Arsenic and Heavy Metals in Vietnamese Rice: Assessment of Human Exposure to These Elements through Rice Consumption

In this work, twelve heavy metals and arsenic, As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Se, and Zn, in a rice sample collected from some areas of Vietnam have been quantified and implemented by using multiple analytical platforms such as ICP-MS, AAS, and mercury analyser. Seventy rice samples collected from the Red River Delta and mining zone activity were analysed. Concentration of heavy metals and arsenic in rice was analysed after appropriated sample digestion using internal or external calibration curves. The mean concentration (mg kg−1 dried weight) of the analysed elements in rice samples decreased on the order of Mn (19.268) > Fe (13.624) > Zn (8.163) > Cu (3.138) > Ni (0.384) > Cr (0.296) > Co (0.279) > As (0.115) > Cd (0.111) > Pb (0.075) > Hg (0.007) > Se (<LOD). Mercury, a highly toxic element, has been only found in rice samples collected in the mining activity zone (frequency detection 14.5% of total samples). The experimental results indicated that the heavy metals and arsenic found in rice collected from mining activity zone were higher than those in rice harvested from normal cultivated areas like the Red River Delta. The heavy metals and arsenic content in Vietnamese rice samples were also compared with the concentration of heavy metals in other foreign rice samples in some recent publications. The estimated daily intake through rice consumption was calculated and compared with the level proposed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The results indicated that the provisional daily intake of Cd was higher than the level proposed by FAO, while the intake of other heavy metals was in an acceptable range of CODEX standard.

Factors Influencing the Health Condition of the Adult Population Residing in the Activity Area of Atomic Industry Enterprise

Purpose: Development of the basic directions of a modern strategy for protecting the health of the adult population living in the activity zone of nuclear industry enterprises (using the example of the Seversk population). Material and methods: The object of the study was the population of the city of Seversk, formed around the Siberian Group of Chemical Enterprises. The subject of the study was demographic indicators; disability; incidence of malignant neoplasms, diseases of the circulatory system, injuries and accidents); socio-economic, behavioral and technological risk factors affecting the occurrence of major diseases. Results: It was established that by the end of the study period (1970–2017), the studied population was in a state of natural population decline due to a decrease in the birth rate and an increase in mortality, while the mortality rate exceeded the birth rate. During the period under review, the primary incidence of malignant neoplasia significantly increased; at the same time, the incidence of cardiovascular diseases, as well as the frequency of injuries and poisoning, decreased. Among the adult population of Seversk, behavioral factors (the habit of smoking, regular use of alcohol, a sedentary lifestyle, lack of regular physical activity) are more common than socio-economic (living conditions, financial situation) risk factors. Important risk factors are incorrect assessment by citizens of their own health and the reasons for its violation. Among Siberian Group of Chemical Enterprises workers exposed to tekhnogenic risk factor (long-term occupational exposure), there is an increased risk of cancer death of all localizations taken together, respiratory and digestive organs; bones, joints, mesothelium, soft tissues and genitals. At the same time, the risk of oncological mortality during irradiation was not exceeded in the range of small doses of (up to 100 mSv), and for any of the localization of malignant neoplasms this effect is not dose-dependent. Conclusion: The data obtained made it possible to specify and substantiate the basic directions of the modern strategy for protecting the health of the adult population living in the activity zone of nuclear industry enterprises (using the example of the Seversk population).

BALAI KAMPUNG KOTA KREATIF DI KOTA TUA JAKARTA UTARA

Along with the current development to the Millennial Generation Era, Kampung Kota also developed into more modern habitations. Residents of Kampung Kota have also begun to recognize electronic devices such as gadgets and smartphones. The main problem that occurs is not only the fulfillment of the need for a place to live, but how to make it possible for the living environment to grow and improve the standard of living of its people. Consequently , the needs that urge to be fulfilled are job (livelihoods) and public space (greening and recreation). Meanwhile, the Old City Tourism area in Jakarta, whose growth since the colonial era was inseparable from the influence of the Kampung Kota, began to develop towards more advanced tourist areas. Kampung Kota directly and indirectly also becomes a supporting area for tourism activities in the Old City. Therefore, Balai Kampung Kota Kreatif was designed with the aim of accommodating creative economic activities and training for Kampung Kota Residents and also for a tourist attraction for Old City Tourists. Using the Cross-Dis Programming Method, the building was designed by combining two main programs, namely the Community Activity Zone and the Tourism Zone. The result of the design showed that the community activity Zone which is needed is a Creative Economic Production Program in the fields of wood, crafts, clothing, and plants, along with additional programs namely Shared Space, Business Units, Creative Corridors and Knowledge areas. Whereas for the Tourist Zones needed are Galleries, Theaters, and Tourist Centers. The program which could combine between two targets (Kampung Kota Residents and Tourist) is the outdoor in the form of Market Place and Ampy Theater. The conclusions obtained from the design of the Balai Kampung Kota Kreatif is a building which could contain a combination of two programs with different targets at once by accommodating the space requirements for both equally. Abstrak Seiring dengan perkembangan zaman ke Era Generasi Milenial. Kampung kota juga turut berkembang menjadi permukiman yang lebih modern. Warga kampung kota juga sudah mulai mengenal alat elektronik seperti gadget dan smartphone. Permasalahan utama yang terjadi bukanlah hanya pemenuhan kebutuhan akan tempat tinggal, namun bagaimana agar lingkungan tempat tinggal dapat berkembang dan menaikan taraf hidup masyarakatnya. Kebutuhan yang perlu dipenuhi adalah penyediaan lahan pekerjaan (mata pencaharian) dan ruang publik (penghijauan dan rekreasi). Sementara itu kawasan Wisata Kota Tua di Jakarta Utara, yang pertumbuhannya sejak Jaman Kolonial tidak lepas dari pengaruh Kampung Kota, mulai berkembang kearah kawasan wisata yang lebih maju. Kampung Kota secara langsung dan tidak langsung juga menjadi daerah penunjang kegiatan wisata di Kota Tua tersebut. Oleh karena itu, Balai Kampung Kota Kreatif dirancang dengan tujuan untuk mewadahi kegiatan ekonomi kreatif beserta pelatihannya bagi warga kampung kota dan juga sekaligus menjadi tempat wisata bagi turis yang mengunjungi Kawasan Wisata Kota Tua. Menggunakan Metode Cross-DisProgramming, bangunan dirancang dengan menggabungkan dua program utama yaitu zona kegiatan komunitas dan zona wisata. Hasil perancangan yang didapatkan bahwa zona kegiatan komunitas yang dibutuhkan adalah program produksi ekonomi kreatif dalam bidang kayu, kriya, pakaian, dan tanaman, serta program tambahan yaitu ruang bersama, unit usaha, selasar kreatif dan area pengetahuan. Sedangkan untuk zona wisata yang dibutuhkan adalah galeri, teater, dan pusat turis. Program yang dapat menggabungkan antara dua sasaran (warga kampung kota dan turis) adalah ruang luar yang berupa Market Place dan Ampy Theater. Kesimpulan yang didapat pada perancangan Balai Kampung Kota Kreatif adalah keseimbangan antara kegiatan warga kampung kota dan wisatawan Kota Tua Jakarta dapat tercapai dengan dengan cara mewadahi kebutuhan ruang untuk keduanya secara seimbang melalu program-program yang dipilah untuk digabungkan atau didekatkan.

The use of GIS technologies for the assessment of tourist routes landscape diversity on the Katon-Karagay National Park territory

National parks belong to the most important category of specially protected natural territories in the Kazakhstan. One of the most important tasks of national parks is to promote ecological tourism and education with reference to the natural and cultural peculiarities of their territory. The Katon-Karagay State National Natural Park is the largest national park with the highest rate of growth in terms of touristic activities in Kazakhstan. It was created in 2001 due to good state of its natural landscapes and biodiversity. At present, the Katon-Karagay National Park is a part of the Big Altai transboundary biosphere reserve organized in 2017. Within the national park 4 functional zones are established: the strictly protected, buffer, tourist and recreational activity, and limited economic activity. The touristic and recreational activity zone plays a major role for tourism development. In this zone the most tourist routes are functioned. In the article we assess both the landscape diversity of the tourist routes and tourist and recreational activity zone. For this the original landscape map was compiled for the national park territory at 1 : 500 000 scale. We identify 63 landscapes types combined into 5 landscape classes. Assessment of landscape diversity was carried out on the basis of geographic information technologies.

Semantic trajectory inference from geo-tagged tweets

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Individual travel trajectories denote a series of places people visit along the time. These places (e.g., home, workspace, and park) reflect people’s corresponding activities (e.g., dwelling, work, and entertainment), which are discussed as semantic knowledge and could be implicit under raw data (Yan et al. 2013, Cai et al. 2016). Traditional survey data directly describe people’ activities at certain places, while costing tremendous labors and resources (Huang and Wong 2016). GPS data such as taxi logs record exact origin-destination pairs as well as people’s stay time along the way, from which semantics can be easily inferred combining with geographical context data (Yan et al. 2013). Research has been done to understand the activity sequences indicated by either individual or collective spatiotemporal (ST) travel trajectories using those dense data. Different models are proposed for trajectory mining and activity inference, including location categorization, frequent region detection, and so on (Njoo et al. 2015). A typical method for matching a location or region with a known activity type is to detect stay points and stay intervals of trajectories and to find geographical context of these stay occurrences (Furtado et al. 2013, Njoo et al. 2015, Beber et al. 2016, Beber et al. 2017).</p><p>However, limited progress has been made to mine semantics of trajectory data collected from social media platforms. Specifically, detection of stay points and their intervals could be inaccurate using online trajectories because of data sparsity. Huang et al. (2014) define the notion of activity zone to detect activity types from digital footprints. In this method, individual travel trajectories first are aggregated using spatial clustering method such as density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN). Then produced clusters are classified based on a regional land use map and Google Places application programming interface (API). Such land use data are only published at specific places, such as the state cartography office’s website at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Researchers need to search for those data based on their study area. Moreover, while major land use maps can be searched for large areas such as the whole United States, detailed land use data for statewide or citywide areas are made in diverse standards, which adds extra work to classify activity zones consistently. Besides, Google Places API is a service that Google opened for developers and will return information about a place, given the place location (e.g., address or GPS coordinates), in the search request. However, API keys need to be generated before we can use these interfaces and each user can only make a limited number of free-charged requests every day (i.e., 1,000 requests per 24 hours period). In sum, previous methods to detect activity zone types using social media data are not sufficient and can hardly achieve effective data fusion. Comparing to the high cost of using officially published dataset, emerging Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) data offer an alternative to infer the types of an individual’s activities performed in each zone (i.e., cluster).</p><p>Using geo-tagged tweets as an example, this research proposes a framework for mining social media data, detecting individual semantic travel trajectories, and individual representative daily travel trajectory paths by fusing with VGI data, specifically OpenStreetMap (OSM) datasets. First, inactive users and abnormal users (e.g., users representing a company with account being shared by many employees) are removed through data pre-processing (Step 1 in Figure 1). Next, a multi-scale spatial clustering method is developed to aggregate online trajectories captured through geo-tagged tweets of a group of users into collective spatial hot-spots (i.e., activity zones; Step 2). By integrating multiple OSM datasets the activity type (e.g., dwelling, service, transportation and work) of each collective zone then can be identified (Step 3). Each geo-tagged tweet of an individual, represented as a ST point, is then attached with a collective activity zone that either includes or overlaps a buffer zone of the ST point. Herein, the buffer zone is generated by using the point as the centroid and a predefined threshold as the radius. Given an individual’s ST points with semantics (i.e., activity type information) derived from the attached collective activity zone, a semantic activity clustering method is then developed to detect daily representative activity clusters of the individual (Step 4). Finally, individual representative daily semantic travel trajectory paths (i.e., semantic travel trajectory, defined as chronological travel activity sequences) are constructed between every two subsequent activity clusters (Step 5). Experiments with the historic geo-tagged tweets collected within Madison, Wisconsin reveal that: 1) The proposed method can detect most significant activity zones with accurate zone types identified (Figure 2); and 2) The semantic activity clustering method based on the derived activity zones can aggregate individual travel trajectories into activity clusters more efficiently comparing to DBSCAN and varying DBSCAN (VDBSCAN).</p>

A Critical Analysis of the Evidence for Sexual Division of Tasks in the European Upper Paleolithic

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the evidence for technical activity specialization in the European Upper Paleolithic by sex. It reviews the arguments based on the kind of evidence researchers are likely to collect (e.g., direct, indirect, and analogical). Some hypotheses are based on suppositions generated by ethnographic comparisons, while others rely on direct or indirect indices (task diversification, activity zone locations, skill level identification, diversity of grave goods, and body evidence like handprints and skeletons). The aim of this chapter is to show that there was a reasoned distribution of activities within groups, accompanied by an emerging social hierarchy, but that it is very difficult to account exactly for what women and men did. And even if we suspect that some tasks were respectively performed by males or females, it is possible that there was also a certain amount of technical specialization that was not related to gender.