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An increasing number of rapidly growing urban areas in Asia are becoming more vulnerable to seismic hazards in their development process. However, local authorities rarely integrate seismic risk into the procedure of emergency and land-use planning. This article explores the question of whether seismic risks for urban areas are increasing or diminishing over time, while trends such as population growth and land development in hazard-prone areas increase the potential for loss in disasters. The net effects of such urbanization factors are examined through the use of simulation models that estimate building inventory and seismic loss changes. Seismic losses are modeled for a comparative analysis under the same hypothetical earthquake events hitting at different points in a city area's long-term development. A case study of seismic risk assessments is illustrated by the Hsinchu City, Taiwan. Results of a prospective analysis indicate that, for the same seismic events, overall risk is expected to increase due to a forecast 2.9 % growth in building inventory. This increment in loss is largely attributed to a large amount of initial buildings predicted to be developed into commercial and industrial uses. However, the spatial pattern of risk would change slightly; particularly, the southeastern, eastern, and some older core areas would be the most vulnerable and risky both at current and future time periods. The approach here enables city planners to incorporate seismic risk analysis into predisaster emergency and land-use planning to encourage risk-reduction strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The betel nut is a common stimulant in many Asian countries. We employed the masking task developed by Enns and Di Lollo ( Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 345-352, ) to investigate the effects of betel nuts on sensory and attentional processing. In the masking task, participants needed to identify a target that was masked by either a contour mask or an object mask. Sensory processing was assessed by examining target identification in the contour mask condition when the target was presented only centrally, whereas attentional processing was assessed by examining target identification in the object mask condition when the target was presented randomly in either a central or a parafoveal location. The results showed that chewing betel nut and chewing gum produced significant contour masking with a large effect size, similar to the pure control condition, in which participants chewed nothing, and the placebo control condition, in which what participants chewed was disguised. This suggests that neither betel nut nor gum affects sensory processing. Alternatively, betel nut chewing could produce a reduction in object masking for the habitual chewers and the nonchewers, suggesting an effect of betel nut on attentional processing. This concentrated attention was also observed in the placebo control condition; thus, it cannot be exclusively driven by the expectation effect. Also, chewing per se reduced the attentional distribution foveally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benzodiazepines are commonly prescribed to patients with schizophrenia in many countries, but as little is known about such treatment in Asia, we evaluated their adjunctive use for 6761 in-patients diagnosed with schizophrenia in nine Asian countries using a cross-sectional study design in 2001, 2004 and 2008. Multivariate logistic regression and multivariate linear regression analyses were performed to assess predictors of benzodiazepine use and dose, respectively. Overall, 54% of the patients received adjunctive benzodiazepines at an average daily dose equivalent to 30.3 mg diazepam, with minor changes over the years sampled. Benzodiazepine use was highest in Taiwan and Japan, lowest in Thailand and China, and was associated with fewer years ill, presence of delusions (OR 1.24), hallucinations (OR 1.22), disorganized speech (OR 1.17), social or occupational dysfunction (OR 1.16), and use of mood stabilizers (OR 3.15), antiparkinsonian (OR 1.79) or antidepressant drugs (OR 1.33), and lower doses of antipsychotics (all p=0.016 to <0.001). Benzodiazepine doses were highest in Taiwan and China, lowest in Korea and Singapore; higher doses were associated with being young, male, physically aggressive, receiving mood stabilizers, and having electroconvulsive treatment (all p=0.019 to <0.001). Benzodiazepine use was associated with neurological and systemic adverse effects. In conclusion, benzodiazepine use was common in Asian patients with schizophrenia. Predictors of benzodiazepine use and dose differed in this population. Critical clinical guidelines should be developed specifically for Asian countries to address sound practices in regard to use of benzodiazepines for psychotic disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Betel quid (BQ) is one of the most commonly used psychoactive substances in some parts of Asia and the Pacific. Although some studies have shown brain function alterations in BQ chewers, it is virtually impossible for radiologists' to visually distinguish MRI maps of BQ chewers from others. In this study, we aimed to construct autoencoder and machine-learning models to discover brain alterations in BQ chewers based on the features of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) was obtained from 16 BQ chewers, 15 tobacco- and alcohol-user controls (TA), and 17 healthy controls (HC). We used an autoencoder and machine learning model to identify BQ chewers among the three groups. A convolutional neural network (CNN)-based autoencoder model and supervised machine learning algorithm logistic regression (LR) were used to discriminate BQ chewers from TA and HC. Classifying the brain MRIs of HC, TA controls, and BQ chewers by conducting leave-one-out-cross-validation (LOOCV) resulted in the highest accuracy of 83%, which was attained by LR with two rs-fMRI feature sets. In our research, we constructed an autoencoder and machine-learning model that was able to identify BQ chewers from among TA controls and HC, which were based on data from rs-fMRI, and this might provide a helpful approach for tracking BQ chewers in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Betel-quid dependence domains and syndrome associated with betel-quid ingredients among chewers: an Asian multi-country evidence" by C. H. Lee et al. in the 2014 issue.