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Desalination is now being proposed for many countries facing water scarcity as a supplement to existing water supplies. In Korea, however, desalination for domestic water usage was restricted to small isolated communities with access to no other water supply. To date, small-scale RO (reverse osmosis) desalination systems, which size ranges from 10 m3/day to 1000 m3/day, have been constructed to produce potable water from brackish or seawater. The major issue of these systems is the optimization of system design to minimize capital cost and energy consumption, which is likely to be difficult for small-scale systems. This paper reviews the current status and future challenges of small-scale desalination plants in Korea. The design and operation of existing desalination systems were compared in terms of treatment efficiency and energy usage. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) is suggested to be involved in the progression of diabetic nephropathy. We investigated the association of the -2518 A/G polymorphism in the MCP-1 gene with progressive kidney failure in Korean patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). We investigated -2518 A/G polymorphism of the MCP-1 gene in type 2 DM patients with progressive kidney failure (n=112) compared with matched type 2 DM patients without nephropathy (diabetic control, n=112) and healthy controls (n=230). The overall genotypic distribution of -2518 A/G in the MCP-1 gene was not different in patients with type 2 DM compared to healthy controls. Although the genotype was not significantly different between the patients with kidney failure and the diabetic control (p=0.07), the A allele was more frequent in patients with kidney failure than in DM controls (42.0 vs. 32.1%, p=0.03). The carriage of A allele was significantly associated with kidney failure (68.8 vs. 54.5%, OR 1.84, 95% CI 1.07-3.18). In logistic regression analysis, carriage of A allele retained a significant association with diabetic kidney failure. Our result shows that the -2518 A allele of the MCP-1 gene is associated with kidney failure in Korean patients with type 2 DM.

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to investigate the associations between the GNB3 C825T polymorphism, body fatness and fitness, and blood pressure in a sample of young Korean men., Methods: A total of 282 apparently healthy Korean men (nonobese N = 152, obese N = 130) aged 19-33 yr participated in the study. Body fatness and blood pressure were measured by using standardized protocols. The GNB3 C825T was genotyped by using polymerase chain reaction with restriction fragment length polymorphism., Results: Univariate analyses of variance and Bonferroni post hoc tests showed that in the obese group only, TT homozygotes had a lower VO2max (P = 0.015 and 0.043, respectively) but higher resting systolic (P = 0.025 and < 0.001, respectively) and mean arterial blood pressures (P = 0.049 and 0.002, respectively) than CC homozygotes or CT heterozygotes. We further investigated possible interactions between group and genotype and found a significant interaction in SBP only (P = 0.037) between the group and genotype, even when controlling for age, BMI, and VO2max as potential confounding factors. Stepwise regression analyses showed that body mass index and GNB3 genotype were two independent predictors for the variations in systolic blood pressure and heart rate up to by 14.3 and 14.5%, respectively. In addition, waist-to-hip ratio explained an individual variation in mean arterial pressure (MAP) up to by 11.2%., Conclusion: The current findings of the study suggest that increased body fatness along with low cardiorespiratory fitness may magnify the genetic susceptibility of the GNB3 825T allele to elevated blood pressure in this study population.