• Journal of Photoscience
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.29-32
• /
• 2002

Studies till date suggest the existence of a fetal biological clock in suprachiasmatic nuclei entrained by the circadian signal from mother. Melatonin from maternal pineal gland reaches to the fetus by crossing every biological barrier including placenta, hence fetuses were exposed to similar melatonin variation as their mother. Experimental modulations of maternal pineal gland activity of pregnant females either by exposing the them to different photoperiodic schedules or by exogenous melatonin treatments till the date of parturition, regulated the fetal plasma level of melatonin, thereby the prenatal (fetal) growth and development. This clearly suggests the maternal transport of melatonin to their fetus through placenta since fetal retina-hypothalamic tract was incomplete. An extension of experimental schedules till 60 days of post-partum period regulated the neonatal pineal gland activity and gonadal maturation along with their plasma levels of melatonin and sex steroids suggesting clearly the phenomenon of maternal transfer of melatonin to their young ones during the post-natal period, when the neonates were solely dependent on the mother's milk for their nutrition and energetic demands. On the basis of above observations we may suggest that the maternal pineal gland activity regulate the prenatal development by passing its melatonin to fetus via placenta and post-natal growth and sexual maturation by passing maternal melatonin to neonates via milk. Hence, the photoperiod perceived by mother is translated into the maternal plasma level of melatonin which not only regulates the prenatal but also the post-natal growth and sexual maturation of neonates.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.183-203
• /
• 2006

The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a parental education program developed to 295 single university students based on pre-test and the post test on the program. The data is interpreted using statistical methods such as the Percentage, T -Test, Anova test, and the Turkey test. The major results were as follows : First, significant difference regarding the knowledge on parenthood existed among students before and after the tests, with the post-test students showing more knowledge on the matter. Among the six sub-categories of parenthood education program, the effects of the post-testing were most visible in pregnancy, delivering, pre-natal and infant development, parents attitude, and sex education for their children in the form of increased awareness and knowledge. However, no significant effects were detected in pre-natal education. In terms of socio-demographic variable, effects were more visible in female students than in male students. Second, the program also resulted in positive effects in both male and female students.

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
• /
• 2000.10a
• /
• pp.177.1-177.1
• /
• 2000

• Preventive Nutrition and Food Science
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.394-407
• /
• 2011

Better understanding of the complex factors leading to human diseases will be necessary for both long term prevention and for managing short and long-term health problems. The underlying causes, leading to a global health crisis in both acute and chronic diseases, include finite global health care resources for sustained healthy human survival, the population explosion, increased environmental pollution, decreased clean air, water, food distribution, diminishing opportunities for human self-esteem, increased median life span, and the interconnection of infectious and chronic diseases. The transition of our pre-human nutritional requirements for survival to our current culturally-shaped diet has created a biologically-mismatched human dietary experience. While individual genetic, gender, and developmental stage factors contribute to human diseases, various environmental and culturally-determined factors are now contributing to both acute and chronic diseases. The transition from the hunter-gatherer to an agricultural-dependent human being has brought about a global crisis in human health. Initially, early humans ate seasonally-dependent and calorically-restricted foods, during the day, in a "feast or famine" manner. Today, modern humans eat diets of caloric abundance, at all times of the day, with foods of all seasons and from all parts of the world, that have been processed and which have been contaminated by all kinds of factors. No longer can one view, as distinct, infectious agent-related human acute diseases from chronic diseases. Moreover, while dietary and environmental chemicals could, in principle, cause disease pathogenesis by mutagenic and cytotoxic mechanisms, the primary cause is via "epigenetic", or altered gene expression, modifications in the three types of cells (e.g., adult stem; progenitor and terminally-differentiated cells of each organ) during all stages of human development. Even more significantly, alteration in the quantity of adult stem cells during early development by epigenetic chemicals could either increase or decrease the risk to various stem cell-based diseases, such as cancer, later in life. A new concept, the Barker hypothesis, has emerged that indicates pre-natal maternal dietary exposures can now affect diseases later in life. Examples from the studies of the atomic bomb survivors should illustrate this insight.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.240-256
• /
• 1997

Purpose: To evaluate the hepatitis B vaccination program which has been conducted since 1980, Korea. Methods: This study was carry out self reported questionnaire and serologic test covering 2,072 elementary school students who were born between 1980 and 1987, selected by cluster sampling. The HBV serologic markers (HBsAg, Anti-HBs and Anti-HBc) were tested by radioimmunoassay (RIA). The contents of questionnaire include demographic data of students and parents, vaccination status, vaccination frequency, vaccination age, past history of mother's HBV test. Results: 1) The HBsAg positive rates by sex showed 3.7% for male and 2.7% for female, representing an average rate of 3.4%. The HBsAg positive rates by age group showed 5.6% for 13 years and l.5% for 6 years, representing a tendency of lowering rate as ages being younger. 2) The pre-natal HBV test rate was 10.2%, while post-natal HBV test rate was 42.5%. The test showed that the parents' educational level being higher than others, the pre- and post-natal HBV test showed higher rates. In case the fathers occupation being office worker, the post-natal HBV test showed a higher rate compared with other occupation. 3) Overall vaccination rate was 82.6%, complete vaccination rate 69.8%, booster injection rate 42.8%. The vaccination rate, complete vaccination rate and booster injection rate increased as the age being younger. If the educational level of parents were higher, the vaccination rate, complete vaccination rate and booster injection rate showed higher rates. Younger students showed younger vaccination age, and higher educational background of family showed younger vaccination ages. 4. With regard to positive rate of HBV markers by vaccination age, HBsAg and Anti-HBc positive rate showed higher degrees in the following order; preschool age (1-6 years), school age (6-13 years) and infancy (0-1 year). Anti-HBs positive rate was increased as the frequency of vaccination increased. Five years after initial complete vaccination, minimum protective rate was lowest, 69.6%.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.5-16
• /
• 1992

The maternal and child health is a basis of national health, and indicates the level of social welfare and health of the country, because it is related with community welfare status, general cultural conditions, and medical and health sciences. This is a study carried out to identify the present practices of maternal and child health care programs implemented by the private clinics located in Guns(counties ; rural area) in Kyungsangnam Province and to propose alternatives to improve their current programs through a self-administrative questionnaire. The subjects were 90 private physicians who operated their own clinics since 1990 and were general practitioners, Obstertrician/Gynecologists or pediatricians: This survey was conducted by mail from 15 January to 25 February 1992. The response rate was 94.4 percent. 1) The major manpower for MCH programs of the studied clinics was physicians and nurseaids. 70.3% of physicians were general practitioners, 81.1% of nursing manpower were nurseaids. 31.1% of the studied clinics employed lab-technicians. 89.2% of them had MCH room whatever the size and the setting, and 84.4% of Ob/Gyn clinics installed laboratory equipments. 2) 55.4% and 63.5% of the studied clinics provided 151 or above consulting services and curative services of MCH per physician a month respectively and 33.8% and 25.7% of them provided 10 or less consulting services and curative services per physician a month. 91.9% of lab-technicians had 10 or less laboratory tests per technician a month. 3) There was a difference between Ob/Gyn and pediatric clinics in terms of services delivered : for example, 80% of Ob/Gyn clinics provided pre- and post- natal care services, while 84.6% of pediatric clinics provided vaccinations for children. It was also found that only a few of general practitioners involved pre-and post- natal care services. 4) There were no clinics which had opened regular health education session but 24.3% of them had opened the sessions irregularly. Ob/Gyn clinics put emphasis on maternity and pediatric clinics did on child health, but general practitioners touched with both maternal and child health. 21.6% of the studied clinics had some kind of educational materials for MCH programs. Most of the materials were pamphlets or small booklets. 5) Proteinuria/glucosuria, blood pressure and blood type were tested in 48.6~69% of the studied clinics ; tests for blood sugar and hepatitis B were provided in 39.2~41.9% of them, most of them were done in Ob/Gyn clinics. 6) 41.9% of physicians, 29.7% of nurses and 45.9% of nurses-aids wanted to receive on-job-training for MCH programs.

• Physical Therapy Korea
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.71-79
• /
• 1995

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature of AIDS/HIV (acquired immune deficiency syndrome/human immunodeficiency virus) and to introduce physical therapy of the AIDS client. It was first reported that five young homosexual men, in 1981 in Los Angeles, died of pneumonia caused by pneumocystis carinii - called "pest of twentieth century". AIDS was implied a fatal breakdown of the functioning of the normal human immune system. The major routes of transmission has occurred via l)sexual contact between men, 2)heterosexual intercourse, 3)contaminated blood and blood products, and 4)intrauterine or pre-natal infection from mothers. AIDS clients who may require physical therapy for a wide range of problems due to respiratory, neurological, musculoskeletal and painful syndromes as well as general decline in fitness and function. AIDS is growing rapidly in our contury as well as all over the world. Therefore, physical therapist has to correct his understandings of AIDS in order to protect himself and to give proper physical therapy to the AIDS clients.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.83.1-83.1
• /
• 2014

Open clusters consisting of a co-spatial and coeval population with a similar chemical composition are a superb astrophysical test bed in both stellar and galactic astronomy. We introduce not only several scientific issues relating to these objects but also comprehensive studies of the two young open clusters Westerlund 1 and IC 1848 formed in extremely different star-forming conditions. Westerlund 1 is known as the most massive starburst cluster in the Galaxy. Located in the Scutum-Centaurus spiral arm, the cluster is relatively close to the Galactic Center. The apparent surface density is very high. On the other hand, IC 1848 is a core cluster within the large-scale star-forming region W5 lying in the Perseus arm. Unlike Westerlund 1, IC 1848 with a putatively low metallicity exhibits a low surface density. We present the fundamental parameters of those young clusters, such as reddening, distance, and age, obtained from the broadband photometric analysis. The stellar initial mass function (IMF) of the clusters is used to investigate the effects of the different star-forming conditions on the star formation activity. With the results of previous studies for several young open clusters, our preliminary results support a possibility that star formation activity may be affected by the environmental factors or the initial condition of natal clouds. In addition, we shortly discuss the age scale and spread of pre-main sequence stars to understand the formation processes of star clusters.

• The Journal of Korean Medical History
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.87-96
• /
• 2015

In this study, we investigated advertisements in Dong-a newspaper about gynecological drugs between 1920 and 1945 and analyzed the awareness of women's health and disease during the Japanese Colonial Rule. The advertisements included leukorrhea, oligomenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, feeling of cold, sterility, hysteria, and sexually transmitted infection and identified inattentive menstruation, improper intercourse, poor pre- and post-natal care as the cause for illness. This study includes the following limitations; it only analysed advertisements from Dong-a newspaper, and most of the drugs were manufactured in Japan and might not accurately reflect the health and disease of Korean women. Suggested future studies may include analysis of institute magazine and Japanese news advertisements during this period.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.17-32
• /
• 2006

This essay has attempted to document the actual behavior patterns and the social networks related to the child delivery in the pre-industrial Korean society. We interviewed 30 women who had given birth to their first child during the 1930s and the 1940s in order to accumulate data related to son-prayer rites, prenatal care and food avoidance, sacred-string culture, and other incantation rituals. The characteristics of the social relationships with the person who had assisted the delivery and the recovery were also analyzed in terms of kinship networks. The results are as follows. First, there was a big gap between knowledge and the actual practices in birth rituals and customs. We assume that this is due to the adverse social-economic conditions at that time which may have restricted the actual performances of these customs. Second, there were almost no differences of the performance of these' birth customs between the urban areas and the rural areas. Third, the people who assisted the delivery were women who were mostly from the husband's family. Help from the wife's family were quite exceptional. Finally, it has been found out that only about half of the women who were interviewed performed the well-known custom of three-week after-birth confinement.