• Dementia and Neurocognitive Disorders
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.156-162
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• 2018

Background and Purpose: Previous studies have reported conflicting results about the prevalence of seizures in Alzheimer's disease (AD). There are few epidemiological studies on this topic in Asia. Thus, the objective of this study was to examine demographic and clinical characteristics as well as incidence for seizures in AD patients compared to non-AD patients in a prospective, longitudinal, community-based cohort with a long follow-up. Methods: Data were collected from National Health Insurance Service-National Elderly Cohort (NHIS-elderly) Database to define patients with AD from 2004-2006 using Korean Classification Diseases codes G30 and F00. We performed a 1:5 case-control propensity score matching based on age, sex, and household income. We conducted Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to estimate the risk of epilepsy in AD patients. Results: In the cohort study, patients with AD had higher risk for epilepsy than those without AD, with hazard ratio of 2.773 (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.515-3.057). This study also showed that male gender and comorbidities such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease increased the risk of developing epilepsy. Patients with AD had 1.527 (95% CI, 1.375-1.695) times higher mortality rate than those in the control group. Conclusions: AD patients have significantly higher risk of developing epilepsy than non-AD patients.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.461-471
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• 2018

The role of urban agriculture should not be limited as a small-scale crop cultivation activity as it was, but it has to be considered as an entire process of a agriculture activity for the restoration of the city community. This study is based on the assumption that there has been a significant change in urban lifestyle and urban farming preference, considering the overall improvement in standard of living after implementation of five day work week system. It was conducted for urban citizens who were interested in actual urban agriculture for ages 19 and over who visited the Korea Urban Agriculture Exhibition in 2018. Only 115 valid samples were used for the empirical analysis. To analyze the demographic characteristics and effects of urban agriculture, frequency analysis and descriptive statistics were conducted. In order to analyze the reliability and validity of the measurement variables of the effect, the variables that deteriorate the validity were removed and 15 variables of the urban agricultural effect were selected. According to the result of factor analysis, three factors were extracted as follows: socially sustainable effect, negative effect and economically sustainable effect. In order to examine the effects of urban agriculture depending on income level, the one-way ANOVA, which is a statistical technique for verifying differences in the sample means, was performed. The psychological stability of people, the recovery of humanity through communion with nature, and the vitalization of agriculture linked with local agriculture had significant correlations with income level. The negative effect showed no significant correlation with income level. The improvement of the local environment was found to have an impact in relation with income level. We expect that there will be more studies on policies for the new types and models of urban agriculture in order to make it easier for urban citizens to approach it.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.602-620
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• 2018

Korean benthic macroinvertebrate community from 959 sites and 14 environmental factors that could affect the biological distribution were surveyed and analyzed. The 438 taxa were divided into six groups according to TWINSPAN. Based on the environmental factor values corresponding to each taxon, the average and range of environmental factors for each biological group tended to increase or decrease in eight environmental factors (altitude, slope, current velocity, fraction of fine particles in substrates, turbidity, $BOD_5$, T-N and T-P). As a result of discriminant analysis (hit ratio: 69.6 %), environmental factors that significantly influence the distribution of each biological group were $BOD_5$, altitude, catchment area, T-N, T-P and fraction of fine particles in substrates. The discriminant functions 1 and 2 classified the existing six biological groups (clustered by TWINSPAN) into five (group 1: highland highly sensitive group; group 2: lowland sensitive group, group; 3 and 4: lowland slightly tolerant group; group 5: lowland tolerant group; group 6: lowland highly tolerant group). Most of the benthic macroinvertebrates were identified in the species level. However, a few others were identified in genus or family level, too. Even the organisms belonging to the same genus or family may prefer different environmental factors in the species level, the identification of characteristic of the habitat environment preferred by organism and species level identification of these organisms are utmost. The results of this study may be used as basic information on environmental factors which can be considered in preservation and restoration research for biodiversity.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.152-164
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• 2019

In this study, a Benthic Macroinvertebrates Family Index (BMFI) was developed using 100 indicator groups (99 families including Chironomidae with 2 phena). Families were assigned a score between 1 and 10 depending on their sensitivity to organic pollution. The BMFI was composed of the sensitivity and relative abundance of the indicator taxa. Sensitivity values of each group were generally similar to Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP) scores or Walley, Hawkes, Paisley, Trigg (WHPT) scores of UK, Japanese BMWP scores, and the FBI tolerance values of North America. However, sensitivity values of some taxa were significantly different from those of foreign countries, which seemed to have resulted from discrepancy in species composition, difference of taxonomic classification system, or methodological difference for estimation of sensitivity. As an annual average level, BMFI showed significant correlation with concentration of 5-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) (correlation coefficient r = -0.80, n = 569 sites), total suspended solids (r = -0.68), and total phosphorus (r = -0.79). In addition, BMFI revealed strong correlation with Shannon-Weaver's species diversity (r = 0.85), Margalef's species richness (r = 0.85) and McNaughton's dominance (r = -0.84). Correlation between BMFI and water quality parameters or community indices such as species diversity did not show significant difference compared to that of species-level indices such as BMI (Benthic Macroinvertebrates Index). This means that BMFI is a more useful indicator in terms of easy identification of organisms. BMFI was used to assess the environmental status of 3,017 sites of Stream Ecosystem Survey conducted by the Korean Ministry of Environment between 2016 and 2018. As a result, about half of all sites appeared to be in good condition, and a quarter in poor condition.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.19-30
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• 2021

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is one of common chronic diseases leading to severe health complications that may cause death. The disease influences individuals, community, and the government due to the continuous monitoring, lifelong commitment, and the cost of treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers Saudi Arabia as one of the top 10 countries in diabetes prevalence across the world. Since most of the medical services are provided by the government, the cost of the treatment in terms of hospitals and clinical visits and lab tests represents a real burden due to the large scale of the disease. The ability to predict the diabetic status of a patient without the laboratory tests by performing screening based on some personal features can lessen the health and economic burden caused by diabetes alone. The goal of this paper is to investigate the prediction of diabetic and prediabetic patients by considering factors other than the laboratory tests, as required by physicians in general. With the data obtained from local hospitals, medical records were processed to obtain a dataset that classified patients into three classes: diabetic, prediabetic, and non-diabetic. After applying three machine learning algorithms, we established good performance for accuracy, precision, and recall of the models on the dataset. Further analysis was performed on the data to identify important non-laboratory variables related to the patients for diabetes classification. The importance of five variables (gender, physical activity level, hypertension, BMI, and age) from the person's basic health data were investigated to find their contribution to the state of a patient being diabetic, prediabetic or normal. Our analysis presented great agreement with the risk factors of diabetes and prediabetes stated by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and other health institutions worldwide. We conclude that by performing class-specific analysis of the disease, important factors specific to Saudi population can be identified, whose management can result in controlling the disease. We also provide some recommendations learnt from this research.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.310-322
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• 2021

The incidence of extremity amputation is estimated at about 200,000 cases annually. Over 25% of patients suffer from terminal neuroma or phantom limb pain (TNPLP), resulting in pain, inability to wear a prosthetic device, and lost work. Once TNPLP develops, there is no definitive cure. Therefore, there has been an emerging focus on TNPLP prevention. We examined the current literature on TNPLP prevention in patients undergoing extremity amputation. A literature review was performed using Ovid Medline, Cochrane Collaboration Library, and Google Scholar to identify all original studies that addressed surgical prophylaxis against TNPLP. The search was conducted using both Medical Subject Headings and free-text using the terms "phantom limb pain," "amputation neuroma," and "surgical prevention of amputation neuroma." Fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria, including six prospective trials, two comprehensive literature reviews, four retrospective chart reviews, and three case series/technique reviews. Five techniques were identified, and each was incorporated into a targetbased classification system. A small but growing body of literature exists regarding the surgical prevention of TNPLP. Targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), a form of physiologic target reassignment, has the greatest momentum in the academic surgical community, with multiple recent prospective studies demonstrating superior prevention of TNPLP. Neurorrhaphy and transposition with implantation are supported by less robust evidence, but merit future study as alternatives to TMR.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1595-1603
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• 2020

Online defamation incidents such as Internet news comments on portal sites, SNS, and community sites are increasing in recent years. Bias and hate expressions threaten online service users in various forms, such as invasion of privacy and personal attacks, and defamation issues. In the past few years, academia and industry have been approaching in various ways to solve this problem The purpose of this study is to build a dataset and experiment with deep learning classification modeling for detecting various bias expressions as well as hate expressions. The dataset was annotated 7 labels that 10 personnel cross-checked. In this study, each of the 7 classes in a dataset of about 137,111 Korean internet news comments is binary classified and analyzed through deep learning techniques. The Proposed technique used in this study is multi-channel CNN model with attention. As a result of the experiment, the weighted average f1 score was 70.32% of performance.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.726-734
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• 2020

Objectives: The aim of this study was to analyze and classify the characteristics of potential damage from hazardous chemical accidents in 229 administrative units in South Korea by reflecting the social and environmental characteristics of areas where chemical accidents can occur. Methods: A number of indicators were selected through preceding studies. Factor analysis was performed on selected indicators to derive factors, and cluster analysis was performed based on the factor scores. Results: As a result of the cluster analysis, 229 administrative units were divided into three clusters, and it was confirmed that each cluster had its own characteristics. Conclusions: The first cluster, "areas at risk of accident occurrence and spread of damage" was a type with a high potential for accident damage and a high density of hazardous facilities. The second cluster, "Urban infrastructure damage hazard areas" appeared to be a cluster with high urban development characteristics. Finally, the third cluster 'Urban and environmental damage hazard areas' appeared to be a cluster with an excellent natural environment. This study went further from the qualitative discussion related to existing chemical accidents to identify and respond to accident damage by reflecting the social and environmental characteristics of the region. Distinct from the previous studies related to the causes of accidents and the response system, it is meaningful to conduct empirical research focusing on the affected areas by analyzing the possibility of accident damage in reflection of the social and environmental characteristics of the community.

• Archives of Craniofacial Surgery
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.33-37
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• 2021

Background: Children with cleft lip and/or palate can be undernourished due to feeding difficulties after birth. A vicious cycle ensues where malnutrition and low body weight precludes the child from having the corrective surgery, in the absence of which the child fails to gain weight. This study aimed to identify the proportion of malnutrition, including the deficiency of major micronutrients, namely iron, folate and vitamin B12, in children with cleft lip and/or palate and thus help in finding out what nutritional interventions can improve the scenario for these children. Methods: All children less than 5 years with cleft lip and/or cleft palate attending our institute were included. On their first visit, following were recorded: demographic data, assessment of malnutrition, investigations: complete blood count and peripheral blood film examination; serum albumin, ferritin, iron, folate, and vitamin B12 levels. Results: Eighty-one children with cleft lip and/or palate were included. Mean age was 25.37±21.49 months (range, 3-60 months). In 53% of children suffered from moderate to severe wasting, according to World Health Organization (WHO) classification. Iron deficiency state was found in 91.6% of children. In 35.80% of children had vitamin B12 deficiency and 23.45% had folate deficiency. No correlation was found between iron deficiency and the type of deformity. Conclusion: Iron deficiency state is almost universally present in children with cleft lip and palate. Thus, iron and folic acid supplementation should be given at first contact to improve iron reserve and hematological parameters for optimum and safe surgery.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.103-109
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• 2021

Objectives: The aim of this study was to calculate the burden of stroke in Kurdistan Province, Iran between 2011 and 2017. Methods: Incidence data extracted from the hospital information system of Kurdistan Province and death data extracted from the system of registration and classification of causes of death were used in a cross-sectional study. The World Health Organization method was used to calculate disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Results: The burden of stroke increased from 2453.44 DALYs in 2011 to 5269.68 in 2017, the years of life lost increased from 2381.57 in 2011 to 5109.68 in 2017, and the years of healthy life lost due to disability increased from 71.87 in 2011 to 159.99 in 2017. The DALYs of ischaemic stroke exceeded those of haemorrhagic stroke. The burden of disease, new cases, and deaths doubled during the study period. The age-standardised incidence rate of ischaemic stroke and haemorrhagic stroke in 2017 was 21.72 and 20.72 per 100 000 population, respectively. Conclusions: The burden of stroke is increasing in Kurdistan Province. Since health services in Iran are based on treatment, steps are needed to revise the current treatment services for stroke and to improve the quality of services. Policy-makers and managers of the health system need to plan to reduce the known risk factors for stroke in the community. In addition to preventive interventions, efficient and up-to-date interventions are recommended for the rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients in hospitals. Along with therapeutic interventions, preventive interventions can help reduce the stroke burden.