• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.74-87
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• 2017

Purpose: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy has been shown to improve survival in locally advanced gastric cancer, but it is associated with significant toxicity. Sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity have been studied in several types of cancers and have been reported to be associated with higher chemotherapy toxicity and morbi-mortality. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of sarcopenia/sarcopenic obesity in patients with gastric cancer, as well as its association with chemotherapy toxicity and long-term outcomes. Materials and Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed using an academic cancer center patient cohort diagnosed with locally advanced gastric cancer between January 2012 and December 2014 and treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy. We analyzed body composition (skeletal muscle and visceral fat index) in axial computed tomography images. Results: A total of 48 patients met the inclusion criteria. The mean age was $68{\pm}10years$, and 33 patients (69%) were men. Dose-limiting toxicity was observed in 22 patients (46%), and treatment was terminated early owing to toxicity in 17 patients (35%). Median follow-up was 17 months. Sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity were found at diagnosis in 23% and 10% of patients, respectively. We observed an association between termination of chemotherapy and both sarcopenia (P=0.069) and sarcopenic obesity (P=0.004). On multivariate analysis, the odds of treatment termination were higher in patients with sarcopenia (odds ratio=4.23; P=0.050). Patients with sarcopenic obesity showed lower overall survival (median survival of 6 months [95% confidence interval {CI}=3.9-8.5] vs. 25 months [95% CI=20.2-38.2]; log-rank test P=0.000). Conclusions: Sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity were associated with early termination of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with gastric cancer; additionally, sarcopenic obesity was associated with poor survival.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.869-877
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• 2022

This study aims to analyze the factors affecting the re-subscription period upon initial termination of the reverse mortgage subscription. The study utilized the Korea Housing Finance Corporation's database to extract the information regarding re-subscribers of the reverse mortgage from July 2007 to June 2021. The ordered logit model was employed and found that a set of user (subscriber) characteristics are influential towards the re-subscription period. Among the individual characteristics, changes in age group, marital status from married to single-living, maintaining single-living, and the initial subscription period were found statistically significant, highlighting that the increase in the initial subscription period decreased the re-subscription period. Among the housing (home equity) characteristics, changes in housing price and ownership type (single and partial ownership) were statistically significant, indicating that the change in ownership type decreases the re-subscription period. Lastly, the variables related to loan terms were found significant, revealing that changes in payout method and schedule were both increasing factors of the re-subscription period. Based on the findings, necessary policy implications can be considered to secure the returning subscribers of the reverse mortgage effectively.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.47-57
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• 2010

To understand day-to-day fluctuations in soil moisture content in Seoul, I simulated daily soil moisture content from 1908 to 2009 using long-term climatic precipitation and temperature data collected at the Surface Synoptic Meteorological Station in Seoul for the last 98 years with a hydrological simulation model, BROOK. The output data set from the BROOK model allowed me to examine day-to-day fluctuations and the severity and duration of droughts in the Seoul area. Although the soil moisture content is highly dependent on the occurrence of precipitation, the pattern of changes in daily soil moisture content was clearly quite different from that of precipitation. Generally, there were several phases in the dynamics of daily soil moisture content. The period from mid-May to late June can be categorized as the initial period of decreasing soil moisture content. With the initiation of the monsoon season in late June, soil moisture content sharply increases until mid-July. From the termination of the rainy season in mid-July, daily soil moisture content decreases again. Highly stochastic events of typhoons from late June to October bring large amount of rain to the Korean peninsula, culminating in late August, and increase the soil moisture content again from late August to early September. From early September until early October, another sharp decrease in soil moisture content was observed. The period from early October to mid-May of the next year can be categorized as a recharging period when soil moisture content shows an increasing trend. It is interesting to note that no statistically significant increase in mean annual soil moisture content in Seoul, Korea was observed over the last 98 years. By simulating daily soil moisture content, I was also able to reconstruct drought phenomena to understand the severity and duration of droughts in Seoul area. During the period from 1908 to 2009, droughts in the years 1913, 1979, 1939, and 2006 were categorized as 'severe' and those in 1988 and 1982 were categorized as 'extreme'. This information provides ecologists with further potential to interpret natural phenomenon, including tree growth and the decline of tree species in Korea.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.407-417
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• 2014

A new-generation video coding standard, named High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), has recently been developed by JCT-VC. This new standard provides a significant improvement in picture quality, especially for high-resolution videos. However, one the most important challenges in HEVC is time complexity. A quadtree-based structure is created for the encoding and decoding processes and the rate-distortion (RD) cost is calculated for all possible dimensions of coding units in the quadtree. This provides a high encoding quality, but also causes computational complexity. We focus on a reduction scheme of the computational complexity and propose a new approach that can terminate the quadtree-based structure early, based on the RD costs of the parent and current levels. Our proposed algorithm is compared with HEVC Test Model version 10.0 software and a previously proposed algorithm. Experimental results show that our algorithm provides a significant time reduction for encoding, with only a small loss in video quality.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.149-157
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• 2015

The 3D-AVC standard aims at improving coding efficiency by applying new techniques for utilizing intra, inter and view predictions. 3D video scenes are rendered with existing texture video and additional depth map. The depth map comes at the expense of increased computational complexity of the encoding process. For real-time applications, reducing the complexity of 3D-AVC is very important. In this paper, we present a fast intra mode decision algorithm to reduce the complexity burden in the 3D video system. The proposed algorithm uses similarity between texture video and depth map. The best intra prediction mode of the depth map is similar to that of the corresponding texture video. The early decision algorithm can be made on the intra prediction of depth map coding by using the coded intra mode of texture video. Adaptive threshold for early termination is also proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm saves the encoding time on average 29.7% without any significant loss in terms of the bit rate or PSNR value.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.240-245
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• 1988

This study was prospectively planned to realize the reduction of calcium ion in serum along with the cardiopulmonary bypass[CPB], to find out the cause of the reduction, and to verify the justification of the classical methods of calcium replacement. Nine patients with various open heart surgeries by CPB in 1987 wee selected at random. Calcium chloride was added as follows:: For each unit of ACD blood transfusion, 600mg of calcium chloride was added. In case of massive transfusion, 600 mg of calcium chloride was injected every 2 or 3 units of transfusion. On occasions such as weaning from CPB, or following defibrillation, or hypotension, weak myocardial contractility of the heart, calcium chloride was needed in an amount of 10 mg / kg. In ICU, calcium chloride was limited to use in low serum level or in emergency use. Total calcium decreased early bypass and progressively increased above the preoperative value during late bypass and three hours thereafter, Ionized calcium increased during late bypass and three hours following. Total and ionized calcium depicted similar patterns of change during open heart surgery. Decrease of the calcium at the early bypass was thought from reduction of total protein and alkalosis during bypass. Meanwhile, increase of both calciums during the end of surgery was presumably attributable to addition of calcium chloride in priming solution, injections of calcium chloride in the process of termination of bypass. We conclude that enough calcium was replaced by the classical methods of calcium supplement.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.147-154
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• 2002

This paper describes the devlopment and implementation for the KOMPSAT-1 scheduling & automatic command plan generator(KSCG). Some problems in mission planning and command planning had occurred using the mission & command planning s/w in MAPS(Missin Analysis and Planning Subsystem) during the LEOP(Launch & Early Orbit Phase) & early normal mission phase due to lots of manual input process and non-automatic process. Therefore, the more mission operations for KOMPSAT-1. In order to prevent the development of new one(KSCG) which should reduce the manual process and generate automatically the command plan has been needed. As a result, the mission operations of KOMPSAT-1 has greatly became stable and more effient.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.17-30
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• 2012

Objectives : This study was to analyse the reasons for the early termination of our clinical trials that were to know the influences of Tai-chi on non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Methods : We stopped the primary study of Tai-chi to observe the changes of non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. So we carried out the survey to our participants of clinical trials. We conducted the survey about the patient's characteristics of usual exercise, experience of Tai-chi, appropriate time allocation, difficulties of proceeding the program and patient's opinion for the improvement of education. And the 4 questions about the contributiveness of Tai-chi for the Parkinson's disease, usability of supplied references, difficulties and time allocation of education were using the questionaries form of 5-point scale(Likert scale). Results : The results of survey showed that the benefits of Tai-chi program for the improvement of symptoms was $3.15{\pm}0.89$ and difficulty of lecture was $3.76{\pm}1.09$. 41% of participants answered that the motions of the Tai-chi is difficult to follow and 17% of participants felt the imbalance during the motion of Tai-chi. Conclusions : Participants replied that the Tai-chi is hard for the patients of Parkinson's disease and the time for the education was too short to keep doing exercise. Thus we have plan to educate the patients of Parkinson's disease with Tai-chi program consists of easier motion by developing ourselves or searching previous studies.

• Korean Journal of Breeding Science
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2010

Five mutants were investigated at the molecular level to determine the factors responsible for mutated endosperm types. They were classified as high (HA) or low amylose (LA) phenotypes based on the amylose content in endosperm. The five were previously produced from Ilpum and Shindongjin cultivar treated with N-methyl-N-nitrosourea and gamma-ray irradiation, respectively. Analysis of the genomic structure and expression of Granule-bounded Starch Synthase I (GBSSI) genes revealed that mutants generally showed a higher incidence of nucleotide transition than transversion, and the $A:T{\rightarrow}G:C$ transition was particularly prevalent. The rates of nucleotide substitution in HA mutants were generally higher than those in the LA mutants, leading to higher substitutions of amino acid in the HA mutants. Neither nucleotide substitutions interfering with intron splicing or causing early termination of protein translation were found, nor any large-sized deletions or additions were found in all the mutants. In principle, amylose content can be regulated by three factors: internal alterations of GBSSI protein, the strength of gene expression, and other unknown external factors. Our results indicate that the endosperm mutants from Shindongjin arose from internal alterations of GBSSI proteins, which may be the result of amino acid substitutions. On the other hand, the Ilpum mutants might be principally caused by the alteration of gene expression level. Analysis of another three glutinous cultivars revealed that the major factor leading to glutinous phenotypes is the 23-bp duplicative motif (5'-ACGGGTTCCAGGGCCTCAAGCCC-3') commonly found in exon 2, which results in the premature termination of protein translation leading to the production of a non-functional GBSSI enzyme.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.636-643
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• 1995

This study was conducted to find some differences in infant feeding pattems between well educated Koreans and local populations living in Texas, USA. Initiation rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the hospital was 35.9% in Koreans and 60.4% in Americans. At 2, 4 and 6 months, exclusive breastfeeding rates were 34.0%, 20.8% and 13.2% for Koreans and 47.2%, 34.0% and 27.2% for Americans respectively. There was a significant difference in age of weaning from breast between these two groups(p<0.01). In Koreans the most common reason for the early termination before 4 months was maternal report of milk insufficiency. 55.6% of Koreans and 42.3% of Americans fed infants on scheduled rather on demand feeding. Primary sources of advice about feeding were medical professionals in Americans while baby's grandmother was the main source in Koreans. In Americans, choice of breastfeeding was not associated with ethnicity, maternal education, and family income in the study. Interventions to promote and support participants of Women Infants and Children(WIC) may play a role in Americans. It might be suggested that effective nutrition education programs targeting for Korean mothers to promote breastfeeding should be needed urgently and systematically.