• Health Policy and Management
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.104-128
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• 2003

Equity in health care has taken priority in the Korean government's policy agenda after the government-led national health insurance achieved universal coverage in 1989 along with the final inclusion of the self-employed as beneficiary. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which there exists difference or inequality in the utilization of health care, especially cancer inpatient services among income classes. We analysed the utilization of cancer inpatient services of residents in Jeju Island for a year of 2000, using the national health insurance data for qualification of beneficiaries and utilization of health care. The independent variable are 10 income classes based on the national health insurance fee imposed on each household for a year of 2000. The dependent variables of this study are an amount of cancer inpatient health care utilization measured by cancer admission days and cancer treatment costs. Also, cancer inpatient health care utilization is analysed by three categories divided into utilization in medical care institutions (1) within Jeju Island, (2) outside Jeju Island, and (3) all within and outside Jeju Island. We measured concentration index of cancer inpatient health care utilization. This analysis showed negative concentration index within Jeju Island and positive outside Jeju Island, and positive in all within and outside Jeju Island. This results suggest inequality against the relatively poor income groups in utilization of cancer inpatient health care services. Especially, inequity of cancer inpatient health care would be more serious in Jeju Island of Korea, considering that lower income groups reportedly have higher incidence rates in most of cancer and thus use more health services.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.177-193
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• 2011

This study constructed an ontology targeting journal articles and evaluated its performance. Also, the performance of a triple structure ontology was compared with the knowledge base of an inverted index file designed for a simple keyword search engine. The coverage was three years of articles published in the Journal of the Korean Society for Information Management from 2007 to 2009. Protege was used to construct an ontology, whilst utilizing an inverted index file to compare performance. The concept ontology was manually established, and the bibliography ontology was automatically constructed to produce an OWL concept ontology and an OWL bibliography ontology, respectively. This study compared the performance of the knowledge base of the ontology, using the Jena search engine with the performance of an inverted index file using the Lucene search engine. As a result, The Lucene showed higher precision rate, but Jena showed higher recall rate.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.6346-6352
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• 2013

Radiotherapy of rectal cancer requires a stabilized image but the movement of patients is almost unavoidable in radiotherapy. In this study, the setup error using the radiation treatment technique was compared according to the loading time and BMI(Body Mass Index) for 14 patients with rectal cancer. In addition, the variation of the dose by the average setup error was compared. Therefore, the technique of a selective standard was established. As a result, 3DCRT(3-Dimensional Radiation Therapy) and VMAT(Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy) showed a similar time and error. In comparison, IMRT(Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy) increased the time two fold and the error four fold. In BMI, a more pyknic patient showed a larger error for all techniques. Regarding the dose, IMRT and VMAT increased much more than 3DCRT in the average error at the small bowel. Therefore, 3DCRT of the short time will be applied to pyknic rectal cancer. Moreover, VMAT selects than IMRT in the overexposure of the small bowel.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.878-885
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• 2013

Seasonal variation in marine macroalgal community structure was examined at the intertidal zones of Heuksando and Hongdo, Shinan, Korea, from July 2008 to May 2009. In total, 86 macroalgal species were identified, including 12 green, 19 brown, and 55 red algae; 67 species at Heuksando and 70 species at Hongdo, were observed. Annual seaweed biomass was 252.44 g dry $wt/m^2$ at Heuksando and 217.67 g dry $wt/m^2$ at Hongdo. The dominant seaweed in importance value (IV > 15) differed between the sites: Sargassum thunbergii at Heuksando and Corallina pilulifera at Hongdo. The vertical distribution pattern of seaweeds from the upper to lower intertidal zones at Heuksando was Gloiopeltis spp., Ulva spp. - S. thunbergii, S. fusiforme, Hildenbrandia rubra - S. thunbergii, C. pilulifera. On the rocky shore of Hongdo, seaweed zonation was distinct: Porphyra yezoensis, Gloiopeltis spp., Ulva spp. - C. pilulifera, S. fusiforme, Myelophycus simplex - Chondrus ocellatus, C. pilulifera, and Carpopeltis affinis. Annual seaweed coverage, richness index (R), evenness index (J'), and diversity index (H') values were greater at Hongdo (41.35%, 12.82, 0.59, and 2.50 respectively) than at Heuksando (31.54%, 11.93, 0.44, and 1.87 respectively), which may indicate that the seaweed community at Hongdo is more stable relative to the one at Heuksando.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.299-311
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• 2015

We report first results from KVN and VERA Array (KaVA) VLBI observations obtained in the frame of our Plasma-physics of Active Galactic Nuclei (PAGaN) project. We observed eight selected AGN at 22 and 43 GHz in single polarization (LCP) between March 2014 and April 2015. Each source was observed for 6 to 8 hours per observing run to maximize the uv coverage. We obtained a total of 15 deep high-resolution images permitting the identification of individual circular Gaussian jet components and three spectral index maps of BL Lac, 3C 111 and 3C 345 from simultaneous dual-frequency observations. The spectral index maps show trends in agreement with general expectations – flat core and steep jets – while the actual value of the spectral index for jets shows indications for a dependence on AGN type. We analyzed the kinematics of jet components of BL Lac and 3C 111, detecting superluminal proper motions with maximum apparent speeds of about 5c. This constrains the lower limits of the intrinsic component velocities to ~ 0.98c and the upper limits of the angle between jet and line of sight to ~20°. In agreement with global jet expansion, jet components show systematically larger diameters d at larger core distances r, following the global relation d ≈ 0.2r, albeit within substantial scatter.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.165-172
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• 2008

Objectives : Despite various government initiatives, including the expansion of national health insurance coverage, health inequality has been a key health policy issue in South Korea during the past decade. This study describes and compares the extent of the total health inequality and the income-related health inequality over time among Korean adults. Methods : This study employs the 1998, 2001 and 2005 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHANESs). The self-assessed health (SAH) ordinal responses, measured on a five-point scale, resealed to cardinal values to measure the health inequalities with using interval regression. The boundaries of each threshold for the interval regression analysis were obtained from the empirical distribution of the EuroQol-5 Dimension (EQ-5D) valuation weights estimated from the 2005 KNHANES. The final model predicting the individuals' health status included age, gender, educational attainment, occupation, income, and the regional prosperity index. The concentration index was used to measure and analyze the health inequality. Results : The KNHANES data showed an unequal distribution of the total health inequality in favor of the higher income groups, and this is getting worse over time (0.0327 in 1998, 0.0393 in 2001 and 0.0924 in 2005). The income-related health inequality in 2005 was 0.0278, indicating that 30.1% of the total health inequality can be attributed to income. Conclusions : The findings indicate there are health inequalities across the sociodemographic and income groups despite the recent government's efforts. Further research is warranted to investigate what potential policy actions are necessary to decrease the health inequality in Korea.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.19-29
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• 2015

Objectives: The purpose of the study is to investigate the related factors to dental care utilization, oral health behaviors, and oral health status in immigrant workers in Korea. Methods: The subjects were 504 foreign immigrant male workers over 20 years old who visited Daegu labor consultation center for oral health survey and oral examination. The questionnaire included 5 questions of socioeconomic characteristics, 8 questions of oral health practice behavior, 6 questions of dental clinic visit, 8 questions of social relations and Korean language proficiency. The question for health behavior was measure by body mass index(BMI). Social relations and Korean language proficiency instrument was modified by Seol from "Family welfare survey in Korean international marriage" and scored by Liker 5 scale. Results: The oral health examination of the immigrant workers was as follows: decayed teeth - 76.6%, filling teeth - 27.4%, missing teeth - 69.8%, dental caries experience above five or more - 60.2%, periodontal pocket tissues - 58.9%. Simplified Oral Hygiene Index was very poor and accounted for 49.0%. Dental care utilization experience was closely associated with social relation indexes including attendance in family events, household stuff help, financial help and counseling for hard work(p<0.01). Dental care utilization experience proportionally increased with proficiency in Korean literacy including speaking, listening, and writing abilities of Korean language(p<0.01). Conclusions: In order to improve the oral health condition of the immigrant workers, it is important to provide social network, Korean language proficiency support, and health insurance coverage through economic burden reduction by the Korean government.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.1-5
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• 2020

As the world gradually advances to an aging society, the quality of human life is valued. Among them, 'quality of sleep' is very closely related to quality of life. Recently, Korea expanded health insurance coverage for "sleep disorders". Particularly, as the number of sleep multiple tests and prescriptions for sleep aids has increased rapidly, much attention has been focused on the related medical service environment. Therefore, this study looked at an in-depth interview of 11 hospitals to see what treatment delivery system is being established when the government applies health insurance for 'sleep disorders'. In conclusion, the organizations with the most average number of sleep polyp tests per day were found to have more sleep polyp labs (hardware) and more full-time specialists. Also, the polysomnography lab (hardware) and the specialist's full-time status (software) did not necessarily result in a "positive pressure regulator prescription" that can solve "sleep apnea" caused by "sleep ailments". Rather, it was found that the number of days of sleep multiple laboratories (hardware), the number of full-time specialists (software) or the specialty majors (software) had a greater impact. In particular, the higher the specialist's full-time personnel (software) index (=6.000), the higher the sleep-inducing agent prescription rate(=1.000), and the lower the specialist's full-time personnel (software) index (=1.000), the higher the sleep-inducer's prescription rate(= 0.010) Was low. In addition, even if the professional full-time personnel(software) index was the same (=1.000), the hospital type was lower as it was closer to the public hospital(=0.067) and higher at the specialized hospital (= 0.933). In the case of university hospitals, when the full-time specialists (software) are in the same condition (= 1.000), the frequency of use of the sleep laboratory (=1.000) and the sleep test rate (= 1.000) were all the same.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.856-874
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• 2019

The performance of recommender systems (RS) has been measured mainly in terms of accuracy. However, there are other aspects of performance that are difficult to understand in terms of accuracy, such as coverage, serendipity, and satisfaction with recommended results. Moreover, particularly with RSs that suggest multiple items at a time, such as YouTube, user satisfaction with recommended results may vary not only depending on their accuracy, but also on their configuration, content, and design displayed to the user. This is true when classifying an RS as a single RS with one recommended result and as a multiple RS with diverse results. No empirical analysis has been conducted on the influence of the content and distribution of recommendation items on user satisfaction. In this study, we propose a research model representing the content and distribution of recommended items and how they affect user satisfaction with the RS. We focus on RSs that recommend multiple items. We performed an empirical analysis involving 149 YouTube users. The results suggest that user satisfaction with recommended results is significantly affected according to the HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index). In addition, satisfaction significantly increased when the recommended item on the top of the list was the same category in terms of content that users were currently watching. Particularly when the purpose of using RS is hedonic, not utilitarian, the results showed greater satisfaction when the number of views of the recommended items was evenly distributed. However, other characteristics of selected content, such as view count and playback time, had relatively less impact on satisfaction with recommended items. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to show that the category concentration of items impacts user satisfaction on websites recommending diverse items in different categories using a content-based filtering system, such as YouTube. In addition, our use of the HHI index, which has been extensively used in economics research, to show the distributional characteristics of recommended items, is also unique. The HHI for categories of recommended items was useful in explaining user satisfaction.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2013

Purpose: A selection of proper energy in treatment planning is very important because of having different dose distribution in body as photon energy. In generally, the low energy photon has been used in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for head and neck (H&N) cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of partially used high energy photon at posterior oblique fields on IMRT plan for H&N cancer. Materials and Methods: The study was carried out on 10 patients (nasopharyngeal cancer 5, tonsilar cancer 5) treated with IMRT in Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. CT images were acquired 3 mm of thickness in the same condition and the treatment plan was performed by Eclipse (Ver.7.1, Varian, Palo Alto, USA). Two plans were generated under same planing objectives, dose volume constraints, and eight fields setting: (1) The low energy plan (LEP) created using 6 MV beam alone, (2) the partially used high energy plan (PHEP) created partially using 15 MV beam at two posterior oblique fields with deeper penetration depths, while 6 MV beam was used at the rest of fields. The plans for LEP and PHEP were compared in terms of coverage, conformity index (CI) and homogeneity index (HI) for planning target volume (PTV). For organs at risk (OARs), $D_{mean}$ and $D_{50%}$ were analyzed on both parotid glands and $D_{max}$, $D_{1%}$ for spinal cord were analyzed. Integral dose (ID) and total monitor unit (MU) were compared as addition parameters. For the comparing dose to normal tissue of posterior neck, the posterior-normal tissue volume (P-NTV) was set on the patients respectively. The $D_{mean}$, $V_{20Gy}$ and $V_{25Gy}$ for P-NTV were evaluated by using dose volume histogram (DVH). Results: The dose distributions were similar with regard to coverage, CI and HI for PTV between the LEP and PHEP. No evident difference was observed in the spinal cord. However, the $D_{mean}$, $D_{50%}$ for both parotid gland were slightly reduced by 0.6%, 0.7% in PHEP. The ID was reduced by 1.1% in PHEP, and total MU for PHEP was 1.8% lower than that for LEP. In the P-NTV, the $D_{mean}$, $V_{20Gy}$ and $V_{25Gy}$ of the PHEP were 1.6%, 1.8% and 2.9% lower than those of LEP. Conclusion: Dose to some OARs and a normal tissue, total monitor unit were reduced in IMRT plan with partially used high energy photon. Although these reduction are unclear how have a clinical benefit to patient, application of the partially used high energy photon could improve the overall plan quality of IMRT for head and neck cancer.