Lessons Learned from the Prevalence of Childhood Asthma in Korea

Asthma is a chronic disease in childhood that affects virtually every facet of a patient's life and school activities, and every member of the family. It imposes a substantial socio-economic burden and demands many special considerations. Despite frequent updates on the current concepts of asthma management and its natural history, the prevalence of childhood asthma has increased worldwide in recent decades. More recently, however, comparable data on the prevalence of childhood asthma showed little change or a plateau in the incidence in some countries, including Korea. For example, the prevalence of asthma symptoms in the past 12 months in 13- to 14-year-old school children was 8.7% in Korea, compared with 8.8% in the entire Asia-Pacific region.1 As part of collaborative international studies in 1995, 2000, and 2005, national and regional cross-sectional surveys of asthma were performed using the Korean versions of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) written and video questionnaires. The ISAAC involves epidemiological studies enthusiastically carried out by the contributing members of the Korean Academy of Pediatric Allergy and Respiratory Diseases. There is little doubt regarding the prevalence of asthma determined by the ISAAC using the Korean versions of the written and video questionnaire

The clinical longevity of cantilever resin-bonded bridges

published_or_final_versio

Prosthetic Socket Cooling System

A team of four senior-level undergraduate students in the Interdisciplinary Senior Project Design course in the Engineering Department of California Polytechnic State University: San Luis Obispo have worked to develop a prosthetic socket cooling system, namely for veteran Taylor Morris and exclusively for a transfemoral prosthetic socket, under the Quality of Life+ Laboratory. This cooling system will utilize the thermoelectric effect known as the Peltier effect to transmit heat generated from the residual limb to the surrounding environment by means of forced convection over small aluminum heat sinks. Two measurement devices have also been developed to, one, measure the heat generated by the muscles of the femoral area by a thermocouple temperature sensor network and, two, measure the efficiency of the proposed socket cooling system by applying a pseudo heat source and ensuring that the Peltier modules are removing the excess heat generated to hold and regulate the residual limb skin temperature

Phase diagram of solution of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes

We study a solution of long polyanions (PA) with shorter polycations (PC) and focus on the role of Coulomb interaction. A good example is solutions of DNA and PC which are widely studied for gene therapy. In the solution, each PA attracts many PCs to form a complex. When the ratio of total charges of PA and PC in the solution, $x$, equals to 1, complexes are neutral and they condense in a macroscopic drop. When $x$ is far away from 1, complexes are strongly charged. The Coulomb repulsion is large and free complexes are stable. As $x$ approaches to 1, PCs attached to PA disproportionate themselves in two competing ways. One way is inter-complex disproportionation, in which PCs make some complexes neutral and therefore condensed in a macroscopic drop while other complexes become even stronger charged and stay free. The other way is intra-complex disproportionation, in which PCs make one end of a complex neutral and condensed in a small droplet while the rest of the complex forms a strongly charged tail. Thus each complex becomes a "tadpole". These two ways can also combine together to give even lower free energy. We get a phase diagram of PA-PC solution in a plane of $x$ and inverse screening radius of the monovalent salt, which includes phases or phase coexistence with both kinds of disproportionation.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures. Major change in results and tex

Assessing Student’s Acceptance of Digital Transformation in Business and Management Universities in Vietnam

In recent years, the trend of digital transformation in education has increased significantly. A series of policies to promote the digital transformation of education have been issued, gradually completing the legal corridor such as the regulations on applying information technology, information in management, organization of online training, the use of the entire industry database system. Therefore, this article is the result of a more comprehensive research project and aims to analyze the digital transformation acceptance of college students in Economic - Business Universities in the North of Vietnam. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and independent variable Perceived Security (PS) have been combined together in order to support the survey. The data was analyzed using the method of multiple regression. These findings shed the light on the digital transformation acceptance level of students with the positive link of Performance Expectancy (PE), Social Influence (SI), Perceived Security (PS) and Facilitating Conditions (FC) on Behavioral Intention of digital transformation and its Use Behavior. Moreover, the study also has the contribution to provide orientations and solutions that will be proposed to approach the trend encouraging the application of digital transformation into higher education specifically in the business field. Keywords: UTAUT, digital transformation, perceived security, higher education DOI: 10.7176/JESD/12-8-02 Publication date: April 30th 202

A SURVEY OF THE ERRORS OF STUDENTS IN GRADES 10 AND 12 WHEN USING VIETA’S FORMULAS TO SOLVE THE ASSOCIATED MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS

Vieta’s formulas have many applications in the general mathematics program in Vietnam. Indeed, they appear in many forms of mathematical problems, ranging from 9th, 10th and 12th grades. The complexity of the mathematical problems makes students commit many errors when using the Vieta’s formulas to solve them. The sample consisted of 246 students in grades 10 and 12, in which they addressed four questionnaires related to Vieta’s formulas. The results were quite unexpected because the errors of tenth graders also existed for 12th grade students for many different reasons.  Article visualizations

The rise of xenophobia and nationalism in China since the COVID pandemic: insights from discourse analysis

Since the successful containment of COVID-19 in Wuhan in late March 2020, China had implemented a nationwide highly stringent and restrictive zero-COVID policy to manage the pandemic until the sudden swift away from it in early December 2022. How did the Chinese Communist Party discursively construct it as a ‘normal’ and legitimate policy? Using interpretivism and poststructuralist political theory, this paper examines how Chinese political elites constructed a discourse of danger for the COVID pandemic, with the dominant discursive narratives full of xenophobic and nationalist languages. The discourse framed ‘foreigners’ as ‘threats’ to Chinese people’s health, advocated that China should rely on home-made vaccines and medicines and, more importantly, argued that the Chinese Communist rule demonstrates ‘institutional superiority’ over Western governance. This xenophobic and nationalist discourse has lingered on after the dismantling of the zero-COVID policy. There are grounds for us to concern whether China is seeking self-reliance rather than integrating itself with the world. A Chinese decoupling from the world—a nationalist self-reliance policy similar with that in the Mao era—is not unthinkable

ARSENIC REMOVAL FROM GROUNDWATER BY IRON CO PRECIPITATION IN CONTACT FILTER

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart

Principles of MicroRNA–Target Recognition

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression in plants and animals. Although their biological importance has become clear, how they recognize and regulate target genes remains less well understood. Here, we systematically evaluate the minimal requirements for functional miRNA–target duplexes in vivo and distinguish classes of target sites with different functional properties. Target sites can be grouped into two broad categories. 5′ dominant sites have sufficient complementarity to the miRNA 5′ end to function with little or no support from pairing to the miRNA 3′ end. Indeed, sites with 3′ pairing below the random noise level are functional given a strong 5′ end. In contrast, 3′ compensatory sites have insufficient 5′ pairing and require strong 3′ pairing for function. We present examples and genome-wide statistical support to show that both classes of sites are used in biologically relevant genes. We provide evidence that an average miRNA has approximately 100 target sites, indicating that miRNAs regulate a large fraction of protein-coding genes and that miRNA 3′ ends are key determinants of target specificity within miRNA families

Study on Additional Carrier Sensing for IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard are able to achieve low-power transmissions in the guise of low-rate and short-distance wireless personal area networks (WPANs). The slotted carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) is used for contention mechanism. Sensor nodes perform a backoff process as soon as the clear channel assessment (CCA) detects a busy channel. In doing so they may neglect the implicit information of the failed CCA detection and further cause the redundant sensing. The blind backoff process in the slotted CSMA/CA will cause lower channel utilization. This paper proposes an additional carrier sensing (ACS) algorithm based on IEEE 802.15.4 to enhance the carrier sensing mechanism for the original slotted CSMA/CA. An analytical Markov chain model is developed to evaluate the performance of the ACS algorithm. Both analytical and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than IEEE 802.15.4, which in turn significantly improves throughput, average medium access control (MAC) delay and power consumption of CCA detection