• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.509-513
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• 2007

Parametric and nonparametric coupled with bootstrap simulation technique were used to reevaluate previously defined reference intervals of serum chemistry parameters. A population-based study was performed in 100 clinically healthy dogs that were retrieved from the medical records of Kangwon National University Animal Hospital during 2005-2006. Data were from 52 males and 48 females(1 to 8 years old, 2.2-5.8 kg of body weight). Chemistry parameters examined were blood urea nitrogen(BUN)(mg/dl), cholesterol(mg/dl), calcium(mg/dl), aspartate aminotransferase(AST)(U/L), alanine aminotransferase(ALT)(U/L), alkaline phosphatase(ALP)(U/L), and total protein(g/dl), and were measured by Ektachem DT 60 analyzer(Johnson & Johnson). All but calcium were highly skewed distributions. Outliers were commonly identified particularly in enzyme parameters, ranging 5-9% of the samples and the remaining were only 1-2%. Regardless of distribution type of each analyte, nonparametric methods showed better estimates for use in clinical chemistry compare to parametric methods. The mean and reference intervals estimated by nonparametric bootstrap methods of BUN, cholesterol, calcium, AST, ALT, ALP, and total protein were 14.7(7.0-24.2), 227.3(120.7-480.8), 10.9(8.1-12.5), 25.4(11.8-66.6), 25.5(11.7-68.9), 87.7(31.1-240.8), and 6.8(5.6-8.2), respectively. This study indicates that bootstrap methods could be a useful statistical method to establish population-based reference intervals of serum chemistry parameters, as it is often the case that many laboratory values do not confirm to a normal distribution. In addition, the results emphasize on the confidence intervals of the analytical parameters showing distribution-related variations.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.532-537
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• 2009

Previous studies reported that the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor is related to alcohol dependence in terms of developing withdrawal or tolerance, however, it is controversial whether NMDA receptor antagonists are effective in preventing relapse in alcohol-dependent patients or not. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of memantine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, on alcohol intake in C57BL/6 mice, which prefer drinking hereditarily. Using limited access procedures in C57BL/6 mice in the state of alcohol dependence, vehicle, naltrexone 1.0 mg/kg or, memantine 5, 25, or 50 mg/kg i.p. was administered respectively for twelve days. Medication effects on 2-hours alcohol, 22-hour water, and 24-hour food intake and body weight were studied. Using repeated measure ANOVA, the naltrexone 1 mg/kg, memantine 5, 25, or 50 mg/kg, and vehicle groups showed significant medication by day interaction (naltrexone, df=4, F=11.827, p<0.01, memantine 5 mg/kg, df=4, F=7.999, p<0.01; memantine 25 mg/kg, df=4, F=6.199, p<0.05; memantine 50 mg/kg, df=4, F=10.522, p<0.01) in 2-hour alcohol intake. In 3 memantine groups, there was no significant medication by day interaction with the vehicle group in 22-hour water intake, 24-hour food intake, or body weight. The naltrexone and vehicle groups showed significant medication by day interaction in body weight, but not in 22-hour water or 24-hour food intake. From these results, it is suggested that memantine treatment can affect alcohol intake in mice. Therefore, it is possible that a pure NMDA receptor antagonist is effective in preventing relapse in alcohol-dependent patients.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.67-75
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• 2012

Purpose : We studied enhanced method to view the vessels in the brain using Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA). Noticing that Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP) image is often used to evaluate the arteries of the neck and brain, we propose a new method for view brain vessels to stereo image in 3D space with more superior and more correct compared with conventional method. Materials and Methods: We use 3T Siemens Tim Trio MRI scanner with 4 channel head coil and get a 3D MRA brain data by fixing volunteers head and radiating Phase Contrast pulse sequence. MRA brain data is 3D rotated according to the view angle of each eyes. Optimal view angle (projection angle) is determined by the distance between eye and center of the data. Newly acquired MRA data are projected along with the projection line and display only the highest values. Each left and right view MIP image is integrated through anaglyph imaging method and optimal stereoscopic MIP image is acquired. Results: Result image shows that proposed method let enable to view MIP image at any direction of MRA data that is impossible to the conventional method. Moreover, considering disparity and distance from viewer to center of MRA data at spherical coordinates, we can get more realistic stereo image. In conclusion, we can get optimal stereoscopic images according to the position that viewers want to see and distance between viewer and MRA data. Conclusion: Proposed method overcome problems of conventional method that shows only specific projected image (z-axis projection) and give optimal depth information by converting mono MIP image to stereoscopic image considering viewers position. And can display any view of MRA data at spherical coordinates. If the optimization algorithm and parallel processing is applied, it may give useful medical information for diagnosis and treatment planning in real-time.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.83-105
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• 2016

Measuring an individual's subjective wellbeing in an accurate, unobtrusive, and cost-effective manner is a core success factor of the wellbeing support system, which is a type of medical IT service. However, measurements with a self-report questionnaire and wearable sensors are cost-intensive and obtrusive when the wellbeing support system should be running in real-time, despite being very accurate. Recently, reasoning the state of subjective wellbeing with conventional sentiment analysis and unstructured data has been proposed as an alternative to resolve the drawbacks of the self-report questionnaire and wearable sensors. However, this approach does not consider contextual polarity, which results in lower measurement accuracy. Moreover, there is no sentimental word net or ontology for the subjective wellbeing area. Hence, this paper proposes a method to extract keywords and their contextual polarity representing the subjective wellbeing state from the unstructured text in online websites in order to improve the reasoning accuracy of the sentiment analysis. The proposed method is as follows. First, a set of general sentimental words is proposed. SentiWordNet was adopted; this is the most widely used dictionary and contains about 100,000 words such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs with polarities from -1.0 (extremely negative) to 1.0 (extremely positive). Second, corpora on subjective wellbeing (SWB corpora) were obtained by crawling online text. A survey was conducted to prepare a learning dataset that includes an individual's opinion and the level of self-report wellness, such as stress and depression. The participants were asked to respond with their feelings about online news on two topics. Next, three data sources were extracted from the SWB corpora: demographic information, psychographic information, and the structural characteristics of the text (e.g., the number of words used in the text, simple statistics on the special characters used). These were considered to adjust the level of a specific SWB. Finally, a set of reasoning rules was generated for each wellbeing factor to estimate the SWB of an individual based on the text written by the individual. The experimental results suggested that using contextual polarity for each SWB factor (e.g., stress, depression) significantly improved the estimation accuracy compared to conventional sentiment analysis methods incorporating SentiWordNet. Even though literature is available on Korean sentiment analysis, such studies only used only a limited set of sentimental words. Due to the small number of words, many sentences are overlooked and ignored when estimating the level of sentiment. However, the proposed method can identify multiple sentiment-neutral words as sentiment words in the context of a specific SWB factor. The results also suggest that a specific type of senti-word dictionary containing contextual polarity needs to be constructed along with a dictionary based on common sense such as SenticNet. These efforts will enrich and enlarge the application area of sentic computing. The study is helpful to practitioners and managers of wellness services in that a couple of characteristics of unstructured text have been identified for improving SWB. Consistent with the literature, the results showed that the gender and age affect the SWB state when the individual is exposed to an identical queue from the online text. In addition, the length of the textual response and usage pattern of special characters were found to indicate the individual's SWB. These imply that better SWB measurement should involve collecting the textual structure and the individual's demographic conditions. In the future, the proposed method should be improved by automated identification of the contextual polarity in order to enlarge the vocabulary in a cost-effective manner.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.383-394
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• 1999

Objectives: This study was conducted to identify the factors influencing the mortality of Koreans over the age of 40 by a nested case-control study. Methods: The cohort consisted of the beneficiaries of Korea Medical Insurance Corporation for Government Employees & Private School Teachers and Staff(KMIC) who received health examinations of KMIC in 1992 and 1993 retrospectively. At that time, they were more than 40 years old. The cases were 19,258 cohort members who had died until December 31, 1997. The controls were 19,258 cohort members who were alive until December 31, 1997. Controls were matched with age and sex distribution of the cases. The data used in this study were the funeral expenses requesting files, and the files of health examinations and health questionnaires gathered in 1992 and 1993. To assess the putative risk factors of death, student t-test, chi-square test, multiple logistic regression analysis were used. Results : In multiple logistic regression analysis, independent risk factors of death were as follows; systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, blood glucose, AST, urine glucose, urine protein, alcohol drinking(frequency), cigarette smoking and perceived health status, intake of restoratives and blood transfusion showed positive associations with death; coffee consumption showed negative associations with death; and body mass index and serum total cholesterol showed J-shaped association with death. Conclusions: Regarding the direction of association, the result of analysis on the data restricted to '96-'97 was same as that of '93-'97. But in some variables such as obesity, serum cholesterol, the odds ratios of death in the data of '96-'97 were higer than those of '93-'94, which suggested that the data of '93-'94 was bearing effect-cause relationship. We concluded that it suggested further researches using long-term follow-up data to be needed in this area.

• The Korean Journal of Pharmacology
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• v.31 no.1 s.57
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• pp.39-51
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• 1995

The roles of ${\beta}-adrenoceptor$ were well known in hyperthyroidal heart, but not with ${\alpha}-adrenoceptor$. So we studied the effects of phenylephrine on membrane potential, intracellular sodium activity ($a^{i}_{Na}$), twitch force, and intracellular pH ($pH_i$) by continuous intracellular recordings with ion-selective and conventional microelectrodes in the papillary muscles of hyperthyroid guinea pig heart. ${\alpha}_1-adrenoceptor$ stimulation by phenylephrine (10^{-5}\;or\;3{\times}10^{-5}M$) produced the following changes: variable changes in action potential duration, a hyperpolarization ($1.5{\pm}0.1mM$) of the diastolic membrane potential, an increase in $a^{i}_{Na}\;(0.4{\pm}0.15mM)$, a stronger positive inotropic effect ($220{\pm}15%$), an increase in $pH_i\;(0.06{\pm}0.002\;unit)$. These changes were flocked by prazosin and atenolol. This indicated that the changes in membrane potential, $a^{i}_{Na}$ twitch force, and $pH_i$ are mediated by a stimulation of the ${\alpha}_1-adrenoceptor$. Ethylisopropylamiloride ($10^{-5}$) also blocked the increase in $a^{i}_{Na}$ and twitch force. On the other hand, strophanthidin, tetrodotoxin, $Cs^+$ or verapamil did not block the increase in $a^{i}_{Na}$ and twitch force. Thus, it was suggested that ${\alpha}_1-adrenoceptor$ stimulation increased $a^{i}_{Na}\;and\;pH_i$ by stimulation of $Na^{+}-H^{+}$ exchange, thereby allowing intracellular alkalinization and $a^{i}_{Na}$ increase. These results were very different from euthyroidal heart which showed ${\alpha}_1-adrenoceptor$-induced decrease in $a^{i}_{Na}$ and initial negative inotropic effect. From the above results, it was concluded that ${\alpha}_1-adrenoceptor$ had a important role in hyperthy-roidal heart.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.467-481
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• 1998

The purpose of this survey, in which 2754 students from 35 middle schools from Taegu city participated, was to identify the degree and the relationship of sexual knowledge, sexual attitude and need for sex education. This information will provide useful data, and promote a more systematic, desirable and practical sex education. The data was collected from September 1 to November 8, 1997. Data was analyzed using the statistical computer package, SPSS to manipulate the data along with percentage, mean, $X^2$-test. t-test, F-test and Pearson correlation coefficient. The results from this study were summarized as follows: 1. The mean score of sex related knowledge showed significant differences between boys and girls in general knowledge(boys: 10.85 girls: 11.71, p=0.000), in the area of physical development(boys : 5.29 girls: 5.72, p=0.000), pregnancy & physiology (boys: 3.23 girls: 3.57, p=0.000) and venereal disease (boys: 2.33 girls: 2.42, p=0.000). 2. The mean score of sex related attitudes showed a significant differences between boys and girls on the whole(boys : 57.68 girls: 58.92, p=0.000), in the area of psychological differences of the other sex (boy: 26.13, girls: 28.08, p=0.000), and sexual delinquency and its prevention(boy: 14.28, girls: 13.68, p=0.000). However, in the area of other sex friendships (boy: 17.28, girls: 17.16, p=0.274). There were no significant differences between boys and girls. 3. Those who had a higher sex related knowledge score showed more positive attitudes towards sex, but was of no statistical significance(r= 0.312, p=0.000). 4. The majority of subjects wanted to learn about friendship with the other sex(40.1%), about physical and psychological differences in adolescence(24.0%), about prevention of sexual violence(15.0%), about pregnancy and delivery (7.5%), about venereal disease and medical cures(7.3%), about contraception methods (4.3%), as well as other aspects of sexual knowledge (1.8%), 5. The mean score of sex related knowledge generally was higher when one paid a lot of attention to health (F= 3. 148, p=0.014), when one's father was alive(t=3.930, p=0.000), and when one's mother was alive(t=2.807, p=0.005), Hobby activities also showed a significant difference(F=9.092, p=0.000). The mean score of sex related knowledge generally according higher when one had sex education(F=9.470, p=0.000), when one obtained sexual knowledges from a teacher (F = 5. 742, p=0.000), and when one had middle grade problems with sex(F=13.58 4, p=0.000). 6. The mean score of sex related attitudes generally showed significant differences when re ligion(F=2.691, p=0.03), hobbies (F= 3.499, p= 0.002) were considered. Those who had a father also had higher scores(t=2.538, p= 0.011). The mean score of sex related attitudes generally with respect to a subject's sex was higher when one had sex education(t=5.338, p= 0.000), when one had high grade problems with sex(F=6.023, p=0.002), and when one had the experience of friendship with the other sex(t= 8.106, p=0.000), The following suggestions are based on the above results, 1. Systematic sex education must be performed in middle schools in order to establish responsible attitudes toward sex, 2. Sexual knowledge, attitude, and general sex education classes must be performed seperately for early, middle, and late adolescents, In other words sex education programs are needed for each adolescent development stage.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.331-339
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• 2015

The first priority of sedation for incorporative children in pediatric dentistry is a safety. Therefore, evidence-based practices in health care are needed for preventing medical accidents. In accordance with the rise of the evidence based medicine, the interest in Evidence-Based Dentistry is increasing in the field of dentistry. However, systematic research about Evidence-Based sedation in Korea has rarely been done. As such, the purpose of this systematic review is to critically analyze the available scientific literature regarding dental sedation and to seek the next developmental strategies about evidence based pediatric dental sedation. A broad search of the 5 databases of the systematic reviews manual of the National Evidence-based Healthcare Collaborating Agency in Korea were referenced: 1) Core search database- KMbase, KISS; 2) Academic information and portal; 3) the National Assembly Library; 4) DBpia, and 5) RISS. Of a total 470 themes limited to the search term of "dental sedation", in accordance with the PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews of health sciences interventions, a literature selection process, which includes the removal of overlapping down the flow chart, was performed. Of the remaining 31 articles, two authors read through articles independently and added or removed articles using the exclusion criteria. Finally, twenty published papers of acceptable quality were identified and reviewed. This systemic review of Korean pediatric dental sedation practices for the last twenty-five years was based on the objective criteria defined in the GRADE process and identified consistent evidence. The results were evidence of moderate quality. Therefore, more systemically well-designed clinical studies are needed about the safe use of a sedative medicines (drugs).

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.177-187
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• 2017

Purpose: From August 2017, hospice-palliative care (HPC) will be provided to patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and liver cirrhosis in Korea. To contribute to building a non-cancer (NC) hospice-palliative care model, NC specialists were interviewed regarding the goals, details, and provision methods of the model. Methods: Four physicians specializing in HPC of cancer patients formulated a semi-structured interview with questions extracted from literature review of 85 articles on NC HPC. Eleven NC disease specialists were interviewed, and their answers were analyzed according to the qualitative content analysis process. Results: The interviewees said as follows: It is difficult to define end-stage NC patients. HPC for cancer patients and that for NC patients share similar goals and content. However, emphasis should be placed on alleviating other physical symptoms and emotional care rather than pain control. Timing of the care provision should be when patients are diagnosed as "end stage". Special issues should be considered for each NC disease (e.g., use of anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS patients, oxygen supply for COPD patients suffering from dyspnea, liver transplantation for patients with liver cirrhosis) and education should be provided to healthcare professionals. NC patients tend to negatively perceive HPC, and the government's financial assistance is insufficient. Conclusion: It is necessary to define end-stage NC patients through in-depth discussion to minimize issues that will likely accompany the expansion of care recipients. This requires cooperation between medical staff caring for NC patients and HPC givers for cancer patients.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.263-271
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• 2006

$\underline{Purpose}$: To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of fentanyl-TTS in the management of radiotherapy induced acute pain and cancer pain treated with radiotherapy. $\underline{Materials\;and\;Methods}$: Our study was open labelled prospective phase IV multi-center study. the study population included patients with more 4 numeric rating scale(NRS) score pain although managed with other analgesics or more than 6 NRS score pain without analgesics. Patients divided into two groups; patients with radiotherapy induced pain (Group A) and patients with cancer pain treated with radiotherapy (Group B). All patients received 25 ug/hr of fentanyl transdermal patch. Primary end point was pain relief; second end points were change in patient quality of life, a degree of satisfaction for patients and clinician, side effects. $\underline{Results}$: Between March 2005 and June 2005, 312 patients from 26 participating institutes were registered, but 249 patients completed this study. Total number of patients in each group was 185 in Group A, 64 in Group B. Mean age was 60 years and male to female ratio was 76:24. Severe pain NRS score at 2 weeks after the application of fentanyl was decreased from 7.03 to 4.01, p=0.003. There was a significant improvement in insomnia, social functioning, and quality of life. A degree of satisfaction for patients and clinician was very high. The most common reasons of patients' satisfactions was good pain control. Ninety six patients reported side effect. Nausea was the most common side effect. There was no serious side effect. $\underline{Conclusion}$: Fentanyl-TTS was effective in both relieving pain with good tolerability and improving the quality of life for patients with radiotherapy induced acute pain and cancer pain treated with radiotherapy. The satisfaction of the patients and doctors was good. There was no major side effect.