• CELLMED
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.3.1-3.8
• /
• 2014

Spa represents a treatment widely used in many rheumatic diseases (RD). The mechanisms by which immersion in mineral or thermal water ameliorates RD are not fully understood. The net benefit is probably the result of a combination of factors, among which the mechanical, thermal and chemical effects are most prominent. Buoyancy, immersion, resistance and temperature play important roles. According to the gate theory, pain relief may be due to the pressure and temperature of the water on skin; heat may reduce muscle spasm and increase the pain threshold. Mud-bath therapy increases plasma ${\beta}$-endorphin levels and secretion of corticotrophin, cortisol, growth hormone and prolactin. It has recently been demonstrated that thermal mud-bath therapy induces a reduction in circulating levels of prostaglandin E2, leukotriene B4, interleukin-$1{\beta}$ and tumour necrosis factor-${\alpha}$, important mediators of inflammation and pain. Furthermore, balneotherapy has been found to cause an increase in insulin-like growth factor-1, which stimulates cartilage metabolism, and transforming growth factor-${\beta}$. Beneficial anti-inflammatory and anti-degenerative effects of mineral water were confirmed in chondrocytes cultures, too. Various studies in vitro and in humans have highlighted the positive action of mud-packs and thermal baths, especially sulphurous ones, on the oxidant/antioxidant system. Overall, thermal stress has an immunosuppressive effect. Many other non-specific factors may also contribute to the beneficial effects observed after spa therapy in some RD, including effects on cardiovascular risk factors (e.g. adipokines) and changes in the environment, pleasant surroundings and the absence of work duties.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.44 no.1
• /
• pp.48-55
• /
• 2011

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of Diagnosis-Related Group (DRG)-based payment on the length of stay and the number of outpatient visits after discharge in for patients who had undergone caesarean section. Methods: This study used the health insurance data of the patients in health care facilities that were paid by the Fee-For-Service (FFS) in 2001-2004, but they participated in the DRG payment system in 2005-2007. In order to examine the net effects of DRG payment, the Difference-In-Differences (DID) method was adopted to observe the difference in health care utilization before and after the participation in the DRG payment system. The dependent variables of the regression model were the length of stay and number of outpatient visits after discharge, and the explanatory variables included the characteristics of the patients and the health care facilities. Results: The length of stay in DRG-paid health care facilities was greater than that in the FFS-paid ones. Yet, DRG payment has no statistically significant effect on the number of outpatient visits after discharge. Conclusions: The results of this study that DRG payment was not effective in reducing the length of stay can be related to the nature of voluntary participation in the DRG system. Only those health care facilities that are already efficient in terms of the length of stay or that can benefit from the DRG payment may decide to participate in the program.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.16
• /
• pp.6819-6822
• /
• 2014

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of a new scoring system in Korean patients with hematuria at high risk of bladder cancer. Materials and Methods: A total of 319 consecutive patients presenting with painless hematuria without a history of bladder cancer were analyzed, from the period of August 2012 to February 2014. All patients underwent clinical examination, and 22 patients with incomplete data were excluded from the final validation data set. The scoring system included four clinical parameters: age (${\geq}50$ = 2 vs. <50 =1), gender (male = 2 vs. female = 1), history of smoking (smoker/ex-smoker = 4 vs. non-smoker = 2) and nature of the hematuria (gross = 6 vs. microscopic = 2). Results: The area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (95% confidence interval) of the scoring system was 0.718 (0.655-0.777). The calibration plot demonstrated a slight underestimation of bladder cancer probability, but the model had reasonable calibration. Decision curve analysis revealed that the use of model was associated with net benefit gains over the treat-all strategy. The scoring system performed well across a wide range of threshold probabilities (15%-45%). Conclusions: The scoring system developed is a highly accurate predictive tool for patients with hematuria. Although further improvements are needed, utilization of this system may assist primary care physicians and other healthcare practitioners in determining a patient's risk of bladder cancer.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.2709-2734
• /
• 2020

The growing demand to make wireless data services 5G compatible has necessitated the development of an energy-efficient approach for an effective new wireless environment. In this paper, we first propose a cognitive sensor node (CSN) based game theory for deriving energy via a primary user-transmitted radio frequency signal. Cognitive users' time was segmented into three phases based on a time switching protocol: energy harvest, spectrum sensing and data transmission. The proposed model chooses the optimal energy-harvesting phase as the effected factor. We further propose a distributed energy-harvesting model as a utility function via pricing techniques. The model is a non-cooperative game where players can increase their net benefit in a selfish manner. Here, the price is described as a function pertaining to transmit power, which proves that the proposed energy harvest game includes Nash Equilibrium and is also unique. The best response algorithm is used to achieve the green connection between players. As a result, the results obtained from the proposed model and algorithm show the advantages as well as the effectiveness of the proposed study. Moreover, energy consumption was reduced significantly (12%) compared to the benchmark algorithm because the proposed algorithm succeeded in delivering energy in micro which is much better compared to previous studies. Considering the reduction and improvement in power consumption, we could say the proposed model is suitable for the next wireless environment represented in 5G.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.193-198
• /
• 2004

Eighteen water buffalo calves of Nili-Ravi breed (about 15 months age and of $147{\pm}12$ kg average body weight and mixed sex) were used with six animals on each treatment. All the animals were fed long wheat straw for ad libitum intake as the basal ration. Animals in group-I were supplemented with ad libitum amount of urea molasses block having cotton seed meal (CSMB) while the animals in group-II were supplemented with ad libitum urea molasses block containing sunflower seed meal (SFMB) and group III animals were supplemented with a fixed amount of commercial concentrate feed (CCF). The experiment lasted for a period of 80 days (April to June). Results revealed a significantly decreased total feed intake (wheat straw+supplements) in group-III ($1,666{\pm}52$ g/h/d) as compared to group I ($2,299{\pm}194$ g/h/d) and group-II ($2,193{\pm}230$ g/h/d). Average daily supplement intakes were $891{\pm}87$; $666{\pm}104$ and $593{\pm}0$ grams per head in group I, II and III, respectively. Supplement intakes among groups were different (p<0.05). Average daily body weight gains (g/h) were $214{\pm}25$, $174{\pm}23 $and $183{\pm}24$ for group I, II and III, respectively. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) was found to be $10.74{\pm}1.12$, $12.60{\pm}0.88$ and $9.90{\pm}1.33$ grams for group No. I, II and III, respectively. The economic net benefit of live weight gain of calves were 7.63, 6.11 and 7.33 rupees/h/d for group No. I, II and III, respectively. Thus SFM can replace CSM and urea molasses blocks can replace commercial concentrates as supplement to basal ration of wheat straw.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.47 no.2
• /
• pp.204-211
• /
• 2015

Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has had a significant role in quantitative decision-making by finding design and operational vulnerabilities and evaluating cost-benefit in improving such weak points. In particular, it has been widely used as the core methodology for risk-informed applications (RIAs). Even though the nature of PSA seeks realistic results, there are still "conservative" aspects. One of the sources for the conservatism is the assumptions of safety analysis and the estimation of failure frequency. Surveillance, diagnosis, and prognosis (SDP), utilizing massive databases and information technology, is worth highlighting in terms of its capability for alleviating the conservatism in conventional PSA. This article provides enabling techniques to solidify a method to provide time- and condition-dependent risks by integrating a conventional PSA model with condition monitoring and prognostics techniques. We will discuss how to integrate the results with frequency of initiating events (IEs) and probability of basic events (BEs). Two illustrative examples will be introduced: (1) how the failure probability of a passive system can be evaluated under different plant conditions and (2) how the IE frequency for a steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) can be updated in terms of operating time. We expect that the proposed model can take a role of annunciator to show the variation of core damage frequency (CDF) depending on operational conditions.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
• /
• v.50 no.2
• /
• pp.105-107
• /
• 2005

A field study was conducted to investigate and ascertain the effects of boron and molybdenum with recommended N P K S Zn fertilizers (RFD) for sustained sugarcane yield in the sandy acidic soil in Old Himalayan Piedmont Plain of Bangladesh. Results revealed that the treatment $T_7$ having recommended fertilizers of N 120, P 35, K 100, S 25 and Zn 2kg $ha^{-1}$ + B 2kg $ha^{-1}$ + Mo 2 kg $ha^{-1}$ produced significantly higher number of millable cane (126.96\times10^3\;ha^{-1})$ except in $T_9$ with RFD + B 2 kg $ha^{-1}$ + Mo 4kg $ha^{-1}$, and higher cane yield (92.83 Mg $ha^{-1}$) among all except in $T_3$ with RFD + B2 kg $ha^{-1}$, $T_5$ with RFD + Mo 2kg $ha^{-1}$ and $T_9$ where the effects were statistically identical. The increase in cane yield by $T_7$ was $164.6\%$ over control. The treatment $T_7$ having RFD + B 2kg $ha^{-1}$ + Mo 2kg $ha^{-1}$ further gave the highest additional net economic benefit of Taka 16, 500.00 for added Band Mo at 2kg $ha^{-1}$ among all the treatments in the study.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.51-57
• /
• 2013

Recently, the number of jellyfish has been rapidly grown because of the global warming, the increase of marine structures, pollution, and etc. The increased jellyfish is a threat to the marine ecosystem and induces a huge damage to fishery industries, seaside power plants, and beach industries. To overcome this problem, a manual jellyfish dissecting device and pump system for jellyfish removal have been developed by researchers. However, the systems need too many human operators and their benefit to cost is not so good. Thus, in this paper, the design, implementation, and experiments of autonomous jellyfish removal robot system, named JEROS, have been presented. The JEROS consists of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV), a device for jellyfish removal, an electrical control system, an autonomous navigation system, and a vision-based jellyfish detection system. The USV was designed as a twin hull-type ship, and a jellyfish removal device consists of a net for gathering jellyfish and a blades-equipped propeller for dissecting jellyfish. The autonomous navigation system starts by generating an efficient path for jellyfish removal when the location of jellyfish is received from a remote server or recognized by a vision system. The location of JEROS is estimated by IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) and GPS, and jellyfish is eliminated while tracking the path. The performance of the vision-based jellyfish recognition, navigation, and jellyfish removal was demonstrated through field tests in the Masan and Jindong harbors in the southern coast of Korea.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.16 no.7
• /
• pp.479-491
• /
• 2018

This study aims to figure out factors influencing health and moderating effect of social support resource between those factors and health of low income women in diverse spheres. The data of low income women were 239 cases and were utilized SPSS ver. 21 program. The main results of this study are as follows: firstly, health of low income women is identified medium level. Secondly, education level, self-efficacy and social support resource are related to the self-rated health of low income women. Especially, social support resource functions as moderators on between education and self-rated level of the health of low income women. Consequently, the findings suggest the need to expand the social intervention range to promote health of low income women from cost benefit to psychological support such as capacity building for self-management and establishment of safety-net to extend social support. And subsequently, the time attribute of the factors related to low-income women's health and the diverse characteristics of the subjects should be considered.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.52 no.10
• /
• pp.2173-2182
• /
• 2020

Control valves are widely used to regulate fluid flux in nuclear power plants, and there are more than 1500 control valves in the primary circuit of one nuclear power plant. With their help, the flux can be regulated to a specific level of water or steam to guarantee the energy efficiency and safety of the nuclear power plant. The flux characteristics of the control valve mainly depend on the valve core shape. In order to analyze the effects of valve core shapes on flux characteristics of control valves, this paper focuses on the valve core shapes. To begin with, numerical models of different valve core shapes are established, and results are compared with the ideal flux characteristics curve for the purpose of validation. Meanwhile, the flow fields corresponding to different valve core shapes are investigated. Moreover, relationships between the valve core opening and the outlet flux under different valve core shapes are carried out. The flux characteristics curve and equation are proposed to predict the outlet flux under different valve core openings. This work can benefit the further research of the flux control and the optimization of the valve core for control valves in nuclear power plants.