• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.216-231
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• 2003

Objectives: To develop a model that predicts a death probability of acute myocardial infarction(AMI) patient, and to evaluate a performance of hospital services using the developed model. Methods: Medical records of 861 AMI patients in 7 general hospitals during 1996 and 1997 were reviewed by two trained nurses. Variables studied were risk factors which were measured in terms of severity measures. A risk model was developed by using the logistic regression, and its performance was evaluated using cross-validation and bootstrap techniques. The statistical prediction capability of the model was assessed by using c-statistic, $R^2$ as well as Hosmer-Lemeshow statistic. The model performance was also evaluated using severity-adjusted mortalities of hospitals. Results: Variables included in the model building are age, sex, ejection fraction, systolic BP, congestive heart failure at admission, cardiac arrest, EKG ischemia, arrhythmia, left anterior descending artery occlusion, verbal response within 48 hours after admission, acute neurological change within 48 hours after admission, and 3 interaction terms. The c statistics and $R^2$ were 0.887 and 0.2676. The Hosmer-Lemeshow statistic was 6.3355 (p-value=0.6067). Among 7 hospitals evaluated by the model, two hospitals showed significantly higher mortality rates, while other two hospitals had significantly lower mortality rates, than the average mortality rate of all hospitals. The remaining hospitals did not show any significant difference. Conclusion: The comparison of the qualities of hospital service using risk-adjusted mortality rates indicated significant difference among them. We therefore conclude that risk-adjusted mortality rate of AMI patients can be used as an indicator for evaluating hospital performance in Korea.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1215-1223
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• 2014

In multi-hop wireless networks, a message transmission path is set up on demand by a route discovery step, where a shortest path is used in general. The shortest path, however, normally uses the nodes near the center area, which causes a high traffic load in that area and reduces the message transmission reliability. We propose a stable routing protocol considering the remaining energy of nodes. Our protocol uses ETX as a link performance estimator and tries to avoid the nodes with smaller energy. By doing this, we can reduce the route failure probability and packet loss. We have evaluated the performance of the proposed protocol using QualNet and compared with AODV and MRFR protocols. The simulation result shows that our protocol has a similar performance as MRFR in terms of end-to-end message reception ratio, average message delay and delay jitter, but outperforms MRFR in terms of traffic load distribution.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.215-227
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• 2018

Supplemental passive control devices are widely considered as an important tool to mitigate the dynamic response of a building under seismic excitation. Nevertheless, a systematic method for strategically placing dampers in the buildings is not prescribed in building codes and guidelines. Many deterministic and stochastic methods have been proposed by previous researchers to investigate the optimum distribution of the viscous dampers in the steel frames. However, the seismic performances of the retrofitted buildings that are under large earthquake intensity levels or near collapse state have not been evaluated by any seismic research. Recent years, an increasing number of studies utilize genetic algorithms (GA) to explore the complex engineering optimization problems. GA interfaced with nonlinear response history (NRH) analysis is considered as one of the most powerful and popular stochastic methods to deal with the nonlinear optimization problem of damper distribution. In this paper, the effectiveness and the efficiency of GA on optimizing damper distribution are first evaluated by strong ground motions associated with the collapse failure. A practical optimization framework using GA and NRH analysis is proposed for optimizing the distribution of the fluid viscous dampers within the moment resisting frames (MRF) regarding the improvements of large drifts under intensive seismic context. Both a 10-storey and a 20-storey building are involved to explore higher mode effect. A far-fault and a near-fault earthquake environment are also considered for the frames under different seismic intensity levels. To evaluate the improvements obtained from the GA optimization regarding the collapse performance of the buildings, Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is conducted and comparisons are made between the GA damper distribution and stiffness proportional damping distribution on the collapse probability of the retrofitted frames.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.21-29
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• 1993

In this paper, a probability-based reliability analysis was proposed based on a finite element method-based random vibration analysis and serviceability limit state of structures. The limit state model defined for the study is a serviceability limit state in terms of the more realistic crack failure that might cause the emission of radioactive materials. The SAP V-2 is used for a three-dimensional finite element analysis of concrete containment structure, and the reliability analysis is carried out by modifying HRAS reliability analysis program for this study. In this study, the load factors for the design of reinforced concrete cointainment structures in Korea are proposed by considering appropriate load combination criteria for design, and the results are compared with the present ASME code. The proposed load factors were proved to be in accordance with a set of code performance objective and showed consistency in the limit state probability.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.41-52
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• 2008

Ubiquitous service environment is poor in reliability of connection and has a high probability that the intrusion and the system failure may occur. Therefore, in the environment, the capability of a system to collectively accomplish its mission in spite of active intrusions and various failure scenarios, that is, the survivability of services are needed. In this paper, we analyze the Jgroup/ARM framework that was developed in order to help the development of fault- tolerant Jini services. More importantly, we propose an intrusion-tolerant Jini service architecture to satisfy the security availability and quality of services on the basis of the analysis. The proposed architecture is able to protect a Jini system not only from faults such as network partitioning or server crash, but also from attacks exploiting flaws. It is designed to provides performance enough to show a low response latency so as to support seamless service usage. Through the experiment on a test-bed, we have confirmed that the architecture is able to provide high security and availability at the level that degraded services quality is ignorable.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.36 no.1A
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• pp.58-66
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a self-organized frequency allocation scheme for femto-cell deployment to avoid intercell interference, thereby reducing cell-registration failure. The proposed scheme follows two steps which if necessary manipulate frequency-band reallocation of existing femto-cells to accomodate newly incoming femto-cells. In the first step named "initial frequency allocation", each femto-cell collects neighboring femto-cells' frequency usage state by listening the broadcasting channels, and then selects one of interference-free frequency-bands. If no inference-free band is available, the second step named "frequency adjustment" starts, where frequency-band reallocation is properly performed from the aspect of overall performance improvement. Numerical results shows that the proposed scheme outperforms the best SINR scheme, which has been practically applied to femto-cell deployment, in terms of cell-registration failure probability and system overhead.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.597-609
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• 2023

One of the applicable methods for the stabilization of soil walls is the nailing system which consists of tensile struts. The stability and safety of soil nail wall systems are influenced by the geometrical parameters of the nailing system. Generally, the determination of nailing parameters in order to achieve optimal performance of the nailing system for the safety of soil walls is defined in the framework of optimization problems. Also, according to the various uncertainty in the mechanical parameters of soil structures, it is necessary to evaluate the reliability of the system as a probabilistic problem. In this paper, the optimal design of the nailing system is carried out in deterministic and probabilistic cases using meta-heuristic and reliability-based design optimization methods. The colliding body optimization algorithm and first-order reliability method are used for optimization and reliability analysis problems, respectively. The objective function is defined based on the total cost of nails and safety factors and reliability index are selected as constraints. The mechanical properties of the nailing system are selected as design variables and the mechanical properties of the soil are selected as random variables. The results show that the reliability of the optimally designed soil nail system is very sensitive to uncertainty in soil mechanical parameters. Also, the design results are affected by uncertainties in soil mechanical parameters due to the values of safety factors. Reliability-based design optimization results show that a nailing system can be designed for the expected level of reliability and failure probability.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.17-30
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• 2021

This paper develops a convenient approach for deterministic and probabilistic evaluations of tunnel face stability using support vector machine classifiers. The proposed method is comprised of two major steps, i.e., construction of the training dataset and determination of instance-based classifiers. In step one, the orthogonal design is utilized to produce representative samples after the ranges and levels of the factors that influence tunnel face stability are specified. The training dataset is then labeled by two-dimensional strength reduction analyses embedded within OptumG2. For any unknown instance, the second step applies the training dataset for classification, which is achieved by an ad hoc Python program. The classification of unknown samples starts with selection of instance-based training samples using the k-nearest neighbors algorithm, followed by the construction of an instance-based SVM-KNN classifier. It eventually provides labels of the unknown instances, avoiding calculate its corresponding performance function. Probabilistic evaluations are performed by Monte Carlo simulation based on the SVM-KNN classifier. The ratio of the number of unstable samples to the total number of simulated samples is computed and is taken as the failure probability, which is validated and compared with the response surface method.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.186-190
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• 2015

$TiO_2$ nanoparticles can be used to improve the performance of carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy resin composites. In this study, the effect of the size of $TiO_2$ nanoparticles on the mechanical properties of carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy resin composites was investigated. The size of the $TiO_2$ nanoparticles was easily controlled using heat treatment. The size of the $TiO_2$ nanoparticles for this study were20nm, 100nm, and 200nm. Three types of carbon fibers with different diameters were also used in this study. The carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy resin composites with 20-nm $TiO_2$ powder showed the highest tensile strength compared to the other types of CFRP, regardless of the fiber maker or fiber diameter. The size of the $TiO_2$ powder and the diameter of the carbon fiber strongly affected the interfacial properties of all kinds of CFRP in this study.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.441-457
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• 2018

Characteristic parameter values of seismic isolators deviate from their nominal design values due to uncertainties and/or errors in their material properties and element dimensions, etc. Deviations may increase over service life due to environmental effects and service conditions. For accurate evaluation of the seismic safety level, all such effects, which would result in deviations in the structural response, need to be taken into account. In this study, the sensitivity of the probability of failure of the structures equipped with nonlinear base isolation systems to the uncertainties in various isolation system characteristic parameters is investigated in terms of various isolation system and superstructure response parameters in the context of a realistic three-dimensional base-isolated building model via Monte Carlo Simulations. The inherent record-to-record variability nature of the earthquake ground motions is also taken into account by carrying out analyses for a large number of ground motion records which are classified as those with and without forward-directivity effects. Two levels of nominal isolation periods each with three different levels of uncertainty are considered. Comparative plots of cumulative distribution functions and related statistical evaluation presented here portray the potential extent of the deviation of the structural response parameters resulting from the uncertainties and the uncertainty levels considered, which is expected to be useful for practicing engineers in evaluating isolator test results for their projects.