• Health Policy and Management
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.148-169
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• 2008

As the Korean Government began to perceive healthcare as one of foundational industries for national dynamics, there has been mounting advocacy for the introduction of for-profit hospitals with a view to bringing efficiency in healthcare services industries and improvement of their international competitiveness. The Government is now considering the issue from all angles in favor of permitting for-profit hospitals. However, There have been few precedent studies on this subject to provide helpful data for the discussion and in the health policy making. This study used private hospitals - for-profit and nonprofit - in Florida, USA as study subjects to accumulate basic data that may be utilized for those involved in debates and health policy making relating to the introduction of for-profit hospitals in Korea. Among all the private general hospitals in Florida, those surveyed by AHA(American Hospital Association) for four consecutive years from 2001 and 2004 and others reported about to MCR(Medicare Cost Report) included in the collected data for analysis. In total 139 private general hospitals consisting of 73 for-profit hospitals and 66 nonprofit hospitals were included in the collected analysis data. Results of analysis revealed no significant difference between for-profit hospitals and nonprofit hospitals in the usage aspects of healthcare services including the average length of stay and the ratio of Medicare vs Medicaid patients. However, financial performances indicated by such factors. as the pre-tax return on assets and the pre-tax operating margin showed to be significantly higher in for-profit hospitals compared with nonprofit hospitals. And the ratio of personnel expenses and the turn period of total assets showed to be significantly lower in for-profit hospitals. Based on the hypothesis that arguments about the introduction of for-profit hospitals have considerably different viewpoints depending on the size of hospital represented by the number of bed, these two hospital types were compared again using the number of beds as a controlled factor, but the results were similar. We, therefore, could conclude that the for-profit hospitals in Florida included in this study could, in their for-profit operation, improve their financial performance by pursuing cost reduction and effectively utilizing their assets without limiting the amount and the range of their services or avoiding less medically protected groups such as Medicare and Medicaid patients.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.61-97
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• 2008

This paper aims at analyzing the practice of job rotation in the Korean government and putting forward policy suggestions. The Korean government is often accused of low capacity and weak competitiveness, which mainly result from the low expertise of public officials. Considering the high quality of human resources flowing into the public sector in Korea, solutions should be found from the structure of the system. This paper regards frequent position changes due to excessive job rotation as a key factor undermining the accumulation of expertise and conducts in-depth analyses. The current practice of frequent rotation shows that the average tenure period of government officials at director level and above is only about one year, far shorter than those in major developed countries, which causes many problems such as low efficiency, lack of accountability and policy consistency, and low opportunity for accumulating expertise. Simple models are set up to analyze job rotation and other alternative personnel management systems. Analyses find that it would be desirable to have each individual experience various positions during the initial rotation period to find his/her own aptitude, and then accumulate expertise by settling in at a certain specialized field for a prolonged period of time based on the revealed aptitude in mid and high positions. This turns out to be in line with the structure of the Career Development Program which is being introduced. The model-based analysis of this paper distinguishes this study from preceding ones conducted in the traditional framework of personnel management study. Practical measures to mitigate the problems of frequent job rotation include rotating within the area of specialty, narrowing the scope of transfer, and reinforcing the minimum tenure period. However, since the current frequent rotation is fundamentally attributable to the rank system based on seniority, the present civil service classification system needs to be converted into a position classification system in the long run.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.2806-2811
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• 2013

New technologies such as multi-antenna and small cell were proposed as key technology for the next generation mobile system to cope with the explosively increasing mobile data traffic. In particular, heterogeneous mobile communication network which can improve spatial reuse factor by exploiting macro and small cells simultaneously is attracting attention. However, the heterogeneous network has a problem that the utilization of small cells becomes low because the transmit power of macro base stations is much higher than that of small base stations and then the probability that mobile stations are attached to the macro base stations becomes high. This problem is dominant in uplink. The concept of cell range expansion bias to mitigate the problem was proposed by 3GPP and the corresponding standardization is in progress. In this paper, we analyze the downlink performance of the heterogeneous mobile communication network based on a system level simulator with the cell range expansion bias in terms of average cell spectral efficiency.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.12A no.4 s.94
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• pp.305-312
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• 2005

In this paper, we present algorithm-level techniques for energy-efficient design at the algorithm level using FPGAs. We then use these techniques to create energy-efficient designs for two signal processing kernel applications: fast Fourier transform(FFT) and matrix multiplication. We evaluate the performance, in terms of both latency and energy efficiency, of FPGAs in performing these tasks. Using a Xilinx Virtex-II as the target FPGA, we compare the performance of our designs to those from the Xilinx library as well as to conventional algorithms run on the PowerPC core embedded in the Virtex-II Pro and the Texas Instruments TMS320C6415. Our evaluations are done both through estimation based on energy and latency equations on high-level and through low-level simulation. For FFT, our designs dissipated an average of $50\%$ less energy than the design from the Xilinx library and $56\%$ less than the DSP. Our designs showed an EAT factor of 10 times improvement over the embedded processor. These results provide a concrete evidence to substantiate the idea that FPGAs can outperform DSPs and embedded processors in signal processing. Further, they show that PFGAs can achieve this performance while still dissipating less energy than the other two types of devices.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.39
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• pp.167-187
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• 2008

This study explores the trends of social security expenditures after financial crisis in welfare states. For the purpose, this study analyzes changes in social expenditures during 1980~2003 in 22 OECD countries. The results show that average total social security expenditure(as a percentage of GDP) among the 22 countries increased from 18.0% in 1980 to 22.3% in 2003. Compared to sharp increases during the great expansion period of the welfare state before 1980s, the increase in social expenditures after 1980s is substantially weakened. The slowdown in the increases of social expenditures is remarkable in the social democratic welfare states where social expenditures have already reached a high level. On the other hand, social expenditures are considerably increased in the lagged welfare states such as South European countries and Japan. As a result, the cross-national difference in social expenditures has continuously decreased. These findings suggest that financial crisis is a key factor of welfare-state reorganization. Countries where social expenditures are in high level need more reforms under the pressure of financial deficits. Since 1980s, they have tried various reforms especially in pensions and unemployment benefits. Facing new and increasing demands for social security as well as financial limitations, the welfare state needs major reforms in the social security system to increase effectiveness/efficiency of existing programs and to iron out priorities among programs.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.63 no.6
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• pp.1314-1327
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• 2021

Bacillus is characterized by the formation of spores in harsh environments, which makes it suitable for use as a probiotic for feed because of thermostability and high survival rate, even under long-term storage. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of Bacillus-based probiotics on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, intestinal morphology, immune response, and intestinal microbiota of weaned pigs. A total of 40 weaned pigs (7.01 ± 0.86 kg body weight [BW]; 28 d old) were randomly assigned to two treatments (4 pigs/pen; 5 replicates/treatment) in a randomized complete block design (block = BW and sex). The dietary treatment was either a typical nursery diet based on corn and soybean meal (CON) or CON supplemented with 0.01% probiotics containing a mixture of Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis (PRO). Fecal samples were collected daily by rectal palpation for the last 3 days after a 4-day adaptation. Blood, ileal digesta, and intestinal tissue samples were collected from one pig in each pen at the respective time points. The PRO group did not affect the feed efficiency, but the average daily gain was significantly improved (p < 0.05). The PRO group showed a trend of improved crude protein digestibility (p < 0.10). The serum transforming growth factor-β1 level tended to be higher (p < 0.10) in the PRO group on days 7 and 14. There was no difference in phylum level of the intestinal microbiota, but there were differences in genus composition and proportions. However, β-diversity analysis showed no statistical differences between the CON and the PRO groups. Taken together, Bacillus-based probiotics had beneficial effects on the growth performance, immune system, and intestinal microbiota of weaned pigs, suggesting that Bacillus can be utilized as a functional probiotic for weaned pigs.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.237-268
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• 2021

As variable renewable sources rapidly increase due to the Energy Transition plan, integration cost of renewable sources to the power system is rising sharply. The increase in variable renewable energy reduces the capacity factor of existing traditional power capacity, and this undermines the efficiency of the overall power supply, and demand resources are drawing attention as a solution. In this study, we analyzed how much electric vehicle demand resouces, which has great potential among other demand resources, can reduce power supply costs if it is used as a flexible resource for renewable generation. As a methodology, a stochastic form of power system optimization model that can effectively reflect the volatile characteristics of renewable generation is used to analyze the cost induced by renewable energy and the benefits offered by electric vehicle demand resources. The result shows that virtual power plant-based direct control method has higher benefits than the time-of-use tariff, and the higher the proportion of renewable energy is in the power system, the higher the benefits of electric vehicle demand resources are. The net benefit after considering commission fee for aggregators and battery wear-and-tear costs was estimated as 67% to 85% of monthly average fuel cost under virtual power plant with V2G capability, and this shows that a sufficient incentive for market participation can be offered when a rate system is applied in which these net benefits of demand resources are effectively distributed to consumers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.55-63
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• 2021

The roughness of the road is an important factor directly connected to the ride comfort, and is an evaluation item for functional evaluation and pavement quality management of the road. In this study, data on the road surface were acquired using the latest 3D geospatial information construction technology of ground LiDAR, drone photogrammetry, and drone LiDAR, and the accuracy and roughness of each method were analyzed. As a result of the accuracy evaluation, the average accuracy of terrestrial LiDAR were 0.039m, 0.042m, 0.039m RMSE in X, Y, Z direction, and drone photogrammetry and drone LiDAR represent 0.072~0.076m, 0.060~0.068m RMSE, respectively. In addition, for the roughness analysis, the longitudinal and lateral slopes of the target section were extracted from the 3D geospatial information constructed by each method, and the design values were compared. As a result of roughness analysis, the ground LiDAR showed the same slope as the design value, and the drone photogrammetry and drone LiDAR showed a slight difference from the design value. Research is needed to improve the accuracy of drone photogrammetry and drone LiDAR in measurement fields such as road roughness analysis. If the usability through improved accuracy can be presented in the future, the time required for acquisition can be greatly reduced by utilizing drone photogrammetry and drone LiDAR, so it will be possible to improve related work efficiency.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.64-77
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• 2022

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to objectify the level of case management performance and the factors influencing performance, to improve the case management performance at the Korea Worker's Compensation & Welfare Service (KWCWS) on the basis of the recognition of the objective realities of case management by job coordinators at the KWCWS, to develop a model of case management fit for the KWCWS, and to provide a basis for establishing guidelines for standardized case management. Methods: A total of 156 questionnaires were distributed to job coordinators at the KWCWS's headquarters, six regional headquarters, and 55 branches. One hundred forty-one questionnaires were collected and 126 were analyzed statistically using SPSS 21.0. Factor analysis and reliability analysis were conducted to verify the validity and reliability of the main measurement items in the research model. Frequency analysis was conducted for general characteristics of survey subjects. Frequency analysis or descriptive statistics were conducted to identify the level of independent variables (case manager's individual variables, job variables, institutional and organizational variables). Dependent variables (case management performance) and the degree of correlation were analyzed through correlation analysis between research variables. Multiple regression analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were conducted to examine the effect of independent variables on case management performance. Results: The results of the study showed that the level of overall performance in the five stages of case management was ordinary, with an average level of 3.45 on a 5-point scale. Levels of performance by step were institutional approach and intake (3.69), assessment (3.63), goal setting and intervention planning (3.46), implementation of intervention plan (3.32), and evaluation and termination (3.20), in that order. The explanatory power of case management performance (overall) by case managers with the KWCWS was case manager's institutional and organizational variables, job variables, and individual variables, in that order. At each stage of case management, the explanatory power of a case manager's institutional and organizational variables was found to be the greatest. The model changes at each stage of case management assume similar aspects statistically. In hierarchical regression analysis, it was institutional support that had a significant effect on case management performance (overall), and institutional support had the greatest effect. The results of multiple regression analysis in which all variables are input simultaneously showed that institutional support and expertise as well as self-efficacy had a positive effect. However, case management work experience, expertise (technology), and autonomy were found to have a negative effect during the stage of case management performance. Conclusions: As a result of the study, it was confirmed that raising the case manager's expertise and support from the institution and organization are important factors to improve the level of case management performance. The research also derived practical ways of reinforcement of case manager capacity, institutional and organizational support, operation of rehabilitation-case management teams, and occupational health-related aspects.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.426-433
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• 2024

In this study, to estimate the effects of plant-induced surface area increase and physiological activity on fine dust purification, a control group was set up. We utilized both foliage plants (Spathiphyllum wallisii) and artificial plants (shaped like Spathiphyllum wallisii) to measure and compare the purification time for fine dust. The results showed that the time required for fine dust purification in each experimental group decreased by 57-64% for Type AP and 31-32% for Type P compared to the control group. Subsequently, using a Linear Mixed Model (LMM), we tested the interaction between time and each experimental group, revealing statistically significant interactions between surface area increase and time(PM10 : t=3.123, p<0.05, PM2.5 : t=3.180, p<0.05), as well as physiological activity and time(PM10 : t=4.065, p<0.05, PM2.5 : t=4.307, p<0.05), indicating the presence of interactions between each factor and the time variable. Finally, we estimated the efficiency of fine dust purification by plant factors through nonlinear regression analysis. Compared to the control group without purification factors (Type C), it was estimated that surface area increase shortened the purification time by 1.40 times and physiological activity by an average of 1.95 times, resulting in a total 2.74 times shorter purification time. Based on these results, we hypothesized that physiological activity(transpiration and absorption) has a greater impact on fine dust purification than surface area increase(biosorption). Accordingly, we emphasize the importance of vegetation management practices such as pruning and irrigation management in green spaces aimed at fine dust purification.