Symposium objectives:
Concurrent with escalating influences of human activities on freshwater and marine ecosystems, the environmental and economic impacts of harmful algal blooms (HABs) have increased in recent decades. It is therefore imperative to know if present trends of human activities and HABs will lead to unacceptable consequences, and if the means can be developed to mitigate impacts. The key to this knowledge is an understanding of the outbreak mechanism of HABs. The symposium covers the fundamental importance of physiological, genetic, and behavioral studies to develop an understanding of the population dynamics and ecological impacts of HABs. It require a thorough understanding of genetic variability and regulation, nutritional and environmental tolerances and responses, behavioral adaptations, life history transformations, toxin physiology and function.

Symposium objectives:
Macroalgal blooms, such as ‘green tide’ caused by the genus Ulva and ‘golden tide’ by Sargassum spp., have severe detrimental influences on the local economy and coastal ecosystems. These incidences have increased in range, frequency and intensity around the world including Korea, probably due to growing anthropogenic pressure, including coastal eutrophication, climate change and inadvertent algal species transport by ship movements. This symposium was organized to better understand the current status of macroalgal blooms in order to make future research direction for developing better management plans.

Symposium objectives:
Jellyfish blooms have recently been ubiquitous in the world’s ocean and caused problems for humans, leading to speculation of ‘jellification of the future ocean’. While many observations and experimental studies have provided hypothetical explanation of anthropogenic causation of jellyfish blooms, many questions about environmental and biological factors regulating their abundance fluctuation are still waiting for answers.
Special interests of this symposium are ecology and molecular biology on life strategy thorough metamorphic stages, and venom biochemistry of jellyfish Nemopilema nomurai, the endemic giant jellyfish in the East Asian Marginal Seas and Aurelia coerulea, one of the commonest and problematic species. However, Broad aspects of taxonomy, behavior and habits, physiological and molecular ecology can be ranged over and welcomed, encompassing other species of gelatinous taxa including ctenophores, chordates as well as cnidarians. Countermeasures such as earlier observation of jellyfish pathway, sustained monitering on newly introduced species, first aid on jellyfish stings and controlling population size by polyp mapping and eliminating are also going to be discussed.

Symposium objectives:
This symposium will cover an array of recent and emerging topics related to harmful organisms including terrestrial insect and Arcari pests in agriculture and vector-borne disease. In particular, the symposium will address invasive and native pests and their impacts on ecosystems and human health based on empirical and simulation data. Recent technical progress in studying the harmful organisms will be also addressed in some of the symposium presentation.

Symposium objectives:
Among many creatures on earth, some of them are considered harmful biological organisms of medical importance. They can be parasites, infectious diseases transmitting vectors or cause allergic diseases for humans. From a medical point of view, parasites being larger in size than prokaryotes are important harmful organisms besides pathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses. The symposium will address interesting aspects of parasitism, cellular biology/genomics on protozoan parasites and interactions between allergy-causing arthropods and hosts etc.

Symposium objectives:
This symposium will cover recent and emerging new topics related to invasive alien plants. For example, economic/ecological impacts and toxicity to humans including decrease in agricultural production, declines in native plants, genetic contamination, allergic, contact dermatitis and damage to livestock. In particular, we also welcome economic and social themes, including lowering ecosystem

Symposium objectives:
Solid waste generation has rapidly increased globally over the last decade. The large amounts of waste being incinerated has resulted in accumulation of significant quantities of solid residues, such as ash. In addition, carbon black is generated from incomplete combustion of oil refinery byproducts. Although these incinerated products have been highlighted for a variety of industry applications, the raw material poses serious risks to human health due to the presence of toxic metals (especially vanadium and nickel for carbon black) and emerging contaminants, as indicated by in vitro studies using human cell lines. The current practice of disposing these waste in landfills results in environment impacts from leachates. Contaminants entering soils and aquatic environments pose long term risks to human health, as they alter ecosystems and food chains

This special session aims to review emerging knowledge on novel methods to detoxify incinerated waste (e.g. ash and carbon black) and the development of emergent functional materials safe for use in the environment. The volume will focus on technologies which minimize human health impacts and environment safety for coastal applications.

The following topics will be discussed during the session.

a. Environmental health issues associated with solid waste, such as ash and carbon black
b. Advanced functional materials which detoxify raw solid waste (e.g. carbon-rich materials)
c. Materials and techniques for the safe application of waste-to-resource materials in coastal applications (reclamation, construction of seawalls)
d. Assessment of environmental safety of novel waste-to-resource materials for human and ocean ecosystem health.

Symposium objectives:
Mosquitoes have been the deadliest animal in the world. They effect seriously on human life and society as vector borne diseases are more and more prevalent these days in particular in the tropical region. Chemical control is still the major method for mosquitoes, but its negative effects on ecosystem as well as insecticide resistance of mosquitoes are well known. Despite some environmental friendly control methods such as biological and ecological controls have limitations in usage, those are still advantageous if correct application procedures are developed. This symposium will focus the latest issues about vector mosquitoes in Southeast Asia and application of IMM. Through domestic and overseas cases, we will deal with details on how to prevent the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. We recommend it to many people who are interested in the basic information of vector mosquitoes and their comprehensive control.

Symposium objectives:
The impact of human activities on environment has been escalated since the industrial revolution, thereby causing to the worldwide pollutions with an unprecedented scale. Diverse microorganisms including beneficial or harmful microorganisms are tightly associated with these pollutions in positive or negative manners, respectively. Therefore, to deal with these pollutions, there is an urgent need to develop an efficient treatment technology, built around the application of microorganisms, which must be dependent on complete understanding on the fates of pollutions in micro or macro-environmental systems, the mechanisms of potential remediation of pollutants, and the way to detect the hazardous pollutants in lower concentrations. Here, in this session, comprehensive topics addressing above issues will be addressed with recent technical improvements.