• Title/Summary/Keyword: Offset Program

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Increased Prevalence of Chronic Disease in Back Pain Patients Living in Car-dependent Neighbourhoods in Canada: A Cross-sectional Analysis

  • Zeglinski-Spinney, Amy;Wai, Denise C.;Phan, Philippe;Tsai, Eve C.;Stratton, Alexandra;Kingwell, Stephen P.;Roffey, Darren M.;Wai, Eugene K.
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.51 no.5
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    • pp.227-233
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    • 2018
  • Objectives: Chronic diseases, including back pain, result in significant patient morbidity and societal burden. Overall improvement in physical fitness is recommended for prevention and treatment. Walking is a convenient modality for achieving initial gains. Our objective was to determine whether neighbourhood walkability, acting as a surrogate measure of physical fitness, was associated with the presence of chronic disease. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of prospectively collected data from a prior randomized cohort study of 227 patients referred for tertiary assessment of chronic back pain in Ottawa, ON, Canada. The Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) was calculated from patient-completed questionnaires and medical record review. Using patients' postal codes, neighbourhood walkability was determined using the Walk Score, which awards points based on the distance to the closest amenities, yielding a score from 0 to 100 (0-50: car-dependent; 50-100: walkable). Results: Based on the Walk Score, 134 patients lived in car-dependent neighborhoods and 93 lived in walkable neighborhoods. A multivariate logistic regression model, adjusted for age, gender, rural postal code, body mass index, smoking, median household income, percent employment, pain, and disability, demonstrated an adjusted odds ratio of 2.75 (95% confidence interval, 1.16 to 6.53) times higher prevalence for having a chronic disease for patients living in a car-dependent neighborhood. There was also a significant dose-related association (p=0.01; Mantel-Haenszel chi-square=6.4) between living in car-dependent neighbourhoods and more severe CCI scores. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that advocating for improved neighbourhood planning to permit greater walkability may help offset the burden of chronic disease.

AGN gas outflows out to z ~ 0.2

  • Woo, Jong-Hak;Son, Donghoon;Bae, Hyun-Jin
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.40 no.1
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    • pp.42.3-43
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    • 2015
  • Using a large sample of 32,000 type 2 AGNs out to z = 0.2, we present the statistical results on the ionized gas outflows, based on the analysis of the velocity shift of narrow emission lines with respect to the systemic velocity measured from the stellar absorption lines. Considering the projection effect, the fraction of type 2 AGNs with the [O III] velocity offset, which is ~50%, is comparable to that of type 1 AGNs. The velocity dispersion of [OIII] is typically larger than that of Ha, suggesting that outflow is prevalent in type 2 AGNs. A weak correlation of the OIII luminosity with velocity shift and velocity dispersion indicates that outflow velocity is stronger for higher luminosity AGNs. Based on our 3-D biconical outflow models with simple assumptions on the velocity structure, we simulate the projected 2-D velocity and velocity dispersion maps, which are spatially integrated to reproduce the measurements of SDSS AGNs. By comparing the distribution of the measured velocity and velocity dispersion of OIII, with the model grids, we constrain the intrinsic outflow velocities. The outflow velocity ranges from a few hundreds to a thousand km/s, implying a strong feedback to ISM.

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Print Mottle : Causes and Solutions from Paper Coating Industry Perspective

  • Lee, Hak-Lae
    • Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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    • v.40 no.5
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    • pp.60-69
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    • 2008
  • The principal reasons for applying a pigment coating to paper are to improve appearance and printability. The pigment coating provides a surface that is more uniform and more receptive to printing ink than are the uncoated fibers and, in turn, both facilitates the printing process and enhances the graphic reproduction. The improvement in print quality is readily apparent, especially in image areas or when multiple colors are involved. Although pigment coating of paper is to improve the printability, coated paper is not completely free from printing defects. Actually there are a number printing defects that are observed only with the coated papers. Among the printing defects that are commonly observed for coated papers, print mottle during multi-color offset printing is one of the most concerned defects, and it appears not only on solid tone area but also half dot print area. There are four main causes of print mottle ranging from printing inks, dampening solution, paper, and printing press or its operation. These indicates that almost every factors associated with lithographic printing can cause print mottle. Among these variation of paper quality influences most significantly on print mottle problems in multicolor offset printing, and this indicates that paper is most often to be blamed for its product deficiency as far as print mottle problems are concerned. Furthermore, most of the print mottle problems associated with paper is observed when coated papers are printed. Uncoated papers rarely show mottling problems. This indicates that print mottle is the most serious quality problems of coated paper products. Overcoming the print mottle is becoming more difficult because the operating speeds of coating and printing machines are increasing, coating weights are decreasing, and the demands on high-quality printing are increasing. Print mottle in offset printing is caused by (a) nonuniform back trap of ink caused by a nonuniform rate of ink drying, referred as "back trap mottle, and (b) nonuniform absorption of the dampening solution. Furthermore, both forms of print mottle have some relationship to the structure of the coated layer. The surest way of eliminating ink mottling is to eliminate unevenness in the base paper. Coating solutions, often easier to put into practice, should, however, be considered. In this paper the principal factors influencing print mottle of coated papers will be discussed. Especially the importance of base paper roughness, binder migration, even consolidation of coating layers, control of the drying rate, types of binders, etc. will be described.

Improvement of Address Pointer Assignment in DSP Code Generation (DSP용 코드 생성에서 주소 포인터 할당 성능 향상 기법)

  • Lee, Hee-Jin;Lee, Jong-Yeol
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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    • v.45 no.1
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    • pp.37-47
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    • 2008
  • Exploitation of address generation units which are typically provided in DSPs plays an important role in DSP code generation since that perform fast address computation in parallel to the central data path. Offset assignment is optimization of memory layout for program variables by taking advantage of the capabilities of address generation units, consists of memory layout generation and address pointer assignment steps. In this paper, we propose an effective address pointer assignment method to minimize the number of address calculation instructions in DSP code generation. The proposed approach reduces the time complexity of a conventional address pointer assignment algorithm with fixed memory layouts by using minimum cost-nodes breaking. In order to contract memory size and processing time, we employ a powerful pruning technique. Moreover our proposed approach improves the initial solution iteratively by changing the memory layout for each iteration because the memory layout affects the result of the address pointer assignment algorithm. We applied the proposed approach to about 3,000 sequences of the OffsetStone benchmarks to demonstrate the effectiveness of the our approach. Experimental results with benchmarks show an average improvement of 25.9% in the address codes over previous works.

The Development of a Non-Linear Finite Element Model for Ductile Fracture Analysis - For Mini-Computer - (연성파괴 해석을 위한 비선형 유한요소 모델의 개발 -소형 컴퓨터를 위한 -)

  • 정세희;조규종
    • Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.25-33
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    • 1986
  • In this paper, the frontal method based elastic-plastic F.E.M. program for mini-computer was developed. Since, the executable source program size was restricted by the system core memory size on the mini-computer, the active variables were memorized by the element base and the nonactive varables were memorized to the external disc file. The active variables of the finally developed program were reduced enough to execute about 1,000 freedom finite element on the mini-computer on which available variables were restricted as 32,767 integers. A modified CT fracture test specimen was examined to test the developed program. The calculated results were compared with experimental results concerning on the crack tip plastic deformation zone. Recrystallization technique was adopted to visualize the intensive plastic deformation regions. The Von-Mises criterion based calculation results were well agreed with the experimental results in the intensive plastic region which was over than 2% offset strain. The F.E.M. results using the developed program were well agreed with the theoritical plastic boundary which was calculated by the stress intensity factor as r$_{p}$=(K$_{1}$$^{2}$/2.pi..sigma.$_{y}$$^{2}$).f(.theta.).).).

Performance Evaluation of Siemens CTI ECAT EXACT 47 Scanner Using NEMA NU2-2001 (NEMA NU2-2001을 이용한 Siemens CTI ECAT EXACT 47 스캐너의 표준 성능 평가)

  • Kim, Jin-Su;Lee, Jae-Sung;Lee, Dong-Soo;Chung, June-Key;Lee, Myung-Chul
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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    • v.38 no.3
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    • pp.259-267
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    • 2004
  • Purpose: NEMA NU2-2001 was proposed as a new standard for performance evaluation of whole body PET scanners. in this study, system performance of Siemens CTI ECAT EXACT 47 PET scanner including spatial resolution, sensitivity, scatter fraction, and count rate performance in 2D and 3D mode was evaluated using this new standard method. Methods: ECAT EXACT 47 is a BGO crystal based PET scanner and covers an axial field of view (FOV) of 16.2 cm. Retractable septa allow 2D and 3D data acquisition. All the PET data were acquired according to the NEMA NU2-2001 protocols (coincidence window: 12 ns, energy window: $250{\sim}650$ keV). For the spatial resolution measurement, F-18 point source was placed at the center of the axial FOV((a) x=0, and y=1, (b)x=0, and y=10, (c)x=70, and y=0cm) and a position one fourth of the axial FOV from the center ((a) x=0, and y=1, (b)x=0, and y=10, (c)x=10, and y=0cm). In this case, x and y are transaxial horizontal and vertical, and z is the scanner's axial direction. Images were reconstructed using FBP with ramp filter without any post processing. To measure the system sensitivity, NEMA sensitivity phantom filled with F-18 solution and surrounded by $1{\sim}5$ aluminum sleeves were scanned at the center of transaxial FOV and 10 cm offset from the center. Attenuation free values of sensitivity wire estimated by extrapolating data to the zero wall thickness. NEMA scatter phantom with length of 70 cm was filled with F-18 or C-11solution (2D: 2,900 MBq, 3D: 407 MBq), and coincidence count rates wire measured for 7 half-lives to obtain noise equivalent count rate (MECR) and scatter fraction. We confirmed that dead time loss of the last flame were below 1%. Scatter fraction was estimated by averaging the true to background (staffer+random) ratios of last 3 frames in which the fractions of random rate art negligibly small. Results: Axial and transverse resolutions at 1cm offset from the center were 0.62 and 0.66 cm (FBP in 2D and 3D), and 0.67 and 0.69 cm (FBP in 2D and 3D). Axial, transverse radial, and transverse tangential resolutions at 10cm offset from the center were 0.72 and 0.68 cm (FBP in 2D and 3D), 0.63 and 0.66 cm (FBP in 2D and 3D), and 0.72 and 0.66 cm (FBP in 2D and 3D). Sensitivity values were 708.6 (2D), 2931.3 (3D) counts/sec/MBq at the center and 728.7 (2D, 3398.2 (3D) counts/sec/MBq at 10 cm offset from the center. Scatter fractions were 0.19 (2D) and 0.49 (3D). Peak true count rate and NECR were 64.0 kcps at 40.1 kBq/mL and 49.6 kcps at 40.1 kBq/mL in 2D and 53.7 kcps at 4.76 kBq/mL and 26.4 kcps at 4.47 kBq/mL in 3D. Conclusion: Information about the performance of CTI ECAT EXACT 47 PET scanner reported in this study will be useful for the quantitative analysis of data and determination of optimal image acquisition protocols using this widely used scanner for clinical and research purposes.

R&D Tax Concession Program in the Australian Government

  • Moon, Yong-Eun;Yoon, Joseph
    • 한국디지털정책학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2004.11a
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    • pp.145-168
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    • 2004
  • In industrialised countries, innovation is a key source of economic growth. Research is a key driver of technological innovation and involves the process of systematic investigation and/or experimentation to discover new knowledge. The Governments' industry innovation policy supports a business focus on Research and Development (R&D) through a range of programs in order to achieve these aims. The Innovation Statement (DISR 2000, 20010, launched by the Australian Prime Minister in January 2001, commits an additional $3 billion overfive years to encourage and support innovation. The Australian Government aims to build world competitive firms and strong research capability in industry to strengthen Australia's international competitiveness and increase national prosperity. It develops policies and programs to enhance investment in innovation. The Australian Government has established a number of R&D funding support programs aimed at increasing the level of R&D in Australia. The backbone of these programs is the tax concession program, which is made up of the 125 per cent R&D tax concession, the 175 per cent premium tax concession and the tax offset. Over 4000 businesses take advantage of the tax concession scheme, which costs the government around $400-million a year. This cost is expected to rise to over half a billion by 2005-06 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2003). Ensuring these resources are invested where they provide significant national economic benefits is a major policy issue. In this sense, this paper looks at the appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of the R&D tax concession with costs and benefits analysis.

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Cost and Benefits of R&D Tax Concession Program in the Australian Government

  • Moon Yong-Eun;Yoon Joseph
    • The Journal of Information Systems
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.135-159
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    • 2004
  • In industrialised countries, innovation is a key source of economic growth. Rrsearch is a key driver of technological innovation and involves the process of systematic investigation and/or experimentation to discover new knowledge. The Governments'industry innovation policy supports a business focus on Research and Development (R&D) through a range of programs in order to achieve these aims. The Innovation Statement (DISR 2000, 20010, launched by the Australian Prime MinisterJanuary 2001, commits an additional ${\$}$3 billion over five years to encourage and support innovation. The Australian Government aims toworld competitive firms and strong research capability in industry to strengthen Australia's international competitiveness and increase national prosperity. It develops policies and programs to enhance investment in innovation. The Australian Government has established a number of R&D funding support programs aimed at increasing the level of R&D in Australia. The backbone of these programs is the tax concession program, which is made up of the 125 per cent R&D tax concession, the 175 per cent premium tax concession and the tax offset. Over 4000 businesses take advantage of the tax concession scheme, which costs the government around ${\$}$400mi11ion a year. This cost is expected to rise to over hall a billion by 2005-06 (commonwealth or Australia, 2003). Ensuring these resources are invested where they provide significant national economic benefits is a major policy issue. In this sense, this paper looks at the appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of the R&D tax concession with costs and benefits analysis.

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Innovation Management in the Australian Government: Cost and Benefit of R&D Tax Concession Program

  • Moon, Yong-Eun;Yoon, Joseph
    • 한국디지털정책학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2004.05a
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    • pp.95-118
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    • 2004
  • In industrialised countries, innovation is a key source of economic growth. Research is a key driver of technological innovation and involves the process of systematic investigation and/or experimentation to discover new knowledge. The Governments' industry innovation policy supports a business focus on Research and Development (R&D) through a range of programs in order to achieve these aims. The Innovation Statement (DISR 2000, 20010, launched by the Australian Prime Minister?in January 2001, commits an additional $3 billion over five years to encourage and support innovation. The Australian Government aims to?build world competitive firms and strong research capability in industry to strengthen Australia's international competitiveness and increase national prosperity.?It develops policies and programs to enhance investment in innovation. The Australian Government has established a number of R&D funding support programs aimed at increasing the level of R&D in Australia. The backbone of these programs is the tax concession program, which is made up of the 125 per cent R&D tax concession, the 175 per cent premium tax concession and the tax offset. Over 4000 businesses take advantage of the tax concession scheme, which costs the government around $400?million a year. This cost is expected to rise to over half a billion by 2005-06 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2003). Ensuring these resources are invested where they provide significant national economic benefits is a major policy issue. In this sense, this paper looks at the appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of the R&D tax concession with costs and benefits analysis.

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A Study on the Disputes Settlement Clause in the Defense Procurement Contracts (국방조달 계약에서의 분쟁해결 조항에 관한 연구)

  • Shim, Sang-Ryul
    • Journal of Arbitration Studies
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    • v.21 no.1
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    • pp.157-181
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    • 2011
  • The term of defense procurement is used indifferently from defence acquisition. It consists of two sectors : domestic defense procurement and foreign defense procurement. For efficient and transparent defense procurement, Defence Acquisition Program Law in Korea suggests some principles including the purchase of domestically manufactured munitions in the first instance, and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration(DAPA)'s direct procurement of munitions, etc. By reviewing the characteristics, process, current situation and model contracts of defense procurement, it is found that domestic procurement contracts only propose the legal approach instead of arbitration and foreign procurement contracts suggest confusedly both the legal approach and arbitration for amicable disputes settlement. Therefore, it is quite recommended for arbitration organizations such as the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board(KCAB), the Korean Arbitrators Association(KAA), and the Korean Association of Arbitration Studies(KAAS) to foster a variety of strong awareness campaign, education and consulting programs, etc. for the popular use of arbitration clause. It will contribute to settle any disputes and controversies between the parties more speedy, economically and rationally, thereby reducing the costs, time and pains for solving them.

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