• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.4491-4501
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• 2016

Verruco-papillary lesions (VPLs) of the oral cavity described in the literature involve a spectrum of conditions including squamous papilloma, verruca vulgaris, focal epithelial hyperplasia, condyloma, proliferative verrucous leukoplakia and verrucous carcinoma. A majority of the VPLs are slow growing, benign in nature and have a viral aetiology. Virus associated benign mucosal outgrowths are not too difficult to diagnose either clinically or by microscopy. Apart from virus-associated lesions, VPLs harboring malignant potential or behaviour such as verrucous carcinoma, proliferative verrucous leukoplakia, oral verrucous hyperplasia (OVH), oral papillary squamous cell carcinoma (PSCC) and oral conventional squamous cell carcinoma with papillary features (CSCC) need to be further clarified for better understanding of their predictable biologic behavior and appropriate treatment. Current understanding of potentially malignant VPLs is perplexing and is primarily attributed to the use of confusing and unsatisfactory terminology. In particular, the condition referred to as oral verrucous hyperplasia (OVH) poses a major diagnostic challenge. OVH represents a histopathological entity whose clinical features are not well recognised and is usually clinically indistinguishable from a verrucous carcinoma and a PSCC or a CSCC. A consensus report published by an expert working group from South Asia as an outcome of the 'First Asian Regional Meeting on the Terminology and Criteria for Verruco-papillary Lesions of the Oral Cavity' held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, recognised the clinical description of these OVH as a new entity named 'Exophytic Verrucous Hyperplasia'. Previously described clinical features of OVH such as the 'blunt' or 'sharp' variants; and the 'mass' or 'plaque' variants can now collectively fall under this newly described entity. This paper discusses in detail the application of the standardized criteria guidelines of 'Exophytic Verrucous Hyperplasia' as published by the expert group which will enable clinicians and pathologists to uniformly interpret their pool of OVH cases and facilitate a better understanding of OVH malignant potential.

• Journal of East-West Nursing Research
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.47-53
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• 2008

Purpose: Metabolic syndrome (also known as insulin resistance syndrome) represents a constellation of hypertriglyceridemia, hypertension, impaired glucose tolerance, and obesity. Presently, the influence of various factors on metabolic syndrome was assessed in patients of a university hospital comprehensive medical examination center. Methods: Age, sex, blood pressure, height, weight, triglyceride level, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and glucose levels were measured in 67 people (37 males and 30 females). These factors were correlated with tobacco use, alcohol consumption, and exercise habits. Metabolic syndrome and abdominal obesity were assessed according to NCEP-ATP III criteria and the Asia-Pacific guidelines (male obesity defined as a waist circumference exceeding 90 cm), respectively. Data was analyzed using t-test, 2-test, and logistic regression. Results: Respective percentages were: tobacco use (14.9% of the 67 people), no tobacco use (85.1%), alcohol consumption (62.7%), no alcohol consumption (37.3%), regular exercise (25.4%), no regular exercise (74.6%). Logistic regression analysis revealed a gender-related odds ratio of 2.3 for metabolic syndrome and no exercise. Conclusions: Weight reduction and physical exercise may decrease the prevalence of metabolic syndrome. Early identification of metabolic syndrome and risk factor modification is prudent in cases of obesity, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.171-181
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• 2012

Purpose: This study was conducted to identify the clinical characteristics and risk factors on the occurrence of metabolic syndrome (MS), and to examine factors affecting the severity of coronary artery diseases in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Methods: A total of 894 patients who had admitted C national university hospital from 2008 to 2010 participated in this study. Collected data were lipid profiles, abdominal circumference, blood pressure, fasting blood sugar (FBS) level, participants' demographic data and other risk factors by interview, measurement, and review of participants' medical records. MS was defined according to modified National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III and Asia-Pacific Criteria. Results: The participants' mean age was 64.7 (${\pm}11.0$) years and 65% was male patients. The participants' with MS was 37.6% in men and 71.4% in women. According to binary logistic regression analysis, high FBS (95% CI 1.7-2.0) and lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (95% CI 1.1-1.9) were independent predictors of severe coronary artery disease. Conclusion: These risk factors of severe coronary artery disease will be utilized as an important basic data in part of management, education, and countermeasure of patients with both MS and AMI.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.85-101
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• 2006

Actual type of aggregation performed by an ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator heavily depends upon the weighting vector. A number of approaches have been suggested for obtaining the associated weights. In this paper, we present analytic forms of OWA operator weighting functions, each of which has such properties as rank-based weights and constant value of orness, irrespective of number of objectives aggregated. Specifically, we propose four analytic forms of OWA weighting functions that can be positioned at 0.25, 0.334, 0.667, and 0.75 on the orness scale. The merits for using these weights over other weighting schemes can be mentioned in a couple of ways. Firstiy, we can efficiently utilize the analytic forms of weighting functions without solving complicated mathematical programs once the degree of orness is specified a priori by decision maker. Secondly, combined with well-known OWA operator weights such as max, min, and average, any weighting vectors, having a desired value of orness and being independent of the number of objectives, can be generated. This can be accomplished by convex combinations of predetermined weighting functions having constant values of orness. Finally, in terms of a measure of dispersion, newly generated weighting vectors show just a few discrepancies with weights generated by maximum entropy OWA.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2002

For the last decade, some leading groups of corporations in Korea have integrated and managed their Information Systems(IS) functions. Each group established a separate System Management(SM) company to manage the IS and tried to get a synergy effect from the integration. These attempts, however, were not initiated by any one company. Rather they were group efforts. Moreover, the previous measuring tools evaluated IS with the scope of technical performance or quantitative user satisfaction using an absolute scale. Obscure criteria were used in an attempt to present improvements in IS function which were qualitatively weak. This study evaluates whether integration has been efficient and successful. For this purpose, we evaluate the performance efficiency of IS functions with Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) methodology. In comparison with prior methods, DEA presents the rate of relative efficiency, the efficiency frontier for improving inefficiency, the degree of improvement(slack), and the guideline to construct any benchmark(reference set). For our DEA evaluation, this study selected a leading group of 23 companies in Korea. Our experimental results are as follows. First, efficiency was rated low on average. It also demonstrates that the motivation of performance efficiency of IS functions is deficient. Second, the result of the test to find the existence of economy of scale and scope shows that the growth of an organization and industrial characteristics do not affect IS performance efficiency from the perspective of user satisfaction. Finally, the comparison with other evaluation approaches informs us that DEA can be a complementary evaluation method which supports other measuring tools.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.139-158
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• 2002

As the telecommunication market becomes mature in Korea, severe competition has already begun on the market. While service providers struggled for the last couple of years to acquire as many new customers as possible, nowadays they are making more efforts on retaining the current customers. The churn management by analyzing customers' demographic and transactional data becomes one of the key customer retention strategies which most companies pursue. However, the customer data analysis has still remained at the basic level in the industry, even though it has considerable potential as a tool for understanding customer behavior. This paper develops several churn prediction models using data mining techniques such as logistic regression, decision trees, and neural networks. For model-building, real data were used which were collected from one of the major telecommunication companies in Korea. This paper explores various ways of comparing model performance, while the hit ratio was mainly focused in the previous research. The comparison criteria used in this study include gain ratio, Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics, distribution of the predicted values, and explanation ability. This paper also suggest some guidance for model selection in applying data mining techniques.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.179-187
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• 2013

It is the recent trend that the valuation criteria on product quality depends on the customer satisfaction instead of conformance to specifications. It also applies to the service quality. This study deals with an empirical study on the relationship between service quality and value and customer behaviour in the medical service industry. This study also investigates the effect of service-related quality on the service quality/value and customer behaviour. A statistical research reveals that 1)the service quality and value each has a positive relationship with customer behaviour, 2)the service-related quality strongly influence the service quality/value and customer behaviour.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.163-186
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• 2005

When firms are confronted with IT investment decision-makings, technical or financial factors are widely considered. However, based on sociotechnical systems theory, it is argued that in addition to the traditional factors, social issues must be considered in the IT investment decision-makings. Even though the strategic criteria of social issues within organization are important for IT investment decision-makings, the social or organizational issues are hardly considered in IT implementation and adoption(Ryan and Harrison, 2000). The objective of this study is to empirically verify how the comprehensive consideration of both of technical and organizational issues related with IT investment affects firm performance through its impact on IT technical capability and IT personnel skills. Senior managers of 153 Korean firms were surveyed, and the collected data were analyzed with PLS technique. The results of the PLS path analysis show that the comprehensive consideration of the technical and social issues affected indirectly firm performance through IT technical capability and IT personnel skills. It is found that the comprehensive consideration had a significant impact on IT technical capability and IT personnel skills, and that IT technical capability and IT personnel skills affected firm performance. IT personnel was also found to affect IT technical capability. Finally, this study found that the consideration of social factors had greater impacts on firm performance than that of technical factors.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.35-45
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• 2021

With the wide spread of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) scales, many studies attempt to apply them in routine teaching and rater training, while more evidence regarding criterial features at different CEFR levels are still urgently needed. The current study aims to explore complexity features that distinguish and predict CEFR proficiency levels in oral performance. Using a quantitative/corpus-based approach, this research analyzed lexical and syntactic complexity features over 80 transcriptions (includes A1, A2, B1 CEFR levels, and native speakers), based on an interview test, Standard Speaking Test (SST). ANOVA and correlation analysis were conducted to exclude insignificant complexity indices before the discriminant analysis. In the result, distinctive differences in complexity between CEFR speaking levels were observed, and with a combination of six major complexity features as predictors, 78.8% of the oral transcriptions were classified into the appropriate CEFR proficiency levels. It further confirms the possibility of predicting CEFR level of L2 learners based on their objective linguistic features. This study can be helpful as an empirical reference in language pedagogy, especially for L2 learners' self-assessment and teachers' prediction of students' proficiency levels. Also, it offers implications for the validation of the rating criteria, and improvement of rating system.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.227-243
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• 2022

Purpose - This study surveyed real estate financial consumers and financial company staff regarding the components of the financial consumer protection system to seek detailed improvement plans for the Financial Consumer Protection Act. Design/methodology/approach - The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique is applied. Findings - Both consumers and staff highly evaluated the importance of the preventive measures in the main classification factors. Regarding the sub-classification factors of preventive measures, consumers emphasized the responsible management of investment staff and financial institutions; however, the staff stressed the principle of effectiveness and efficiency. Regarding the elements of ex-post remedies, consumers answered that fast remedy would have a significant effect. At the same time, staff believed that punitive measures hinder free trading and investment activities. Regarding the sub-sub classification factors of prevention measures, the consumers value responsible management of staff and financial companies, while the staff tend to prefer the importance of the self-regulatory governance. Research implications or Originality - Based on the above results, financial regulatory authorities should find a balance between preventive and ex-post components once focusing on preventative measures. Our paper is one of the first research findings in this field of financial consumer protection system in Korea.