• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.152-165
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• 1998

Background : In this paper patient outcomes research is going to be reviewed and described, to be compared with relevant studies, and to consider the application in Korea. Methods : We compiled and reviewed the articles and materials related to patient outcomes research especially by PORT(Patient Outcomes Research Team) and rearranged them for seeking the main point and comparing with relevant studies. Results : Patient outcomes research emphasizes patient outcomes as well as conventional clinical outcomes. It is prospective study observing effectiveness in real situation instead of efficacy in ideal condition. Patient outcomes research comprises of 6 fields ; literature review and meta-analysis, use of claims data, decision modeling, outcomes assessment, cost of care, dissemination of research findings. SAA(small-area variations analysis), appropriateness study and clinical practice guideline are connected with patient outcomes research. Conclusion : In view of the fact that current medical policy in Korea is shifting its focus from accessibility to the improvement in quality and cost containment, and is stressing patient-based research, patient outcomes research is one direction for which the medicine is accountable and assessable. Considering that the number of patient receiving medical treatment in Korea is higher than the West, patient outcomes research has competitive power as against the West.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.87-95
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to provide a decision support to select an appropriate rapid prototyping(RP) machine that suits the application of a part. Selection factors include concept model, form/fit/functional model, pattern model for molding, material property, build time and part cost that greatly affect the performance of RP machines. However, the selection of a RP is not an easy decision because they are uncertain and vague. For this reason, the aim of this research is to propose hybrid multiple attribute decision making approaches to effectively evaluate RP machines. In addition, because subjective considerations are relevant to selection decision, a fuzzy logic approach is adopted. The proposed selection procedure consists of several steps. First, we identify RP machines that the users consider. After constructing the evaluation criteria, we calculate the weights of the criteria by applying the fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) method. Finally, we construct the fuzzy Technique of Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution(TOPSIS) method to achieve the ranking order of all machines providing the decision information for the selection of RP machines.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.73-77
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• 2012

Operation of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) can be improved by monolithic integration of the pixel transistors with light emitting diodes (LEDs) on a single substrate. Conventional LCDs make use of filters to control the backlighting which reduces the overall efficiency. These LCDs also utilize LEDs in series which impose failure and they require high voltage for operation with a power factor correction. The screen of small hand-held devices can operate from moderate brightness. Therefore, III-V nanowires that are grown along with transistors over Silicon substrates can be utilized. Control of nanowire LEDs with nanowire transistors will significantly lower the cost, increase the efficiency, improve the manufacturing yield and simplify the structure of the small displays that are used in portable devices. The steps to grow nanowires on Silicon substrates are described. The vertical n-type and p-type nanowire transistors with surrounding gate structures are characterized. While biased at 0.5 V, nanowire transistors with minimum radius or channel width have an OFF current which is less than 1pA, an ON current more than 1 ${\mu}A$, a total delay less than 10 ps and a transconductance gain of more than 10 ${\mu}A/V$. The low power and fast switching characteristics of the nanowire transistor make them an ideal choice for the realization of future displays of portable devices with long battery lifetime.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.389-405
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• 2013

A facility layout design (FLD) problem can be generally introduced as assignment of facilities (departments) to a site such that a set of criteria are satisfied or some objectives are minimized (maximized). Hence, it can be considered as a multi-criteria problem due to the presence of qualitative criteria such as maintenance or flexibility and quantitative criteria such as the total cost of handling material. The VIKOR method was developed to solve multiple criteria decision making problems with conflicting and non-commensurable (different units) criteria, assuming that compromising is acceptable for conflict resolution, the decision maker wants a solution that is the closest to the ideal, and the alternatives are evaluated according to all established criteria. This paper proposes a hierarchical analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and VIKOR approach to solve the FLD problem. A computer-aided layout-planning tool is adopted to generate the facility layout problems, as well as their quantitative data. The qualitative performance measures are weighted by AHP. VIKOR is then used to solve the FLD problem. Finally, the proposed integrated procedure is applied to three real-time examples.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.49.2-49.2
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• 2010

Polycrystalline CdTe thin films for solar cell continues to be a promising material for the development of cost effective and reliable photovoltaic processes. The two key advantages of this material are its high optical absorption coefficient and its near ideal band gap for photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 1.4-1.5 eV. In this study we made the CdTe thin films for solar cell application which was deposited on the glass substrates using a modified chemical spray method at low temperature. This process does not require the sophisticated and expensive vacuum systems. The prepared CdTe films were characterized with the aid of scanning electron microscope (SEM), UV-visible spectrophotometer, and X-ray diffraction spectrometer (XRD). Following are results of a study on the "Human Resource Development Center for Economic Region Leading Industry" Project, supported by the Ministry of Education, Science & Tehnology(MEST) and the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF).

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2020

This study intends to produce an ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) made with hybrid fibres (i.e., steel and polypropylene). Compressive and tensile strength characteristics of the hybrid fibres UHPFRC are considered. A total of 14 fibre-reinforced composites (FRCs) with different fibre contents or types of fibres were prepared and tested in order to determine a suitable hybrid fibre combination. The compressive and tensile strengths of each concrete at 7 days were determined. The results showed that a hybrid mix of micro-polypropylene and steel fibres exhibited good compromising performances and is the ideal reinforcement mixture in a strong, cost-effective UHPFRC. In addition, maximum compressive strength of 167 MPa was achieved for UHPFRC using 1.5% steel fibres blended with 0.5% macro-polypropylene fibres.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.43 no.5 s.347
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• pp.45-50
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• 2006

As a settlement for the fiber access, the FTTH is an ideal mode for providing various high-bandwidth value added services including high definition IPTV to broadband users, and KT, the largest incumbent of Korea, started FTTH service from 2005. For FTTH deployment, it needs a cost-effective solution including reliability and maintenance costs. This paper analyzes the characteristics and technical issues for the main components of outside plant in general household area.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.115-123
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• 2011

Most of cameras being used in practice induce lens distortion; the amount of distortion depends on the specific applications as well as the camera cost. Up to now, many methods of lens distortion correction have relied on invariant properties of projective geometry to find distortion parameters. A common property is "the straight line in scene is straight line in image". However, if the straight lines are also parallel together, the previous works have missed this restriction in determining lens distortion parameters. In this paper, we propose a method that leads to guarantee of the restrictions simultaneously for the determination. Therefore, corrected image will close to an ideal image taken by the pinhole camera model. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by our experiments on both synthetic images and real images.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.84-92
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• 2015

Multi-hop relay networks have been widely considered as a promising solution to extend the coverage area and to reduce the deployment cost by deploying the relay stations (RSs) in mobile communication systems. Suitable deployment for the RSs is one of the most important features of the demand nodes (DNs) to obtain a high data transmission rate in such systems. Considering a tradeoff among the network throughput, the deployment budget, and the overall coverage of the systems, efficient RS deployment schemes and corresponding algorithms must be developed and designed. A novel cluster-based RS deployment scheme is proposed in this paper to select the appropriate deployment locations for the relay stations from the candidate positions. To make an ideal cluster distribution, the distances between the DNs are calculated when deploying the RSs. We take into account the traffic demands and adopt a uniform cluster concept to reduce the data transmission distances of the DNs. On the basis of the different candidate positions, the proposed scheme makes an adaptive decision for selecting the deployment sites of the RSs. A better network throughput and coverage ratio can be obtained by balancing the network load among the clusters. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the previously known schemes in terms of the network throughput and the coverage ratio. Additionally, a suitable deployment budget can be implemented in multi-hop relay networks.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.8-16
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• 2012

An image obtained from a low light environment results in a low-exposure problem caused by non-ideal camera settings, i.e. aperture size and shutter speed. Of particular note, the multiple color-filter aperture (MCA) system inherently suffers from low-exposure problems and performance degradation in its image classification and registration processes due to its finite size of the apertures. In this context, this paper presents a novel method for the color enhancement of low-exposure images and its application to color shift model-based MCA system for image refocusing. Although various histogram equalization (HE) approaches have been proposed, they tend to distort the color information of the processed image due to the range limits of the histogram. The proposed color enhancement algorithm enhances the global brightness by analyzing the basic cause of the low-exposure phenomenon, and then compensates for the contrast degradation artifacts by using an adaptive histogram specification. We also apply the proposed algorithm to the preprocessing step of the refocusing technique in the MCA system to enhance the color image. The experimental results confirm that the proposed method can enhance the contrast of any low-exposure color image acquired by a conventional camera, and is suitable for commercial low-cost, high-quality imaging devices, such as consumer-grade camcorders, real-time 3D reconstruction systems, digital, and computational cameras.