• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.443-448
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• 2005

Objectives : This study was done to evaluate the reliability of education and occupational class between using the health survey and the death certificate data. Methods : The 1998 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) was conducted on a cross-sectional probability sample of South Korean households, and it contained unique 13-digit personal identification numbers that were linked to the data on mortality from the Korean National Statistical Office. The data from 263 deaths were used to estimate the agreement rates and the Kappa indices of the education and occupational class between using the NHANES data and the death certificate data. Results : The simple and weighted Kappa indices for education were 0.60 (95% CI=0.53-0.68) and 0.73 (95% CI=0.67-0.79) respectively, if the educational level was grouped into five categories: no-formal-education, elementary-school, middle-school, high-school and college or over. The overall agreement rate was 71.9% for these educational groups. The magnitude of reliability, as measured by the overall agreement rates and Kappa indices, tended to increase with a decrease in the educational class. The number of non-educated people with using the death certificate data was smaller than that with using the NHANES data. For the occupational class (manual workers, non-manual workers and others), the Kappa index was 0.40 (95% CI=0.30-0.51), which was relatively lower than that for the educational class. Compared with the NHANES, the number of non-manual workers for the deceased who were aged 30-64 tended to be increased (8 to 12) when using the death certificate data, whereas the number of manual workers tended to be decreased (59 to 41). Conclusions : The socioeconomic inequalities in the mortality rates that were based on the previous unlinked studies in South Korea were not due to a numerator/denominator bias. The mortality rates for the manual workers and the no-education groups might have been underestimated.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.11-19
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• 1999

The flash point is generally used as a hazardous index of fire and explosion of a flammable liquid. A classification of the flash points is important for the safe handling of flammable liquids such as solvent mixtures. The flash points of pure substances and solvent mixtures can be c calculated with the appropriate use of the fundamental laws of Raoult, Dalton, Le Chatelier and a activity coefficient models. In this study, experimentally determined lower and upper flash points w were compared with the calculated values by using Raoult's law and van Laar equation. The flash points of pure substances were in agreement with the calculated values by vapor pressure and e explosive limits. Also, the lower flash points of M.E.K(methylethylketone)-toluene system were i in agreement with the predicted values by Raoult’s law, and the upper flash points were in a agreement with the predicted values by van Laar equation. By means of this methodology, it is possible to evaluate reliability of expermental data of the flash points of the flammable mixtures.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.141-149
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• 2005

Purpose: This study was conducted to assess the level of agreement among survey instruments used to study dementia and to determine the prevalence rate of suspected dementia using different instruments. Subjects and Methods: A total 171 subjects older than 65 in Gyeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, were surveyed from February to October 2003. The age, sex and educational level were examined through interview surveys, and cognitive function was evaluated using three survey instruments including MMSE-K, S-SDQ, and KDSQ. Results: The cognitive function scores obtained with the MMSE-K showed significant difference according to age. For sex and educational level significant differences were observed with all three survey instruments. The kappa index, the level of agreement between the questionnaires, was 0.302 between MMSE-K and S-SDQ, 0.401 between MMSE-K and KDSQ, and 0.762 between KDSQ and S-SDQ. The prevalence rate of suspected dementia based on the criteria suggested by MMSE-K, S-SDQ, and KDSQ was 27.5%, 15.2%, and 17.0% respectively. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that caution is needed when comparing the measured cognitive function scores and analyzing the prevalence of dementia; this is because the prevalence of dementia and cognitive functions vary according to the questionnaires used.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.280-295
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• 2021

Objectives: This study aimed to examine the characteristics of patients according to their nutritional status as assessed by five nutritional screening tools: Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA), NUTRISCORE, Nutritional Risk Index (NRI), Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI), and Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT) and to compare the agreement, sensitivity, and specificity of these tools. Methods: A total of 952 gastric cancer patients who underwent gastrectomy and chemotherapy from January 2009 to December 2012 at the Samsung Medical Center were included. We categorized patients into malnourished and normal according to the five nutritional screening tools 1 month after surgery and compared their characteristics. We also calculated the Spearman partial correlation, Cohen's Kappa coefficient, the area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity of each pair of screening tools. Results: We observed 86.24% malnutrition based on the PG-SGA and 85.82% based on the NUTRISCORE among gastric cancer patients in our study. When we applied NRI or CONUT, however, the malnutrition levels were less than 30%. Patients with malnutrition as assessed by the PG-SGA, NUTRISCORE, or NRI had lower intakes of energy and protein compared to normal patients. When NRI, PNI, or CONUT were used to identify malnutrition, lower levels of albumin, hemoglobin, total lymphocyte count, total cholesterol, and longer postoperative hospital stays were observed among patients with malnutrition compared to those without malnutrition. We found relatively high agreement between PG-SGA and NUTRISCORE; sensitivity was 90.86% and AUC was 0.78. When we compared NRI and PNI, sensitivity was 99.64% and AUC was 0.97. AUC ranged from 0.50 to 0.67 for comparisons between CONUT and each of the other nutritional screening tools. Conclusions: Our study suggests that PG-SGA and NRI have a relatively high agreement with the NUTRISCORE and PNI, respectively. Further cohort studies are needed to examine whether the nutritional status assessed by PG-SGA, NUTRISCORE, NRI, PNI, and CONUT predicts the gastric cancer prognosis.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.12
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• pp.2089-2093
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• 2017

The past decades have been a golden era during which great tasks were accomplished in the field of microbiology, including food microbiology. In the past, culture-dependent methods have been the primary choice to investigate bacterial diversity. However, using culturein-dependent high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes has greatly facilitated studies exploring the microbial compositions and dynamics associated with health and diseases. These culture-independent DNA-based studies generate large-scale data sets that describe the microbial composition of a certain niche. Consequently, understanding microbial diversity becomes of greater importance when investigating the composition, function, and dynamics of the microbiota associated with health and diseases. Even though there is no general agreement on which diversity index is the best to use, diversity indices have been used to compare the diversity among samples and between treatments with controls. Tools such as the Shannon-Weaver index and Simpson index can be used to describe population diversity in samples. The purpose of this review is to explain the principles of diversity indices, such as Shannon-Weaver and Simpson, to aid general microbiologists in better understanding bacterial communities. In this review, important questions concerning microbial diversity are addressed. Information from this review should facilitate evidence-based strategies to explore microbial communities.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.159-169
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• 2014

This study generalizes the lateral load-displacement relationship of reinforced concrete shear walls from the section analysis for moment-curvature response to straightforwardly evaluate the flexural capacity and ductility of such members. Moment and curvature at different selected points including the first flexural crack, yielding of tensile reinforcing bar, maximum strength, 80% of the maximum strength at descending branch, and fracture of tensile reinforcing bar are calculated based on the strain compatibility and equilibrium of internal forces. The strain at extreme compressive fiber to determine the curvature at the descending branch is formulated as a function of reduction factor of maximum stress of concrete and volumetric index of lateral reinforcement using the stress-strain model of confined concrete proposed by Razvi and Saatcioglu. The moment prediction models are simply formulated as a function of tensile reinforcement index, vertical reinforcement index, and axial load index from an extensive parametric study. Lateral displacement is calculated by using the moment area method of idealized curvature distribution along the wall height. The generalized lateral load-displacement relationship is in good agreement with test result, even at the descending branch after ultimate strength of shear walls.

• Journal of Korean Critical Care Nursing
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.61-71
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• 2012

Purpose: The aim of this study was to measure the inter-rater reliability of Emergency severity index (ESI) version 4 among triage nurse. Methods: This study was carried out from August 11, 2010 to September 7, 2010 in a regional emergency department. Data collection was done by ten triage nurses who trained ESI v.4. Two research nurses and ten triage nurses scored the ESI version 4 to the patients as references, independently. We calculated the weighted kappa between the triage nurses and research nurses to evaluate the consistency of the ESI v.4. Results: A total of 233 patients were enrolled in this study. Classification of ESI level was as follows - level 1 (0.4%), level 2 (21.0%), level 3 (67.8%), level 4 (9.4%), and level 5 (1.3%). Inter-rater reliability by weighted kappa was 0.79 (95% Confidence Interval= 0.74-0.83) and agreement rate was 87.1%. Under-triage rate by triage nurse was 6.0% and over-triage rate was 6.9%. Conclusion: For this study, inter-rater reliability was measured good level between triage nurses and research nurses in Korean single ED.

• Composites Research
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.40-45
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• 2012

The comparison of the numerical results with those measured by the experiment showed good agreement. The design of composite joint which is the weakest part in the composite structures has become a very important research area since the composite materials are widely used in the aircraft and machine structure. In this paper, the new composite key joints that minimize the fiber discontinuity and strength degradation of adherend were proposed and their failure loads were evaluated. The failure index and damage area method were used for the failure prediction of the composite key joint. From the tests, the failure load of the composite key joint was 93% larger than that of a mechanical joint and the key joint whose slot depth and edge length were 0.88mm and 20mm had the largest failure load. Also, the analytic failure modes by the failure index and damage area were compared with experimental failure modes.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.18-32
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• 2009

The goal of this study was to predict the health outcomes of lung cancer surgery based on the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI). An attempt was likewise made to assess the prognostic value of such data for predicting mortality, survival rate, and length of hospital stay. A medical-record review of 389 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer was performed. To evaluate the agreement, the kappa coefficient was tested. Logistic-regression analysis was also conducted within two years after the surgery to determine the association of CCI with death. Survival and multiple-regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between CCI and the hospital care outcomes within two-year survival after lung cancer surgery and the length of hospital stay. The results of the study showed that CCI is a valid prognostic indicator of two-year mortality and length of hospital stay, and that it shows the health outcomes, such as death, survival rate, and length of hospital stay, after the surgery, thus enabling the development and application of the methodology using a systematic and objective scale for the results.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.304-313
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• 2012

In this study, the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent for polydispersed aerosol during dynamic processes was investigated. Log-normal aerosol size distribution was assumed, and a sensitivity analysis of the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent with regards the coagulation and condensation process was performed. The ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent is expected to decrease because of the particle growth due to coagulation and condensation. However, it is difficult to quantify the degree of change. In order to understand quantitatively the change in the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent during coagulation and condensation, different real and imaginary parts of the refractive index were considered. The results show that the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent is sensitive to changes in size distribution and refractive index. The total number concentration decreases and the geometric mean diameter of aerosols increase during coagulation. On the while, the geometric standard deviation approaches monodispersed size distribution during the condensation process, and this change in size distribution affects the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent. The degree of change in the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent depends on the refractive index and initial size distribution, and the size parameter changes with the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent for a given refractive index or chemical composition; this indicates that the size distribution plays an important role in determining the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent as well as the chemical composition. Subsequently, this study shows how the ${\AA}$ngstrom exponent changes quantitatively during the aerosol dynamics processes for a log-normal aerosol size distribution for different refractive indices; the results showed good agreement with the results for simple analytic size distribution solutions.