• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.114-119
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• 2016

Purpose: This study aimed to assess the reference values and factors influencing blood lead levels among Korean adolescents. Methods: The study population consisted of 1,585 adolescents (801 males, 784 females; aged 10-19 years) who participated in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2010-2013. We analyzed blood lead concentrations in relation to demographic/lifestyle characteristics for all participants. "Reference values" of blood lead levels were calculated as the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval of the 95th percentile. Results: The average "reference value" for blood lead concentrations among Korean adolescents was $2.25{\mu}g/dL$ ($2.49{\mu}g/dL$ for males, $2.07{\mu}g/dL$ for females), and the geometric mean of the blood lead concentrations was $1.34{\mu}g/dL$. Males had higher blood lead concentrations than females (male, $1.48{\mu}g/dL$; female, $1.19{\mu}g/dL$; P<0.001). Elementary school students had higher blood lead concentrations than junior and senior high school students ($1.44{\mu}g/dL$ vs. $1.31{\mu}g/dL$, P<0.001). Participants living in detached houses had higher blood lead concentrations than those living in apartments (P<0.001) and current smokers had higher concentrations than nonsmokers or participants with secondhand smoke exposure (P<0.05). Additionally, participants with excessive alcohol consumption had higher levels than non-drinkers (P<0.001). Conclusion: This study provides national reference data on blood lead concentrations stratified by demographic and lifestyle factors among Korean adolescents. Further studies are needed to elucidate the relationship between increased lead exposure and demographic factors including type of housing.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.130-141
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• 2004

For a coastal or harbor structure design, one of the most important environmental factors is the appropriate design wave condition. Especially, the information of deepwater wave height distribution is essential for reliability design. In this paper, a set of deep water wave data obtained from KORDI(2003) were analyzed for extreme wave heights. These wave data at 67 stations off the Korean coast from 1979 to 1998 were arranged in the 16 directions. The probability distributions considered in this research were the Weibull, the Gumbel, the Log-pearson Type-III, and Lognormal distribution. For each of these distributions, three parameter estimation methods, i.e. the method of moments, maximum likelihood and probability weighted moments, were applied. Chi-square and Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit tests were performed, and the assumed distribution was accepted at the confidence level 95%. Gumbel distribution which best fits to the 67 station was selected as the most probable parent distribution, and optimally estimated parameters and 50 year design wave heights were presented.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.517-526
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• 2008

Geological and related thematic maps make various economical and social benefits at many sectors. Recently, development of information managing technology such as GIS, Geographic Information System, enlarges the usage of geological map and information. In this research, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, we analyzed the weight of attributes which compose value of geological map and information. Results of research are as follows. By the analysis of the weight of attributes, we found that the weight of confidence, upper hierarchy attribute, was above 50%. The weight of convenience and additional effect was about $16%{\sim}30%$ in the geological map, geophysical map, geochemical map and hydrogeologic map. And the consumption of each maps will increase, especially in large scale map.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.346-351
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• 2009

To investigate concentration and characteristics of dioxins in soil at Cheongju city, total 28 soil samples were collected. The total and I-TEQ concentration of 17 PCDDs/DFs ranged from 2.30 to 630.40 pg/g dry weight and from 0.002 to 9.79 pg I-TEQ/g dry weight with averages of 55.42 pg/g and 1.13 pg I-TEQ/g, respectively. These levels are very lower than those of around various incinerators in Korea (from n.d. to 153.23 with average value of 7.36 I-TEQ/g). The correlation between total concentration and TEQ concentration showed significant with 99% confidence interval (p-value < 0.001). The TEQ concentration as land use was high as follows; industrial area> green area> residential and commercial area> farm land. In terms of congener distribution, OCDD which is highly detected in general soil samples, was predominant and showed various fraction (from 23 to 100%). The ratios of PCDF concentration against to PCDD concentration varied as samples (from 0.1 to 2.4).

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.189-197
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• 2018

The study aims to examine the availability of figure therapy in convergence perspective by verifying the effectiveness of the figure therapy programs on the psychological exhaustion and ego resilience of counselors. For the purpose, this study examine the changes of psychological exhaustion and ego resilience of participated counselors from 11 clients of general counseling center in 2 areas of Gyeonggi through the independent sample t-test and the corresponding sample t-test based on group figure therapy programs. As a result, there was a slight difference in the mean value of psychological exhaustion, and the mean of ego resilience has increased. In addition, the mean value of confidence and interpersonal efficiency, which is a sub factor of ego resilience, has increased and showed statistical significance. Based on the result, the study will be applied as a basic data of developing various figure therapy programs to improve the self resilience of counselors.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.289-297
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• 2018

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the usefulness of a behavioral cue checklist (BCC) containing 17 items developed by Wilkes et al. (2010) for identifying potentially violent patients in emergency departments. Methods: This was a prospective observational study to evaluate the usefulness of the Korean version of a BCC (K-BCC) as an assessment tool for predicting patient violence in emergency departments, and was conducted over 4 weeks in a regional emergency medical center located in B City. A total of 1,324 patients were finally analyzed. Results: Logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate whether each item of the K-BCC predicts violence, and a parsimonious set of 8 statistically significant items was selected for the tool. Receiver operating characteristic analysis of the BCC showed that the area under the curve was .97 (95% confidence interval: .94~1.0). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value at the cut-off score of 2 were 75.6%, 98.9%, 68.2%, and 99.2%, respectively. Conclusion: The K-BCC was found to be useful in predicting patient violence toward emergency department staff. This tool is simple, and fast to use and can play a significantly role identifying potentially violent patients. Owing to this advance identification, this tool can be helpful in preventing the potential for violence from manifesting as violent behaviors.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.21
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• pp.9077-9083
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• 2014

Background: This study aimed to summarize the potential diagnostic value of serum DKK1 levels in cancer detection. Materials and Methods: Serum DKK1 was measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in a case-control study. Then we performed a meta-analysis and the pooled sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic odds ratio, and summary receiver operating characteristic (sROC) curves were used to evaluate the overall test performance. Results: Serum DKK1 levels were found to be significantly upregulated in gastric cancer as compared to controls. ROC curve analysis revealed an AUC of 0.636, indicating the test has the potential to diagnose cancer with poor accuracy. The summary estimates of the pooled sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic odds ratio in meta-analysis were 0.55 with a 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.53-0.57), 0.86 (95%CI, 0.84-0.88) and 12.25 (95%CI, 5.31-28.28), respectively. The area under the sROC was 0.85. Subgroup analysis revealed that the diagnostic accuracy of serum DKK1 in lung cancer (sensitivity: 0.69 with 95%CI, 0.66-0.74; specificity: 0.95 with 95%CI, 0.92-0.97; diagnostic odds ratio: 44.93 with 95%CI, 26.19-77.08) was significantly higher than for any other cancer. Conclusions: Serum DKK1 might be useful as a noninvasive method for confirmation of cancer diagnosis, particularly in the case of lung cancer.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.4691-4698
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• 2015

Background: The tumor suppressor phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) is an important negative regulator of cell-survival signaling. However, available results for the prognostic value of PTEN expression in patients with cancer remain controversial. Therefore, a meta-analysis of published studies investigating this issue was performed. Materials and Methods: A literature search via PubMed and EMBASE databases was conducted. Statistical analysis was performed by using the STATA 12.0 (STATA Corp., College, TX). Data from eligible studies were extracted and included into the meta-analysis using a random effects model. Results: A total of 3,810 patients from 27 studies were included in the meta-analysis, 22 investigating the relationship between PTEN expression and overall survival (OS) using univariate analysis, and nine with multivariate analysis. The pooled hazard ratio (HR) for OS was 1.64 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.32-2.05) by univariate analysis and 1.56 (95% CI: 1.20-2.03) by multivariate analysis. In addition, eight papers including two disease-free-survival analyses (DFSs), four relapse-free-survival analyses (RFSs), three progression-free-survival analyses (PFSs) and one metastasis-free-survival analysis (MFS) reported the effect of PTEN on survival. The results showed that loss of PTEN expression was significant correlated with poor prognosis, with a combined HR of 1.74 (95% CI: 1.24-2.44). Furthermore, in the stratified analysis by the year of publication, ethnicity, cancer type, method, cut-off value, median follow-up time and neoadjuvant therapy in which the study was conducted, we found that the ethnicity, cancer type, method, median follow-up time and neoadjuvant therapy are associated with prognosis. Conclusions: Our study shows that negative or loss of expression of PTEN is associated with worse prognosis in patients with cancer. However, adequately designed prospective studies need to be performed for confirmation.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.603-606
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• 2013

Background: Ovarian cancer is the second most common malignancy in Pakistani women, accounting for 4% of all cancers in the female population. The aim of this study was to determine sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and 95% confidence intervals for ultrasound in characterization of ovarian masses in patients presenting at public and private tertiary care hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan. Materials and Methods: We adopted a cross-sectional analytical study design to retrospectively collect data from January 2009-11 from medical records of two tertiary care hospitals. Using a non-probability purposive sampling technique, we recruited a sample of 86 women aged between 15 and 85 years fulfilling inclusion criteria with histopathologically proven ovarian masses presenting for an ultrasound examination in our radiology departments. Results: Our retrospective data depicted sensitivity and specificity of ultrasound to be 90.7%, 95%CI (0.77, 0.97) and 91.4%, 95%CI (0.76, 0.98) respectively. Positive predictive value was 93%, 95%CI (0.79, 0.98) and negative predictive value was 89%, 95%CI (0.73, 0.96). A total of 78 ovarian masses were detected, out of which 42 were malignant and 36 were benign. Conclusions: Results of our study further reinforce the conclusion that ultrasound should be used as an initial modality of choice in the workup of every woman suspected of having an ovarian mass. It not only results in decreasing the mortality but also avoids unnecessary surgical interventions.

• The Journal of Advanced Prosthodontics
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.190-195
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• 2011

PURPOSE. This study evaluated the initial stability of different implants placed above the bone level in different types of bone. MATERIALS AND METHODS. As described by Lekholm and Zarb, cortical layers of bovine bone specimens were trimmed to a thickness of 2 mm, 1 mm or totally removed to reproduce bone types II, III, and IV respectively. Three Implant system (Br${\aa}$nemark System$^{(R)}$ Mk III TiUnite$^{TM}$, Straumann Standard Implant SLA$^{(R)}$, and Astra Tech Microthread$^{TM}$-OsseoSpeed$^{TM}$) were tested. Control group implants were placed in level with the bone, while test group implants were placed 1, 2, 3, and 4 mm above the bone level. Initial stability was evaluated by resonance frequency analysis. Data was statistically analyzed by one-way analysis of variance in confidence level of 95%. The effective implant length and the Implant Stability Quotient (ISQ) were compared using simple linear regression analysis. RESULTS. In the control group, there was a significant difference in the ISQ values of the 3 implants in bone types III and IV (P<.05). The ISQ values of each implant decreased with increased effective implant length in all types of bone. In type II bone, the decrease in ISQ value per 1-mm increase in effective implant length of the Br${\aa}$nemark and Astra implants was less than that of the Straumann implant. In bone types III and IV, this value in the Astra implant was less than that in the other 2 implants. CONCLUSION. The initial stability was much affected by the implant design in bone types III, IV and the implant design such as the short pitch interval was beneficial to the initial stability of implants placed above the bone level.