• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.27-31
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• 2009

Purpose: Lymphedemas are tissue fluid swellings, usually on the arms or legs, and occur as a result of impaired lymphatic drainage. Presently, the most effective treatment available is complete decongestive physiotherapy (CDP). However, this therapy is ineffective in some patients and surgery may be indicated. Herein, we examined the efficacy of minimally invasive needle aspiration of the most enlarged areas in hypodermic adipose tissues, of patients who had failed CDP. Methods: We included 21 patients who were diagnosed with lymphedema stage II-III in the upper or lower extremities and visited the lymphedema clinic at a university hospital from September 1, 2003 to February 28, 2004. All patients had been treated with CDP at least once, but had failed to respond to the therapy for more than one year. Nine patients had breast cancer and 12 had cervical cancer. We identified the area with the most severe edema by using MRI and performed a 16-gauge angio-needle aspiration on the area. The patients were followed up for 3 months. Effectiveness of the treatment was evaluated by comparing the volume of edema before and after the treatment using Wilcoxon signed rank-test. Results: The mean reduction ratio of the volume of edema comparison normal volume was 41.1${\pm}$35.3% (P=0.001). There were no major or minor operative complications except localized hemorrhage. Conclusion: We conclude that a needle aspiration prior to other surgical treatments is relatively safe and effective for those patients who are unresponsive to CDP.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.82-93
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• 2010

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to explore attitude and belief about menopause and severity of menopausal symptoms according to menopausal status. This study conducted a cross-sectional assessment of the effects of depressive symptoms and the severity of trait anxiety on the severity of menopausal symptoms. Methods : Participants were all outpatients at the psychiatric outpatient clinic of Korea University Guro Hospital. All participants, aged 40 to 64, had depressive or anxiety disorders and were divided into the premenopause, perimenopause, premenopause, and postmenopause groups. Menopause Rating Scale(MRS) was used to measure the severity of menopausal symptoms. The attitude toward menopause was examined by a self-report questionnaire regarding menopause. Beck Depression Inventory(BDI) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory(STAI) were used to assess depressive symptoms and anxiety. Results : The severity of menopausal symptoms was not different among the groups according to menopausal status. There was a significant correlation between a negative attitude toward menopause and the severity of menopausal symptoms. Patients with moderate to severe depressive symptoms and trait anxiety had more severe menopausal symptoms. Conclusion : Negative attitude toward menopause, depressive symptoms, and anxiety had a significantly negative impact on the severity of menopausal symptoms. The results of this study suggest that treatment to relieve depressive symptoms and anxiety and intervention to reduce negative attitude toward menopause are required. Further studies with larger sample size are needed to evaluate potentially effects of depressive symptoms and anxiety on severity of menopausal symptoms in middle-aged female psychiatric patients.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2009

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to investigate the various aspects of stress in patients with chronic prostatitis. Methods : Thirty two chronic prostatitis patients meeting the criteria of NIH-category III were compared with sixty four controls. Data pertaining to the source of, response to, and coping with stress, as well as chronic prostatitis symptom index were collected using a self-report questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of a Global Assessment of Recent Stress(GARS), Stress Response Inventory(SRI), Ways of Coping Checklist(WCC), in addition to the NIH-CPSI. Results : From the results of GARS subscales, the scores of changes in relationship, sickness or injury and financial were significantly higher in patients with chronic prostatitis than normal controls. Chronic prostatitis patients had greater amplification of somatization, depression and anger in SRI and significantly lower score in ways of coping checklist compared with controls. In the NIH-CPSI of chronic prostatitis patients, the degree of symptom played a role in depression as stress response item and significant negative correlationship between the symptom point and problem focused, seeking social support coping strategy was observed. Conclusion : These results show that patients with chronic prostatitis have greater stress, higher stress response and insufficient coping strategy. Therefore, these efforts should be considered that enhancing healthier coping strategy and evaluation and management of stress experienced by chronic protatitis patients

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.597-606
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• 2010

This study investigates the change of level of psychosocial factors of decisional balance, processes of change, and self-efficacy after nutrition education on vegetable and fruit intake of children in pre-action stages. Forty-seven 5th grade elementary school children in Yeongi-Gun, Chungnam-Do were categorized into pre-action stages from a total of 71 children by four-stage questions, and then finally into two stages of precontemplation and contemplation & preparation. After 6 weeks nutrition education, recognition of both of pros and cons of vegetable intake were improved in the two groups of precontemplation and contemplation & preparation. In fruits intake, however, recognition of pros was not changed after nutrition education in either stage, but recognition of cons was improved only in the precontemplation stage. However, no difference in any psychosocial variables was found between precontemplation stage and contemplation & preparation stage. After the nutrition education, the score of consciousness raising of vegetable intake belonging to cognitive process of change increased in the subjects of the precontemplation stage, wheres the scores of dramatic relief, self-reevaluation, environment reevaluation and social liberation increased in the group of contemplation & preparation. In fruit intake, however, no change was found except in the environment reevaluation in the precontemplation group. The behavioral process of change of vegetable and fruit intake did not show any change in either group after nutrition education. Self-efficacy scores of vegetable intake of keeping the foods at hand, eating the recommended number of servings and making time to eat increased in the precontemplation group, while in the contemplation & preparation group, self efficacy scores of shopping for a variety of vegetables, instead of keeping the foods at hands, as well as the scores of the rest two items of eating the recommended number of servings and making time to eat increased after nutrition education. However, in case of fruits intake, no difference was shown in the precontemplation stage except an item of keeping the foods at hand. The results indicated that the stage of change was progressed in the pre-action stage after nutrition education and the scores of many psychosocial factors increased in both pre-action stages. It is suggested that the recognition of cons as well as the cognitive process of change and self-efficacy could be best used as indicators of the assessment of nutrition education program for vegetable intake.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.86-97
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• 2013

This study investigated the eating habits of elementary school children and their perceptions related to traditional Korean foods, based on the health belief model. The subjects were fifth grade elementary school children (274 boys and 274 girls) in eight Korean cities. The results were as follows: The children ate almost three meals per day and were grateful for their meals. However, they irregularly consumed meals and snacks. They tended to eat heartily and did not eat foods that they had not yet eaten. Their meals were based on rice and they have eaten kimchi and vegetables at almost every meal. However, they had undesirable habits in eating other foods, such as fruits, fish, soybeans, and sweet foods. They did not sensitively or seriously perceive their eating habits in relation to their health. They perceived that it was very good for their nutrition, health, and tastes to eat traditional Korean foods, and they had pride in traditional Korean foods and eating style. Although they expressed some difficulty regarding availability and preparation of traditional Korean foods, they hardly felt difficulty in eating them. They had high dietary self-efficacy with regard to eating these foods, except for two items of self-regulation. Their eating habits showed positive correlation with dietary self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility, and perceived benefit. In conclusion, eating habits of elementary school children in relation to traditional Korean foods are not desirable, but not serious. They did not sensitively or seriously perceive their eating habits in relation to their health. However, they perceived that it was very good for their nutrition and health to eat traditional Korean foods, did not have a high level of difficulty in eating them, and had high dietary self-efficacy with regard to eating them. Therefore, we suggest that children should be exposed to various traditional Korean foods, along with education about them, in order to enhance their concern and motivation to eat them.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.44-54
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• 2013

Objectives : To investigate the frequency and clinical characteristics of premenstrual syndrome(PMS)/premenstrual dysphoric disorder(PMDD) in high school students, and determine the correlates of PMS/PMDD in association with comorbid depression and anxiety. Methods : A total of 1688 students were recruited from 5 high schools in Seoul, Korea. Subjects completed the questionnaire composed of scales to measure premenstrual symptoms, depression, and anxiety, as well as sociodemographic and reproductive variables. Subjects were categorized into 3 groups by using the Premenstrual Symptom Screening Tool(PSST) to determine the frequency and clinical characteristics of PMS/PMDD. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the correlates of PMS/PMDD. Results : The frequency of moderate to severe PMS and PMDD was 20.1% and 6.4%, respectively. Irritability(78.8%), fatigue(76.4%), and emotional sensitivity(69.8%) were common premenstrual symptoms, and functional impairment in academic performance(67.1%) was dominant. Dysmenorrhea[odd ratio(OR)=3.68, 95% confidence interval(CI) 2.45-5.55], family history of PMS(OR=1.91, 95% CI 1.35-2.71), and use of oral contraceptive (OR=1.85, 95% CI 1.16-2.94) were associated with the increased risk of PMS/PMDD after adjustment for depression and anxiety. Negative attitude to menses(OR=15.60, 95% CI 3.61-67.42) was associated with the increased risk of PMS/PMDD, particularly in subjects without depression and anxiety. Conclusions : PMS was common, as the frequency of PMS more than moderate severity including PMDD exceeded 25%, and disrupted daily functioning in adolescents. PMS is associated with various sociodemographic and menstrual characteristics, and these associations are affected by comorbid depression and anxiety.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.305-322
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• 2005

Watermarking is a widely employed method tn protecting copyright of a digital image, the owner's unique image is embedded into the original image. Strengthened level of watermark insertion would help enhance its resilience in the process of extraction even from various distortions of transformation on the image size or resolution. However, its level, at the same time, should be moderated enough not to reach human visibility. Finding a balance between these two is crucial in watermarking. For the algorithm for watermarking, the predefined strength of a watermark, computed from the physical difference between the original and embedded images, is applied to all images uniformal. The mean brightness or contrast of the surrounding images, other than the absolute brightness of an object, could affect human sensitivity for object detection. In the present study, we examined whether the detectability for watermark noise might be attired by image statistics: mean brightness and contrast of the image. As the first step to examine their effect, we made rune fundamental images with varied brightness and control of the original image. For each fundamental image, detectability for watermark noise was measured. The results showed that the strength ot watermark node for detection increased as tile brightness and contrast of the fundamental image were increased. We have fitted the data to a regression line which can be used to estimate the strength of watermark of a given image with a certain brightness and contrast. Although we need to take other required factors into consideration in directly applying this formula to actual watermarking algorithm, an adaptive watermarking algorithm could be built on this formula with image statistics, such as brightness and contrast.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.416-430
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• 2020

Purpose: This study was conducted to assess the effects of a personalized nutritional intervention program on food security and health and nutritional status of elderly people in the city of Seoul. Methods: A total of 372 elderly adults aged 65 years or above who resided in Seoul were enrolled in this study. Personalized supplementary food supply and nutritional education based on chronic disease status, disability and cooking ability were implemented for 4 months. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, nutrient intake, food security status, anemia status, chronic disease management, and frailty status, and prevalence of malnutrition (Mini Nutritional Assessment) were examined. Results: After the program, all subjects displayed significantly increased nutrient intake. Before the intervention, all subjects were in a state of food insecurity; however, after the intervention, 37.1% of the subjects were food secure. Moreover, the rates of being at risk of malnutrition and malnutrition in subjects were decreased and instead rate of those who improved to normal increased to 29.8% from 0% of normal rate before the prevention. The rate of subjects without anemia increased from 18.7% to 28.5% after the intervention. In addition, the rate of subjects with intensive or periodic management of chronic diseases decreased, while those with occasional management of chronic diseases increased from 0% to 4.6%. Furthermore, the rates of being at risk of frailty and frailty were decreased and the normal rate increased from 0% to 9.7% instead. Age group-based analysis showed that elderly people over 80 years showed less improvement in the management of the chronic disease status and the frailty status. Conclusion: Personalized supplementary food supplies and nutritional education improved not only the nutritional status but also disease status in vulnerable older adults, and the effects were more significant in adults aged less than 80 years.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.43-57
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• 2012

To enhance the competitive advantage in a constantly changing business environment, an enterprise management must make the right decision in many business activities based on both internal and external information. Thus, providing accurate information plays a prominent role in management's decision making. Intuitively, historical data can provide a feasible estimate through the forecasting models. Therefore, if the service department can estimate the service quantity for the next period, the service department can then effectively control the inventory of service related resources such as human, parts, and other facilities. In addition, the production department can make load map for improving its product quality. Therefore, obtaining an accurate service forecast most likely appears to be critical to manufacturing companies. Numerous investigations addressing this problem have generally employed statistical methods, such as regression or autoregressive and moving average simulation. However, these methods are only efficient for data with are seasonal or cyclical. If the data are influenced by the special characteristics of product, they are not feasible. In our research, we propose a forecasting framework that predicts service demand of manufacturing organization by combining Case-based reasoning (CBR) and leveraging an unsupervised artificial neural network based clustering analysis (i.e., Self-Organizing Maps; SOM). We believe that this is one of the first attempts at applying unsupervised artificial neural network-based machine-learning techniques in the service forecasting domain. Our proposed approach has several appealing features : (1) We applied CBR and SOM in a new forecasting domain such as service demand forecasting. (2) We proposed our combined approach between CBR and SOM in order to overcome limitations of traditional statistical forecasting methods and We have developed a service forecasting tool based on the proposed approach using an unsupervised artificial neural network and Case-based reasoning. In this research, we conducted an empirical study on a real digital TV manufacturer (i.e., Company A). In addition, we have empirically evaluated the proposed approach and tool using real sales and service related data from digital TV manufacturer. In our empirical experiments, we intend to explore the performance of our proposed service forecasting framework when compared to the performances predicted by other two service forecasting methods; one is traditional CBR based forecasting model and the other is the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. We ran each service forecasting 144 times; each time, input data were randomly sampled for each service forecasting framework. To evaluate accuracy of forecasting results, we used Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) as primary performance measure in our experiments. We conducted one-way ANOVA test with the 144 measurements of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches. For example, the F-ratio of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches is 67.25 and the p-value is 0.000. This means that the difference between the MAPE of the three different service forecasting approaches is significant at the level of 0.000. Since there is a significant difference among the different service forecasting approaches, we conducted Tukey's HSD post hoc test to determine exactly which means of MAPE are significantly different from which other ones. In terms of MAPE, Tukey's HSD post hoc test grouped the three different service forecasting approaches into three different subsets in the following order: our proposed approach > traditional CBR-based service forecasting approach > the existing forecasting approach used by Company A. Consequently, our empirical experiments show that our proposed approach outperformed the traditional CBR based forecasting model and the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides some research background information such as summary of CBR and SOM. Section 3 presents a hybrid service forecasting framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Self-Organizing Maps, while the empirical evaluation results are summarized in Section 4. Conclusion and future research directions are finally discussed in Section 5.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.157-176
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• 2018

The purpose of this research is to develop a detection model for companies designated as administrative issue in KOSDAQ market using financial data. Administration issue designates the companies with high potential for delisting, which gives them time to overcome the reasons for the delisting under certain restrictions of the Korean stock market. It acts as an alarm to inform investors and market participants of which companies are likely to be delisted and warns them to make safe investments. Despite this importance, there are relatively few studies on administration issues prediction model in comparison with the lots of studies on bankruptcy prediction model. Therefore, this study develops and verifies the detection model of the companies designated as administrative issue using financial data of KOSDAQ companies. In this study, logistic regression and decision tree are proposed as the data mining models for detecting administrative issues. According to the results of the analysis, the logistic regression model predicted the companies designated as administrative issue using three variables - ROE(Earnings before tax), Cash flows/Shareholder's equity, and Asset turnover ratio, and its overall accuracy was 86% for the validation dataset. The decision tree (Classification and Regression Trees, CART) model applied the classification rules using Cash flows/Total assets and ROA(Net income), and the overall accuracy reached 87%. Implications of the financial indictors selected in our logistic regression and decision tree models are as follows. First, ROE(Earnings before tax) in the logistic detection model shows the profit and loss of the business segment that will continue without including the revenue and expenses of the discontinued business. Therefore, the weakening of the variable means that the competitiveness of the core business is weakened. If a large part of the profits is generated from one-off profit, it is very likely that the deterioration of business management is further intensified. As the ROE of a KOSDAQ company decreases significantly, it is highly likely that the company can be delisted. Second, cash flows to shareholder's equity represents that the firm's ability to generate cash flow under the condition that the financial condition of the subsidiary company is excluded. In other words, the weakening of the management capacity of the parent company, excluding the subsidiary's competence, can be a main reason for the increase of the possibility of administrative issue designation. Third, low asset turnover ratio means that current assets and non-current assets are ineffectively used by corporation, or that asset investment by corporation is excessive. If the asset turnover ratio of a KOSDAQ-listed company decreases, it is necessary to examine in detail corporate activities from various perspectives such as weakening sales or increasing or decreasing inventories of company. Cash flow / total assets, a variable selected by the decision tree detection model, is a key indicator of the company's cash condition and its ability to generate cash from operating activities. Cash flow indicates whether a firm can perform its main activities(maintaining its operating ability, repaying debts, paying dividends and making new investments) without relying on external financial resources. Therefore, if the index of the variable is negative(-), it indicates the possibility that a company has serious problems in business activities. If the cash flow from operating activities of a specific company is smaller than the net profit, it means that the net profit has not been cashed, indicating that there is a serious problem in managing the trade receivables and inventory assets of the company. Therefore, it can be understood that as the cash flows / total assets decrease, the probability of administrative issue designation and the probability of delisting are increased. In summary, the logistic regression-based detection model in this study was found to be affected by the company's financial activities including ROE(Earnings before tax). However, decision tree-based detection model predicts the designation based on the cash flows of the company.