• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6523-6528
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• 2013

Background: Cigarette smoking is the largest single recognized cause of human cancers. In Western countries, many epidemiologists have reported risk factors for kidney cancer including smoking. However, little is known about the Japanese population. Materials and Methods: We evaluated the association of smoking with the risk of kidney cancer death in the Japan Collaborative Cohort (JACC) Study. Participants included 46,395 males and 64,190 females. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to determine age-and-sex adjusted relative risks. Results: A total of 62 males and 26 females died from kidney cancer during the follow-up of 707,136 and 1,025,703 person-years, respectively. Heavy smokers (Brinkman index >1200), fondness of fatty foods, hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM), and obesity were suggested to increase the risk of renal cell carcinoma while walking was suggested to decrease the risk. Even after controlling for age, sex, alcohol drinking and DM, heavy smoking significantly increased the risk. Conclusions: The present study suggests that six factors including smoking may increase and/or reduce the risk of kidney cancer in the Japanese population. Because of the small number of outcomes, however, we did not evaluate these factors after adjusting for all possible confounding factors. Further studies may be needed to confirm the findings in this study.

• Architectural research
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.35-42
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• 2009

Recently, intensive urban redevelopment concentrated on new towns has reduced the number of settled population, and weakened various functions such as commercial, culture, education and welfare in old towns, and made the stagnation and declination of the entire or some parts of old towns. Urban regeneration project means renewing cities' functions in terms of physical, environmental, social, cultural, industrial and economic aspects or revitalizing the existing functions through improvement project in the entire or part of a city, which is now drawing keen attention from the public. However, urban regeneration project is huge in scale, needs long construction period and various complex facilities, and also characterized by complicated relations with many stakeholders. Due to such characteristics, there are many risks in the project. Therefore, systematic risk management is absolutely necessary to efficiently manage various risk factors inherent in urban regeneration project. The purpose of this research proposes a basic model to establish risk management plan and work process in order to help project participants to perform risk management more systematically and rationally in the development phase of urban regeneration project.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.655-671
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• 2021

This study analyzes the premium risk of insurers in Korea, which is expected to experience the fastest population aging in the world. Based on the Lee-Carter model, we generate 10,000 scenarios for the number of future survivors in the group of the 10,000 policyholders of life annuity. According to the result of simulation study, the probability of insurer's loss for both groups of male and female policyholders is very low. This result indicates that the premium risk of insurers is not as great as the insurer's concern. This study also suggests introduction of the longevity swap as an alternative to manage the premium risk for the insurer which sells life annuity products. The longevity swap allows insurers to hedge premium risk and reduce capital burden due to the premium risk inherent in life annuity. This study also shows through examples that the counterparty of swap deal may have excess profit in exchange for taking premium risk.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.791-801
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• 2010

This study reviews the concept of disclosure, disclosure risks, and uniqueness. The number of uniqueness in the population is of great importance in evaluating the disclosure risk of micro data files. We approach this problem by considering some basic superpopulation models including the Multinomial-Dirichlet model, the Poisson- Gamma model of Bethlehem et al. (1990) and Takemura (1997), and the Modified Multinomial-Dirichlet model. We decided the critical population size of each superpopulation model for four different superpopulation models.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.20
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• pp.8765-8774
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• 2014

This study aimed at summarizing epidemiological research findings on associations between tobacco, alcohol and tea consumption and risk of gastric cancer (GC) in the Chinese population. The review searched PubMed, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and China Biology Medicine (CBM) databases and reference lists of review papers for all studies published in English or Chinese languages. Information extracted, via two independent researchers, from retrieved articles included first author, year of publication, study design, sample size, source of controls and adjusted odds ratio (OR) or relative risk (RR) with the corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for each category. Statistical analyses used software STATA version 12.0. The systematic search found 89 articles containing 25,821 GC cases and 135,298 non-cases. The overall random effects in terms of pooled OR and 95%CI for tobacco, alcohol and tea consumption were 1.62 (95%CI: 1.50-1.74), 1.57 (95%CI: 1.41-1.76) and 0.67 (95%CI: 0.59-0.76) respectively; while the heterogeneity among included studies ranged from 80.1% to 87.5%. The majority of subgroup analyses revealed consistent results with the overall analyses. All three behavioral factors showed statistically significant dose-dependent effects on GC (P<0.05). The study revealed that tobacco smoking and alcohol drinking were associated with over 1/2 added risk of GC, while tea drinking conferred about 1/3 lower risk of GC in the Chinese population. However, these results should be interpreted with caution given the fact that most of the included studies were based on a retrospective design and heterogeneity among studies was relatively high.

• Korean Journal of Weed Science
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.195-202
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• 1993

The benefits of pesticides in improving the food quantity and quality requirements for an increasing world population are significant, and they can be described in agronomic, economic and social terms. The risks are assessed from the hazards which are likely to occur in practice ; the hazards are defined by the toxicity of the pesticide to non-target organisms at various exposure levels. There are ways of reducing the risks (mainly by reducing exposure in practice) and improving the benefits of pesticides ; these are known as risk management and benefit management respectively. The overall risk-benefit assessment is facilitated if each component can be expressed in financial terms, but it must be made nationally or locally on a sound technical basis against the prevailing agronomic, socio-economic and political circumstances. Paraquat is used to illustrate the risk-benefit assessment process in general terms, and the conclusion is that the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. It is important to keep the risks of pesticides in perspective with those associated with other naturally occurring chemicals in our diet and with other everyday aspects of life. In an overall context, the pesticide risk is small.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.24-34
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• 2024

Fire, being primarily a natural phenomenon, is impossible to control, although it is feasible to map the forest fire risk zone, minimizing the frequency of fires. The spread of a fire starting in any stand in a forest can be predicted, given the burning conditions. The natural cover of the land and the safety of the population may be threatened by the spread of forest fires; thus, the prevention of fire damage requires early discovery. Satellite data and geographic information system (GIS) can be used effectively to combine different forest-fire-causing factors for mapping the forest fire risk zone. This study mainly focuses on mapping forest fire risk in the Madikhola watershed. The primary causes of forest fires appear to be human negligence, uncontrolled fire in nearby forests and agricultural regions, and fire for pastoral purposes which were used to evaluate and assign risk values to the mapping process. The majority of fires, according to MODIS events, occurred from December to April, with March recording the highest occurrences. The Risk Zonation Map, which was prepared using LULC, Forest Type, Slope, Aspect, Elevation, Road Proximity, and Proximity to Water Bodies, showed that a High Fire Risk Zone comprised 29% of the Total Watershed Area, followed by a Moderate Risk Zone, covering 37% of the total area. The derived map products are helpful to local forest managers to minimize fire risks within the forests and take proper responses when fires break out. This study further recommends including the fuel factor and other fire-contributing factors to derive a higher resolution of the fire risk map.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2017

Objectives: The aim of this study was to verify relationships between light- and heavy alcohol drinking and health-risk behaviors such as smoking, inappropriate weight control, physical inactivity, and sexual activity among adolescents. Methods: The data of 68,043 adolescents in middle- and high school collected from the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey in 2015 were analyzed. For statistical analysis, logistic regression model was used. Results: The rate of heavy alcohol drinking increased with increasing age up to 21.5% among boys and 13.9% among girls. Among boys, heavy alcohol drinkers were at a higher risk of smoking (adjusted odds ratios [OR]=3.3, 95% confidence interval [CI]=2.8-3.8), inappropriate weight control (OR=1.7; 95% CI=1.4-2.1), having sexual intercourse (OR=3.6; 95% CI=3.0-4.2) than light drinkers. Multiple health-risk behaviors of smoking, inappropriate weight control and sexual intercourse also increased in accordance with the severity of drinking alcohol beverage compared to non-drinker. Physical inactivity was decreased among heavy drinkers compared to light drinkers (OR=0.8; 95% CI=0.7-0.9 for inactivity of moderate exercise). Similar results were observed among girls. Conclusions: Alcohol drinking especially heavy alcohol drinking among adolescents is related to other risky behaviors including smoking, inappropriate weight control, and sexual activity. To prevent health problems in adolescents, it is necessary to adopt a combined approach regarding heavy drinking and health-risk behaviors.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.218-225
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• 2011

Objectives: This study investigated the relationship between the blood mercury concentration and cardiovascular risk factors in elderly Korean individuals living in coastal areas. Methods: The sample consisted of 477 adults (164 males, 313 females) aged 40 to 65 years who visited a Busan health promotion center from June to September in 2009. The relationship between blood mercury concentration and cardiovascular risk factors including metabolic syndrome, cholesterol profiles, blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), was investigated. Variables related to blood mercury concentration were further evaluated using multiple regression analysis. Results: The blood mercury concentration of the study population was 7.99 (range, 7.60 to 8.40) ${\mu}g$/L. In males, the blood mercury concentration was 9.74 (8.92 to 10.63) ${\mu}g$/L, which was significantly higher than that in females (7.21, [6.80 to 7.64] ${\mu}g$/L). The blood mercury concentration of the study population was related to several cardiovascular risk factors including low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (p=0.044), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (p=0.034), BMI (p = 0.006), waist circumference (p = 0.031), and WHR (p < 0.001). In males, the blood mercury concentration was significantly correlated with WHR in the multiple regression analysis. Conclusions: In males, the blood mercury concentration was related to waist-to-hip ratio, which is a central obesity index and cardiovascular risk factor. Our finding suggests that cardiovascular disease risk in males was increased by mercury exposure via an obesity-related mechanism.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.647-653
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• 2016

Background: Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer affecting Malaysian women. Recent statistics revealed that the cumulative probability of breast cancer and related deaths in Malaysia is higher than in most of the countries of Southeast Asia. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in CYP2E1 (rs6413432 and rs3813867), STK15 (rs2273535 and rs1047972) and XRCC1 (rs1799782 and rs25487) have been associated with breast cancer risk in a meta-analysis but any link in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, remained to be determined. Hence, we investigated the relationship between these SNPs and breast cancer risk among Malaysian women in the present case-control study. Materials and Methods: Genomic DNA was isolated from peripheral blood of 71 breast cancer patients and 260 healthy controls and subjected to polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) analysis. Results: Our study showed that the c1/c2 genotype or subjects with at least one c2 allele in CYP2E1 rs3813867 SNP had significantly increased almost 1.8-fold higher breast cancer risk in Malaysian women overall. In addition, the variant Phe allele in STK15 rs2273535 SNP appeared to protect against breast cancer in Malaysian Chinese. No significance association was found between XRCC1 SNPs and breast cancer risk in the population. Conclusions: This study provides additional knowledge on CYP2E1, STK15 and XRCC1 SNP impact of risk of breast cancer, particularly in the Malaysian population. From our findings, we also recommend Malaysian women to perform breast cancer screening before 50 years of age.