Environmental threats to children's health in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific

The Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions contain half of the world's children and are among the most rapidly industrializing regions of the globe. Environmental threats to children's health are widespread and are multiplying as nations in the area undergo industrial development and pass through the epidemiologic transition. These environmental hazards range from traditional threats such as bacterial contamination of drinking water and wood smoke in poorly ventilated dwellings to more recently introduced chemical threats such as asbestos construction materials; arsenic in groundwater; methyl isocyanate in Bhopal, India; untreated manufacturing wastes released to landfills; chlorinated hydrocarbon and organophosphorous pesticides; and atmospheric lead emissions from the combustion of leaded gasoline. To address these problems, pediatricians, environmental health scientists, and public health workers throughout Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific have begun to build local and national research and prevention programs in children's environmental health. Successes have been achieved as a result of these efforts: A cost-effective system for producing safe drinking water at the village level has been devised in India; many nations have launched aggressive antismoking campaigns; and Thailand, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan have all begun to reduce their use of lead in gasoline, with resultant declines in children's blood lead levels. The International Conference on Environmental Threats to the Health of Children, held in Bangkok, Thailand, in March 2002, brought together more than 300 representatives from 35 countries and organizations to increase awareness on environmental health hazards affecting children in these regions and throughout the world. The conference, a direct result of the Environmental Threats to the Health of Children meeting held in Manila in April 2000, provided participants with the latest scientific data on children's vulnerability to environmental hazards and models for future policy and public health discussions on ways to improve children's health. The Bangkok Statement, a pledge resulting from the conference proceedings, is an important first step in creating a global alliance committed to developing active and innovative national and international networks to promote and protect children's environmental health.

新型土壤改良剂对夏玉米生理生长特性的影响

通过大田玉米试验,验证新型土壤改良剂对夏玉米生育期土壤水分、紧实度及玉米生理生长特性的影响。结果表明,施用改良剂PJG和PFL夏玉米全生育期平均株高、叶面积分别高于对照20.7%、19.75%和51.88%、72.37%;2种改良剂对干物质积累的影响存在差异,影响效果依次为茎干重>叶干重>根干重。夏玉米光合速率和叶绿素含量受土壤改良剂影响较大,PJG和PFL分别高于对照29.96%、24.48%和73.36%、68.53%。在0~10 cm土层内,施用PJG和PFL后土壤紧实度分别低于对照44.44%和42.91%。施用改良剂PJG后,0~20 cm土层土壤含水量维持在田间持水量的77.9%左右,未施用改良剂土壤,夏玉米生育期表层土壤含水量起伏变化较大。土壤改良剂PJG在夏玉米的施用效果略好于PFL。

土壤结构改良剂在节水农业中的研究与应用

amendment; Water-saving agriculture; Research prospect; 【摘要】 为了充分了解土壤结构改良剂在节水农业中的研究应用现状,本文从作用机理、田间应用技术和效果等几个方面介绍土壤改良剂的应用现状。在此基础上,提出了土壤改良剂在节水农业应用中需要进一步解决的问题,指出了必须深入系统地研究不同土壤结构改良剂的田间实际应用效果,进一步研究有关土壤结构改良剂尤其是残留单体对环境的负面影响。

学习困难儿童智力结构及其与心理语言、视动能力关系的研究

IQ Structure, Psycholinguistic and Visual-motor Abilities Study on Children Learning Disability TONG Fang Directed by professor Zhu Liqi (Developmental and educational psychology) ABSTRACT Objective To comprehensive analyze the IQ structures, and relationships among IQ, psychometric characteristics and visual-motor integration on children disability. At same time, to probe into the family factors that influenced IQ, psycholinguistic abilities and behavior of LD children. Method (1) Downloading the papers on children learning disability from www.cqvip.com and www.wanfangdata.com, in which, the articles were collected by key words from 1985 to 2005. To conduct meta-analysis on IQ construction, compare the case group and the control group, including full IQ, verbal and practice IQ. (2) Designed with model compared and self-compared, 59 diagnosed learning disability children, tested themes with WISC, ITPA and Berry’s VMI. WISC included 10 items, 5 of which subtotal to verbal and practice IQ respectively. IPTA included 10 items, too, 5 process of which subtotal to auditory and visual perception. The first 3 items shared representation level, the other 2 of that shared automatic level.VMI had one score. Analyzed factors and levels with description and Pearson Correlation. To probe to linguistic internal alternately functions of LD children, and compare the scores of groups in different IQ. (3) Analyzed the perspective questionnaire filled by parents. Early development facts compared with model groups. Factors relationships analyzed with Kendall correlation, KOM and Bartlett’s test of sphericity, Promax Rotation. Results: (1) There have been 319 papers related with LD, in which 36 with IQ and 14 valid reports have been analyzed by Meta. FIQ’s 95%CI (confidence interval) is 2.418 ~ 0.172, VIQ between the difficulty and non- difficulty group. C-WISC-R reports were 10 papers, of which, 95%CI of FIQ is 2.424 ~ 0.676, of VIQ is 2.314 ~ 1.196, of PIQ is 2.176 ~ 0.176. The VIQ comparing the PIQ, 95%CI is 1.1 ~ -0.07 in difficulty group and 0.5 ~ -0.0046 in non-difficult group. Nevertheless, in the other 4 tests, FIQ’s 95%CI is 2.00 ~ -0.818 between LD and NLD. (2) Children psycholinguistic abilities had strong relation with Berry’s VMI test excluding auditory reception, and with perceptive factor of intelligence excluding verbal expression. Auditory reception and visual closure had strong relation with FIQ and PIQ. Grammatic closure, visual association and manual expression had strong relation with concept factor. The representational and automatic levels are depended on integration of auditory and visual procession. Lower verbal expression (VE) let to lower expression process and low scores on representational level. Lower visual sequential memory (VSM) let to lower memory process and influenced automatic level. Groups compared by IQ 90 show that LD children with under IQ 90 had lower scores on items of IPTA than with up IQ 90 excluded verbal expression. It was proved that IQ administrated the linguistic ability. Nevertheless, general abilities deficiency didn’t show influencing on the types of the perceptive delay. There was mutual function among linguistic ability on LD children. Auditory and visual level are overlapped each other. Not only show higher Decoding and lower Encoding on Auditory perception, lower Decoding and higher Encoding on Visual perception, in representation, but also higher Sequential remember, lower Closure on Audition, and lower Sequential member, higher Closure on Vision, in Automation. Nevertheless, there was no different between Representational and Automatic level, which may be the relationship of parallel or evolution. (3) Major family factors were father’s education, occupation. Lower auditory perception related to unconcerned, lower visual perception related to premature delivery and written slowly. Threatened–abortion, childbirth-suffocated were known as influencing children’s IQ and later linguistic abilities. It wasn’t shown that dosage relationship with the types of perceptive delay. Conclusion: (1) The FIQ, VIQ and PIQ of Children with LD is lower than that of NLD group. There is no significantly different between VIQ and PIQ in LD and NLD groups. (2) The objectives of ITPA and WISC tests are differently. The psycholinguistic abilities had strong relation with perceptive factor and VMI. Some facts of IPTA related with FIQ. IQ had strong administration on linguistic abilities. There was mutual function among linguistic internal abilities. (3) Family facts on IQ and psycholinguistic abilities were Father’s education, abnormal pregnant and abortion. It would be pre-show development delay in early period.

5-9岁儿童对常见病病因及其致病不确定性的认知发展

Research on children's naive concepts has previously tended to focus on the domains of physics and psychology, but more recently attention has turned to conceptual development in biology as a core domain of knowledge. Because of its familiarity, illness has been a popular topic for researchers in this domain. However, they have only studied the children’s understanding of its causes. Other aspects of illness, such as treatment and prognosis, have received little attention. This research addresses the development of 5- to 9-year-old children’s understanding of the causes of illness and their probabilities via open-ended and forced choice interviews. The results of this research are: 1) Most of the 5- to 7-year-old children used behavioral causes to explain illness, and the 9-year-old children primarily used biological causes to interpret illness. With age, more and more children selected psychological causes to explain illness. 2) Pre-school children did not over-generalize contagions to non-contagious illnesses. They used behavioral and biological causes to explain contagious illnesses. For non-contagious illnesses, they chose only behavioral causes. 3) Most of the children used only one kind of cause to explain illness. 4) Some preschool-aged children viewed outcomes of familiar causes of illness as probabilistic. With age, more and more could make uncertain predictions of illness. 5) The children’s understanding of the causes’ probabilities appeared to be based on naïve biology. 5- to 9-year-old children often made probabilistic predictions by analyzing a single cause of illness. 6) Children coming from higher educational backgrounds outperformed their counterparts coming from lower educational backgrounds with respect to understanding illness. 7) Specific knowledge acquired could generally improved the preschoolers’ understanding of causes of illness and their probabilities.

汉语婴儿对早期词汇的理解与表达

Whether Mandarin is a verb-friendly language for young word learners or not is a hotly debated issue. Researches on children's word learning were either naturalistic study or experimental study, and they were from cross-cultural perspective. This study tries to examine the noun/verb proportion in Mandarin infants, from a longitudinal perspective; it also examines how Mandarin infants understand their first nouns and verbs using both naturalistic study and experimental study. The results of this research are: 1） According to the results of CDI test, Mandarin infants of 18 month old could say more verbs than nouns significantly; while 24 month-olds could say more nouns than verbs significantly. 2） According to the results of CDI test, Mandarin infants’ verb/noun proportion was higher in 18 month old than in 24 month old. This means that the relative advantage of verb learning may be easier to show up in infants younger than 2 years old. 3） The total vocabulary of 18 month-olds was positively correlated with the Mean Length of Utterances(MLU) of 24 month-olds. The MLU of 24 month olds was positively correlated with the verbs of 18 month-olds. 4） Only 24 month-old could succeed in our IPLP study and showed “true” understanding to their familiar words. 14- and 18- month-olds watch the target side and non-target side randomly. 5） According to the results of IPLP study, the infants could understand nouns better than verbs. Both female and male infants understood nouns better than verbs, but females seemed to have stronger tendency to watch the object-same side in both noun and verb condition. 6） According to the results of parents’ reports, all the infants in 3 age groups could understand verbs as well as nouns, and they are quite familiar with those words. However, IPLP study results showed that these infants understood nouns better than verbs. 7） In IPLP study, less than 50% of the Mandarin infants watch the target side of verbs longer than the non-target side (action-same response). However, the AS responses appear more frequently in verb condition than in noun condition among 24-month-olds.