• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.107-120
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• 2009

Background : To estimate fall incidence rate and associated factors in inpatients from a general hospital. Method : The data were collected from 104 fall incident reports developed by the patient safety committee in a general hospital in Seoul from 01 January 2007 to 31 December 2008. Information included general characteristics of patients, factors related to fall, types, places, circumstances and outcomes of fall. Result : The incidence rate of fall, which was 4.4 per 1,000 total discharged patients and 0.5 per 1,000 patient-days, was much lower than that of several hospitals in the United States. The difference may reflect the different incidence reporting system of each hospital. Fall-prone patients were, in general, $$\geq_-$$65 years of age, had an alert mental status, were ambulatory with some assistance, and were dependent on and ambulatory device. High incidence of falls was associated with patients with circulatory disease. The majority of fall events usually occurred in bed or at the bedside in the patient's room, and occurred more often during the night than during the day or evening. Risk factors of fall were use of drugs (antihypertensive or neuropsychiatric drugs) and environmental factors (e.g., overly high bed height, surrounding objects, inadequate fitness shoes and slippery floor). Physical injury occurred in 43.3% of fall events, which typically required diagnosis of injury and treatment such as suturing. Risk factors for repeated falls were use of a neuropsychiatric drug (odds ratio=13.9) and gait disturbance (odds ratio=91.2). Risk factors for fall-related injury were alert mental status (odds ratio=3.3 times more likely to fall than those who were drowsy or in a stupor) and general weakness(odds ratio=3.3 times more likely to fall than those who were not generally weak). Conclusion : Medical and nursing staff should be aware of the fall risk factors of hospitalized patients and should intensively pursue preventative strategies. Development of fall prevention education based on these results is recommended.

• Journal of forensic and investigative science
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.44-56
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• 2006

The reform necessity of medicolegal death investigation system is continuously issued. The problems from the current death investigation system are discussed, specially on the professionalism of the involved personnel such as policemen, doctors, prosecutors. Death investigation exists not only to prosecute the criminals but also primarily to protect the general public's health, safety, and welfare. The reform proposals of death investigation system are followed as below. Statutes require that the prosecutor be notified of certain deaths. All deaths that may reasonably result from anything other than natural disease should be investigated. A death certificate is a legal document which authenticate a death, therefore it is issued by the doctor. The postmortem examination must be rearranged on the university base and performed by the qualified doctors who are trained at least in pathology. The police officer specified in death investigation and forensic identification should be encouraged to keep doing their special work in many ways.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.227-241
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• 2024

Safety and structural integrity of civil structures, like bridges and buildings, can be substantially enhanced by employing appropriate structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques for timely diagnosis of incipient damages. The information gathered from health monitoring of important infrastructure helps in making informed decisions on their maintenance. This ensures smooth, uninterrupted operation of the civil infrastructure and also cuts down the overall maintenance cost. With an early warning system, SHM can protect human life during major structural failures. A real-time online damage localization technique is proposed using only the vibration measurements in this paper. The concept of the 'Degree of Scatter' (DoS) of the vibration measurements is used to generate a spatial profile, and fractal dimension theory is used for damage detection and localization in the proposed two-phase algorithm. Further, it ensures robustness against environmental and operational variability (EoV). The proposed method works only with output-only responses and does not require correlated finite element models. Investigations are carried out to test the presented algorithm, using the synthetic data generated from a simply supported beam, a 25-storey shear building model, and also experimental data obtained from the lab-level experiments on a steel I-beam and a ten-storey framed structure. The investigations suggest that the proposed damage localization algorithm is capable of isolating the influence of the confounding factors associated with EoV while detecting and localizing damage even with noisy measurements.

• Korean journal of applied entomology
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.69-78
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• 2023

The currently implemented Positive List System, sales manager training, and pesticide sales record systems focus on the safety of determined pesticide use, but the proposed agrochemical pharmacist (AP) system aims accurate diagnosis and reasonable prescription. In this study, 81% of famers claimed expert assistance for purchasing and applying pesticides, and 42~86% of sales managers insisted on the strengthening expertise in diagnosis and prescription. In the institutionalization of AP, a special implementation guideline is essential to embrace the present sales managers with long experience. Sales managers of commercial and agricultural cooperatives recognize the qualifications of agrochemical pharmacists as a strategy to differentiate themselves from competitors, and increase sales through market positioning of "pesticides prescribed by trustworthy agrochemical pharmacists", not sales managers anymore.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.58-71
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• 2015

Objectives: The aims of this study were to investigate the classification system of chemical substances in the Occupational Safety and Health Act(OSHA) and Chemical Substances Control Act(CSCA) and to compare several health indices (i.e., Time Weighted Average (TWA), Lethal Dose ($LD_{50}$), and Lethal Concentration ($LC_{50}$) of chemical substances by categories in each law. Methods: The chemicals regulated by each law were classified by the specific categories provided in the respective law; seven categories for OSHA (chemicals with OELs, chemicals prohibited from manufacturing, etc., chemicals requiring approval, chemicals kept below permissible limits, chemicals requiring workplace monitoring, chemicals requiring special management, and chemicals requiring special heath diagnosis) and five categories from the CSCA(poisonous substances, permitted substances, restricted substances, prohibited substances, and substances requiring preparation for accidents). Information on physicochemical properties, health indices including CMR characteristics, $LD_{50}$ and $LD_{50}$ were searched from the homepages of the Korean Occupational and Safety Agency and the National Institute of Environmental Research, etc. Statistical analysis was conducted for comparison between TWA and health index for each category. Results: The number of chemicals based on CAS numbers was different from the numbers of series of chemicals listed in each law because of repeat listings due to different names (e.g., glycol monoethylether vs. 2-ethoxy ethanol) and grouping of different chemicals under the same serial number(i.e., five different benzidine-related chemicals were categorized under one serial number(06-4-13) as prohibited substances under the CSCA). A total of 722 chemicals and 995 chemicals were listed at the OSHA and its sub-regulations and CSCA and its sub-regulations, respectively. Among these, 36.8% based on OSHA chemicals and 26.7% based on CSCA chemicals were regulated simultaneously through both laws. The correlation coefficients between TWA and $LC_{50}$ and between TWA and $LD_{50}$, were 0.641 and 0.506, respectively. The geometric mean values of TWA calculated by each category in both laws have no tendency according to category. The patterns of cumulative graph for TWA, $LD_{50}$, $LC_{50}$ were similar to the chemicals regulated by OHSA and CCSA, but their median values were lower for CCSA regulated chemicals than OSHA regulated chemicals. The GM of carcinogenic chemicals under the OSHA was significantly lower than non-CMR chemicals($2.21mg/m^3$ vs $5.69mg/m^3$, p=0.006), while there was no significant difference in CSCA chemicals($0.85mg/m^3$ vs $1.04mg/m^3$, p=0.448). $LC_{50}$ showed no significant difference between carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxic chemicals and non-CMR chemicals in both laws' regulated chemicals, while there was a difference between carcinogens and non-CMR chemicals in $LD_{50}$ of the CSCA. Conclusions: This study found that there was no specific tendency or significant difference in health indicessuch TWA, $LD_{50}$ and $LC_{50}$ in subcategories of chemicals as classified by the Ministry of Labor and Employment and the Ministry of Environment. Considering the background and the purpose of each law, collaboration for harmonization in chemical categorizing and regulation is necessary.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.1088-1097
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• 2021

Vibration data of mechanical equipment inevitably have noise. This noise adversely af ects the maintenance of mechanical equipment. Accordingly, the performance of a learning model depends on how effectively the noise of the data is removed. In this study, the noise of the data was removed using the Denoising Auto Encoder (DAE) technique which does not include the characteristic extraction process in preprocessing time series data. In addition, the performance was compared with that of the Wavelet Transform, which is widely used for machine signal processing. The performance comparison was conducted by calculating the failure detection rate. For a more accurate comparison, a classification performance evaluation criterion, the F-1 Score, was calculated. Failure data were detected using the One-Class SVM technique. The performance comparison, revealed that the DAE technique performed better than the Wavelet Transform technique in terms of failure diagnosis and error rate.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.81 no.4
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• pp.330-338
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• 2018

Background: We developed an additional laser guidance system to improve the efficacy and safety of conventional computed tomography (CT)-guided percutaneous transthoracic needle biopsy (PTNB), and we conducted this study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of our system. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of 244 patients who underwent CT-guided PTNB using our additional laser guidance system from July 1, 2015, to January 20, 2016. Results: There were nine false-negative results among the 238 total cases. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and diagnostic accuracy of our system for diagnosing malignancy were 94.4% (152/161), 100% (77/77), 100% (152/152), 89.5% (77/86), and 96.2% (229/238), respectively. The results of univariate analysis showed that the risk factors for a false-negative result were male sex (p=0.029), a final diagnosis of malignancy (p=0.033), a lesion in the lower lobe (p=0.035), shorter distance from the skin to the target lesion (p=0.003), and shorter distance from the pleura to the target lesion (p=0.006). The overall complication rate was 30.5% (74/243). Pneumothorax, hemoptysis, and hemothorax occurred in 21.8% (53/243), 9.1% (22/243), and 1.6% (4/243) of cases, respectively. Conclusion: The additional laser guidance system might be a highly economical and efficient method to improve the diagnostic efficacy and safety of conventional CT-guided PTNB even if performed by inexperienced pulmonologists.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.31-42
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• 2024

Objective : In order to understand the changes in domestic approval regulations applicable to traditional Korean medical device companies, this article will explain the major amendments 「Regulation on Medical Device Approval Report Review, etc.」 from 2005 to the present on a year-by-year basis, and provide a counter plan to the recent changes in approval regulations. Methods : We analysed the changes in approval regulatory amendments related to the traditional Korean medical devices from 2005 to the present. Results : The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety is continuously improving medical device approval regulations to ensure the global competitiveness of domestic medical devices and contribute to the improvement of public health. Recent major approval regulatory amendments include the establishment of a review system for software medical devices and digital therapeutics, the recognition of real world evidence materials, the introduction of a biological evaluation of medical devices within a risk management process and a medical device approval licence renewal system. Conclusions : It is expected that the range of medical devices available to Korean medicine doctors will continue to expand in the future through the provision of non-face-to-face medical services and the development of advanced and new medical devices, as well as wearable medical devices and digital therapeutics. In order to increase the market entry potential of traditional Korean medical devices that incorporate advanced technologies such as digital technology and AI-based diagnosis and prediction technology, it is urgent that the government provide significant support to traditional Korean medical device companies to improve approval regulatory compliance.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.641-659
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• 2010

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) gradually becomes a technique for ensuring the health and safety of civil infrastructures and is also an important approach for the research of the damage accumulation and disaster evolving characteristics of civil infrastructures. It is attracting prodigious research interests and the active development interests of scientists and engineers because a great number of civil infrastructures are planned and built every year in mainland China. In a SHM system the sheer number of accompanying wires, fiber optic cables, and other physical transmission medium is usually prohibitive, particularly for such structures as offshore platforms and long-span structures. Fortunately, with recent advances in technologies in sensing, wireless communication, and micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS), wireless sensor technique has been developing rapidly and is being used gradually in the SHM of civil engineering structures. In this paper, some recent advances in the research, development, and implementation of wireless sensors for the SHM of civil infrastructures in mainland China, especially in Dalian University of Technology (DUT) and Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), are introduced. Firstly, a kind of wireless digital acceleration sensors for structural global monitoring is designed and validated in an offshore structure model. Secondly, wireless inclination sensor systems based on Frequency-hopping techniques are developed and applied successfully to swing monitoring of large-scale hook structures. Thirdly, wireless acquisition systems integrating with different sensing materials, such as Polyvinylidene Fluoride(PVDF), strain gauge, piezoresistive stress/strain sensors fabricated by using the nickel powder-filled cement-based composite, are proposed for structural local monitoring, and validating the characteristics of the above materials. Finally, solutions to the key problem of finite energy for wireless sensors networks are discussed, with future works also being introduced, for example, the wireless sensor networks powered by corrosion signal for corrosion monitoring and rapid diagnosis for large structures.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.181-195
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• 2009

Modern constitution obtains its justice by protecting the people's basic legal rights. The constitutional rights can be more than a defensive measure against government power by modern viewpoints. The government has to create an atmosphere which the rights are not violated. The Constitution provides that the government has to make efforts to prevent disaster and protect the people from danger in Clause 34, Art. 6. The government has an obligation to protect the people's basic legal rights of life, health and property from fire damages, and those rights are gathering strength under a socialist state principle as fundamental ideology of modern societies. The present fire inspection system gains a point constitutionally but it still needs to be certified as the most suitable system. This article examines the solution to operate fire inspection system efficiently, given the reality of present system operation. It is necessary to improve the system by integrating the present fire inspection with the self fire inspection. Government needs to re-modification the Fire inspections system for prevent and promote (resolve) the problem which government officer (ex fire fighter) can make a irregularities and corruption as do it oneself.