• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.476-482
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• 2023

Introduction: There is a growing global interest in the issue of precarious employment. We aimed to analyze the characteristics and socio-demographic distribution of precarious employment using a summative score approach. Methods: To operationalize precarious employment, we utilized data from the Korean Working Conditions Survey and focused on three distinct dimensions: employment insecurity, income inadequacy, and a lack of rights and protections. By constructing a summative scale ranging from -16 to 2, with lower scores indicating higher precariousness, we measured employment precariousness among Korean wage workers. To compare employment precariousness according to survey participant characteristics, we employed the Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test. Results: We analyzed a weighted number of 38,432 workers. The overall sample showed a median (Q1, Q3) summative scale score of -3 (-6, -1). The median summative score was lower for women compared to men (men: -2; women: -5; p < 0.001), as well as for young or older workers compared to middle-aged workers (young: -4; middle-aged: -2; older: -5; p < 0.001). Similarly, workers with lower educational levels (middle school or below: -8; high school: -5; college or above: -2; p < 0.001) and non-white collar workers (blue collar: -5; service/sales worker: -6; white collar: -2; p < 0.001) experienced higher levels of employment precariousness. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that certain vulnerable groups, such as women, young or older adults, workers with low educational attainment, and caregiving or low-skilled elementary workers, are disproportionately exposed to high employment precariousness. Active policy interventions are needed to improve the employment quality of vulnerable groups.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.25.1-25.12
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• 2024

Background: Surgical excision is the treatment of choice for feline intracranial meningioma. Objectives: To report clinical findings, complications, and outcomes following surgery for feline intracranial meningioma. Methods: Medical records (01/2000-01/2017) of cats that underwent surgical excision of an intracranial meningioma at our institution were reviewed. Patient data included signalment, clinical signs, surgical technique, complications, histopathologic diagnosis, survival time, and owners' answers to a satisfaction questionnaire. Survival was assessed using the Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test. Results: Twenty-six cats were included in this study. The exact cause of death was known in 17 cases and was not related to meningioma in 9/17 cases. Overall median survival time was 881 days (95% confidence interval 518; 1248). The age of the cat did not influence survival (p = 0.94) or the occurrence of complications (p = 0.051). Complications occurred in 13/24 cats, including dramatic complications in 4/24 cats. Most complications appeared in the first 24 hours post-surgery (12/13). Males had more postoperative complications (p = 0.042), including more seizures (p = 0.016). Cats with cranioplasty had fewer complications (p = 0.021). Clinical recurrence was confirmed in 3 out of 17 cats. Recurrence-free survival time was 826 days. Most owners (12/14) were satisfied with the outcome. Conclusions: Surgical treatment of intracranial meningioma in cats was associated with a long median survival time but also with a high rate of minor and major postoperative complications, including early postoperative seizures. Cranioplasty may reduce complications. Age at the time of surgery had no effect on outcomes.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.145-150
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• 2007

Purpose: To investigate the degree and effect of cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 expression on the survival of patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GM). Materials and Methods: Between 1997 and 2006, thirty consecutive GM patients treated with surgery and postoperative radiotherapy (dose range: $44{\sim}65.1$ Gy, median dose: 61.2 Gy) were included in the study. Three patients were excluded that discontinued radiotherapy before receiving a dose of 40 Gy due to mental deterioration. The expression of the COX-2 protein in surgical specimens was examined by immunohistochemical analysis. Survival analysis and verification were performed with respect to sex, age, performance status, resection extent, radiotherapy dose, and degree of COX-2 expression using the Kaplan-Meier method and the log rank test. Results: The median length of follow-up was 13.3 months (range:$6{\sim}83$ months). Staining for COX-2 was positive in all patient samples. Staining for COX-2 that was positive for over 75% of the tumor cells was found in 24 patients. Staining for COX-2 that was positive in less than 25% of tumor cells was found in 3 patients (10.0%), staining for COX-2 that was positive in 25 to 50% of tumor cells was found in 1 patient (3.3%), staining for COX-2 that was positive in 50 to 75% of tumor cells was found in 2 patients (6.7%) and staining for COX-2 that was positive in 75 to 100% of tumor cells was found in 24 patients (80.0%). The median survival and two-year survival rate were 13.5 months and 17.5%, respectively. The survival rate was influenced significantly by the degree of resection (tumor removal by 50% or more) and radiotherapy dose (59 Gy or greater) (p<0.05). The median survival of patients with staining for COX-2 that was positive in less than 75% of tumor cells and in at least 75% of tumor cells was 15.5 and 13.0 months, respectively (p>0.05), and the two-year survival for these groups was 33.3 and 13.3%, respectively (p>0.05). Conclusion: The absence of a statistical correlation between the degree of COX-2 expression and survival in GM patients, despite the high rate of COX-2 positive tumor cells in the GM patient samples, requires further studies with a larger series to ascertain the prognostic value of the degree of COX-2 expression in GM patients.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.730-737
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• 2012

Purpose: This study was done to identify the time interval to pressure ulcer and to determine the optimal time interval for position change depending on pressure ulcer risk in patients using foam mattress in intensive care units. Methods: The Braden scale score, occurrence of pressure ulcers and position change intervals were assessed with 56 patients admitted to an intensive care unit from April to November, 2011. The time to pressure ulcer occurrence by Braden scale risk group was analyzed with Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and log rank test. Then, the optimal time interval for position change was calculated with ROC curve. Results: The median time to pressure ulcer occurrence was 5 hours at mild or moderate risk, 3.5 hours at high risk and 3 hours at very high risk on the Braden scale. The optimal time interval for position change was 3 hours at mild and moderate risk, 2 hours at high and very high risk of Braden scale. Conclusion: When foam mattresses are used a slight extension of the time interval for position change can be considered for the patients with mild or moderate pressure ulcer risk but not for patients with high or very high pressure ulcer risk by Braden scale.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.9
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• pp.1746-1752
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• 2002

Fatigue fracture in machine components is produced by surface micro-crack from stress concentration area such as notch and material defect. It is difficult to predict the remaining fatigue lift of mechanical components because the surface micro-crack on critical area initiates and grows with statistical distribution. Plane bending fatigue tests were carried out on the plain specimen of Al 2024-T3 and the initiation and growth behavior of surface micro cracks were observed. The statistical distribution of surface length of multiple micro cracks and their maximum length were investigated. The maximum surface crack length distributions were analyzed on the basis of the statistics of extremes in order to examine the prediction of remaining life.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.4133-4136
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• 2012

Aim: To report the results of radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy in the patients with oral cancer. Methods: Over the 2003-2009 periods, a total number of 69 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity that refused surgery or had unresectable tumor were enrolled in this study. A total dose of 60 to 70 Gy (2 Gy per day) was given to the primary tumor and clinically positive nodes. In the patients with locoregionally advanced disease (57 patients with $T_3$, $T_4$ lesions and/ or $N^+$) induction chemotherapy following by concomitant chemoradiation was used. Induction chemotherapy consisted of 3 cycles of Cisplatin and 5-Flourouracil with or without Docetaxel. Weekly cisplatin was used in concomitant protocol. Kaplan-Meier method was used to calculate overall survival. Log-rank test and Cox regression model were used for comparison purposes. Results: Median follow-up was 32 months. The mean age of the patients was 59.2 years. The overall response rate after induction chemotherapy was 68.4%. Actuarial overall survival rates after 2 and 3 years were 38% and 26%, respectively. Clinical stage emerged as the only independent predictor of survival. Conclusion: Outcome of the patients with oral cancer is poor. Presenting with an advanced stage lesion contributed to this result. The role of chemotherapy in advanced cases remains to be defined.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.3121-3123
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• 2015

The main objective of this paper was to assess the influence of educational level on the survival of uterine cervix cancer patients in our population. A total of 224 patients were registered in our registry, of which 178 had information on stage and different educational levels. The overall median survival (MS) was 23 months, with values of 18.5, 20.7 and 41.3 months for the illiterate, literate and qualified groups, respectively. In the illiterate patients, stage I was seen in 2.6% and stage IV in 11.8%, while in other 2 groups stage I was seen in 10% to 17% of patients at the time of diagnosis. The survival probability at around 50 months was around 42%, 30% and 26% (approximately) for qualified, literates and illiterates respectively [Log Rank (Mantel-Cox) showed p=0.023]. Emphasis on imparting education to females can be a part of comprehensive cancer control programme for improving the overall survival in patients with carcinoma of the uterine cervix in our population.

• Archives of design research
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.117-130
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• 1989

Evaluation is to be seen a~ a central component of design activity. It is an attempt to ensure that the proposal which arises is accepted and that the resulting artefact itself suited to its purposes in practice. Recent surveys of Evaluation show that most methods require quantitative and explicit attributes. Always a significant part of the attributes of design proposals is qualitative. Therefore we need some study that convert qualitative attributes into quantitative scale values, because in many cases con\ulcornerclusions can be drawn about the order of the overall value of the design proposals. Following to Thurstone's psychological scaling methods, attributive values are assigned by ruting scale methods, met, hod of rank-order and method of paired comparisons. The problem of psycho\ulcornerlogical scaling is then to determine whether the stimuli can be ordered on a psychological continuum with respect to the degree of the attributes each possesses. The law of comparative judgement assumes that for a given stimulus there is associated a most frequently aroused or modal discriminal process on a psychological continuum. This paper is based upon the premise that the modal discriminul process will also be the same as the mean or median of the distribution.The objective of this paper is to argue for an acceptance of qualitative approaches to the evalua\ulcornertion of Design as a complement to the existing quantitative techniques. The scale values of 10 attri\ulcornerbutes \ulcorner(1) originality, (2) aesthetics, (3) satisfaction, (4) effeciency, (5) function, (6) size, (7) texture, (8) simplicity, (9) symbol, and (10) facility) in case of TV sets are obtained and their interactions are examined.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.3873-3887
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose a novel method to recover images corrupted by impulse noise. The proposed method uses two stages: noise detection and filtering. In the first stage, we use pixel values, rank-ordered logarithmic difference values, and median values to train a neural-network-based impulse noise detector. After training, we apply the network to detect noisy pixels in images. In the next stage, we use group-based weighted couple sparse representation to filter the noisy pixels. During this second stage, conventional methods generally use only clean pixels to recover corrupted pixels, which can yield unsuccessful dictionary learning if the noise density is high and the number of useful clean pixels is inadequate. Therefore, we use reconstructed pixels to balance the deficiency. Experimental results show that the proposed noise detector has better performance than the conventional noise detectors. Also, with the information of noisy pixel location, the proposed impulse-noise removal method performs better than the conventional methods, through the recovered images resulting in better quality.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.494-498
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• 2007

Purpose: This study was done to know the usefulness of fractal analysis when evaluating the radiologic changes after decompression on jaw bone cystic lesions using fractal analysis. Materials and methods: 30cases of cystic lesions were followed up after decompression. Panoramic image was used to observe radiologic changes around the cystic lesion. The part of the panoramic image which showed radiologic change was defined as region of interest(ROI); The fractal dimension of the ROI was calculated using box-counting method. Results: Using sign-rank test, there was a statistically significant difference in fractal dimensions after decompression therapy(P<0.0001). The fractal dimensions statistically increased after decompression(the median of D:0.12). Conclusions: The ROI after decompression showed higher fractal dimensions which offer the objective proof of the bone healing around cystic lesions after decompression treatment.