• The Journal of the Korean bone and joint tumor society
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.14-20
• /
• 2010

Purpose: To investigate prognostic factors influencing on local recurrence, distant metastasis and event-free survival of liposarcomas. Materials and Methods: Fifty-two patients managed for liposarcomas since 1993 were analyzed respectively in the view of prognostic influence of patient age, tumor size, location, histologic type, histologic grade, resection type, surgical margin, chemotherapy and radiation therapy on local recurrence, distant metastasis and event-free survival. The mean follow up period was 39 months. The univariate and multivariate regression analysis were performed for statistical evaluation. Results: The local recurrences occurred in 11 patients (21.2%) and distant metastasis in 4 patients (8%), Event-free survival rate at 4 year follow up was 67%. In univariate analysis, histologic grade, surgical margin, chemotherapy and radiation therapy were significant prognostic factors on local recurrence (p<0.05). However, histologic grade lost its significance in muitivariate analysis. Trunk location revealed higher rate of distant metastasis than extremity location. In univariate analysis on event-free survival. histologic grade and chemotherapy were significant factors (p<0.05). No factor remained significant in multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Considering selection bias, positive surgical margin was negative prognostic factor on local recurrence. Liposarcomas arisen in trunk revealed higher rate of distant metastasis. There was no independent prognostic factor on event-free survival of patients with liposarcomas.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.589-596
• /
• 2013

Vaccinium bracteatum Thunb. is an evergreen plant that belongs to the Genus Vaccinium distributed in Korea, and its fruit has been used for food by the common people and thus has a high possibility of commercialization. Therefore, the habitat environment and individual characteristics of V. bracteatum in Jeju Island were investigated to obtain the basic data for commercialization and preservation. The results showed that V. bracteatum is mostly distributed on the southern slope of Mt. Halla at an altitude of 100 to 500 m. V. bracteatum that occurred in the quadrat were total 30 individuals, which had an average height of 6.0 m, an average DBH of 7.8 cm, and an average number of trunk of 4.3. As for the community structure of the habitat, the average percentage of vegetation cover for the tree layer was 36%, while that for the subtree layer was 78%, which emphasized the importance of the subtree layer. The total number of species that occurred in the quadrat was 76. For the tree layer, total 10 species occurred, which include 2 species of evergreen coniferous trees, 3 species of evergreen broad-leaved trees, and 5 species of deciduous broad-leaved trees. For the subtree layer, total 24 species occurred, which include 1 species of evergreen coniferous tree, 11 species of evergreen broad-leaved trees, and 10 species of deciduous broad-leaved trees. Among these, Eurya japonica Thunb. was the species with a high relative contribution, which threatened V. bracteatum For the shrub layer, 27 species occurred including Cinnamomum japonicum Siebold, and for the herbaceous layer, 64 species occurred including Ardisia crenata Sims. The similarity between the habitats of V. bracteatum was very low, and it did not prefer a characteristic community. The V. bracteatum community around Shinrei stream was distributed on the surrounding area adjacent to the slope of the stream rather than the slope. There were a lot of basins, but the branches, which did not receive sunlight, had withered. It is thought that V. bracteatum would decline if the forest formation continues.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
• /
• v.10 no.5
• /
• pp.403-409
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this study was to examine the teaching efficiency of clinical training for dental hygiene students in Gyeonggi Province. The subjects in this study were 371 dental hygiene juniors in seven different colleges in Gyeonggi Province, on whom a self-administered survey was conducted. The collected data were analyzed with a SPSS WIN 12.0 program, and the findings of the study were as follows: 1. The teaching efficiency of clinical training that the dental hygiene students undergone was on the average. As for evaluation of the factors of teaching efficiency, they gave the highest marks to the role model factor(3.40). 2. The size of the institutions where they received clinical training made no statistically significant differences to the teaching efficiency of their clinical training. The university hospitals ranked first in professional knowledge, one of the sub-directory of teaching efficiency, and the gap between them and the others was statistically significant(p=.005). 3. Concerning links between satisfaction level with the major and view of teaching efficiency, stronger satisfaction with the major led to better perception of teaching efficiency(p=.001). Among the subdirectory of teaching efficiency, that made statistically significant differences to view of interpersonal skills, performance as a supporter, fair evaluation, academic organization skills(p=.005), encouragement and support, teaching methods, professional academic knowledge(p=.001), communicative competency, performance as a role model and cooperation with the staff of dental clinics(p=.000). 4. There were no statistically significant gaps in teaching efficiency according to teaching styles. Among the sub-directory of teaching efficiency, statistically significant differences were found only in encouragement and support(p=.005). The above-mentioned findings suggest that the teaching efficacy of the clinical training was approximately on the average, and that a better satisfaction with the major led to a higher teaching efficacy. Therefore a wide variety of teaching methods and systematic training programs should be developed to boost the quality of clinical training to improve its teaching efficacy.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.189-194
• /
• 1975

On a newly reclaimed acidic soil, investigation was made to find out the influence of lime and P application at a largeg uantity on the uptake of Zn by corn and its distribution among the leaves, under afactorial combination with two levels of Zn, lime, and P. The results are summarized as following. 1. The application of lime for neutralization of soil significantly reduced the uptake of Zn by corn. 2. Liberal doses of P (5% of P absorption coefficient of soil; 500ppm) applied before sowing did not influence the uptake of Zn. 3. The concentration of Zn in bottom leaves better reflected the Zn uptake status of corn than the upper leaves. The concentration of Zn in bottom leaves responded clearly to the treatments of lime and Zn, while those of upper leaves tended to be constant unresponding to application of lime and Zn. 4. On the present experimental condition, the yield of corn was increased with the increase of P application. But the concentration of P in plant tissue remained constant under different P levels. 5. Application of lime (calcium hydroxide) on low P plots, depressed the yield of corn significantly. It was speculated that the lime applied at large dose made the applied P less available to corn.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.37 no.6_1
• /
• pp.1657-1667
• /
• 2021

Anthropogenic activities and natural processes have been causes of land subsidence which is sudden sinking or gradual settlement of the earth's solid surface. Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, is one of the most severe land subsidence areas which are resulted from excessive groundwater extraction. Because groundwater is the primary water resource occupies almost 70% of total water usage in the city. Traditional terrestrial observations like the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) or leveling survey have been preferred to measure land subsidence accurately. Although the GNSS observations have highly accurate information of the surfaces' displacement with a very high temporal resolution, it has often been limited due to its sparse spatial resolution and highly time-consuming and high cost. However, space-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry has been widely used as a powerful tool to monitor surfaces' displacement with high spatial resolution and high accuracy from mm to cm-scale, regardless of day-or-night and weather conditions. In this paper, advanced interferometric approaches have been applied to get a time-series of land subsidence of Mexico City using four-year-long twenty ALOS PALSAR L-band observations acquired from Feb-11, 2007 to Feb-22, 2011. We utilized persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI) and small baseline subset (SBAS) techniques to suppress atmospheric artifacts and topography errors. The results show that the maximum subsidence rates of the PSI and SBAS method were -29.5 cm/year and -27.0 cm/year, respectively. In addition, we discuss the different subsidence rates where the study area is discriminated into three districts according to distinctive geotechnical characteristics. The significant subsidence rate occurred in the lacustrine sediments with higher compressibility than harder bedrock.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
• /
• v.59 no.3
• /
• pp.261-270
• /
• 2021

Purpose. The aim of this study was (1) to compare the reverse engineering technique with other existing measurement methods and (2) to analyze the effect of implant angulations and impression coping types on implant impression accuracy with reverse engineering technique. Materials and methods. Three different master models were fabricated and the distance between the two implant center points in parallel master model was measured with different three methods; digital caliper measurement (Group DC), optical measuring (Group OM), and reverse engineering technique (Group RE). The 90 experimental models were fabricated with three types of impression copings for the three different implant angulation and the angular and distance error rate were calculated. One-way ANOVA was used for comparison among the evaluation methods (P < .05). The error rates of experimental groups were analyzed by two-way ANOVA (P < .05). Results. While there was significant difference between Group DC and RE (P < .05), Group OM had no significant difference compared with other groups (P > .05). The standard deviations in reverse engineering were much lower than those of digital caliper and optical measurement. Hybrid groups had no significant difference from the pick-up groups in distance error rates (P > .05). Conclusion. The reverse engineering technique demonstrated its potential as an evaluation technique of 3D accuracy of impression techniques.

• Information Systems Review
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.161-177
• /
• 2014

Corporate credit rating assessment consists of complicated processes in which various factors describing a company are taken into consideration. Such assessment is known to be very expensive since domain experts should be employed to assess the ratings. As a result, the data-driven corporate credit rating prediction using statistical and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques has received considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. In particular, statistical methods such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and multinomial logistic regression analysis (MLOGIT), and AI methods including case-based reasoning (CBR), artificial neural network (ANN), and multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) have been applied to corporate credit rating.2) Among them, MSVM has recently become popular because of its robustness and high prediction accuracy. In this study, we propose a novel optimized MSVM model, and appy it to corporate credit rating prediction in order to enhance the accuracy. Our model, named 'GAMSVM (Genetic Algorithm-optimized Multiclass Support Vector Machine),' is designed to simultaneously optimize the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection. Prior studies like Lorena and de Carvalho (2008), and Chatterjee (2013) show that proper kernel parameters may improve the performance of MSVMs. Also, the results from the studies such as Shieh and Yang (2008) and Chatterjee (2013) imply that appropriate feature selection may lead to higher prediction accuracy. Based on these prior studies, we propose to apply GAMSVM to corporate credit rating prediction. As a tool for optimizing the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection, we suggest genetic algorithm (GA). GA is known as an efficient and effective search method that attempts to simulate the biological evolution phenomenon. By applying genetic operations such as selection, crossover, and mutation, it is designed to gradually improve the search results. Especially, mutation operator prevents GA from falling into the local optima, thus we can find the globally optimal or near-optimal solution using it. GA has popularly been applied to search optimal parameters or feature subset selections of AI techniques including MSVM. With these reasons, we also adopt GA as an optimization tool. To empirically validate the usefulness of GAMSVM, we applied it to a real-world case of credit rating in Korea. Our application is in bond rating, which is the most frequently studied area of credit rating for specific debt issues or other financial obligations. The experimental dataset was collected from a large credit rating company in South Korea. It contained 39 financial ratios of 1,295 companies in the manufacturing industry, and their credit ratings. Using various statistical methods including the one-way ANOVA and the stepwise MDA, we selected 14 financial ratios as the candidate independent variables. The dependent variable, i.e. credit rating, was labeled as four classes: 1(A1); 2(A2); 3(A3); 4(B and C). 80 percent of total data for each class was used for training, and remaining 20 percent was used for validation. And, to overcome small sample size, we applied five-fold cross validation to our dataset. In order to examine the competitiveness of the proposed model, we also experimented several comparative models including MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, ANN and MSVM. In case of MSVM, we adopted One-Against-One (OAO) and DAGSVM (Directed Acyclic Graph SVM) approaches because they are known to be the most accurate approaches among various MSVM approaches. GAMSVM was implemented using LIBSVM-an open-source software, and Evolver 5.5-a commercial software enables GA. Other comparative models were experimented using various statistical and AI packages such as SPSS for Windows, Neuroshell, and Microsoft Excel VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). Experimental results showed that the proposed model-GAMSVM-outperformed all the competitive models. In addition, the model was found to use less independent variables, but to show higher accuracy. In our experiments, five variables such as X7 (total debt), X9 (sales per employee), X13 (years after founded), X15 (accumulated earning to total asset), and X39 (the index related to the cash flows from operating activity) were found to be the most important factors in predicting the corporate credit ratings. However, the values of the finally selected kernel parameters were found to be almost same among the data subsets. To examine whether the predictive performance of GAMSVM was significantly greater than those of other models, we used the McNemar test. As a result, we found that GAMSVM was better than MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, and ANN at the 1% significance level, and better than OAO and DAGSVM at the 5% significance level.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.119-138
• /
• 2016

Since the Industrial Revolution, which made the mass production and mass distribution of standardized goods possible, machine-made (manufactured) products have accounted for the majority of the market. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing even more expensive handmade products has become a noticeable trend as consumers have started to acknowledge the value of handmade products, such as the craftsman's commitment, belief in their quality and scarcity, and the sense of self-esteem from having them,. Consumer interest in these handmade products has shown explosive growth and has been coupled with the recent development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies. Etsy.com is the world's largest online handmade platform. It is no different from any other online platform; it provides an online market where buyers and sellers virtually meet to share information and transact business. However, Etsy.com is different in that shops within this platform only deal with handmade products in a variety of categories, ranging from jewelry to toys. Since its establishment in 2005, despite being limited to handmade products, Etsy.com has enjoyed rapid growth in membership, transaction volume, and revenue. Most recently in April 2015, it raised funds through an initial public offering (IPO) of more than 1.8 billion USD, which demonstrates the huge potential of online handmade platforms. After the success of Etsy.com, various types of online handmade platforms such as Handmade at Amazon, ArtFire, DaWanda, and Craft is ART have emerged and are now competing with each other, at the same time, which has increased the size of the market. According to Deloitte's 2015 holiday survey on which types of gifts the respondents plan to buy during the holiday season, about 16% of U.S. consumers chose "homemade or craft items (e.g., Etsy purchase)," which was the same rate as those for the computer game and shoes categories. This indicates that consumer interests in online handmade platforms will continue to rise in the future. However, this high interest in the market for handmade products and their platforms has not yet led to academic research. Most extant studies have only focused on machine-made products and intelligent services for them. This indicates a lack of studies on handmade products and their intelligent services on virtual platforms. Therefore, this study used signaling theory and prior research on the effects of sellers' characteristics on their performance (e.g., total sales and price premiums) in the buyer-seller relationship to identify the key influencing e-Image factors (e.g., reputation, size, information sharing, and length of relationship). Then, their impacts on the performance of shops within the online handmade platform were empirically examined; the dataset was collected from Etsy.com through the application of web harvesting technology. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that the reputation, size, and information sharing have significant effects on the total sales, while the reputation and length of relationship influence price premiums. This study extended the online platform research into online handmade platform research by identifying key influencing e-Image factors on within-platform shop's total sales and price premiums based on signaling theory and then performed a statistical investigation. These findings are expected to be a stepping stone for future studies on intelligent online handmade services as well as handmade products themselves. Furthermore, the findings of the study provide online handmade platform operators with practical guidelines on how to implement intelligent online handmade services. They should also help shop managers build their marketing strategies in a more specific and effective manner by suggesting key influencing e-Image factors. The results of this study should contribute to the vitalization of intelligent online handmade services by providing clues on how to maximize within-platform shops' total sales and price premiums.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.44 no.4
• /
• pp.822-835
• /
• 1997

Background : There have been many in vitro evidences that interleukin-4(IL-4) might be the most important cytokine inducing IgE synthesis from B-cells, and interferon-gamma(IFN-$\gamma$) might be a main cytokine antagonizing IL-4-mediated IgE synthesis. Recently some reports demonstrated that IFN-$\gamma$ might be used as a new therapeutic modality in some allergic diseases with high serum IgE level, such as atopic dermatitis or bronchial asthma. To evaluate the in vivo effect of IFN-$\gamma$ in bronchial asthma we tried a clinical study. Methods : Fifty bronchial asthmatics(serum IgE level over 200 IU/ml) who did not respond to inhaled or systemic corticosteroid treatment, and 17 healthy nonsmoking volunteers were included in this study. The CD 23 expressions of peripheral B-cells, the IL-4 activities of peripheral T-cells, the serum soluble CD23(sCD23) levels, and the superoxide anion(${O_2}^-$) generations by peripheral PMN were compared between bronchial asthmatics and normal subjects. The IL-4 activities of peripheral T-cells were analyzed by T-cell supernatant (T-sup)-induced CD23 expression from tonsil B-cells. In bronchial asthmatics the serum IgE levels and histamine $PC_{20}$ in addition to the above parameters were also compared before and after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment. IFN-$\gamma$ was administered subcutaneously with a weekly dose of 30,000 IU per kilogram of body weight for 4 weeks. Results : The ${O_2}^-$ generations by peripheral PMNs in bronchial asthmatics were higher than normal subjects($8.23{\pm}0.94$ vs $5.00{\pm}0.68\;nmol/1{\times}10^6$ cells, P<0.05), and significantly decreased after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment compared to initial values($3.69{\pm}0.88$ vs $8.61{\pm}1.53\;nmol/1{\times}10^6$ cells, P<0.05). CD23 expression of peripheral B-cells in bronchial asthmatics was higher than normal subjects($47.47{\pm}2.96%$, vs $31.62{\pm}1.92%$, P<0.05), but showed no significant change after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment. The serum sCD23 levels in bronchial asthmatics were slightly higher than normal subjects($191.04{\pm}23.3\;U/ml$ vs $162.85{\pm}4.85\;U/ml$), and 11(64.7%) of 17 patients showed a decreasing pattern in their serum sCD23 levels after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment. However the means of serum sCD23 levels were not different before and after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment. The IL-4 activities of peripheral T-cells in bronchial asthmatics were slightly higher than normal subjects($22.48{\pm}6.81%$ vs $18.90{\pm}2.43%$), and slightly increased after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment($27.90{\pm}2.56%$). Nine(60%) of 15 patients showed a decreasing pattern in their serum IgE levels after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment. And the levels of serum IgE were significantly decreased after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment compared to initial values ($658.67{\pm}120.84\;IU/ml$ vs $1394.32{\pm}314.42\;IU/ml$, P<0.05). Ten(83.3%) of 12 patients showed an improving pattern in bronchial hyperresponsiveness after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment, and the means of histamine $PC_{20}$ were significantly increased after IFN-$\gamma$ treatment compared to initial values ($1.22{\pm}0.29mg/ml$ vs $0.69{\pm}0.17mg/ml$, P<0.05). Conclusion : Our results suggest that IFN-$\gamma$ may be useful as well as safety in the treatment of bronchial asthmatics with high serum IgE level and that in vivo effects of IFN-$\gamma$ may be different from its in vitro effects on the regulations of IgE synthesis or the respiratory burst of PMN.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.705-711
• /
• 2013

This study was carried out to investigate the effects of the complex fertilizers containing polyaspartic acid (PAA) on growth and $CH_4$ emission in rice field and optimum application rate of the fertilizer compared to the standard recommended application rate (control). The PAA-containing complex fertilizers (PCF) were applied at 55, 65 and 75% levels of standard recommended application rate (control). The application rate of PAA in the plot of every PCF treatment was 150g ai/10a. The PCF was applied as a basal dressing without topdressing at tillering stage. The growth parameters of rice and its nitrogen use efficiency treated with PCF at a 65 to 75% level were not different compared with those of control, and the rice yield was also not significantly different between PCF at a 65 to 75% level and control during 2 years(2010~2011) field experiment. And the $NH_4$-N content in soil was not affected by 65% to 75% level of PCF treatment. Considering overall research results such as rice yield and growth parameters PCF is not significantly different with the control and the optimum application rate of the PCF as a basal fertilization was determined to be 65~75% of the standard application rate based on the result in rice cultivation. Moreover, $CH_4$ emission rate was significantly reduced by PCF treatments, showing 216 kg and 229 kg $CH_4/ha$ at 65% and 75% PCF treatment level, respectively, compared to 266 kg $CH_4/ha$ of the control.