• International Journal of Human Ecology
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.39-55
• /
• 2001

Concerns about paid-facilities for the elderly with dementia from middle and upper class families have been discussed lately in Korea. Small-scale, home-like group homes for the elderly with dementia were developed in Sweden in the 1980, but they have not been effectively introduced in Korea where they remain a comparatively new concept. The group home, however, would provide a good alternative to Koreans who feel guilty when they have to leave their frail parents in large-scale facilities or hospitals instead of caring for them at home. The aim of this paper is, first, to define the care of the demented elderly who come from upper and middle class families in Korea and, secondly, to discuss the need for group homes to help care for them. A survey was done by questionnaire and was answered by 577 respondents who belonged to middle and upper class families living in Korea in December 2000. Methods of analysis were frequency, mean, and Chi-square. The results of this study were as follows: 1) the traditional notion that the eldest son should be burdened with the primary responsibility for a demented parent has weakened remarkably; 2) a small-scale long-term care facility was considered the most desirable living environment for the demented elderly; 3) the facilities families needed for professional hospitals for victims of dementia, senior citizen centers, large and small-scale long-term care facilities, day-care centers, and short-stay and service housing. The study also revealed that there was low awareness of the group home. The most preferred type of structure for group homes was a single-family detached house, and the most preferred management system was small-scale that could create home-like atmosphere. Additionally the respondents wanted group homes to consist of 6-8 residents with 2-4 persons per room. The results of this study strongly suggest that policy makers should encourage the development of smallscale group homes as an alternative form of housing for the elderly with dementia.

• Information Systems Review
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.105-123
• /
• 2006

Traditional commerce has transformed into electronic commerce, then, mobile commerce again plays a critical role in diversifying different types of business. Although the fast changing of mobile commerce as an emerging channel of communication in business, not many studies address why consumers stay on mobile commerce and how they are influenced and influence other consumers. In this study, we investigate the impact of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on customers' satisfaction and its results. We adopt the Technology Acceptance Model(TAM), value-satisfaction theories, and other motivation studies in developing theoretical framework. We then synthesize these theoretical approaches to conceptualize mobile customers' behavior. Specifically, we postulate cognitive beliefs that influence customers' satisfaction with mobile commerce, and, in turn, significantly contribute to the spread of positive word-of-mouth. The current research model and its results could provide a rigorous basis for understanding customers' behavior in wireless contexts.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.23 no.4 s.32
• /
• pp.451-464
• /
• 1990

The variation in resource utilization for hospitalized patients who had a group of similar diseases -- a Korean Diagnosis Related Group (KDRG) -- among the same type of hospitals was studied to assess the utillization variation due to the practice pattern of hospitals. Information about inpatients who were beneficiaries of the medical insurance for teachers and government officials discharged from 20 large university teaching hospitals in Seoul during 1986 and information about the hospitals were analyzed to achieve the study objective. A total of 20,223 non-outlier patients in 100 most frequent KDRGs were included in the analysis. Case charges after the review and length of stay (LOS) were used as measures of resource utilization during a hospitalization. A substantial variation among hospitals was found in most KDRGs : o the ratio of the maximum and the minimum among the mean case charges of hospitals was greater than 2 in 83 KDRGs ; o the difference between the maximum and the minimum among the mean case charges of hospitals was greater than 100,000 Won in 94 KDRGs : o the ratio of the maximum and the minimum among the mom LOS of hospitals was greater than 2 in 82 KDRGs ; o the difference between the maximum and the minimum among the mean LOS of hospitals was greater than 3 days in 94 KDRGs. The practice pattern of hospitals explained more than 20% of charge variation in 49 KDRGs and more than 20% of LOS variation in 43 KDRGs. The study results indicated need for a new health policy initiative for cost containment and quality assurance.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2006.04a
• /
• pp.283-290
• /
• 2006

Cable-stayed bridge is a bridge that consists of one or more pylons, with cables supporting the deck. Cable-stayed bridges have come into wide use recently because of their economy, stability, and excellent appearance. It is possible to achieve a uniform moment distribution in the stiffening girders mainly by prestressing the cables, which leads to a more economical design in material and weight than other types of bridges. However, to achieve a more uniform moment distribution is vague objective, so it cannot be easily defined as the optimization problem. In other words, the minimization of cost or weight as the objective is not directly related to the optimization of cable prestressing. Therefore, it has been considered as one of the most important, difficult and also interesting topics among many researchers and bridge engineers to determine the optimal tensioning strategy how to apply prestressing forces of the cables of cable-stayed bridge. A number of approaches (Wang et al. 1993, $Negr\~{a}o\;and\;Sim\~{o}es$ 1997, Agrawal 1997, Janjic et al. 2003) to determine the optimal cable tensions have been proposed in the literature. Among these approaches the unit load method (Janjic et al. 2003) is considered in this paper because it can take into account the actual construction process while other approaches are based on the configuration of the final structure only. In this paper, '2-step approach' based on the unit load method is proposed to find the optimal tensioning strategy especially for the atypical asymmetric bridge under construction, which has continuous deck supported by one pylon and stay cables. Some numerical results will be given to show the validity of the new approach suggested in this paper.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.89-95
• /
• 1993

30 patients with spontaneous pneumothorax underwent videothoracoscopic treatment between March and July 1992. The patients ranged in age from 16 years to 62 years (mean age, 30.4 years) and the incidence according to age group was highest as 50 % in the adolescence between 21 and 30 years old. The indications of the therapeutic videothoracoscopy for spontaneous pneumothorax were recurrence (30.8％), persistent air leak (30.8％), visible blebs on the chest X-ray (20.4％), tension pneumothorax (15.4％), and bilaterality (2.6％). Intraoperative scopic findings were as follows; blebs (87.1％), pleural adhesion (45.2％), and pleural effusion (22.6％). The operation was performed under general anesthesia with one lung intubation guided by flexible fiberoptic bronchoscopy. Procedures included bleb and/or wedge resection, tetracycline pleurodesis with mechanical abrasion, and parietal pleurectomy. Successful treatment was obtained in 66.7％ (20/30) and the mean postoperative hospital stay of the successful cases was 5 days. Videothoracoscopy also provided the benefits of lesser postoperative pain, rapid recovery, short hospitalization, and smaller scar of wound by reduced trauma on access. The total 13 postoperative complications were occured in 10 patients, which showed somewhat higher rate than that of other reports because of lack of experiences in the earlier period, however, it had decreased progressively as experiences were accumulated and instruments were improved in the later period. The operative mortality was absent. Conclusively, videothoracoscopy is a new interesting modality of surgical treatment of spontaneous pneumothorax and also can be extensively applicable in the diagnosis and treatment of other thoracic surgery.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.53-58
• /
• 2016

With the growing use of big data and data mining, it serves to understand how such techniques can be used to understand various relationships in the healthcare field. This study uses hierarchical methods of data analysis to explore similarities in hospitalization across several New York state counties. The study utilized methods of measuring crowding distance of data for age-specific hospitalization period. Crowding distance is defined as the longest distance, or least similarity, between urban cities. It is expected that the city of Clinton have the greatest distance, while Albany the other cities are closer because they are connected by the shortest distance to each step. Similarities were stronger across hospital stays categorized by age. Hierarchical clustering can be applied to predict the similarity of data across the 10 cities of hospitalization with the measurement of crowding distance. In order to enhance the performance of hierarchical clustering, comparison can be made across congestion distance when crowding distance is applied first through the application of converting text to an attribute vector. Measurements of similarity between two objects are dependent on the measurement method used in clustering but is distinguished from the similarity of the distance; where the smaller the distance value the more similar two things are to one other. By applying this specific technique, it is found that the distance between crowding is reduced consistently in relationship to similarity between the data increases to enhance the performance of the experiments through the application of special techniques. Furthermore, through the similarity by city hospitalization period, when the construction of hospital wards in cities, by referring to results of experiments, or predict possible will land to the extent of the size of the hospital facilities hospital stay is expected to be useful in efficiently managing the patient in a similar area.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.8 no.5
• /
• pp.237-245
• /
• 2008

Characteristics of Japanese public library recently has been changed to mutual networking between libraries, complex use of data, and long stay of users. Such change requires new service and contents. Also, in Korea, it is circumstance that interest of library's contents rise politically. And under government leading by BTL project, various libraries are increasing all over the country fast such as public library, extension of existing school library and the small library, etc. In this research, space composition of library, automatic check-out & bookshelf system, and mutual networking between libraries was analyzed by selected 3 libraries (central library of Chiba city, Tomisato and Ichigawa city library) of Chiba area and find applicable contents to our library system.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.407-418
• /
• 2012

Many displaced North Koreans (NK) are living in South Korea (SK); however nutrition research with the displaced NK is limited. This study examined food and nutrient consumption status of displaced NK children (6-18 year-old) currently living in SK. A total of 154 children were recruited, and a pre-tested dietary behavior questionnaire, food frequency questionnaire, 24-hr recall method were used. Sex- and age-matched SK children (n = 462) randomly selected from 2009-2010 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were used as the comparison group. This study found that more NK children skipped breakfast (37%) and dinner (11%), and ate breakfast (38.8%) and dinner (18.2%) without family members than SK children. Many NK children reported that they rarely ate bread, rice cake, hamburger, pizza, fried food, candy. NK children consumed significantly less energy and nutrients (except calcium) and obtained more energy from fat and protein than SK children. Overall index of nutrient quality in NK children, however, was generally good. Length of stay in SK and breakfast skipping rates were significantly associated with lower diet quality. Therefore, nutrition education with displaced NK children should target those who recently came to SK. How to incorporate "new" foods, generally high in energy, sugar, or fat, in healthy ways and importance of breakfast should be emphasized. The growth patterns of the displaced NK children who were born and raised in food-deprived environments and will grow in food-affluent environments of SK should be monitored for health promotion of the NK children and for nutrition policy of the future united Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
• /
• 2006.05a
• /
• pp.189-194
• /
• 2006

The internal construction industry is not situation of cost reduction based on low wages anymore by the increase in wages as insufficient supply of stilled workers. Recently remodeling constructions that only need to change facilities as to stay the existing structures are on the increase. Now the method of piping facility used to remodeling construction needs stilled workers, large work space and a variety of tools. These complex construction process have a difficulty of high-quality and economical construction. In addition it have the hish incidence of warranty and a problem of cost increase as a commitment of manpower by warranty repair. In order to solve these problems it is necessary for appropriate new technology to the internal construction environment. Piping fittings by Insert & Coupling Joint is a method that unskilled workers can be easily constructed though one touch set up and it is convenient to maintain for repair work of piping facility. This technology show the effect of 3 percentages labor cost reduction as compared with piping fittings by press joint on apartment 500 households. Therefore this technology is supposed that attain a cost reduction though the technical and economical construction and a client satisfaction though the high-quality construction on the present construction market.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
• /
• v.41 no.4
• /
• pp.1-19
• /
• 2003

In Scandinavian countries, where the society experienced change of typical nuclear family structure and higher vocational activity rates of married women earlier than East Asian countries, cohousing scheme has been evolved as an alternative housing to reduce housework for working women, and to reduce loneliness of elderly people who stay in their own homes. They can promote active mutual relationship among residents in the community. Korean family structure has been stemmed to more like extended family, but the tendency to live independently from their married children is getting more and more common in new cohort of senior citizens who are active, healthy, economically stable and higher educated. Korea has been industrialized rather rapidly since 1970's and faces to many societal phenomena about quality of life for senior citizens. Introduction of alternative housing solution for these senior citizens is necessary in Korea. In this paper, Danish senior cohousing scheme, particularly, self-work model project is described about its design feature in accordance to site planning, common facility, and dwelling unit. Aiming to mutual support and more frequent social contacts among residents, self-work model cohousing scheme has different design concept from the service mode scheme. Information about design feature of senior cohousing was collected from the published data with drawings and from field survey to 10 exiting projects in Denmark. Of those, 5 projects were described as a case study. It, hopefully, could provide practical information for architectural design when establishment of senior cohousing schemes start in Korea in the near future.