• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
• /
• v.46 no.10
• /
• pp.1243-1252
• /
• 2017

There are limited programs for low sodium intake based on the nutrition education model for housewives who cook family meals. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of model-based nutrition programs for low sodium intake among housewives residing in Seoul by incorporating social cognitive theory. A questionnaire survey before and after education was conducted on 140 housewives who participated in the 'Low Sodium Nutritional Education Program' delivered by a district public health center for 12 weeks from November 2015 to January 2016. The contents of the nutrition education program and program evaluation items were based on the action plans for 'Less Sodium Healthy Practice' suggested by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. The results show that program participants showed a lower preference for sodium, higher selection of low sodium dishes from restaurants or cafeteria if available, and increased awareness of the need of restaurants to serve low sodium dishes compared to before. In terms of behavioral changes, there were significant improvements in checking nutrition labeling and selection of foods with low sodium, use of low sodium food products, use of natural seasonings to reduce salt intake, and consumption of fast foods and processed foods. On the other hand, requesting less salty meals when ordering and introducing restaurants or cafeterias with healthy and low sodium menus turned out to be difficult to put into practice. In conclusion, the nutrition education program for sodium intake reduction for housewives was effective in increasing knowledge, environment recognition, and behaviors related to low sodium intake but not behaviors related to physical environmental factors. Therefore, further nutrition education programs and practices for sodium intake reduction should be comprehensively implemented with improvement of physical environments for low sodium intake.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.41 no.6
• /
• pp.624-631
• /
• 1994

Background: Genus of Aspergilli are ubiquitous saprophytic molds in nature, but its change from a saprophytic fungus to a pathogenic organism has occurred since the use of various antibiotics. The fungus affects the chronically ill and debilitated population. Recently frequency of the fungal infection is increasing in Korea with abuse of antibiotics and glucocorticoids. Method: We analyzed medical records of 52 patients with pulmonary aspergillosis seen at Hanyang University Hospital from 1980 to 1994. The results were as follows; Results: 1) Ages ranged between second to eighth decades with majority(50%) in the fourth to fifth decades. The male to female ratio was 1.1:1. 2) Hemoptysis and productive cough, the leading symptoms, occurred in 42.3% and 25% respectively. 3) On chest X-ray fingings, the characteristic "fungus ball" pattern were observed in 53.8% of the 52cases. 4) Sputum culture for aspergilli were positive in 21.6% of the cases. We performed fine needle aspiration in 22 patients and the diagnostic yield was 100%. 5) Thirty-six patients had history of treatment with antituberculous drugs under diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis for an average of 27.3 months. But sputum analysis for acid-fast bacilli were positive in 5.6%(2cases of 36cases), and postoperative pathologic findings showed that 38.9%(12 cases of 28cases) were combined with tuberculosis. 6) Right upper and left upper lobes were predominantly involved(34.6% and 19.2% respectively) and lobectomies were performed in 21 cases. 7) Underlying diseases were present in 47 cases and 48.9% of them were pulmonary tuberculosis. Conclusion: These results showed that pulmonary aspergillosis usually develops in patients with open cavitary pulmonary tuberculosis. And we must consider the possibility of pulmonary aspergillosis in a patient with hemoptysis and cavitary lung lesion.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.50 no.5
• /
• pp.599-606
• /
• 2001

Background : Since the advent of AIDS, tuberculosis has become a major public health problem in the western society. Therefore, it is essential that pulmonary tuberculosis be rapidly diagnosed. Light microscopic detection of acid-fast organisms in sputum has traditionally been used for rapidly diagnosing tuberculosis. However positive smears are only observed in about one-half to three-quarters of cases. Studies using PCR for diagnosing pulmonary tuberculosis disclosed several shortcomings suggesting an inability to distinguish between active and treated or inactive tuberculosis. In this study, the clinical significance of a PCR-based rapid technique for detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in peripheral blood was investigated. Materials and Methods : From July 1, 1998 through to August 30, 1999, 59 patients with presumed tuberculosis, who had no previous history of anti-tuberculosis medication use within one year prior to this study were recruited and followed up for more than 3 months. AFB stain and culture in the sputum and/or pleural fluids and biopsies when needed were performed. Blood samples from each of the 59 patients were obtained in order to identify Mycobacterium Tuberculosis DNA by a PCR test. Results : 1) Forty five out of 59 patients had a final diagnosis of tuberculosis ; Twenty eight were confirmed as having active pulmonary tuberculosis by culture or biopsy. Four were clinically diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. The other 13 patients were diagnosed as having tuberculous pleurisy (9) and extrapulmonary tuberculosis (4). 2) Fourteen patients showed a positive blood PCR test. The PCR assay correctly identified active tuberculosis in 13 out of 14 patients. The overall sensitivity and specificity of this blood peR assay for diagnosing tuberculosis were 29% and 93%, respectively. The positive predictive value was 93%, the negative predictive value was 29% and the diagnostic accuracy was 44%.3) Six out of 14(43%) patients with blood PCR positive tuberculosis were immunologically compromised hosts. 4) A simple chest radiograph in blood PCR positive tuberculosis patients showed variable and inconsistent findings. Conclusion : A peripheral blood PCR assay for Mycobacterium tuberculosis is not recommended as a screening method for diagnosing active tuberculosis. However, it was suggested that the blood PCR assay could contribute to an early diagnostic rate due to its high positive predictive value.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.47 no.6
• /
• pp.747-756
• /
• 1999

Background: Acid-fast stain and cultures for diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis are primary and essential method, but have their limitation : low sensitivity and time consuming. The objective of this study is comparison of amplified Mycobacterium tuberculosis direct test(MTD) by the conventional AFB smears and cultures in the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in respiratory specimens. Methods: During the period between November, 1997 and May, 1998 a total of 267 respiratory specimens (sputum 173, bronchial washing 94) from 187 patients suspected pulmonary tuberculosis were subjected to AFB smears, cultures and MID test. MID is based on nucleic acid amplification. We compared the MID with 3% Ogawa culture method. In positive AFB smear and negative MID specimen, positive culture identification between nontuberculous mycobacterium and M.tuberculosis was assesed by using Accuprobe M.tuberculosis complex probe. In negative AFB smear and negative AFB culture, MTD results are assessed by clinical follow-up. Results : 1) Compared with culture in sputum and bronchial fluid specimens, sensitivity and specificity of MTD in positive AFB smear is 79.7% and 20.0%, sensitivity and specificity of MTD in negative AFB smear specimens is 75.0% and 79.7%. 2) Discrepant analysis is assessed by clinical follow-up and other specimen results beyond study. Culture negative but MTD positive specimens were proved to be true positive and gave MTD sensitivity 79.2%, specificity of 84.4%, positive predictive value 80.5% and negative predictive value 83.2%. 3) 14 out of 31 specimens in negative AFB smear, negative AFB culture and positive MTD showed pulmonary tuberculosis diagnosed on clinical follow-up and sensitivity is 45.2%. 4) 2 out of 13 specimens in positive AFB smear, positive AFB culture and negative MID diagnosed as non tuberculous mycobacterium by Accuprobe culture. Conclusion: This study suggested that MID in respiratory specimens is simple and rapid diagnostic method, but considered adjuvant method rather than replace the conventional AFB smear and culture.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.49 no.2
• /
• pp.169-178
• /
• 2000

Background : Usually fever subsides within one week in over 90% of pulmonary tuberculosis (TBp) patients after the start of short-course anti-tuberculosis therapy, but occasionally it persists over two weeks after treatment. When the fever persists, drug resistance, combined infection, or drug fever, and so on, are considered as an etiology and, in some cases, drugs are changed. But inadvertent discontinuation of a short-course regimen inevitably will extend the duration of treatment, and the treatment completion may be delayed. This study was performed to investigate the causes of prolonged fever (PF) and to identify the predictors of PF in drug-susceptible TBp patients in Korea. Method : Five hundred-ninety-eight patients, who were admitted to Asan Medical Center from January 1996 to March 1999, diagnosed with TBp and prescribed short-course, anti-tuberculosis treatment, were reviewed. PF was defined as having fever over two weeks despite treatment. The causes of PF were analyzed. Drug-sus-ceptible TBp patients who presented no causes for PF, except turberculosis itself, were selected(n=22), and they were compared with those who had no fever at diagnosis (n=22) and those who had fever at diagnosis, which had subsided within two weeks after treatment (n=22). Clinical, laboratory, and radiological parameters were compared among the three groups. Results : Twenty-eight (4.8%) of 598 patients showed PF over two weeks despite short-course treatment. The causes of PF were drug fever (n=2), multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (n=3), disseminated Mycobacterium kansasii infection (n=1), and drug-susceptible tuberculosis itself (n=22). The patients with PF had more risk factors for tuberculosis, long duration of symptoms before treatment, night sweats, weight long, numerous acid fast bacilli on sputum smear, anemia, hyponatremia, hypoalbuminemia, over three lung cavity numbers and extensive infiltration, indicating that they had prolonged and extensive lung diseases. Conclusion : The main cause of PF in TBp despite short-course regimen seems to be drug-susceptible but extensive disease in Korea. Any changes to the drug regiment provided for TBp patients with prolonged fever despite treatment should be carefully considered.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.208-215
• /
• 2005

The 10mm diameter aggregates made of clay, carbon and $Fe_2O_3$ were prepared to investigate the mechanism of black core formation. The specific gravity, absorption rate, percent of black core area, fracture strength, total Fe analysis, and XRF were measured at various compositions, sintering temperatures, sintering times, sintering atmospheres, and sintering methods. Small addition of $Fe_2O_3$ did not affect physical properties of the aggregates; however, the percent of black core area increased with increasing carbon contents and increasing sintering temperature. Specific gravity of the aggregates decreased and the water absorption ratio increased with increasing percent of black core area. The aggregates sintered at oxidation atmosphere showed clear border between shell and black core area. Hence, the aggregates sintered at reduction atmosphere showed only black core area in the cross-section of the aggregates. The specific gravity of the aggregates sintered at reduction atmosphere increased with increasing carbon contents and that was the lowest of all comparing other aggregates sintered at different atmospheres. Adsorption rate increased with increasing carbon contents at all atmospheres. The fast sintered aggregates showed lower specific gravity, higher absorption rate, and more black core area than the normally sintered aggregates. It was turned out that the aggregates having more black core area showed higher fracture strength than that of aggregates with no black core area. From the total Fe analysis, the concentration of Fe and FeO was higher at black core area than at shell. Because the concentration of $Fe_2O_3$ in the shell was higher than other area, the color of the shell appeared red. It was also turned out from the XRF analysis that carbon was exist only at black core area.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.43-65
• /
• 2010

Facing a complex environment driven by a decade, many companies are adopting new strategic frameworks such as Customer Relationship Management system to achieve sustainable profitability as well as overcome serious competition for survival. In many business areas, CRM system advanced a great deal in a matter of continuous compensating the defect and overall integration. However, pharmaceutical companies in Korea were slow to accept them for usesince they still have a tendency of holding fast to traditional way of sales and marketing based on individual networks of sales representatives. In the circumstance, this article tried to empirically address current status of CRM system as well as the effects of the system on the performance of pharmaceutical companies by applying BSC method's four perspectives, from financial, customer, learning and growth and internal process. Survey by e-mail and post to employers and employees who were working in pharma firms were undergone for the purpose. Total 113 cases among collected 140 ones were used for the statistical analysis by SPSS ver. 15 package. Reliability, Factor analysis, regression were done. This study revealed that CRM system had a significant effect on improving financial and non-financial performance of pharmaceutical companies as expected. Proposed regression model fits well and among them, CRM marketing information system shed the light on substantial impact on companies' outcome given profitability, growth and investment. Useful analytical information by CRM marketing information system appears to enable pharmaceutical firms to set up effective marketing and sales strategies, these result in favorable financial performance by enhancing values for stakeholderseventually, not to mention short-term profit and/or mid-term potential to growth. CRM system depicted its influence on not only financial performance, but also non-financial fruit of pharmaceutical companies. Further analysis for each component showed that CRM marketing information system were able to demonstrate statistically significant effect on the performance like the result of financial outcome. CRM system is believed to provide the companies with efficient way of customers managing by valuable standardized business process prompt coping with specific customers' needs. It consequently induces customer satisfaction and retentionto improve performance for long period. That is, there is a virtuous circle for creating value as the cornerstone for sustainable growth. However, the research failed to put forward to evidence to support hypothesis regarding favorable influence of CRM sales representative's records assessment system and CRM customer analysis system on the management performance. The analysis is regarded to reflect the lack of understanding of sales people and respondents between actual work duties and far-sighted goal in strategic analysis framework. Ordinary salesmen seem to dedicate short-term goal for the purpose of meeting sales target, receiving incentive bonus in a manner-of-fact style, as such, they tend to avail themselves of personal network and sales and promotional expense rather than CRM system. The study finding proposed a link between CRM information system and performance. It empirically indicated that pharmaceutical companies had been implementing CRM system as an effective strategic business framework in order for more balanced achievements based on the grounded understanding of both CRM system and integrated performance. It suggests a positive impact of supportive CRM system on firm performance, especially for pharmaceutical industry through the initial empirical evidence. Also, it brings out unmet needs for more practical system design, improvement of employees' awareness, increase of system utilization in the field. On the basis of the insight from this exploratory study, confirmatory research by more appropriate measurement tool and increased sample size should be further examined.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.59-71
• /
• 2014

System trading is becoming more popular among Korean traders recently. System traders use automatic order systems based on the system generated buy and sell signals. These signals are generated from the predetermined entry and exit rules that were coded by system traders. Most researches on system trading have focused on designing profitable entry and exit rules using technical indicators. However, market conditions, strategy characteristics, and money management also have influences on the profitability of the system trading. Unexpected price deviations from the predetermined trading rules can incur large losses to system traders. Therefore, most professional traders use strategy portfolios rather than only one strategy. Building a good strategy portfolio is important because trading performance depends on strategy portfolios. Despite of the importance of designing strategy portfolio, rule of thumb methods have been used to select trading strategies. In this study, we propose a SVM-based strategy portfolio management system. SVM were introduced by Vapnik and is known to be effective for data mining area. It can build good portfolios within a very short period of time. Since SVM minimizes structural risks, it is best suitable for the futures trading market in which prices do not move exactly the same as the past. Our system trading strategies include moving-average cross system, MACD cross system, trend-following system, buy dips and sell rallies system, DMI system, Keltner channel system, Bollinger Bands system, and Fibonacci system. These strategies are well known and frequently being used by many professional traders. We program these strategies for generating automated system signals for entry and exit. We propose SVM-based strategies selection system and portfolio construction and order routing system. Strategies selection system is a portfolio training system. It generates training data and makes SVM model using optimal portfolio. We make $m{\times}n$ data matrix by dividing KOSPI 200 index futures data with a same period. Optimal strategy portfolio is derived from analyzing each strategy performance. SVM model is generated based on this data and optimal strategy portfolio. We use 80% of the data for training and the remaining 20% is used for testing the strategy. For training, we select two strategies which show the highest profit in the next day. Selection method 1 selects two strategies and method 2 selects maximum two strategies which show profit more than 0.1 point. We use one-against-all method which has fast processing time. We analyse the daily data of KOSPI 200 index futures contracts from January 1990 to November 2011. Price change rates for 50 days are used as SVM input data. The training period is from January 1990 to March 2007 and the test period is from March 2007 to November 2011. We suggest three benchmark strategies portfolio. BM1 holds two contracts of KOSPI 200 index futures for testing period. BM2 is constructed as two strategies which show the largest cumulative profit during 30 days before testing starts. BM3 has two strategies which show best profits during testing period. Trading cost include brokerage commission cost and slippage cost. The proposed strategy portfolio management system shows profit more than double of the benchmark portfolios. BM1 shows 103.44 point profit, BM2 shows 488.61 point profit, and BM3 shows 502.41 point profit after deducting trading cost. The best benchmark is the portfolio of the two best profit strategies during the test period. The proposed system 1 shows 706.22 point profit and proposed system 2 shows 768.95 point profit after deducting trading cost. The equity curves for the entire period show stable pattern. With higher profit, this suggests a good trading direction for system traders. We can make more stable and more profitable portfolios if we add money management module to the system.

• Clean Technology
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.375-382
• /
• 2014

This work investigated the plasma-catalytic decomposition of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and the behavior of the byproduct compounds over monolith-supported metal oxide catalysts. Iron oxide ($Fe_2O_3$) or copper oxide (CuO) was loaded on a monolithic porous ${\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ support, which was placed inside the coaxial electrodes of plasma reactor. The IPA decomposition efficiency itself hardly depended on the presence and type of metal oxides because the rate of plasma-induced decomposition was so fast, but the behavior of byproduct formation was largely affected by them. The concentrations of the unwanted byproducts, including acetone, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, methane, carbon monoxide, etc., were in order of $Fe_2O_3/{\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ < $CuO/{\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ < ${\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ from low to high. Under the condition (flow rate: $1L\;min^{-1}$; IPA concentration: 5,000 ppm; $O_2$ content: 10%; discharge power: 47 W), the selectivity towards $CO_2$ was about 40, 80 and 95% for ${\alpha}-Al_2O_3$, $CuO/{\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ and $Fe_2O_3/{\alpha}-Al_2O_3$, respectively, indicating that $Fe_2O_3/{\alpha}-Al_2O_3$ is the most effective for plasma-catalytic oxidation of IPA. Unlike plasma-alone processes in which tar-like products formed from volatile organic compounds are deposited, the present plasma-catalyst hybrid system did not exhibit such a phenomenon, thus retaining the original catalytic activity.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.56-64
• /
• 1979

Two types of fiat-plate collector were designed and constructed for utilizing the solar energy as heating source of red pepper drying. It was performed to investigate the basic factors on using the collectors and the drying effect on various types of red pepper, and the results obtained are summarized as follows. 1. The optimum tilted angles of the collector in Daejeon area were ${\phi}-15^{\circ}$ in summer season and ${\phi}+15^{\circ}$ in winter season when it was adjusted two times per a year: 2. In the conditions during experiment period, average atmospheric temperature and relative humidity were $25.6^{\circ}C$ and 52.6%, respectively, and $42.0^{\circ}C$, 74.2% in the control chamber. The temperature in the drying chamber connected to the water heater was the highest but relative humidity in the chamber connected to the air heater was the lowest among the chambers. 3. The drying velocity of whole red pepper in the chamber connected to the water heater was the fastest as 2.3 times as compared to the whole type on the mat drying followed by air heater and control in decreasing order. The horizontally cut red pepper in the chamber connected to the water heater was dried exceedingly fast among twelve plots. 4. The content of capsaicine as pungent principle and of capsanthine as red pigment in the red pepper were reduced during drying but there were no differences significantly on the drying method, and it could not affect much on the quality of dried product.