• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.42-51
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• 2024

Background Increasing concerns regarding the safety of textured surface implants have resulted in surgeons transitioning from textured tissue expanders (TEs) to smooth TEs. Given this change has only recently occurred, this study evaluated outcomes between smooth and textured TEs. Methods Women who underwent two-stage breast reconstruction using TEs from 2013 to 2022 were included. TE-specific variables, perioperative information, pain scores, and complications were collected. Chi-squared, t-test, and linear regression analyses were performed. Results A total of 320 patients received a total of 384 textured and 152 smooth TEs. Note that 216 patients received bilateral reconstruction. TEs were removed in 9 cases. No significant differences existed between groups regarding comorbidities. Smooth TEs had a higher proportion of prepectoral placement (p < 0.001). Smooth TEs had less fills (3±1 vs. 4±2, p < 0.001), shorter expansion periods (60±44 vs. 90±77 days, p < 0.001), smaller expander fill volumes (390±168 vs. 478±177 mL, p < 0.001), and shorter time to exchange (80±43 vs. 104±39 days, p < 0.001). Complication rates between textured and smooth TEs were comparable. Smooth TE had a greater proportion of TE replacements (p = 0.030). On regression analysis, pain scores were more closely associated with age (p = 0.018) and TE texture (p = 0.046). Additional procedures at time of TE exchange (p < 0.001) and textured TE (p = 0.017) led to longer operative times. Conclusion As many surgeons have transitioned away from textured implants, our study shows that smooth TEs have similar outcomes to the textured alternatives.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.352-361
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of macroeconomic and non-macroeconomic forces on the management performance of the air transport firms and offer the useful information to the managers. To conduct the regression analysis, eight macroeconomic and non-macroeconomic variables were selected individually as an independent variable. Macroeconomic variables were the return of corporate bond, West Texas Intermediate, the unemployment rate, the money supply, the trade balance, the won to USD exchange rate, the consumer price index and the index of industrial production. And non-macroeconomic variables were Taiwan earthquake, the Asian economic crisis, the 911 terrorist attacks in the US, the Iraq war, Beijing Olympic, the outbreak of a swine flu epidemic, the 1st presidential election and the 2nd presidential election. And ROA was selected as a dependent variable. As the result of analysis, it was found that the changing rates of won to USD exchange rate and consumer price index affected the changing rate of ROA significantly. And also as the result of analysing the impact of two significant macroeconomic variables and eight non-macroeconomic variables on the changing rate of ROA, it was found that the Asian economic crisis and the outbreak of a swine flu epidemic had a negative impact on it. Therefore managers should take note of a change in macroeconomic and non-macroeconomic variables carefully to improve the management performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 2012

This paper assessed environmental impact of tidal power plant construction in the western sea of Korea, and diagnosed problems of the related assessment. We also proposed key assessment items (scoping) and system improvement for environmental impact assessment (EIA). The establishment of a broad consensus of the appropriateness and a clear purpose for business is an important aspect of the aptness of using the waters, and the aggressive collecting of opinions of the stakeholder and institutions will have to be fulfilled. In addition, we presented the following scoping plan in order to minimize the negative effects of the marine ecosystem and the conflict between the people who work in the fishing industry which result due to the construction of the tidal power plants. (1) the change in seawater exchange rates and the aspect of erosion/sedimentation which result from the change in the velocity of running fluid, (2) the destruction of spawns/habitats of fish due to the damage of tidal flats, (3) fishery resources, impacts of fishing grounds, and the spread of suspended sediments, etc. will have to be applied to the key assessment items(scoping). In addition, every citizen will have work hard for an establishment of an active plan which achieves the harmony and balance of environmental preservation and for the policy to be applied through changing their consciousness of environmental preservation.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.648-655
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• 2016

As the FTAs' implementations are accelerated, an Ex-post assessment, such as an analysis of the tariff schedule and agricultural trade has been emerging as an important national issue for an agricultural sector Korea-EU FTA, which was to be implemented in the five years from July 2016 as one of the giant FTA. The purpose of this study was to determine the demand of an ex-post assessment on agricultural sector as a trade negotiation procedural law. In addition, by providing policy direction for the agricultural policy part requiring amendments and supplements through ex-post assessment, the conflicting arguments between agricultural and non-agricultural sector can be evaluated more objectively. The current evaluation method on the economic impact ex-post assessment of a FTA is generally compared using the change in trade balance before and after the time of FTA implementation. On the other hand, this comparison cannot be said to be the pure FTA effects and objective, tightening economic impact assessment of the FTA in all combined situations, such as the effects of exchange rates and international macroeconomic changes and climate change & occurrence of pests. Over the last 4 years, however, Korea-EU FTA's total accumulated agricultural GDP loss was measured to be 2,178 billion by these research attempts with dynamic analysis as ex-post assessment methodology. The greatest impact was mainly livestock and pork followed by cereals and vegetables. In addition, this research is expected to contribute to policy evaluations in the future.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.90 no.3
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• pp.242-248
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• 2001

Changes in land-use can affect soil organic matter content and fertility. We compared total soil carbon and nitrogen concentrations, soil respiration, and nitrogen availability under three land-use types in central Korea; conversion of old rice field to natural willow-maple (Salix-Acer) forest, conversion of old field to artificial Korean pine (Pines koraiensis) forest, and indigenous oak (Quercus spp.) forest. After 20 years of fallow the area of rice field conversion to forest had higher soil carbon and nitrogen concentrations in the soil depth of 0-10cm and 10-20cm than the areas of field conversion to Korean pine forest and indigenous forest. In general, soil carbon and nitrogen concentrations decreased with soil depth. Organic matter accumulation as a balance of input and decomposition seemed to be higher in the soil of previous rice field, and carbon and nitrogen accumulation was largely confined to the topsoil. Soil respiration rates were greatest at the area of rice field conversion to forest, and appeared to be related to soil carbon and soil moisture. Soil nitrogen availability measured by the ion exchange resin bag method differed significantly among land-use types; soil inorganic nitrogen ($NH_4{^+}+NO_3{^-}$) and ammonium availability were highest in the soil under indigenous oak forest followed by conversion of old field to artificial Korean pine forest and conversion of old field to natural willow-maple forest.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.173-181
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• 2008

Last decade, Korea's export scale has resulted in remarkably increasing tendency, and the Korean construction firms(KCFs)' activities on the global markets also have been revitalized. Therefore, this paper analyze a correlation between changes in the oversee market conditions and firms' competitiveness focused on plant business. The aim of this paper is to analyze the internal competency change of the KCFs on the global markets in the past 5 years and to find gap of internal competencies between KCFs and outstanding foreign firms. From a survey analysis this paper found that the external impacts on the global markets(changes of exchange rates, raw materials prices, supply-demand conditions, etc.) have highly influenced the sales amount of the KCFs. But the impacts to change the operating profit have been analyzed as not important. So it is necessary to reinforce the KCF's internal competencies rater than expecting an improvement of the external conditions. Also, the KCFs should strengthen the design engineering as a core competency.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.105-125
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• 2016

The expansionary monetary policy was practiced after 2001 in Japan to treat the deflation spiral, and reduced only the nominal interest rates and domestic household demand. One of the most serious factors for this failure was the change of private sector's expectancy. This paper has studied the effect of Japanese monetary policy in 21c., with empirical research based on a renewed macroeconomic model and the VAR. The empirical analysis shows that the effect of monetary policy on the national income during 2001.01-2015.03 is weaker than that of 1985.01-1994.04. Money volume has a diminutive effect on the growth of GDP within a short term after 2001. The change in the expectations of the private sectors might have been the cause of ineffectiveness of the expansive monetary policy. Economic agents learned from the past Japanese financial crisis that an expansive monetary policy increased the inflation rate and caused the 'bubbles to burst' afterwards. The VAR analysis says that the effectiveness of monetary policy on the economic depression declined over the past 20 years and the expansion of money volume has no influence on exchange rate and net export. This means that the expansive monetary policy lost its effect on net export and national income steadily. Monetary policy makers have to recognize this fact, and to consider another anti-cycle political instrument, i.e. the fiscal policy with government debt.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.19-43
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• 2016

This study examines the causes of the Asian exchange rate crisis and compares it to the European Monetary System crisis. In 1997, emerging countries in Asia experienced financial crises. Previously in 1992, currencies in the European Monetary System had undergone the same experience. This was followed by Mexico in 1994. The objective of this paper lies in the generation of useful insights from these crises. This research presents a comparison of South Korea, United Kingdom and Mexico, and then compares three different models for prediction. Previous studies of economic crisis focused largely on the manual construction of causal models using linear techniques. However, the weakness of such models stems from the prevalence of nonlinear factors in reality. This paper uses a structural equation model to analyze the causes, followed by a neural network model to circumvent the linear model's weaknesses. The models are examined in the context of predicting exchange rates In this paper, data were quarterly ones, and Consumer Price Index, Gross Domestic Product, Interest Rate, Stock Index, Current Account, Foreign Reserves were independent variables for the prediction. However, time periods of each country's data are different. Lisrel is an emerging method and as such requires a fresh approach to financial crisis prediction model design, along with the flexibility to accommodate unexpected change. This paper indicates the neural network model has the greater prediction performance in Korea, Mexico, and United Kingdom. However, in Korea, the multiple regression shows the better performance. In Mexico, the multiple regression is almost indifferent to the Lisrel. Although Lisrel doesn't show the significant performance, the refined model is expected to show the better result. The structural model in this paper should contain the psychological factor and other invisible areas in the future work. The reason of the low hit ratio is that the alternative model in this paper uses only the financial market data. Thus, we cannot consider the other important part. Korea's hit ratio is lower than that of United Kingdom. So, there must be the other construct that affects the financial market. So does Mexico. However, the United Kingdom's financial market is more influenced and explained by the financial factors than Korea and Mexico.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.146-156
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• 2017

In this study, the causal relationship between the main factors influencing the import of agricultural products and the changes in agricultural imports was investigated. In addition, we compared the magnitude of the impact of each factor on the changes in agricultural imports. It was found that the import liberalization rate, which represents the FTA factors and reflects the per capita GDP, the conditions of supply and demand of agricultural products in exporting countries and the changes in exchange rates, affects the changes of the agricultural products imports. However, the factors affecting the change of the imports by agricultural product category and the magnitude of the influence by each factor were different. This shows that various factors, other than the FTA factors, are compounding the changes in the agricultural imports. In the future, the market openings due to the implementation of the FTA will be further enlarged and the economic territory of the FTA will be further expanded, due to the implementation of additional FTAs, and the changes in the imports of agricultural products will cause damage to the domestic agricultural sector.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.146-154
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• 2002

To assess the adsorption and removal mechanism of dissolved inorganic nutrients in seawater by scattering yellow loess, a laboratory experiment was conducted for the change of nutrient concentration in seawater during the course of time depending on particle size and scattered concentration of the yellow loess. Twenty four hours after the addition of yellow loess in the size range of 0 $\mu$m to 500 $\mu$m in seawater, the removal rate of dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) was increased with increasing amount of yellow loess. There was little difference among the removal rates depending on the size of yellow loess. On average, $26\%$ of dissolved inorganic silicate was reduced for the same period. No greate difference among the removal rate depending on both size and amount of yellow loess was found. Our results suggested that the removal mechanism of DU seemed to be associated with mostly the chemical bond with iron. More than $99\%$ of initial DU concentration was likely to be removed by this mechanism. In the case of inorganic dissolved silicate, the removal mechanism was likely to be attributed to a cation exchange between the yellow loess and seawater.