• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.5 no.3_4
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• pp.19-28
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• 1990

Nitroarenes are ubiquitous environmental pollutants displaying potent mutagenicity in bacteria and carcinogenicity in mammal. In this study, the concentration of nitroarenes in coarse and fine particles and mutagenicity of POC$\_$N/ fraction was investigated in suspended particulates at the Shinchon and Bulkwang area of Seoul. The suspended particulates were collected bimonthly by a high volume cascade impactor air sampler from July 1987 to May 1988. Extractable organic matter was obtained by ultrasonic extraction on diethly ether/cyclohexane (8/2, v/v). Neutral fraction was obtained by liquid-liquid extraction. Polar neutral organic compounds (POC$\_$N/) was fractionated by thin-layer chromatography. Finally, the concentrations of nitroarenes in POC$\_$N/ fraction were measured and determined by capillary gas chromatography. Direct and indirect mutagenicity of POC$\_$N/ fraction were measured using Salmonella typhimurium TA 98. The result were as follows: 1) Major nitroarenes at the Shinchon area was 1-nitropyrene and at the Bulkwang area it was 2,7-dinitro-9-fluorenone during the year. 2) Average concentration of total nitroarenes measured was 67.26 ng/m$^3$in fine particles which was 1,3 folds higher that in coarse particle (52.30 ng/m$^3$). 3) Annual pattern of nitroarenes concentrations revealed that concentration during heating season (Feb., Jan., Mar.) was 2.2 folds higher than that in non heating season (May, Jul., Sep.). Concentration of each season has 157.68 ng/m$^3$and 80.39 ng/m$^3$. 4) The mutagenic activity of POC$\_$N/ fraction from fine particles was higher compared to that of coarse particles and was increased when metabolically activated, with 59 mixture. Mutagenicities, Metabolically activated, were significantly different between Shinchon and Bulkwang area, 322.8 rev/250 $\mu\textrm{g}$/plate and 286.8 rev/250 $\mu\textrm{g}$/plate, respectively. 5) Annual pattern of mutagenicity of POC$\_$N/ fraction revealed that mutagenicity during the heating season was 1.7 folds higher at Shinchon area and 1.2 folds higher at Bulkwang than during the non heating season. The variable contents and levels of nitroarenes in suspended particulates may affect human health significantly. Further studies such as risk assessment should be conducted on the basis of these kind of studies.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartC
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• v.16C no.3
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• pp.285-298
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• 2009

According to the development of ubiquitous technologies, sensor networks is used in various area. In particular, medical field is one of the significant application areas using sensor networks, and recently it has come to be more important according to standardization of the body sensor networks technology. There are special characteristics of their own for medical sensor networks, which are different from the one of sensor networks for general application or environment. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical medical sensor networks structure considering own properties of medical applications, and also introduce transmission mechanism based on hierarchical structure. Our mechanism uses the priority and threshold value for medical sensor nodes considering patient's needs and health condition. Through this way Cluster head can transmit emergency data to the Base station rapidly. We also present the new key establishment mechanism based on key management mechanism which is proposed by L. Eschenauer and V. Gligor for our proposed structure and transmission mechanism. We use key provisioning for emergency nodes that have high priority based on patients' health condition. This mechanism guarantees the emergency nodes to establish the key and transmit the urgent message to the new cluster head more rapidly through preparing key establishment with key provisioning. We analyze the efficiency of our mechanism through comparing the amount of traffic and energy consumption with analysis and simulation with QualNet simulator. We also implemented our key management mechanism on TmoteSKY sensor board using TinyOS 2.0 and through this experiments we proved that the new mechanism could be actually utilized in network design.

• Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Health Society Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.24-25
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• 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

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.145-162
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• 2008

One of the big concerns in e-society is privacy issue. In special, in developing robust ubiquitous smart space and corresponding services, user profile and preference are collected by the service providers. Privacy issue would be more critical in context-aware services simply because most of the context data themselves are private information: user's current location, current schedule, friends nearby and even her/his health data. To realize the potential of ubiquitous smart space, the systems embedded in the space should corporate personal privacy preferences. When the users invoke a set of services, they are asked to allow the service providers or smart space to make use of personal information which is related to privacy concerns. For this reason, the users unhappily provide the personal information or even deny to get served. On the other side, service provider needs personal information as rich as possible with minimal personal information to discern royal and trustworthy customers and those who are not. It would be desirable to enlarge the allowable personal information complying with the service provider's request, whereas minimizing service provider's requiring personal information which is not allowed to be submitted and user's submitting information which is of no value to the service provider. In special, if any personal information required by the service provider is not allowed, service will not be provided to the user. P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences) has been regarded as one of the promising alternatives to preserve the personal information in the course of electronic transactions. However, P3P mainly focuses on preserving the buyers' personal information. From time to time, the service provider's business data should be protected from the unintended usage from the buyers. Moreover, even though the user's privacy preference could depend on the context happened to the user, legacy P3P does not handle the contextual change of privacy preferences. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a mutual P3P-based negotiation mechanism. To do so, service provider's privacy concern is considered as well as the users'. User's privacy policy on the service provider's information also should be informed to the service providers before the service begins. Second, privacy policy is contextually designed according to the user's current context because the nomadic user's privacy concern structure may be altered contextually. Hence, the methodology includes mutual privacy policy and personalization. Overall framework of the mechanism and new code of ethics is described in section 2. Pervasive platform for mutual P3P considers user type and context field, which involves current activity, location, social context, objects nearby and physical environments. Our mutual P3P includes the privacy preference not only for the buyers but also the sellers, that is, service providers. Negotiation methodology for mutual P3P is proposed in section 3. Based on the fact that privacy concern occurs when there are needs for information access and at the same time those for information hiding. Our mechanism was implemented based on an actual shopping mall to increase the feasibility of the idea proposed in this paper. A shopping service is assumed as a context-aware service, and data groups for the service are enumerated. The privacy policy for each data group is represented as APPEL format. To examine the performance of the example service, in section 4, simulation approach is adopted in this paper. For the simulation, five data elements are considered: $\cdot$ UserID $\cdot$ User preference $\cdot$ Phone number $\cdot$ Home address $\cdot$ Product information $\cdot$ Service profile. For the negotiation, reputation is selected as a strategic value. Then the following cases are compared: $\cdot$ Legacy P3P is considered $\cdot$ Mutual P3P is considered without strategic value $\cdot$ Mutual P3P is considered with strategic value. The simulation results show that mutual P3P outperforms legacy P3P. Moreover, we could conclude that when mutual P3P is considered with strategic value, performance was better than that of mutual P3P is considered without strategic value in terms of service safety.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.181-199
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• 2010

As rapid progress of population aging and strong interest in health, the demand for new healthcare service is increasing. Until now healthcare service has provided post treatment by face-to-face manner. But according to related researches, proactive treatment is resulted to be more effective for preventing diseases. Particularly, the existing healthcare services have limitations in preventing and managing metabolic syndrome such a lifestyle disease, because the cause of metabolic syndrome is related to life habit. As the advent of ubiquitous technology, patients with the metabolic syndrome can improve life habit such as poor eating habits and physical inactivity without the constraints of time and space through u-healthcare service. Therefore, lots of researches for u-healthcare service focus on providing the personalized healthcare service for preventing and managing metabolic syndrome. For example, Kim et al.(2010) have proposed a healthcare model for providing the customized calories and rates of nutrition factors by analyzing the user's preference in foods. Lee et al.(2010) have suggested the customized diet recommendation service considering the basic information, vital signs, family history of diseases and food preferences to prevent and manage coronary heart disease. And, Kim and Han(2004) have demonstrated that the web-based nutrition counseling has effects on food intake and lipids of patients with hyperlipidemia. However, the existing researches for u-healthcare service focus on providing the predefined one-way u-healthcare service. Thus, users have a tendency to easily lose interest in improving life habit. To solve such a problem of u-healthcare service, this research suggests a u-healthcare recommender system which is based on collaborative filtering principle and social network. This research follows the principle of collaborative filtering, but preserves local networks (consisting of small group of similar neighbors) for target users to recommend context aware healthcare services. Our research is consisted of the following five steps. In the first step, user profile is created using the usage history data for improvement in life habit. And then, a set of users known as neighbors is formed by the degree of similarity between the users, which is calculated by Pearson correlation coefficient. In the second step, the target user obtains service information from his/her neighbors. In the third step, recommendation list of top-N service is generated for the target user. Making the list, we use the multi-filtering based on user's psychological context information and body mass index (BMI) information for the detailed recommendation. In the fourth step, the personal information, which is the history of the usage service, is updated when the target user uses the recommended service. In the final step, a social network is reformed to continually provide qualified recommendation. For example, the neighbors may be excluded from the social network if the target user doesn't like the recommendation list received from them. That is, this step updates each user's neighbors locally, so maintains the updated local neighbors always to give context aware recommendation in real time. The characteristics of our research as follows. First, we develop the u-healthcare recommender system for improving life habit such as poor eating habits and physical inactivity. Second, the proposed recommender system uses autonomous collaboration, which enables users to prevent dropping and not to lose user's interest in improving life habit. Third, the reformation of the social network is automated to maintain the quality of recommendation. Finally, this research has implemented a mobile prototype system using JAVA and Microsoft Access2007 to recommend the prescribed foods and exercises for chronic disease prevention, which are provided by A university medical center. This research intends to prevent diseases such as chronic illnesses and to improve user's lifestyle through providing context aware and personalized food and exercise services with the help of similar users'experience and knowledge. We expect that the user of this system can improve their life habit with the help of handheld mobile smart phone, because it uses autonomous collaboration to arouse interest in healthcare.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.359-366
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• 2004

Iron (Fe) is an essential metal in biological processes, which maintains a homeostasis in the human body. Divalent metal transporter 1 (DMT1) has been known as an iron transporting membrane protein, which is involved in the uptake Fe at the apical portion of intestinal epithelium, and may transport Fe across the membrane of acidified endosome in peripheral tissues. In this study, we studied the tissue distribution of DMT1 in the Fe supplemented (FeS) diet fed rats, and the regulation of DMT1 expression by depleting body Fe. Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into two groups, and fed FeS (120 mg Fe/kg) diet or Fe deficient (FeD, 2∼6 mg Fe/kg) diet for 4 weeks. The evaluation of body Fe status was monitored by measuring sFe, UIBC and tissue Fe concentration. Additionally, DMT1 mRNA levels were analyzed in the peripheral tissues by using the quantitative real time RT-PCR method. In the FeS diet fed rats, the tissue Fe was maintained at a relatively high level, and DMT1 was eventually expressed in all tissues studied. DMT1 was highly expressed in the testis, kidney and spleen, while a moderate levels of DMT1 expression was detected in the brain, liver and heart. In the digestive system, the highest level of DMT1 was found in the duodenum. Feeding the FeD diet caused a reduced body weight gain and depletion of body Fe with finding of decreased sFe, increased UIBC and decreased tissue Fe concentration. The depletion of body Fe upregulated DMT1 expression in the peripheral tissue. The expression of DMT1 was very sensitive to the body Fe depletion in the small intestine, especially in the duodenum, showing dramatically higher levels in the FeD rats than those of the FeS group. In the FeD diet fed animals, the expression of DMT1 was low significantly in other tissues compared with the duodenum. The expression of DMT1, however, was 60∼120% higher in the testis, kidney and spleen, and 30∼50% higher in the lung, liver and heart, compared to the FeS diet fed rats. In summary, DMT1 expression was ubiquitous in mammalian tissue, and the level of expression was the organ-dependent. The expression of DMT1 in peripheral tissues was upregulated by depletion of body Fe. Duodenum was the most sensitive tissue among organs studied during Fe depletion, and expressed the greatest level of DMT1, while other tissues were less higher than in duodenum. This study supports that DMT1 plays a role in maintaining the body Fe level through intestinal uptake as well as homeostasis of Fe in the peripheral tissue.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.13-19
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• 2007

Computer games for elderly people can be utilized as a tool not only for enjoying themselves but also for improving their health and quality of lives. It is reported that such games could be played in order to stimulate and enhance mental and physical capabilities of elderly people. It is also reported that traditional folk games are preferred to be played by elderly people rather than modern computer games. In this paper, we propose to use a tabletop interface, u-Table, and its corresponding natural gestures as a user interface for playing traditional folk games by elderly people. Since a table is a good place for people to get together, talk to each other and share their experiences, a tabletop interface can be used for playing games of cooperation, conversation and sharing. A set of traditional folk games were digitalized using u-Table. It was demonstrated that its users had better experiences of playing games with u-Table comparing to playing games using a mouse of a conventional computer.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.33-41
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to develop more accurate and robust emotion prediction neural network (EPNN) model by combining heart rate variability (HRV) and neural network. For the sake of improving the prediction performance more reliably, the proposed EPNN model is based on various types of activation functions like hyperbolic tangent, linear, and Gaussian functions, all of which are embedded in hidden nodes to improve its performance. In order to verify the validity of the proposed EPNN model, a number of HRV metrics were calculated from 20 valid and qualified participants whose emotions were induced by using money game. To add more rigor to the experiment, the participants' valence and arousal were checked and used as output node of the EPNN. The experiment results reveal that the F-Measure for Valence and Arousal is 80% and 95%, respectively, proving that the EPNN yields very robust and well-balanced performance. The EPNN performance was compared with competing models like neural network, logistic regression, support vector machine, and random forest. The EPNN was more accurate and reliable than those of the competing models. The results of this study can be effectively applied to many types of wearable computing devices when ubiquitous digital health environment becomes feasible and permeating into our everyday lives.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.40 no.sup
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• pp.3-8
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• 2007

Sugars are a ubiquitous component of our food supply and are consumed as a naturally occurring component of many foods and as additions to foods during processing, preparation, or at the table. Most fruits and dairy products are high in sugars and thus naturally occurring sugars are consumed as part of a healthy diet. Some countries developed recommended daily intake figures(daily values : DVs or guideline daily amounts: GDA) for nutrients, and some countries, but not most have developed DV/GDA for total sugars. Dietary Reference Intakes for Koreans established by the Korean Nutrition Society in 2005, did not include the reference values for total sugar or added sugar. The committee on Dietary Reference Intakes for sugar was constituted in 2006 and discussed whether to special added sugars or total sugar. Although added sugars are not chemically or physiologically different from naturally occurring sugars, many foods and beverages that are major sources of added sugars have lower micronutrient densities compared with foods and beverages that are major sources of naturally occuring sugars. But it was so hard to calculate a dietary intake of added sugar for Korean people, because there was insufficient information about contents of added sugar during processing or preparation of Korean food. Currently Korean or US food labels contain information on total sugars per serving but do not distinguish between sugars naturally present in food and added sugars. Therefore the committee decided to set the reference value for total sugar for Koreans. According to the recommended diet pattern for Koreans suggested by the Korean Nutrition Society, estimated sugar intake from the sugar containing food based on 2,000 kilocalories is 67 g or 13% of total energy. Based on the data available on risk of obesity, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome from the analysis of Korean NHANES, it was insufficient evidence to set a UL for total sugar, but tended to increase serum LDL cholesterol and obesity at over 20-25% of energy from total sugar when consumed with high carbohydrates. Therefore the committee on Dietary Reference Intakes for sugar set the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range for total sugar as 10-20% of total energy intake.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.172-178
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• 2014

In this work, we describe an electrochemical immunosensor for simple, fast and quantitative detection of a urinary hippuric acid (HA). Urinary HA, of molecular weight 180 DA, is one of the major metabolites and biological indicators in toluene-exposed humans. Simple and ubiquitous monitoring of exposure to toluene is very important in occupational health care. We propose the electrochemical immunoassay based on the dopamine-antigen conjugate for detecting hippuric acid. Our electrochemical immunoassay system employs a conjugate of dopamine (DA) as an electrochemical active molecule and hippuric acid (HA) as an antigen. As an electrochemical aspect, dopamine (DA) containing two hydroxyl group can show excellent redox signal. Also, dopamine-tethered hippuric acid (DA-HA) shows the reversible redox signal in the immunoassay. The competition between HA and DA-HA generated electric signals proportional to HA concentration. The electrochemical immunoassay was performed with DA-HA on the screen printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs), and then applies the mixture antigen (HA) and HA-antibody. The electrical signals were proportional to HA in the range of 0.010~2.500 mg/mL which is enough range to be used for the point-of-care.