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The development of metalinguistic awareness, and specifically syntactic awareness, (here measured by age-related changes in the ability to judge and revise unacceptable sentences), reflects developmental changes in focus from semantic to syntactic properties of sentences. Previous research reported that children find judgements of word-order changes easier than morphological violations (Hakes, 1980). We hypothesized that this difference in ease of judgement is linked to the language under investigation. That is, there may be a relationship between the functional load of grammatical morphemes and ability to detect syntactic violations. This study investigated the development of syntactic awareness in Cantonese-speaking children. Fifty-six subjects from four age groups (three, five, seven and 20 years old) were asked to judge the grammaticality of 40 sentences (18 with word-order changes and 22 with morphological violations) and correct the grammatically deviant sentences. There was a significant age effect on subjects' performance in both judgement and revision tasks. Children scored significantly higher in judging sentences with word order changes than those with morphological violations. They also scored higher on word order revisions than morphological revisions, an unexpected finding. The success of correcting morphological violations varied by morphological marker, apparently according to each marker's degree of obligatory use in the language. It would seem then that syntactic awareness is very much affected by language-specific characteristics.

The school plays a very important role in health education and promotion at the crucial stage of childhood and adolescence. It develops personal character, skills, attitude and physique, in addition to imparting knowledge. To sustain the concerted effort to address inter-wined social, educational, psychological and health needs of children, training and ongoing reinforcement must be given to teachers. A task force made up of parents, teachers, administrators, students and health professionals must be formed to develop core values, visions, goals and activities; and to provide new direction for health education and promotion. The 'Health Promoting Schools' Programme of the CUHK was launched in 1999 with the aim to promote physical, emotional and intellectual development of students through healthy and hygienic practices. The programme has also conducted researches on health of students, prioritise and evaluate relevant programmes. Recent research studies revealed that students in higher grades had more physical and psychological health problems, probably due to heavy workload and less emphasis on health education in their formal curriculum. Another research study has shown the lack of concrete school policies in health education. It is therefore important to develop policies, practices and structures, as well as regular curricular reviews to promote health of the school children. The "Health Promoting Schools' Programme has already initiated several district based health promotion programmes to pave the way for the formation of local task force on youth health promotion.

Chronic hepatitis B infection is hyperendemic in Taiwan. A massive hepatitis B vaccination programme has been implemented since 1984. Eight years after its introduction, the HBsAg carrier rate in young children has decreased fivefold, and the protective efficacy of the vaccines is estimated to be 85%. Despite the successful execution of the programme, a certain percentage of the population declined vaccination. The reasons for not completing or for delaying the vaccination schedule are discussed. In conclusion, a flexible and target-specific campaign should be undertaken in the future.

Patients with uremia usually develop hypoxemia during hemodialysis therapy. It has been thought by most of the investigators that the development of hypoxemia is related to the impropriety of biocompatibility of the dialyzer membranes. Besides, acetate dialysate through metabolism may cause a decrease of respiratory quotient and some amount of CO2 may be lost during hemodialysis. The decrease of CO2 in the blood may induce hypoventilation and therefore develop hypoxemia. A total of 32 patients who received hemodialysis therapy were studied. They were divided into group A and group B. In group A, there were 14 males and 8 females. They were hemodialyzed with cuprophan dialyzer membrane for 22 times totally. In group B, there were 6 males and 4 females. They were hemodialyzed with PMMA dialyzer membrane for 16 times totally. In both groups, acetate dialysate was used. Arterial blood gas analyses were hemodialyzed with PMMA dialyzer membrane for 16 times totally. In both groups, acetate dialysate was used. Arterial blood gas analyses were performed before hemodialysis as the baseline and at 15, 30, 45, 60, 120, 180, 240, and 300 minutes during hemodialysis. White blood cell counts (WBC) were done at the same time when arterial blood gas analyses were performed. The results showed that in group A, a marked decrease of WBC at 15 minutes (p less than 0.001).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)