Green IT initiative" for being compatible with economic growth and environmental protection. Not only energy saving technologies but energy saving systems have been developed for accomplishing sustainable development. Korea's CO2 emission and energy consumption continuously have grown at comparatively high rates. They are related to its industrial structure depending on high energy-consuming industries such as iron and steel Industry, automotive industry, shipbuilding industry, semiconductor industry, and so on. In particular, export proportion of IT manufacturing is quite high in Korea. For example, the global market share of the semiconductor such as DRAM was about 80% in 2008. Accordingly, Korea needs to establish a systematic strategy to respond to the global environmental regulations and to maintain competitiveness in the IT industry. However, green competitiveness of Korea ranked 11th among 15 major countries and R&D budget for green technology is not large enough to develop energy-saving technologies for infrastructure and value chain of low-carbon society though that grows at high rates. Moreover, there are no concrete action plans in Korea. This research aims to deduce the priorities of the Korean green business/IT strategies to use multi attribute weighted average method. We selected a panel of 19 experts who work at the green business related firms such as HP, IBM, Fujitsu and so on, and selected six assessment indices such as the urgency of the technology development, the technology gap between Korea and the developed countries, the effect of import substitution, the spillover effect of technology, the market growth, and the export potential of the package or stand-alone products by existing literature review. We submitted questionnaires at approximately weekly intervals to them for priorities of the green business/IT strategies. The strategies broadly classify as follows. The first strategy which consists of the green business/IT policy and standardization, process and performance management and IT industry and legislative alignment relates to government's role in the green economy. The second strategy relates to IT to support environment sustainability such as the travel and ways of working management, printer output and recycling, intelligent building, printer rationalization and collaboration and connectivity. The last strategy relates to green IT systems, services and usage such as the data center consolidation and energy management, hardware recycle decommission, server and storage virtualization, device power management, and service supplier management. All the questionnaires were assessed via a five-point Likert scale ranging from "very little" to "very large." Our findings show that the IT to support environment sustainability is prior to the other strategies. In detail, the green business /IT policy and standardization is the most important in the government's role. The strategies of intelligent building and the travel and ways of working management are prior to the others for supporting environment sustainability. Finally, the strategies for the data center consolidation and energy management and server and storage virtualization have the huge influence for green IT systems, services and usage This research results the following implications. The amount of energy consumption and CO2 emissions of IT equipment including electrical business equipment will need to be clearly indicated in order to manage the effect of green business/IT strategy. And it is necessary to develop tools that measure the performance of green business/IT by each step. Additionally, intelligent building could grow up in energy-saving, growth of low carbon and related industries together. It is necessary to expand the affect of virtualization though adjusting and controlling the relationship between the management teams.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.979-984
• /
• 2016

The incidence rate of stomach cancer in Bali, Indonesia, is estimated to be strikingly lower than that in Japan. We conducted an on-site ecological study to investigate the association between the stomach cancer incidence and Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection. Recruiting 291 healthy persons (136 men and 155 women) from the general population in Bali, Indonesia, we conducted a urea breath test (UBT) to examine H. pylori infection, along with a pepsinogen test to detect chronic atrophic gastritis and urine analysis to estimate sodium and potassium excretion. UBT positivities were 9% (2-15, 95% confidence interval) for men and 7% (1-12) for women, and positive cases for H. pylori IgG antibodies were 1% (0-3) for men and 3% (0-5) for women, significantly lower than the respective values in Japan. Positive pepsinogen tests in Bali were 0% (0-0) for men and 1% (0-4) for women, also significantly lower than the Japanese figures. Computed values for daily salt excretion were $13.3{\pm}4.1g$ (mean${\pm}$SD) for men and $11.1{\pm}3.1g$ for women, as high as corresponding Japanese consumption values. Moreover, the estimated potassium excretion was $3.2{\pm}0.7g$ for men and $2.8{\pm}0.6g$ for women in Bali, significantly higher than the figures in Japan. There were no associations across genetic polymorphisms of IL-beta, TNF-alpha, and PTPN11 with UBT positivity. The low incidence of stomach cancer in Bali may thus mainly be due to the rare H. pylori infection. Namely, the bacterium infection seems to be a critical factor for gastric cancer rather than host or other environmental factors.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.91-115
• /
• 2004

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the cooperative squid fisheries problems surrounding the $E128^{\circ}$, established by the 1965 Korea - Japan Fisheries Agreement which banned Korean large trawlers' fishing east to the $E128^{\circ}$ In fact, the moratorium was put on by Japans request. However, such issue did not occur until the filefish stock in the southern Korean sea, which was a major target fish species of the large trawl fisheries, The filefish stock collapsed completely around 1991 and at the same time most of bottom fish stocks in the East China Sea began to show a symptom of over - exploitation. Thus, the off - shore large trawlers learned to have a little opportunity of finding out alternative fish stocks as well as fishing grounds. Fortunately, at that time squid resource stock and consumption were on the increasing trend. The large trawl fisheries were able to economically exploit squid stock east to the $E128^{\circ}$ through cooperative fishing with squid angling light boats in the East and East - South Sea, even though such cooperative fishing activities violate the existing fishery laws apparently. Some important reasons that the large trawlers have continued the cooperative fishing seem to be because (ⅰ) squid resource stock has been on the increasing state over time, (ⅱ) the trawl fisheries have made a significant contribution to meeting domestic and export demands and stabilizing squid prices, and (ⅲ) they have kept domestic squid market from foreign competition. However, the new Korea - Japan fisheries agreement in 1998 provided a momentum of questioning the effectiveness of the $E128^{\circ}$ by the squid - related fisheries other than the squid angling. Serious conflicts between squid - related fisheries began to emerge and to be much intensified. Squid angling industries in the East opposed to large trawlers's efforts to formalize such illegal cooperative squid fishing activities. Their main argument was that such formalizing would definitely make the East coast squid prices lower and in turn their business performance would be worse off. The results of quantitative analysis suggest that the trawlers' massive landing may have a significant influence on lowering the east coast squid prices. Now, an important issue that the squid - related fisheries and the government are facing is to solve such complex squid fishing problems through a multi - participatory negotiation process, including price stabilization, total allowable catch level and its operation schemes, $E128^{\circ}$ rearrangement, and so on.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.31-40
• /
• 2017

This research aims to investigate 'Hallyu' contents consumption tendency of consumers from Korea, Japan, and the United States by analyzing their emotional responses. With the development of social media, research on emotion analysis by reviewing text materials has grown. Whereas environmental variables affect consumer demand towards 'Hallyu' contents, little comparative analyses have been conducted on the emotional responses of consumers from different countries. In this research, the emotional prototype model proposed by Russell(1980) used to extract and distinguish emotional words to clarify how people in the three countries differently perceive the Korean drama "Goblin". First of all, the SNS reviews were collected during a two-month period (February 12 to April 12). Second, significant factors were identified in the collected data according to Russell's emotion model. Third, random forest was applied to organize the selected variables in the order of variable importance. Fourth, the correlations among the emotional words were compared. Lastly, the accuracy of the trained model was measured using the test dataset. The results show that "Happy" was found to be the greatest factor in Korea and in the United States and "Pleased" in Japan. Emotional words correlations showed that when watching the drama "Goblin", "passive unpleasure" was the main factor associated with individual's interest in Korea whereas "passive pleasure" was associated with individual's interest in Japan and in the United States. Based on the results, this research suggests the possibility of developing evaluation guidelines for emotional responses of different countries towards 'Hallyu' contents.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.86-96
• /
• 2010

The oxygen utilization rate (OUR) is one of the crucial parameters for ocean carbon cycling and climate models. However, parameterization of OUR in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) is yet to be established. We estimated the basin-specific OURs in the East Sea and fitted them with exponential functions with depth by using pCFC- 12 age and apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) measured in summer 1999. The estimated OURs are higher in the upper water column and decrease with depth, in general. The vertical distributions of the estimated OURs in the Western and Eastern Japan Basins (WJB & EJB) are very similar. The OURs in the Ulleung Basin (UB) varied greatly depending on whether the surface layer (0~200 m) data are included in the OUR estimate or not. Apparently, weaker oxygen consumption occurs in the deep layer of Yamato Basin (YB). The ranges of the OURs between 200 m and 2000 m at WJB, EJB, UB, and YB are 8.15~0.83, 8.11~0.68, 5.29~0.73, and 7.31~0.06 ${\mu}mol$ $kg^{-1}$ $yr^{-1}$, respectively. Consideration of the wintertime surface water oxygen disequilibrium condition in estimating the OUR will be necessary in the future study.

• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.15 no.3 s.71
• /
• pp.3-19
• /
• 2006

Sustainable supply of minerals and energy is global problem. Metals and energy consumption in the world has increased with economic growth. Currently more than 40 metals are systematically extracted and used in many different fields in civilized society. Recycling and reuse have become very important because recycling contributes to supplying the materials and protecting the environment of society. It is not realistic that all waste materials are capable of being recycled, because recycling metals have fundamentally been competing with primary production. In this point of view, prior to discuss on current recycling technology of waste resources in Korea, world wide trend and Korean recent activity in the supply-demand far minerals and energy resources are reviewed.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.285-299
• /
• 2016

Although South Korea experienced a rolling blackout in 2011, the possibility of a blackout in South Korea continues to increase due to rapid electrification. This study examines the problems of energy taxation and price distortions as possible reasons for the rapid electrification in South Korea, which is occurring at a faster rate than in Japan, Europe, and other developed countries. Further, we suggest new energy taxation and price systems designed to normalize electricity prices. In order to do so, we consider two possible scenarios: the first imposes a tax on bituminous coal for electricity generation and the second levies a tax to provide compensation for the potential damages from a nuclear accident. Based on these scenarios, we analyze the effects of a new energy system on electricity price and demand. The results show that a new energy system could guarantee the power generation costs and balance the relative prices between energy sources, and could also help prevent rapid electrification. Therefore, the suggested new energy system is expected to be utilized as a basis for energy policy to decrease the speed of electrification, thus preventing a blackout, and to induce the rational consumption of energy in South Korea.