• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.101-118
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• 2008

Japanese national health expenditure was 8.0% of GDP in 2004, and it was lower than average of OECD countries. But it has increased rapidly in recent years. Japan has relatively many acute care beds and high-price medical equipments, and the average length of stay is long. Japanese government is trying healthcare reform to contain healthcare expenditure, increase the efficiency of management and improve the quality of healthcare. As healthcare policies for hospitals such as DPC (Diagnosis Procedure Combination) for acute care beds, reduction of long-term care beds, and functional differentiation and liaison among healthcare institutions are implemented, the number of hospitals in financial difficulties is increasing. The serious situation urges hospitals to adapt to changes and search new directions of management. They need to establish and implement appropriate positioning strategy, and increase management efficiencies. Korean healthcare system has similarities with Japanese in many aspects. The recent reform and changes in Japanese healthcare system and hospitals give suggestions to Korean hospitals as to how they can prepare for environmental changes and improve management.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.205-218
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• 2007

This study investigates the reasons of dropout in a survey of 348 dropouts from a cyber university located in Seoul, Korea. Most common reasons are time constraints due to work or family-related needs. Difficulties in adjusting to online learning environment and uncertainties regarding the value of a cyber university degree also played important roles. Drop-out students who pointed to these two reasons also suffered from lack of communication and interaction with other students and professors. Efforts to address these issues are in order as well as the development of time-efficient learning strategies and financial aids.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.97-114
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• 1996

Recently, attention for health promotion is rising. Alcohol is widely consumed among adults. About 1/3 of people 15 years of older enjoy drinking alcohol. Some 80% of them drink a half or more bottle of soju each time. Regular excessive drinking of alcohol may cause various problems. WHO(1990) reported that social problems such as divorce, unemployment, and financial difficulties ; psychological problems such as melancholy, suicide, and drug abuse ; physical problems such as cirrhosis, lung cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, and sterilization. The patients with liver disease are estimated to be 628,000. Approximately, 12,000 persons are dying by chronic liver disease and cirrhosis each year. Among the people of 15 years or older, persons dependent on alcohol are estimated to be 1,480,000. This study suggests policies to reduce the consumption of alcohol for planning for health promotion. Limitations of sites and times of sales and designation of sellers, designation of sites prohibiting drinking, limitation of alcohol sales promotion, and restrictions on advertisement can be inaugurated. Increase of price through the raise of tax and taxation of promotion cost. Education of high risk groups such as soldiers, pregnant women, and the youth can be introduced. Provision of alternative socialization programs instead of drinking. Some approaches on target groups were suggested.

• Journal of The Korean Digital Architecture Interior Association
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.33-39
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• 2006

Along with the increasing number of disabled people, number of handicapped people who spends most of their time indoors increase. Their disabilities constrain them in social activities and bind them to indoors. But living environment built for normal people are many cases inevitably inconvenient for disabled people. People realizes that housing renovation is necessary, however problems such as financial difficulties must be solved in advance. House renovations, to create comfortable and independent living conditions for disabled people, various thesis and documents were analyzed, along with survey through questionnaire. Results are as following. (1) House renovation is necessary, due to the increasing number of disabled people and inconvenience of former house form. (2) Integrated or specialized house renovation manual is required to satisfy the different need derived from extent and type of disabilities. (3) Central and local government's policy for continued support is necessary. (4) House renovation plan for homeless disabled people is necessary. (5) Separate research on the size of space, type of space, efficiency is necessary. (6) Separate house renovation plan considering the people who lives with disabled people is required. (7) Disabilities are not personal but societal problem. This paper is to uncover all the problems in the house renovation for disabled people. It will be used to develop house renovation manual in the future. Therefore, this paper does not deal with the actual house renovation plans.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.385-392
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• 2014

Random walk hypothesis is a hypothesis that explains theoretically the difficulty in forecasting in financial market. Various tests for the hypothesis have been developed so far but it is known that those tests suffer from low power and size distortion. In this article, a sign test based on slopes are suggested to overcome these difficulties. A simulation study is conducted to compare this test to the often used Dickey and Fuller (1979) test.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.13-26
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• 2012

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between resilience of migrant workers and their mental health for improving their quality of life and adaptation in Korean society. Methods: Data were collected from March 21 to May 7, 2011. The participants included 488 migrant workers who lived in Busan Metropolitan City or Gyoungnam province. Results: First, heavy working burdens and lack of rests, low wages, poor living environments, low economic status & deficiency of living necessities, hard physical labors, and conflicts with Korean workers had negative effects on mental health. Second, high perceived stress caused by usual 'living difficulties', high 'cutural shock', high feeling of 'social isolation', and high discomfort from 'lack of Korean language proficiency' gave negative effects on migrant worker's mental health. Third, the most important factor on the mental health was the 'cultural shock' among stressors. Even though many stressors existed among migrant workers, these negative effects on mental health were lessened by their high resilience level. Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of migrant workers in Busan, Korea. To improve their mental health, social support including financial supports and educational programs that foster resilience needed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.124-131
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• 2017

This study aims to contribute to urban policy for more effective disaster prevention, as abnormal natural disasters are becoming more frequent. Up to now, the urban plan for disaster prevention in Korea merely includes basic principles and necessities of measures as an early stage. Furthermore, there are difficulties to make specific programs because the legal system, technical instruments, and financial supports are not sufficient. Therefore, this study figures out problems in the current plan related to urban prevention after analyzing the legal system and practices. Resulting from case studies in developed countries, the study draws significant implications, as follows: enhancing legally binding force; improving the procedures for the programs; establising technical infrastructure. It first suggests a way for the urban policy for disaster prevention by considering our local features comprehensively. It then defines the roles of central, local governemnts and research institutions, and the procedure for urban disaster prevention planning building on the individual roles. This study concludes that an emphasis should be placed on institutional tools necessary to publish technical guideline and establish the system so that urban planners more easily access to disaster risk information.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.5049-5054
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• 2013

Background: To assess the treatment pattern and expenditure incurred by cancer patients undergoing treatment at government tertiary hospitals in India. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study of 508 cancer patients randomly selected from tertiary cancer hospitals funded by central/state governments located in major cities of five states in India, namely Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Mizoram, during March - May 2011 was conducted. Information related to direct costs, indirect costs and opportunity costs incurred on investigations and treatment, major source of payment and difficulties faced by patients during the course of treatment was collected. Results: About 45% of the patients used private health facilities as the first point of contact for cancer related diseases as against 32% in public hospitals. About 47% sought private health facilities for cancer investigations, 21% at district/sub-district hospitals, and about 4% contacted primary health care facilities. A majority of the patients (76%) faced financial problems while undergoing treatment. Conclusions: The results highlight the importance of involving the primary health care system in the cancer prevention activities.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.30-39
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• 2012

Design-build (D&B) has been broadly perceived as an effective project delivery method and become popular in the world. However, the implementation process of this innovative procurement method in Vietnam encounters difficulties due mainly to unfamiliarity and inexperience with the approach. Critical success factors (CSFs) which could be used to enhance the project execution are useful to practitioners in Vietnam if identified. A questionnaire survey was employed to identify CSFs of D&B projects in Vietnam. Parties' competence, especially financial capability, and contract documentation are the most important factors significantly affecting project success. It was also shown that the perspectives of two principal parties in D&B projects on the CSFs are statistically correlated. The identified CSFs were then validated with some various D&B projects. The execution results of CSFs' were compared with the projects' performance measured try key performance indicators (KPIs). The most important success factors of this study were also compared with other countries'. The validation and comparison results provide project participants with some useful information to perform D&B projects better. Practitioners should well perform the identified CSFs to enhance the chance of the success of D&B projects in Vietnam. The findings of this study are useful not only to Vietnamese practitioners but also to others who are concerned about D&B method and plan to employ it in Vietnam in future.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.81-96
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• 2009

Data mining, specially clustering is one of exciting research areas for ant based algorithms. Ant clustering algorithm, however, has many difficulties for resolving practical situations in clustering. We propose a new grid-based ant colony algorithm for clustering of data. The previous ant based clustering algorithms usually tried to find the clusters during picking up or dropping down process of the items of ants using some stigmergy information. In our ant clustering algorithm we try to make the ants reflect neighborhood information within the storage nests. We use two ant classes, search ants and labor ants. In the initial step of the proposed algorithm, the search ants try to guide the characteristics of the storage nests. Then the labor ants try to classify the items using the guide in-formation that has set by the search ants and the stigmergy information that has set by other labor ants. In this procedure the clustering decision of ants is quickly guided and keeping out of from the stagnated process. We experimented and compared our algorithm with other known algorithms for the known and statistically-made data. From these experiments we prove that the suggested ant mining algorithm found the clusters quickly and effectively comparing with a known ant clustering algorithm.