• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.207-212
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• 2006

In parallel with social and economic progress, motives of patients to consult dentists have increased and diversified. An increasing number of people visit dental clinics to improve their facial appearance and masticating functions deteriorated largely due to malocclusion. There is also greater interest in and concern as well as demand for teeth alignment treatment among people. Under this situation, it is required to find and suggest ways to enhance quality and profitability of dental care in view of managerial needs for dentists to cope with changing circumstances. This study, thus, aims to measure satisfactions of orthodontics patients and to determine the elements influencing their satisfactions. For this aim, a survey was performed for 20 days from March 7th to 26th, 2005 by means of questionnaires distributed to randomly selected samples, resulting in following conclusions: 1. From comparison of satisfactions with dental service by their elements, higher satisfaction was reported from orthodontics patients in the element of dental hygienists(4.21). Least satisfaction, however, was found in the procedure for treatment and waiting hours(3.73). 2. By gender, male orthodontics patients turned out to be more satisfactory with dental service than females. In terms of intention for return visits, both male and female orthodontics patients showed higher satisfaction than non-orthodontics ones. 3. As for satisfaction with dental service by age of orthodontics and non-orthodontics patients, with regard to intention for return visit, orthodontics patients of all ages showed to have higher grade of satisfaction. 4. Regarding satisfaction with dental treatment by orthodontics and non-orthodontics patients by monthly income, Dental hygienist with intention for return visit, the higher the satisfaction of orthodontics patients. 5. In regard to satisfaction with dental treatment by education, higher satisfaction was expressed by orthodontics patients with elementary school education kept dentist, dental hygienist and internal and external environments. As a result from this study, we knew that dental service of the orthodontics patients is higher satisfaction than that of the non-orthodontics patients.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.161-170
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• 2018

The epidemic of disorders associated with synthetic stimulants, such as methamphetamine (MA) and amphetamine (AP), is a health, social, legal, and financial problem. Owing to the high potential of their abuse and addiction, reliable analytical methods are required to detect and identify MA, AP, and their metabolites in biological samples. Thus, a dilute-and-shoot liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrophotometry (LC-MS/MS) was developed for simultaneous determination of MA, 4-hydroxymethamphetamine (4HMA), AP, and 4-hydroxyamphetamine (4HA) in urine. Urine sample ($100{\mu}L$) was mixed with $50{\mu}L$ of mobile phase consisting of 0.4 % formic acid and methanol and $50{\mu}L$ of working internal-standard solution. Aliquots of $8{\mu}L$ diluted urine was injected into the LC-MS/MS system. For all analytes, chromatographic separation was performed using a C18 reversed-phase column with gradient elution and a total run time of 5 min. The identification and quantification were performed by multiple reaction monitoring (MRM). Linear least-squares regression was conducted to generate a calibration curve, with $1/x^2$ as the weighting factor. The linear ranges were 2.0-200, 1.0-800, and 10-2500 ng/mL for 4HA and 4HMA, AP, and MA, respectively. The inter- and intraday precisions were within 6.6 %, whereas the inter- and intraday accuracies ranged from -14.9 to 11.3 %. The low limits of quantification were 2.0 ng/mL (4HA and 4HMA), 1.0 ng/mL (AP), and 10 ng/mL (MA). The proposed method exhibited satisfactory selectivity, dilution integrity, matrix effect, and stability, which are required for validation. Moreover, the purification efficiency of high-speed centrifugation was clearly higher than 6-15 % for QC samples (n=5), which was higher than that of the membrane-filtration method. The applicability of the proposed method was tested by forensic analysis of urine samples from drug abusers.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.1-16
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• 2015

Traffic accident is one of the major cause of death worldwide for the last several decades. According to the statistics of world health organization, approximately 1.24 million deaths occurred on the world's roads in 2010. In order to reduce future traffic accident, multipronged approaches have been adopted including traffic regulations, injury-reducing technologies, driving training program and so on. Records on traffic accidents are generated and maintained for this purpose. To make these records meaningful and effective, it is necessary to analyze relationship between traffic accident and related factors including vehicle design, road design, weather, driver behavior etc. Insight derived from these analysis can be used for accident prevention approaches. Traffic accident data mining is an activity to find useful knowledges about such relationship that is not well-known and user may interested in it. Many studies about mining accident data have been reported over the past two decades. Most of studies mainly focused on predict risk of accident using accident related factors. Supervised learning methods like decision tree, logistic regression, k-nearest neighbor, neural network are used for these prediction. However, derived prediction model from these algorithms are too complex to understand for human itself because the main purpose of these algorithms are prediction, not explanation of the data. Some of studies use unsupervised clustering algorithm to dividing the data into several groups, but derived group itself is still not easy to understand for human, so it is necessary to do some additional analytic works. Rule based learning methods are adequate when we want to derive comprehensive form of knowledge about the target domain. It derives a set of if-then rules that represent relationship between the target feature with other features. Rules are fairly easy for human to understand its meaning therefore it can help provide insight and comprehensible results for human. Association rule learning methods and subgroup discovery methods are representing rule based learning methods for descriptive task. These two algorithms have been used in a wide range of area from transaction analysis, accident data analysis, detection of statistically significant patient risk groups, discovering key person in social communities and so on. We use both the association rule learning method and the subgroup discovery method to discover useful patterns from a traffic accident dataset consisting of many features including profile of driver, location of accident, types of accident, information of vehicle, violation of regulation and so on. The association rule learning method, which is one of the unsupervised learning methods, searches for frequent item sets from the data and translates them into rules. In contrast, the subgroup discovery method is a kind of supervised learning method that discovers rules of user specified concepts satisfying certain degree of generality and unusualness. Depending on what aspect of the data we are focusing our attention to, we may combine different multiple relevant features of interest to make a synthetic target feature, and give it to the rule learning algorithms. After a set of rules is derived, some postprocessing steps are taken to make the ruleset more compact and easier to understand by removing some uninteresting or redundant rules. We conducted a set of experiments of mining our traffic accident data in both unsupervised mode and supervised mode for comparison of these rule based learning algorithms. Experiments with the traffic accident data reveals that the association rule learning, in its pure unsupervised mode, can discover some hidden relationship among the features. Under supervised learning setting with combinatorial target feature, however, the subgroup discovery method finds good rules much more easily than the association rule learning method that requires a lot of efforts to tune the parameters.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.123-127
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• 1978

The major objective of this research is to identify those hospital characteristics that best explain cost variation among hospitals and to formulate linear models that can predict hospital costs. Specific emphasis is placed on hospital output, that is, the identification of diagnosis related patient groups (DRGs) which are medically meaningful and demonstrate similar patterns of hospital resource consumption. A casemix index is developed based on the DRGs identified. Considering the common problems encountered in previous hospital cost research, the following study requirements are estab-lished for fulfilling the objectives of this research: 1. Selection of hospitals that exercise similar medical and fiscal practices. 2. Identification of an appropriate data collection mechanism in which demographic and medical characteristics of individual patients as well as accurate and comparable cost information can be derived. 3. Development of a patient classification system in which all the patients treated in hospitals are able to be split into mutually exclusive categories with consistent and stable patterns of resource consumption. 4. Development of a cost finding mechanism through which patient groups' costs can be made comparable across hospitals. A data set of Medicare patients prepared by the Social Security Administration was selected for the study analysis. The data set contained 27,229 record abstracts of Medicare patients discharged from all but one short-term general hospital in Connecticut during the period from January 1, 1971, to December 31, 1972. Each record abstract contained demographic and diagnostic information, as well as charges for specific medical services received. The 'AUT-OGRP System' was used to generate 198 DRGs in which the entire range of Medicare patients were split into mutually exclusive categories, each of which shows a consistent and stable pattern of resource consumption. The 'Departmental Method' was used to generate cost information for the groups of Medicare patients that would be comparable across hospitals. To fulfill the study objectives, an extensive analysis was conducted in the following areas: 1. Analysis of DRGs: in which the level of resource use of each DRG was determined, the length of stay or death rate of each DRG in relation to resource use was characterized, and underlying patterns of the relationships among DRG costs were explained. 2. Exploration of resource use profiles of hospitals; in which the magnitude of differences in the resource uses or death rates incurred in the treatment of Medicare patients among the study hospitals was explored. 3. Casemix analysis; in which four types of casemix-related indices were generated, and the significance of these indices in the explanation of hospital costs was examined. 4. Formulation of linear models to predict hospital costs of Medicare patients; in which nine independent variables (i. e., casemix index, hospital size, complexity of service, teaching activity, location, casemix-adjusted death. rate index, occupancy rate, and casemix-adjusted length of stay index) were used for determining factors in hospital costs. Results from the study analysis indicated that: 1. The system of 198 DRGs for Medicare patient classification was demonstrated not only as a strong tool for determining the pattern of hospital resource utilization of Medicare patients, but also for categorizing patients by their severity of illness. 2. The wei틴fed mean total case cost (TOTC) of the study hospitals for Medicare patients during the study years was $11,27.02 with a standard deviation of $117.20. The hospital with the highest average TOTC ($1538.15) was 2.08 times more expensive than the hospital with the lowest average TOTC ($743.45). The weighted mean per diem total cost (DTOC) of the study hospitals for Medicare patients during the sutdy years was $107.98 with a standard deviation of $15.18. The hospital with the highest average DTOC ($147.23) was 1.87 times more expensive than the hospital with the lowest average DTOC ($78.49). 3. The linear models for each of the six types of hospital costs were formulated using the casemix index and the eight other hospital variables as the determinants. These models explained variance to the extent of 68.7 percent of total case cost (TOTC), 63.5 percent of room and board cost (RMC), 66.2 percent of total ancillary service cost (TANC), 66.3 percent of per diem total cost (DTOC), 56.9 percent of per diem room and board cost (DRMC), and 65.5 percent of per diem ancillary service cost (DTANC). The casemix index alone explained approximately one half of interhospital cost variation: 59.1 percent for TOTC and 44.3 percent for DTOC. Thsee results demonstrate that the casemix index is the most importand determinant of interhospital cost variation Future research and policy implications in regard to the results of this study is envisioned in the following three areas: 1. Utilization of casemix related indices in the Medicare data systems. 2. Refinement of data for hospital cost evaluation. 3. Development of a system for reimbursement and cost control in hospitals.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.64 no.2
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• pp.87-94
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• 2008

Background: Surveillance of TB drug resistance (DR) is essential for providing information on the magnitude and trends in resistance, for developing treatment guidelines and for monitoring the effect of interventions. Up to now national surveys of drug resistance of M. tuberculosis have been conducted four times since 1994 among patients registered at health centers. The purpose of this study is to estimate the prevalence of primary drug resistance among new cases identified in private sector, and to compare it with the previous national drug resistance surveys. Methods: The study collected results of drug susceptibility testing (DST) performed at the Korean Institute of Tuberculosis by the request of private sector from January 2003 to December 2005, and then finally selected new cases for the analysis from the database of Korean TB Surveillance (KTBS) by matching patients' name and social identification numbers. Results: Of the 5,132 new patients included in the study, 689 (13.4%) patients were found to have drug resistance at least one drug, 530 patients (10.3%) were isoniazid resistant, 195 patients (3.8%) were multi-drug resistant (MDR), and 21 patients (0.4%) were extensively drug resistant (XDR). The rate of drug resistance tended to decrease annually but it was not statistically significant. When compared with previous national DR surveys in 2003 and in 2004 respectively, they were not significantly different. Conclusion: The prevalence of DR among new cases managed in the private sector did not show significant difference from that of new patients registered in the public sector in the same year.

• Archives of design research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.151-160
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• 2003

Packages have been used for a wide variety of purposes, for protection, for display, for transportation of goods, or for keeping personal belongings. According to the demands of society and the times, liquor packages have been specialized and have appeared in almost every shape and size without restriction to cine particular type of material. In spite of its rapid development and wide application in our society, liquor package design has rarely been considered as a subject of comprehensive study. Majoring in package design, I have become especially interested in the area of liquor package design. I would like to explore liquor package design from several aspects. With the advent of new market and the rise of a new consumer society, advertising and mass media have expanded rapidly. While convenience of use is not a major issue, serving size certainly are quality, appeal of heritage and health concerns. Heritage is a major consumer appeal in Whisky, Beer, Wine and spirits. Designers have drawn heavily on the tradition of alcoholic products, have used type and graphics to create the illusion of heritage for new products. A sidelight to the heritage aspect of spirits package is the evolution of outer boxes for international liquors. International liquors package design illustrated the past and current themes. The design is contemporary and spare. Colored panels correlated to the liquor flavor used on clean white, black, gold boxes. While this research does not deny the impact of structural innovation and convenience package design , it does deny the existence of a graphic plateau. It is assumed therefore, that development in technology can facilitate communication between East and West. This can be accomplished because as containers of products are used in social setting, their form will gradually apply strong influence to the need for economical, easily handled, easily utilized packaging. Typically, ethnic package designs are those packages containing products which are prepared and marketed to a category of people who are prepared and marketed to a culture traits. They are liquor products sold in the metropolitan New York area which are marketed specially to Asians, Hispanics, or Eurpean population. These cultural groups share numerous traits including religion, language, dietary habits and traditional drinking styles. Therefore, the products which are familiar or common in their native countries are often imported or marketed there to serve them. These packages and products are frequently found on the shelves of supermarkets in predominantly ethnic areas. That is Korea, Japan if packaging is correctly design it would appeal to the American market. My research is that oriental beverage -Soju is good example of this precept. Assumedly, there must be a degree of subjectivity since it is a mean in which the consumers can relate to its advertising. This degree to relate and identify is the degree to which the package will be remembered and purchased. Subjectivity is intimately related to purchases since there is no such thing as a rational purchase in a society that operates on mass consumption. It is essential that packages become more personal human, entertaining, and more like advertising in order to maximize merchandising potential.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.216-224
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• 2015

This study aims to identify the prevalence of sleep related disease in those who experienced car accidents caused by drowsy driving. To this end, a survey of usual sleep habits, polysomnography, and multiple sleep latency tests were conducted in 34 persons who experienced an accident after normal sleep (Group 1), 22 persons who experienced an accident after abnormal sleep (Group 2), and 17 persons who was proven to be normal as a result of polysomnography and had no accident (Group 3). In all, 192 persons responded to the preliminary survey and the results were compared and analyzed. Crossover analysis was conducted to test the homogeneity of statistical characteristics, and the physical characteristics by age were analyzed. In the survey of sleeping habits, there was a significance between groups in how often they woke up while asleep (p<0.01), how difficult it was to go back to sleep again after waking up from sleep (p<0.05), how early they woke up in the morning (p<0.05), how difficult it was to get up in the morning (p<0.05), how sleepy they felt in the daytime (p<0.01), and how tired they felt in the daytime (p<0.01). Furthermore, among 56 subjects who had an accident during drowsy driving, 94.6% (53 persons) were found to have sleep related diseases. This suggests that car accidents during drowsy driving is not simply caused by temporary lack of sleep but by sleep related diseases even when sleep is adequate, leading to car accidents. Therefore, this study is significant identifying the association between car accidents during drowsy driving and sleep related disorders. Furthermore, the data would be considered basic to prepare social measures against drowsy driving related to such sleep related disorders.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.116-186
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• 1983

An epidemiological study on Clonorchis sinensis infection along the Nam-river (total length ; 186km) flowing in Gyeongsang-nam-do, southern part of Korea, was carried out. Formalin-ether concentration technique and Stoll's egg counting method were employed to figure out the prevalence of C. sinensis infection. For the detection of cercariae from Parafossarulus sp., the snail host of C. sinensis, each snail was placed in aerated tap water, and examined for expelled cercariae. For observing the metacercariae the fresh water fish favorably eaten in raw conditions wore prepared by means of pressing the muscles between two slide glasses and/or by digesting them with artificial gastric juice. The fresh water fish were fed to the rabbits to get the worms and to identify the morphology of adult C. sinensis. The results are summarized as follows: 1. Overall Prevalence of C. sinensis infection was 38.75 from 5,291 examinees; 44.15 (1,408 out of 3,196) in male and 30.4% (637 out of 2,095) in female. 2. The prevalence rates were 42.0% at the upper stream, 41.2% around the vicinity of Jinyanglake, 34.2% at Jinju city, 34.2% at middle stream and 40.3% at down stream regions, respectively. 3. By age, the highest positive rate (53.4∼54.3%) was observed in 30 to 59 years of age. In this age group, the rate in males was 59.7∼62.2%, and in females 42.2∼44.4%, In the age group of less than 19 years it was 7.5∼20.9%. 4. By social strata, the positive rate was 16.5% in the primary school children, 22.6% in school students, 46.2% in teachers and local officers and 49.6% in the general inhabitants. 5. The quantitative examinations with the stool collected from clonorchiasis cases revealed that the light infection (less than 4,000/EPG) was 53.6%, moderate infection (4,001∼10,000 /EPG) 30.3% and heavy infection (more than 10,001/EPG) 16.1%, respectively. More than half of total cases examined were light infection, and 73.2% of female examinees were lightly infected with this cuke. 6. The average value of EPG was 4,963 (male, 6,057; female, 2,557 and the highest value was obtained from the age group of 30 to 59 years (5,240∼6,454). 7. The prevalence of Metagonimus yokogawai infection in humans was 5.5%, and 89.8% of metagonimiasis cases wore double-infected arith C. sinensis. The highest prevalence rate was observed in Jinju city (11.2%). 8. Total of 5,005 Parafossarulus sp., the snail intermediate host of C. sinensis, were examined for the detection of cercariae. The cercarial expulsion rate was 0.34%, and the snails collected in Jin-yang-lake side and in the down stream expelled mainly the cercariae of C, sinensis. 9. About 788 cercariaejday (range: 127∼1,503) were expelled daily from a snail naturally infected with C. sinensis. The snails which released more than 1,000 cercariae/day were 30.8% out of total collected. A snail uniquely released 5,840 cercariae/day in this study. 10. The other trematode cercariae besides C. sinensis were also detected, and the rates out of total snails were the cercariae of Losogenes liberum 6.71%, Cyathocotyle orientalis 0.26%, Notocotylus attenuatus 2.52% and Mucobucaris 0.54%, 11. Ten out of 18 species of fresh water fish caught along the river harbored the metacercariae of C, sinensis. The highest rate of metacercarial infection in fish was detected in Pseudorasbora larva (85.9%). The fish mainly eaten by the inhabitants along the Nam-river, and the metacercarial infection rates were: Zacco platypus 8.0%, Hemibarbus sp. 18.2∼26.7%, Gnathepcgcn sp. 37.5%, Ischikauia steenackeri 42.9% and Pseudogobio esocinus 16.7%. 12. Out of 36 P. larva, the number of metacercariae were about 109 (ranEe; 18∼446) per fish and 27 per gram of flesh. The fish caught in spring harbored the highest number of metacercariae. As indicated above, the prevalence of C. sinensis infection in the inhabitants residing around the Nam-river was relatively high. The farther toward the upper stream areas, the higher was the positive rate of C. sinensis infection, and most of clonorchiasis cases were lightly infected. The snail hosts of C. sinensis distributed all around the Nam-river. Several species of freshwater fish were infected with the metacercariae of C. sinensis and the infection rates were relatively high. To prevent C. sinensis infection in the endemic areas, the effective health education system is suggested as a control measure, although mass treatment is also expected to be useful, using chemotherapeutic agents such as "praziquantel", a recently developed anthelminthic for C. sinensis inftraction.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.452-458
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• 1999

Objectives: The authors conducted the study to evaluate bias when potentially diseased subjects were included in cohort members while analyzing risk factors of chronic liver diseases. Methods: Total of 14,529 subjects were followed up for the incidence of liver diseases from January 1993 to June 1997. We have used databases of insurance company with medical records, cancer registry, and death certificate data to identify 102 incident cases. The cohort members were classified into potentially diseased group(n=2,217) when they were HBsAg positive, serum GPT levels higher than 40 units, or had or has liver diseases in baseline surveys. Cox's model were used for potentially diseased group, other members, and total subjects, respectively. Results: The risk factors profiles were similar for total and potentially diseased subjects: HBsAg positivity, history of acute liver disease, and recent quittance of smoking or drinking increased the risk. while intake of pork and coffee decreased it. For the potentially diseased, obesity showed marginally significant protective effect. Analysis of subjects excluding the potentially diseased showed distinct profiles: obesity increased the risk, while quitting smoking or drinking had no association. For these intake of raw liver or processed fish or soybean paste stew increased risk; HBsAg positivity, higher levels of liver enzymes and history of acute liver diseases increased the risk. Conclusions: The results suggested the potential bias in risk ratio estimates when potentially diseased subjects were included in cohort study on chronic liver diseases, especially for lifestyles possibly modified after disease onset. The analytic strategy excluding potentially diseased subjects was considered appropriate for identifying risk factors for chronic liver diseases.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.215-229
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• 2020

Purpose: This study examines the attitude of South Korean adults toward food aid to North Korea and factors associated with it. Methods: An online survey involving 1,000 adults aged 19-69 years was conducted between September-October 2019. Throughout South Korea, the subjects were proportionally distributed with respect to gender, age, and region, to represent South Korean adults. Results: A total of 44.6% of the respondents agreed (Agreement group), 36.7% disagreed (Disagreement group), and 18.7% neither agreed nor disagreed to food aid to North Korea. Compared to the Disagreement group, the Agreement group had a higher concern of food aid to North Korea and a more positive perception on the effect of it. The Agreement group selected "direct assistance from the government" whereas the Disagreement group chose "support through international organizations" as the most appropriate channel for food aid to North Korea. Logistic regression analysis revealed that South Korean adults showing a more positive perception on the effect of food aid to North Korea were more likely to agree to the aid (odds ratio [OR], 19.32). Moreover, compared to the conservatives, the progressives were more likely to agree to food aid to North Korea (OR, 5.94). South Korean adults in their 40-50s were more likely to agree to food aid to North Korea than those in their 20-30s (OR, 2.81). South Korean adults with a higher concern of food aid to North Korea (OR, 3.93) and a greater positive perception on Korean unification (OR, 1.88) were more likely to agree to food aid to North Korea. Conclusion: The most important factor associated with the attitude of South Korean adults toward food aid to North Korea was their perception on the subsequent effect. As strategies to draw social consensus on food aid to North Korea, we recommend systematizing the monitoring process on the effect of providing food aid to North Korea and informing the public of the outcomes.