• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.193-200
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• 2007

Purpose: This study evaluated the pretreatment expression patterns of MDM2, p53, and pRb proteins to determine if the expression patterns could predict the outcome of concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and aid in the decisions for the selection of treatment modalities. Materials and Methods: Fifty-one patients that were treated with definitive chemoradiotherapy for stage $I{\sim}IVa$ esophageal squamous cell carcinoma were selected for this study. Radiotherapy was administered with daily $1.8{\sim}2\;Gy$ fractions up to a median dose of 54 Gy for primary tumors, and with four cycles of cisplatin/5-fluorouracil chemotherapy that was administered every 4 weeks, the first two cycles of which were administered concurrently with radiotherapy. Expression of MDM2, p53, and pRb was investigated by immunohistochemical analysis using pretreatment biopsy specimens. Results: MDM2, p53, and pRb were detected with high immunoreactivity in 19.6%, 27.5%, and 66.7% of the patients, respectively. However, there was no significant correlation between expression of these factors and clinical outcome. By the use of multivariate analysis with nine covariates-age, tumor location, tumor length, stage, pathological response, clinical response, MDM2 expression, p53 expression, and pRb expression, only pathological response and stage were significant factors for cause-specific survival. Conclusion: Expression of MDM2, p53, and pRb was not found to be clinically significant for predicting outcomes after CCRT in this study. Further studies with a larger patient population and longer follow-up periods are needed to re-evaluate the expression pattern and to identify new predictors for CCRT response.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.477-484
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• 2015

The objective of this study was to investigate the awareness of the meaning of a low-sodium diet as well as the self-reported preference of saltiness and sodium-intake related dietary behaviors for university students in Busan. A survey was conducted with 977 students (male: 512, female: 465). For the self-reported preference of saltiness, 45.8% of the participants reported 'moderate' preference, 35.3% reported 'salty' preference, and 18.8% reported 'unsalty' preference. Males had significantly higher scores than females (p<0.01). Regarding awareness of the meaning of a low-sodium diet, 20.8 % of the students did not recognize the phraseand, males had significantly lower awareness than females (p<0.01). The 'salty' group had a significantly lower rate than others (p<0.01). Males had significant higher sodium-related dietary behaviors scores than females for the following questions 'I often eat dried seafood and salted seafood', 'I usually eat all the broth in soups or stews' (p<0.01), 'I usually eat a lot of kimchi and salt-pickled vegetables', 'I usually eat soy dip or hot pepper dip with sushi and fritters' (p<0.05). Mean scores for sodium-related dietary behaviors by self-reported preference of saltiness were 2.49/5.00 (unsalty), 2.87/5.00 (moderate), and 3.19/5.00 (salty), respectively. There was a statistically significant difference between the groups (p<0.01). The lower the scores for the self-reported preference of saltiness, the lower the scores for sodium intake-related dietary behaviors (p<0.01). The average score for sodium-related dietary behaviors in the group familiar with the meaning of a low-sodium diet was significantly lower than that of the group that 'did not know' (p<0.01).

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.26-32
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• 2004

Purpose : Hypercoagulability is present in patients with nephrotic syndrome. Plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1(PAI-1) is a major inhibitor of plasminogen activators. PAI-1 inactivates both tissue plasminogen activator(tPA) and urokinase plasminogen activator(uPA) by rapid formation of inactive 1:1 stoichiometric complexes. Recently some studies showed that the enhanced PAI-1 expression may be involved in the intraglomerular fibrinogen/fibrinrelated antigen deposition seen in nephrotic syndrome. Methods : PAI-1 gene promoter -844(G/A) polymorphism was evaluated in 146 children with minimal change nephrotic syndrome(MCNS) and 230 control subjects. The patients with MCNS were subdivided into 85 infrequent-relapser(IR) group and 61 frequent relapser(FR) group. PCR of PAI-1 gene promoter region including -844(G/A) and RFLP using the restriction enzyme Xhol were performed for each DNA samples extracted from the groups. Results : The distribution of PAI-1 genotype in the control group was G/G 81(32.5%), A/A 42(16.9%), and G/A 126(50.6%). The distribution of PAI-1 genotypes in the IR group of MCNS was G/G 29(34.1%), A/A 15(17.7%), and G/A 41(48.2%). The distribution of PAI-1 genotype in the FR group of MCNS was G/G 17(27.9%), A/A 18(29.5%), and G/A 26(42.6%). There was a significantly increased frequency of A/A genotype(P=0.0251) in the FR group of MCNS. Conclusion : Our results indicate that the PAI-1 gene promoter A/A genotype may be associated with the FR in MCNS.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2010

Geochemical approaches on the two recovered piston cores were performed to understand the characteristics of organic matters and the influence of the sea level variation of the East Sea in the Hupo Basin since the Holocene. The analyzing results on organic components (TOC and TN), and isotopic compositions of organic matters showed the variation to core locations and sampling depths. In core 08HZP-01, their values were gradually changed with depth from 4 mbsf to seafloor. However, rapid variation was observed at the boundary of 4.71 mbsf (meter below seafloor) in core 08HZP-03. Based on TOC/TN, $\delta^{13}C_{org}$ and $\delta^{15}N_{org}$, the origin of organic matters in the Hupo Basin can be divided into three groups; 1) predominant marine algae, 2) $C_3$ land plant, and 3) mixture of $C_3$ land plant and marine/freshwater algae. It is likely that the vertical and spatial variations of organic and isotopic compositions reflect the shifts in sedimentary environment (including sediment transportation) by ocean currents and sea-level changes and others during the Holocene period.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.575-596
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• 2012

Students' perception on a science program for gifted was investigated. The whole program was designed in consistency and integrity based on the Autonomous Learner Model suggested by Betts & Kercher(1999). 7th, 8th and 9th grade students were enrolled in this program, offered by G Education Institute for Gifted(GEI) located in Seoul. A survey was done to ask students' perception regarding the effect of the program. The survey consisted of statements about the expected effects of the program and students were asked if they agreed with the statements. Most students strongly agreed that GEI's program has positive effects. Students replied that they learned useful and interesting science contents, enjoyed meaningful experience of cooperating with members in small groups, and were challenged by the inquiry tasks. They recognized that they were being trained to become autonomous learners. They also said that their choices and decisions were respected, which resulted in positive effects on their ability to negotiate or to inquire actively. These implies that Autonomous Learner Model had been successfully applied. Although it was not clear autonomy of students was fully grown, the possibility of becoming an autonomous learner was evident. Satisfaction level is higher for the older students, implying that the integrity in the program gave accumulating effect. Students response showed that three sub-programs of GEI, the classes of each subject, conference at the end of the year and autonomous learner training played equally important role for students to learn the process of scientific inquiry and autonomous learning. This was a positive sign that the strategies for scientific inquiry and autonomous learning were embedded and integrated deeply in the program. The results of current research suggests that the integrity of a program based on a specific education model for the gifted could provide better education environment for the gifted students.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.11
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• pp.241-253
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• 1998

One form of the anomalies of stock price changes as reaction to earnings information is believed to be caused by the so-called earnings fixation, which is the overreaction of stock prices to earnings. According to the Sloan (1996) study, stock price changes are positively associated with earnings at the time of earnings releases, but the association becomes negative after that, as the early overreaction is corrected. However, the problem in his study is to use cash flows computed by adjusting earnings with appropriate income statement and balance sheet items. As Bahnson et al. (1996) show, these cash flows substantially deviate from SFAS No. 95 cash flows and the sample used in this study is found to be subject to this substantial measurement error. Therefore, the result of Sloan might be driven by this error and the reexamination of earnings fixation is warranted. The results are generally consistent with those in Sloan. First, earnings is positively associated with stock price changes at the time of earnings releases, but the association becomes negative after that. Second, cash flows show a weak association with stock price changes at the time of earnings releases, but the association become stronger thereafter. Third, when seperated from cash flows, accruals have an incremental explanation about stock price changes beyond that of cash flows, accruals have a negative association later on. This finding is consistent with stock price overreaction to accruals, even when more cleaner cash flow data are used.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.5 no.3 s.19
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• pp.200-205
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• 2005

Purpose: KLF4, a member of the KLF family, is a zinc finger tumor suppressor protein that is critical for gastric epithelial homeostasis. Our aim was to determine whether the altered expression of KLF4 might be associated with gastric cancer development and, if so, to determine to which pathologic parameter it is linked. Materials and Methods: For the construction of the gastric cancer tissue microarray, 84 paraffin-embedded tissues containing gastric cancer areas were cored 3 times and transferred to the recipient master block. The expression pattern of KLF4 was examined on tissue microarray slides by using immunohistochemistry and was compared with pathologic parameters, including histologic type, depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, and peritoneal dissemination. Results: The KLF4 protein was expressed in cytoplasm and nucleus of superficial and foveolar epithelial cells in the normal gastric mucosa. We found markedly reduced or loss of KLF4 expression in 43 (51.2%) of the 84 gastric cancer tissues. There was no significant correlation between KLF4 expression and pathologic parameters, including histologic type, depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis and peritoneal dissemination. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that altered expression of KLF4 may contribute to abnormal regulation of gastrointestinal epithelial cell growth and differentiation and to the development of Korean gastric cancer, as an early event.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.149-162
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• 2014

Course guidance is a mentoring process which is performed before students register for coming classes. The course guidance plays a very important role to students in checking degree audits of students and mentoring classes which will be taken in coming semester. Also, it is intimately involved with a graduation assessment or a completion of ABEEK certification. Currently, course guidance is manually performed by some advisers at most of universities in Korea because they have no electronic systems for the course guidance. By the lack of the systems, the advisers should analyze each degree audit of students and curriculum information of their own departments. This process often causes the human error during the course guidance process due to the complexity of the process. The electronic system thus is essential to avoid the human error for the course guidance. If the relation data model-based system is applied to the mentoring process, then the problems in manual way can be solved. However, the relational data model-based systems have some limitations. Curriculums of a department and certification systems can be changed depending on a new policy of a university or surrounding environments. If the curriculums and the systems are changed, a scheme of the existing system should be changed in accordance with the variations. It is also not sufficient to provide semantic search due to the difficulty of extracting semantic relationships between subjects. In this paper, we model a course mentoring ontology based on the analysis of a curriculum of computer science department, a structure of degree audit, and ABEEK certification. Ontology-based course guidance system is also proposed to overcome the limitation of the existing methods and to provide the effectiveness of course mentoring process for both of advisors and students. In the proposed system, all data of the system consists of ontology instances. To create ontology instances, ontology population module is developed by using JENA framework which is for building semantic web and linked data applications. In the ontology population module, the mapping rules to connect parts of degree audit to certain parts of course mentoring ontology are designed. All ontology instances are generated based on degree audits of students who participate in course mentoring test. The generated instances are saved to JENA TDB as a triple repository after an inference process using JENA inference engine. A user interface for course guidance is implemented by using Java and JENA framework. Once a advisor or a student input student's information such as student name and student number at an information request form in user interface, the proposed system provides mentoring results based on a degree audit of current student and rules to check scores for each part of a curriculum such as special cultural subject, major subject, and MSC subject containing math and basic science. Recall and precision are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The recall is used to check that the proposed system retrieves all relevant subjects. The precision is used to check whether the retrieved subjects are relevant to the mentoring results. An officer of computer science department attends the verification on the results derived from the proposed system. Experimental results using real data of the participating students show that the proposed course guidance system based on course mentoring ontology provides correct course mentoring results to students at all times. Advisors can also reduce their time cost to analyze a degree audit of corresponding student and to calculate each score for the each part. As a result, the proposed system based on ontology techniques solves the difficulty of mentoring methods in manual way and the proposed system derive correct mentoring results as human conduct.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.149-155
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• 2002

Recent advances in radiation transport algorithms, computer hardware performance, and parallel computing make the clinical use of Monte Carlo based dose calculations possible. To compare the speed and accuracies of dose calculations between different developed codes, a benchmark tests were proposed at the XIIth ICCR (International Conference on the use of Computers in Radiation Therapy, Heidelberg, Germany 2000). A Monte Carlo treatment planning comprised of 28 various Intel Pentium CPUs was implemented for routine clinical use. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of our system using the above benchmark tests. The benchmark procedures are comprised of three parts. a) speed of photon beams dose calculation inside a given phantom of 30.5 cm$\times$39.5 cm $\times$ 30 cm deep and filled with 5 ㎣ voxels within 2% statistical uncertainty. b) speed of electron beams dose calculation inside the same phantom as that of the photon beams. c) accuracy of photon and electron beam calculation inside heterogeneous slab phantom compared with the reference results of EGS4/PRESTA calculation. As results of the speed benchmark tests, it took 5.5 minutes to achieve less than 2% statistical uncertainty for 18 MV photon beams. Though the net calculation for electron beams was an order of faster than the photon beam, the overall calculation time was similar to that of photon beam case due to the overhead time to maintain parallel processing. Since our Monte Carlo code is EGSnrc, which is an improved version of EGS4, the accuracy tests of our system showed, as expected, very good agreement with the reference data. In conclusion, our Monte Carlo treatment planning system shows clinically meaningful results. Though other more efficient codes are developed such like MCDOSE and VMC＋＋, BEAMnrc based on EGSnrc code system may be used for routine clinical Monte Carlo treatment planning in conjunction with clustering technique.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.188-206
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• 2010

Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is an operations research-based method for measuring the performance efficiency of decision units that are characterized by multiple inputs and outputs. DEA has been applied successfully as a performance evaluation tool in many fields. However, it has not been extensively applied in the shipbuilding industry. This paper applied the input-oriented DEA model, and Malmquist indices to the 7 shipbuilding firms to measure the efficiency and productivity changes during the period of 2004 to 2009. The Malmquist indices will be decomposed into three components such as pure efficiency change, scale efficiency change, and technical change. The empirical results show the following findings. First, the DEA findings indicate that main source of inefficiency is scale rather than pure technical. Second, the Malmquist indices show that an overall decrease in productivity.