• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.459-465
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• 2002

Purpose : The aim of this study was to evaluate the latest tendency of esophageal foreign body's extraction and to obtain a consensus from recent trends of indications and techniques of flexible endoscopy of esophageal FB in children. Methods : We retrospectively reviewed medical records of 127 cases with foreign bodies in esophagus at Dept. of Pediatrics and Otorhinolaryngology, Gyeongsang National University Hospital (GNUH) from Jun, 1987 to July, 2001. They were divided into two groups by the kinds of endoscopy : flexible endoscope(66 cases) or rigid endoscope(61 cases). Rigid endoscopy was performed under general anesthesia at Dept. of Otorhinolaryngology but flexible endoscopy was performed without general anesthesia or sedative drugs(midazolam or diazepam). Results : An annual number of cases of two groups were similar from 1991 to 1998. But from 1999, flexible endoscopy was performed actively. Asymptomatic cases were frequently observed in flexible endoscopy(28 cases/66 cases) but swallowing difficulties were frequently observed in the rigid endoscopy group(25 cases/61 cases). Other symptoms were vomiting, irritability, chest discomfort and abdominal pain. The total number of cases with underlying disease(esophageal stenosis, cerebral palsy) was 8. The total number of cases with complications (erosion, ulcer, bleeding, perforation) was 11. The above cases were not correlated between the two groups. In 55 cases(83.3%) of the flexible endoscopic group and 53 cases(86.8%) of the rigid endoscopic group, foreign bodies in the esophagus were removed within 24 hours. Conclusion : We could not find any benefit in rigid endoscopic technique. Flexible endoscopic FB removal can be performed safely and effectively in children by an experienced endoscopist.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.183-191
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• 2002

Purpose : X-linked agammaglobulinemia(XLA) is an immunodeficiency caused by abnormalities in Bruton's tyrosine kinase(Btk), and is characterized by a deficiency of peripheral blood B cells. We studied the cytoplasmic expression of Btk protein and analyzed the Btk gene in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from two siblings and one cousin with XLA, as well as additional family members. Methods : Btk protein expression was analyzed by flow cytometry. Isolation of the coding sequence of the Btk gene was performed by amplification using the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) technique. Sequence alterations were screened by the single-stranded conformation polymorphism(SSCP) method and characterized by standard sequencing protocols. Results : Cytoplasmic expression of Btk protein in monocytes was not detected in three patients with XLA. In addition, Btk protein analysis clearly showed cellular mosaicism in monocytes from four obligate carriers, findings further supported by SSCP. A single base pair mutation(T to C) in Btk-exon three, which encodes the PH domain, was identified in four XLA patients. A diagnostic sequencing analysis was established to detect heterozygotic pattern in 4 carrier females. Furthermore, we found significant clinical heterogeneity in individuals with the same gene mutation. Conclusion : The implicating genetic alteration provided valuable clues to the pathogenesis of XLA in Korea and the flow cytometric analysis was suggested as a useful tool for rapid detection of XLA patients and carriers. The present study has identified a genetic mutation in the Btk coding region and demonstrated heterogeneity in clinical manifestations among patients with the same mutation. A flow cytometric analysis was found to be informative in establishing a deficiency of Btk protein in both patients and carriers and is recommended as a frontline procedure in the molecular diagnosis and work-up of XLA.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.194-198
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• 2009

Purpose : Active perioperative intervention and improvement on surgical technique has decreased the mortality rate of total anomalous pulmonary venous connection (TAPVC); however, when complicated with pulmonary venous obstruction, operative mortality is still high. The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical course of TAPVC. Methods : Twenty-seven patients who were diagnosed with TAPVC (without other complex heart anomalies) by echocardiogram at Kyungpook National University Hospital from January 1994 to February 2008 were included. Results : Mean age at diagnosis was $28.1{\pm}33.4$ days (1-126 days). Sites of drainage were supracardiac type (15), cardiac (6), infracardiac (5), and mixed (1). Seven patients had pulmonary venous obstruction: 5 with supracardiac type, 1 with cardiac, and 1 with infracardiac. Intraoperative trans-esophageal echocardiograms were performed in 14 patients (58.3%). The operative mortality was 16.7% (4 of 24) and overall hospital mortality (including deaths without operation) was 22.2% (6 of 27). There were 5 postoperative pulmonary venous obstructions. The sites of obstruction were anastomotic in 3 of 5 (60%) patients, and ostial pulmonary vein in the other 2 (40%) patients. Three patients who presented with anastomotic pulmonary venous obstruction underwent reoperation, but all the patients were found to have pulmonary venous anastomotic obstruction. The other 2 patients with ostial pulmonary vein obstruction who had no significant symptoms were diagnosed by routine echocardiographic examination during follow-up. Conclusion : In TAPVC patients, early diagnosis and aggressive surgical management will improve prognosis, and we must pay attention to early and late pulmonary vein restenosis through intraoperative trans-esophageal echocardiogram and peri- and post-operative echocardiographic follow-up examinations.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.241-254
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• 2011

Financial time-series forecasting is one of the most important issues because it is essential for the risk management of financial institutions. Therefore, researchers have tried to forecast financial time-series using various data mining techniques such as regression, artificial neural networks, decision trees, k-nearest neighbor etc. Recently, support vector machines (SVMs) are popularly applied to this research area because they have advantages that they don't require huge training data and have low possibility of overfitting. However, a user must determine several design factors by heuristics in order to use SVM. For example, the selection of appropriate kernel function and its parameters and proper feature subset selection are major design factors of SVM. Other than these factors, the proper selection of instance subset may also improve the forecasting performance of SVM by eliminating irrelevant and distorting training instances. Nonetheless, there have been few studies that have applied instance selection to SVM, especially in the domain of stock market prediction. Instance selection tries to choose proper instance subsets from original training data. It may be considered as a method of knowledge refinement and it maintains the instance-base. This study proposes the novel instance selection algorithm for SVMs. The proposed technique in this study uses genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize instance selection process with parameter optimization simultaneously. We call the model as ISVM (SVM with Instance selection) in this study. Experiments on stock market data are implemented using ISVM. In this study, the GA searches for optimal or near-optimal values of kernel parameters and relevant instances for SVMs. This study needs two sets of parameters in chromosomes in GA setting : The codes for kernel parameters and for instance selection. For the controlling parameters of the GA search, the population size is set at 50 organisms and the value of the crossover rate is set at 0.7 while the mutation rate is 0.1. As the stopping condition, 50 generations are permitted. The application data used in this study consists of technical indicators and the direction of change in the daily Korea stock price index (KOSPI). The total number of samples is 2218 trading days. We separate the whole data into three subsets as training, test, hold-out data set. The number of data in each subset is 1056, 581, 581 respectively. This study compares ISVM to several comparative models including logistic regression (logit), backpropagation neural networks (ANN), nearest neighbor (1-NN), conventional SVM (SVM) and SVM with the optimized parameters (PSVM). In especial, PSVM uses optimized kernel parameters by the genetic algorithm. The experimental results show that ISVM outperforms 1-NN by 15.32%, ANN by 6.89%, Logit and SVM by 5.34%, and PSVM by 4.82% for the holdout data. For ISVM, only 556 data from 1056 original training data are used to produce the result. In addition, the two-sample test for proportions is used to examine whether ISVM significantly outperforms other comparative models. The results indicate that ISVM outperforms ANN and 1-NN at the 1% statistical significance level. In addition, ISVM performs better than Logit, SVM and PSVM at the 5% statistical significance level.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.208-218
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• 2012

Numerical simulation technique has been developed to calculate microwave backscattering from water surface. The simulation plays a role of a substitute for experiments. Validation of the simulation was shown by comparing with experimental results. Water area observations by microwave radar have been simulated to evaluate algorithms and systems. Furthermore, the simulation can be used to understand microwave scattering mechanism on the water surface. The simulation has applied to the various methods for water area observations, and the utilizations of the simulation are introduced in this paper. In the case of fixed radar, we show following examples, 1. Radar image with a pulse Doppler radar, 2. Effect of microwave irradiation width and 3. River observation (Water level observation). In addition, another application (4.Synthetic aperture radar image) is also described. The details of the applications are as follows. 1. Radar image with a pulse Doppler radar: A new system for the sea surface observation is suggested by the simulation. A pulse Doppler radar is assumed to obtain radar images that display amplitude and frequency modulation of backscattered microwaves. The simulation results show that the radar images of the frequency modulation is useful to measure sea surface waves. 2. Effect of microwave irradiation width: It is reported (Rheem[2008]) that microwave irradiation width on the sea surface affects Doppler spectra measured by a CW (Continuous wave) Doppler radar. Therefore the relation between the microwave irradiation width and the Doppler spectra is evaluated numerically. We have shown the suitable condition for wave height estimation by a Doppler radar. 3. River observation (Water level observation): We have also evaluated algorithms to estimate water current and water level of river. The same algorithms to estimate sea surface current and sea surface level are applied to the river observation. The simulation is conducted to confirm the accuracy of the river observation by using a pulse Doppler radar. 4. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image: SAR images are helpful to observe the global sea surface. However, imaging mechanisms are complicated and validation of analytical algorithms by SAR images is quite difficult. In order to deal with the problems, SAR images in oceanic scenes are simulated.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1147-1158
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• 1998

Background: Portable cardiopulmonary bypass(CPB) technique has been used increasingly as a potent and effective option for emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation(CPR) because it can maintain more stable hemodynamics and provide better survival than conventional CPR techniques. This study was designed to develop a prototype of Korean portable CPB system and, by applying it to CPR, to discriminate whether it would be superior to standard open-chest CPR. Material and Method: By using adult mongrel dogs, open-chest CPR(OCPR group, n=4) and portable-CPB CPR(CPB group, n=4) were compared with respects to restoration of spontaneous circulation(ROSC), hemodynamics, effects on blood cells, blood gas patterns, biochemical markers, and survivals. Ventricular fibrillation-cardiac arrest(VF-CA) of arrest(VF-CA) of 4 minutes followed by basic life support(BLS) of 15 minutes was applied in either group, which was standardized by the protocol of American Heart Association. Then, advanced life support(ALS) was applied to either group under the support of internal cardiac massage or CPB. ALS was maintained until ROSC was achieved but not longer than 30 minutes regardless of the presence of ROSC. All of the measured values were expressed as means±SD percent change from baseline. Result: During the early ALS, higher mean arterial pressure was maintained in CPB group than in OCPR group(90±19 vs. 71±32 %; p<.05) and lower mean pulmonary arterial pressure was also maintained in CPB group than in OCPR group(105±24 vs. 146±6%; p<.05). ROSC was achieved in all dogs. Post-ROSC levels of hematocrit, RBC, and platelet were decreased and plasma free hemoglobin was increased significantly in CPB group compared to OCPR group(p<.05). Changes in blood gas patterns, lactate, and CK-MB levels were not different between groups. Early mortality was seen in 3 dogs in OCPR group(survival time 31±36 hours) and 2 in CPB group(228±153 hours, p=ns). The remainders in both groups showed prolonged survival. Conclusion: These findings indicate that portable CPB can be effective to maintain stable hemodynamics during cardiac arrest, to achieve ROSC and to prolong survival. Further study is needed to refine the portable CPB system and to meet clinical challenges.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.438-444
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• 2016

This study was performed to determine the optimal freezing point for the reliable cold storage of Korean agricultural products, and to provide basic data for determining the storage temperature based on the quality characteristics. Additional supercooling temperature analysis was conducted to explore the possibility of supercooling storage. To determine the effects of quality characteristics on the freezing point, the hardness, acidity, moisture and sugar content were analyzed. The crops were frozen using customized cooling unit and their freezing and supercooling points were determined based on their heat release points. The freezing temperatures of garlic, leek, cucumber, hot pepper, grape, oriental melon, netted melon, peach, cherry tomato, plum, daikon, sweet persimmon, apple, sweet potato, mandarin, pear, and strawberry were -1.6, -0.5, -0.5, -0.7, -1.6, -1.6, -1.3, -0.8, -0.3, -1.1, -0.3, -1.7, -1.5, -1.5, -0.8, -1.5, and -$0.9^{\circ}C$, respectively; otherwise, supercooling points were -7.8, -3.7, -3.3, -4.9, -5.7, -4.6, -2.8, -3.3, -5.9, -4.2, -0.8, -4.7, -3.2, -3.7, -4.7, -4.2, and -$3.4^{\circ}C$, respectively. These results suggest that the ideal freezing temperature of crops could be estimated through freezing point depression because of their sugar content, and this technique should be used to maintain an optimum storage temperature. However, cold storage is complicated and further study is required because of the effects of long-term cold storage on the crops.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.97-130
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• 1979

Many industrial processes those employ bacteria are subjected to phage infestations. In L-glutamic acid fermentions using acetic acid, the phage infestations of the organisms have been recently recognized. In efforts to elucidate the sources of phage contamination involved in the abnormal fermentation, a series of study was conducted to isolate the phages both from the contents of abnormally fermented tanks and the soil or sewage samples from the surroundings of a fermentation factory, to define major charateristics of the phage isolates, and finally to determine the correlation between the phage isolates and temperate phages originating from the miscellaneous bacterial species isolated from the soil or sewage samples. The results are summarized as follows; 1) All phages were isolated from the irregular fermentation tanks and soil or sewage samples, and they were designated as phage PR-1, PR-2, PR-3, PR-4, PR-5, PR-6, and PR-7, in the order of isolation. These PR-series phages were proved to be highly specific for the variant strains of Br. lactofermentum only, namely, phage PR-1 and PR-2 for Br. lactofermentum No. 468-5 and phage PR-3~PR-7 for Br. lactofemrentum No. 2256. By cross-neutralization test, the 7 phagescould be subdivided into 3 groups, i. e., phage PR-I and PR-2 the first, phage PR-3, PR-4, PR-5, PR-6 the second, and the phage PR-7 the third. 2) The 7 phages were virulent under the experimental conditions. They produced plaques with clear and relatively sharp margins without distinct halo. The mean sizes of plaques were 1.5mm in diameter for phage PR-1 and PR-2, and 1. Omm for phages PR-3~PR-7. Double layer technique modified by Hongo and described by Adams, was applied to assay of the PR-series phages. The factors influencing the plaques were as follows;young age cells of host bacteria cultured for 3-6 hours represented the largest number and size, optimum was pH 7.0, incubation temperature was $30^{\circ}C$, and agar concentration and amount of overlayer medium were 0.6% and 0.2ml, respectively. 3) PR-series phages were stable in 0.05M tris buffer and 0.1M ammonium acetate buffer solution. The addition of $5{\times}10^{-3}M$ magnesium ion effectively increased the stability. Thermostability experiments indicated that PR-series phages were stable at the teinperture between $50^{\circ}{\sim}55^{\circ}C$ in nutrient medium, $45^{\circ}{\sim}50^{\circ}C$ in buffer solution. However, the phages mere completely inactivated at 603C and 65$^{\circ}$C within 10 minutes. The phages were stable at the range of pH6~9 in nutrient medium and of pH 8-9 in buffer solution, respectively. Exposure of the phages to UV for 25, 60 and 100 seconds resulted in the complete loss of infectivily, respectively. 4) Electron microscopy showed that PR-series phage particles exhibited rather similar morphology, differing in the size All of PR-series phages had a multilateral head and had a simple long tiil about three to five times long as compared with head. By the size, phage PR-1 and PR-2, PR-3, PR-4, PR-5, and PR-6 and PR-7 were classified into same groups, respectively. The head and tail size of phage PR-1, PR-5, PR-5(T) and PR-7 were 85nm, 74nm and 235nm and 350mm, and 72nm and 210nm, respectively. 5) Nucleic acids of PR-series phages were double stranded DNA. The G+C contents of phage PR-1, PR-5 and PR-7 were 56.1, 52.9 and 53.7, respectively. The values of G+C contents derived from the $T_m$ were in agreement with the chemically determined values. 6) PR-series phages effectively adsorbed on their host bacteria at the rate of more than 90% during 5 min. K value for phage PR-1, PR-5 and PR-7 were calculated to be $6{\times}10^9 ml$ per minute, respectiveky. The pH of the medium did effect adsorption rate, but both temperature and age of host cells did not. Generally, optimum adsorption condition of phages seemed to be almost same as optimum growth conditions of host bacteria. 7) In one-step growth experiments, the latent periods at $30^{\circ}C$ for PR-1, and PR-7 were about 70, 50 and 55 min, respectively. The corresponding average burst size was 200, 70 and 90, respectively. Lpsis period according to the multiplicity of infection and a phage series. In case of m. o. i. 100, strain No. 2256 (PR-5) and No. 468-5(PR-1) failed to grow and turbidity decreased after 50 and 70min, respectively. 8) In the lysate of a plaque purified phage PR-5 infected bacteria, there observed 2 types ofphage particles, i. e., phage PR-5 and PR-5 (T) of similar morphology but differing at the length of phage tail, and phage tail like particles. The phage taillike particles could be divided into 4 types by the length. Induction experiments of Br. lactofermentum with UV irradiation, mitomycin C or bacitracin treatment produced neither phage PR-5 (T) or phage tail-like particles. 9) No lysis occured when the growth of 7 strains of miscellaneous bacteria, isolated from soil and sewage samples, were inoculated with either phage PR-5 (T) or phage tail-like particles the inoculation of phage PR-5 pellet resulted in the growth inhibition of the orgainsms in the spot test. The lysates obtained from 3 miscellaneous soil derived bacteria following mitomycin C treatment the growth of Br. lactofermentum, but did not lyze the bacterium.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.1-14
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• 2007

Backgrounds : Rheumatoid Arthritis(RA) is known as the chronic inflammatory diseasethat induces persistent inflammation in the joint cavity. The destruction of cartilage occurs as the result of bones destoyed by pannus, several influential cytokines induced by the synovial capsulitis, varieties of proteinases, $O_2$ radicals, and the secondary degenerative changes of articular cartilage. The type 2 collagen-induced arthritis model is used in recent experimental research on rheumatoid arthritis. Cervus elaphus sibiricus (Nockyong) has the effect of relieving pain by nourishing the muscles, joints, and bones. It is also known to be efficacious in promoting and enhancing the immune system. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of Cervus elaphus sibiricus herbal acupuncture to inhibit the generation of proinflammatory enzyme on type 2 collagen-induced arthritis. I investigated the inhibition of mRNA transcription of MIF(macrophage migration inhibitory factor), $TNF-{\alpha}$(Tumor necrosis $factor-{\alpha}$) and MMP-9 (matrix metalloproteinase-9) of Cervus elaphus sibiricus herbal acupuncture using an in vitro test. Also investigated was the inhibition of differentiation of Th 1 cells and activation of cytokines(MIF, $TNF-{\alpha}$, IL-6, MMP-9), which are known to cause initial RA ,and are also related to the morphology of the synovial membranes of the joint capsule, by an in vivo test, using CIA(collagen induced arthritis) model mice. Materials & methods : The laboratory animals used in this experiment were 4 week-old DBA female mice, weighing approximately 20 grams, and adjusted to the laboratory environment. The experiment was divided into the normal group(NOR)-no treated group, control group(CON)-CIA induced group, and sample group(SAM)-Cervus elaphus sibiricus herbal acupuncture treated group. RA was induced in the mice via injection of $50{\mu}{\ell}$ C II mixed CFA. The Cervus elaphus sibiricus herbal acupuncture solution was applied on $GB_{35}$(陽陵泉) for 26 days from the 3rd day of RA inducement. The concentration of the solution was determined via a MTT assay. To research the effect on the expression of MIF, $TNF-{\alpha}$ and MMP-9 mRNA, RT-PCR was performed on synovial membrane cells from the knee joint of CIA mice. C II induced RA knee joint's histo-chemical synovial membrane was observed using a specimen model via the Hematoxilin and Eosin dying technique. Results : The expression of mRNA of RA-related cytokines such as MIF, $TNF-{\alpha}$, and MMP-9 dosedependently decreased in the cell from the synovial membranes of the joint, which is treated with Cervus elaphus sibiricus herbal acupuncture solution. In mice treated with Cervus elaphus sibiricusherbal acupuncture, the damage of synovial membranes of the joint was lessened, and differentiation of Th 1 cells was suppressed. The activation of RA-related cytokines such as MIF was suppressed, and the generation of $TNF-{\alpha}$ and MMP-9 showed a statistically significant decreas. Conclusions : It is speculated that Cervus elaphus sibiricus herbal acupuncture has the therapeutic effect of palliating the damage of the tissue impaired by RA by inhibition of the initial RA progression and by regulating excessive differentiation of Th 1 cell as it suppresses the generation of RA-related cytokines during the highest stage of RA by acting on pro-inflammatory enzymes.

• Journal of Home Health Care Nursing
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• v.4
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• pp.5-22
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• 1997

The purpose of the study was to development an information delivery system for the home nursing service, to demonstrate and to evaluate the efficiency of it. The period of research conduct was from September 1996 to August 31, 1997. At the 1st stage to achieve the purpose, Firstly Assessment tool for the patients with cerebral vascular disease who have the first priority of HNS among the patients with various health problems at home was developed through literature review. Secondly, after identification of patient nursing problem by the home care nurse with the assessment tool, the patient's classification system developed by Park (1988) that was 128 nursing activities under 6 categories was used to identify the home care nurse's activities of the patient with CAV at home. The research team had several workshops with 5 clinical nurse experts to refine it. At last 110 nursing activities under 11 categories for the patients with CVA were derived. At the second stage, algorithms were developed to connect 110 nursing activities with the patient nursing problems identified by assessment tool. The computerizing process of the algorithms is as follows: These algorithms are realized with the computer program by use of the software engineering technique. The development is made by the prototyping method, which is the requirement analysis of the software specifications. The basic features of the usability, compatibility, adaptability and maintainability are taken into consideration. Particular emphasis is given to the efficient construction of the database. To enhance the database efficiency and to establish the structural cohesion, the data field is categorized with the weight of relevance to the particular disease. This approach permits the easy adaptability when numerous diseases are applied in the future. In paralleled with this, the expandability and maintainability is stressed through out the program development, which leads to the modular concept. However since the disease to be applied is increased in number as the project progress and since they are interrelated and coupled each other, the expand ability as well as maintainability should be considered with a big priority. Furthermore, since the system is to be synthesized with other medical systems in the future, these properties are very important. The prototype developed in this project is to be evaluated through the stage of system testing. There are various evaluation metrics such as cohesion, coupling and adaptability so on. But unfortunately, direct measurement of these metrics are very difficult, and accordingly, analytical and quantitative evaluations are almost impossible. Therefore, instead of the analytical evaluation, the experimental evaluation is to be applied through the test run by various users. This system testing will provide the viewpoint analysis of the user's level, and the detail and additional requirement specifications arising from user's real situation will be feedback into the system modeling. Also. the degree of freedom of the input and output will be improved, and the hardware limitation will be investigated. Upon the refining, the prototype system will be used as a design template. and will be used to develop the more extensive system. In detail. the relevant modules will be developed for the various diseases, and the module will be integrated by the macroscopic design process focusing on the inter modularity, generality of the database. and compatibility with other systems. The Home care Evaluation System is comprised of three main modules of : (1) General information on a patient, (2) General health status of a patient, and (3) Cerebrovascular disease patient. The general health status module has five sub modules of physical measurement, vitality, nursing, pharmaceutical description and emotional/cognition ability. The CVA patient module is divided into ten sub modules such as subjective sense, consciousness, memory and language pattern so on. The typical sub modules are described in appendix 3.