• Title/Summary/Keyword: System Improvement

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TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS OF MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS IN STUDENTS AND PSYCHIATRIC CONSULTATIONS (학생들의 정신건강문제와 정신과 의뢰에 대한 교사의 인식도 조사)

  • Kwak, Young-Sook;Chun, Ja-Sung
    • Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.82-90
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    • 1998
  • This study is attempted to examine Korean teachers’ perceptions of mental health problems in students and their attitudes towards psychiatric consultations through a questionnaire survey. The results of this study are as follows. 1) Teachers thought that 5.3% of their students had mental health problems, 1.9% of students required psychiatric evaluation, and 1.2% of students were referred or recommended psychiatric evaluation by their teachers. 2) The most frequent mental health problems in students discovered by teachers were distractibility and inattention, lack of academic skills, and language difficulties in elementary schools;distractibility and inattention, conduct problems, and lack of academic skills in middle schools;and conduct problems, distractibility and inattention, physical symptoms, and substance abuse in high schools. 3) Teachers thought the mental health problems in students were caused by the family environment, psychological factors, the educational system, and a lack of mental health services. 4) Teachers desired smaller classes, improvement of the school environment, more time, regular mental health education, a special program for students with mental health problems, and the counseling staffs or consultants for the school mental health. 5) Teachers consulted with other teachers, the parents of the students, the counseling teachers, the health care teachers, the counseling institutes, the psychiatric clinics, and the principals in descending order to handle the hard case problems. The frequent reasons for failing in psychiatric consultations were the prejudice of parents against psychiatric services, the teachers’ sense of superiority in dealing with the problems of students, the prejudice of teachers themselves against psychiatric practice, and inaccessible professional consultation. 6) About 20.4% of teachers reported they had proposed psychiatric consultations or had recommended their students to receive psychiatric evaluations.

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Improvement of the Dose Calculation Accuracy Using MVCBCT Image Processing (Megavoltage Cone-Beam CT 영상의 변환을 이용한 선량 계산의 정확성 향상)

  • Kim, Min-Joo;Cho, Woong;Kang, Young-Nam;Suh, Tae-Suk
    • Progress in Medical Physics
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.62-69
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    • 2012
  • The dose re-calculation process using Megavoltage cone-beam CT images is inevitable process to perform the Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART). The purpose of this study is to improve dose re-calculation accuracy using MVCBCT images by applying intensity calibration method and three dimensional rigid body transform and filtering process. The three dimensional rigid body transform and Gaussian smoothing filtering process to MVCBCT Rando phantom images was applied to reduce image orientation error and the noise of the MVCBCT images. Then, to obtain the predefined modification level for intensity calibration, the cheese phantom images from kilo-voltage CT (kV CT), MVCBCT was acquired. From these cheese phantom images, the calibration table for MVCBCT images was defined from the relationship between Hounsfield Units (HUs) of kV CT and MVCBCT images at the same electron density plugs. The intensity of MVCBCT images from Rando phantom was calibrated using the predefined modification level as discussed above to have the intensity of the kV CT images to make the two images have the same intensity range as if they were obtained from the same modality. Finally, the dose calculation using kV CT, MVCBCT with/without intensity calibration was applied using radiation treatment planning system. As a result, the percentage difference of dose distributions between dose calculation based on kVCT and MVCBCT with intensity calibration was reduced comparing to the percentage difference of dose distribution between dose calculation based on kVCT and MVCBCT without intensity calibration. For head and neck, lung images, the percentage difference between kV CT and non-calibrated MVCBCT images was 1.08%, 2.44%, respectively. In summary, our method has quantitatively improved the accuracy of dose calculation and could be a useful solution to enhance the dose calculation accuracy using MVCBCT images.

The Sympathetic Skin Responses after Thoracic Sympathicotomy for Patients with Palmar Hyperhidrosis (수장부 다한증환자의 흉부 교감신경절단술후 교감신경 피부반응)

  • 김오곤;홍종면;이석재;홍장수;이광래;김상규
    • Journal of Chest Surgery
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    • v.32 no.6
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    • pp.579-583
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    • 1999
  • Background: Thoracic sympathicotomy has been used safely and successfully to manage palmar hyperhidrosis. The preoperative and postoperative recording of Sympathetic Skin Responses(SSR) was performed for objective evaluation and follow-up of thoracic sympathicotomy in hyperhidrosis patients, and also for ascertaining the clinical usefullness of SSR. Material and Method: The recording of SSR was performed on 15 patients suffering from palmar hyperhidrosis with Medelec Sapphire Plus electromyogragh before and after thoracic sympathicotomy. Eletrical stimuli on the right median nerve was made in patients in supine position and results were recorded on right and left palms with soles at the same time by 4 channels. Skin temperatures were also monitored simultaneously. T2,3 sympathicotomy was performed with VATS in every patients. SSR was done in 2 patients one month later. Result: Clinically, all patients had symptomatic improvement with satisfaction. Postoperative complication was small amount of residual pneumothorax in 5 patients but it was absorbed sponteneously. There was no recurrence during follow-up period and ten patients(66%) complained compensatory hyperhidrosis. After operation, SSR change was shown in every 15 patients. Abolition of SSR on both palms was achieved in 12 patients(80%) and on both soles in 6 patients. In the other 3 patients, the latencies were significantly delayed and the amplitudes were significantly reduced at both palms and soles. In two patients who were examined at one month later after operation, similar results with postoperative SSRs were shown. The skin temperature on preoperative both palm and sole were lower than normal temperature, and those on postoperative both palm and sole were increased. Those had statistical significance(p<0.05), and the temperature on the palm was increased higher that than on the sole. Conclusion: After thoracic sympathicotomy was performed on palmar hyperhidrosis patients, an increment of skin temperatures and SSR changes were achieved at both palms and soles of all patients. Palmar SSRs were completely abolished in 12 patients(80%), and similar results of postoperative SSRs were achieved. The recording of SSR may be useful to easily and objectively assess the completeness of sympathicotomy and the follow-up of recurrence in hyperhidrosis patients.

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An Embedding /Extracting Method of Audio Watermark Information for High Quality Stereo Music (고품질 스테레오 음악을 위한 오디오 워터마크 정보 삽입/추출 기술)

  • Bae, Kyungyul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.21-35
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    • 2018
  • Since the introduction of MP3 players, CD recordings have gradually been vanishing, and the music consuming environment of music users is shifting to mobile devices. The introduction of smart devices has increased the utilization of music through music playback, mass storage, and search functions that are integrated into smartphones and tablets. At the time of initial MP3 player supply, the bitrate of the compressed music contents generally was 128 Kbps. However, as increasing of the demand for high quality music, sound quality of 384 Kbps appeared. Recently, music content of FLAC (Free License Audio Codec) format using lossless compression method is becoming popular. The download service of many music sites in Korea has classified by unlimited download with technical protection and limited download without technical protection. Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology is used as a technical protection measure for unlimited download, but it can only be used with authenticated devices that have DRM installed. Even if music purchased by the user, it cannot be used by other devices. On the contrary, in the case of music that is limited in quantity but not technically protected, there is no way to enforce anyone who distributes it, and in the case of high quality music such as FLAC, the loss is greater. In this paper, the author proposes an audio watermarking technology for copyright protection of high quality stereo music. Two kinds of information, "Copyright" and "Copy_free", are generated by using the turbo code. The two watermarks are composed of 9 bytes (72 bits). If turbo code is applied for error correction, the amount of information to be inserted as 222 bits increases. The 222-bit watermark was expanded to 1024 bits to be robust against additional errors and finally used as a watermark to insert into stereo music. Turbo code is a way to recover raw data if the damaged amount is less than 15% even if part of the code is damaged due to attack of watermarked content. It can be extended to 1024 bits or it can find 222 bits from some damaged contents by increasing the probability, the watermark itself has made it more resistant to attack. The proposed algorithm uses quantization in DCT so that watermark can be detected efficiently and SNR can be improved when stereo music is converted into mono. As a result, on average SNR exceeded 40dB, resulting in sound quality improvements of over 10dB over traditional quantization methods. This is a very significant result because it means relatively 10 times improvement in sound quality. In addition, the sample length required for extracting the watermark can be extracted sufficiently if the length is shorter than 1 second, and the watermark can be completely extracted from music samples of less than one second in all of the MP3 compression having a bit rate of 128 Kbps. The conventional quantization method can extract the watermark with a length of only 1/10 compared to the case where the sampling of the 10-second length largely fails to extract the watermark. In this study, since the length of the watermark embedded into music is 72 bits, it provides sufficient capacity to embed necessary information for music. It is enough bits to identify the music distributed all over the world. 272 can identify $4*10^{21}$, so it can be used as an identifier and it can be used for copyright protection of high quality music service. The proposed algorithm can be used not only for high quality audio but also for development of watermarking algorithm in multimedia such as UHD (Ultra High Definition) TV and high-resolution image. In addition, with the development of digital devices, users are demanding high quality music in the music industry, and artificial intelligence assistant is coming along with high quality music and streaming service. The results of this study can be used to protect the rights of copyright holders in these industries.

A Study on the Evaluative Models and Indicators for Diagnosis of Urban Visual Landscape - Focusing on Seoul City - (도시경관 진단을 위한 평가모델 및 지표개발 연구 - 서울시를 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Seung-Ju;Im, Seung-Bin
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.37 no.1
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    • pp.78-86
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    • 2009
  • Recently, there seems to besome problems in the urban visual landscape as a result of continuous economic growth and industrial development. At the same time, the public has begun to be aware of the importance of visual resources, and the necessity for visual landscape conservation and improvement. Therefore, the development of evaluative indicators for systematic visual landscape planning and design is urgent. The purpose ofthis study is to discover evaluative models and indicators for the diagnosis of urban visual landscapes. This study included the selection of 18 physical indicators(statistical data) by literature reviews, adoption of field and questionnaire surveys at 12 autonomous districts in Seoul and surrounding major mountain valleys and river streams(i.e. Mt. Nam and Han-River). The content of the questionnaire is scenic beauty. Moreover, the linear regression analysis between the scenic beauty mean scores and the physical indicator scores figure out the scenic beauty prediction model. As this study suggests, the most important indicators in urban visual landscapes are 'Greens', 'Park' and 'the number of apartment buildings(higher than 20 stories).' Based on the results, greens and parks should be priority elements to considerin urban landscape planning and design. Moreover, since the number of apartment buildings that are higher than 20 stories has a negative correlation with the scenic beauty score, it can be used as basic data for landscape planning. For the scenic beauty prediction models and evaluative indicators suggest a direction of urban management, each indicator becomes basic data for visual landscape planning and design. In following studies, if physical indicators and case studies are added, the scenic beauty prediction models and evaluative indicators could be more synthetic and systematic. Moreover, the development of physical indicators in three dimensions(3D)(i.e. results from visual district analysis, view surface analysis) could be expected to obtain more general and varied results.

Developing a Project and Program Management Capability Assessment System for the Korean Construction Management Firms (국내 CM 기업의 프로젝트 및 프로그램 관리역량 평가를 위한 자가 역량 평가 시스템 개발)

  • Choi, Jaehyun;Son, Jaeho;Kim, Jihye
    • Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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    • v.16 no.1
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    • pp.3-14
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    • 2015
  • Since the global financial crisis, the Korean domestic construction market has continuously experienced downturns, and the Korean domain construction firms'profitability has been persistently deteriorated. Domestic construction firms have rapidly advanced to overseas markets exclusively for the construction contract packages. However, the profitability for the construction contracts has been lower compared to engineering or project management contracts. One of the critical issues the Korean firms have faced was project management capability across all phases in project execution. Even though several project management capability assessment tools were introduced, most tools were applicable to a wide variety of industry sectors rather than construction industry. Project management capability assessment tool specifically applicable to domestic CM firms was developed through this research, in order to assess project and program management capabilities and improve the competitiveness in overseas market Also, the correlation between project, programs, and the CM infrastructure were identified. The CM firms were divided into two groups according to the size of the business, and both were evaluated at the project and the program level based for the 9 different criteria. The project management capability assessment tool developed for the CM firms can be used for self-assessment to distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of each company at the project and program level. In addition, the current status of each group can be identified by spotting improvement areas for the management capabilities.

Improvement of Radar Rainfall Estimation Using Radar Reflectivity Data from the Hybrid Lowest Elevation Angles (혼합 최저고도각 반사도 자료를 이용한 레이더 강우추정 정확도 향상)

  • Lyu, Geunsu;Jung, Sung-Hwa;Nam, Kyung-Yeub;Kwon, Soohyun;Lee, Cheong-Ryong;Lee, Gyuwon
    • Journal of the Korean earth science society
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    • v.36 no.1
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    • pp.109-124
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    • 2015
  • A novel approach, hybrid surface rainfall (KNU-HSR) technique developed by Kyungpook Natinal University, was utilized for improving the radar rainfall estimation. The KNU-HSR technique estimates radar rainfall at a 2D hybrid surface consistings of the lowest radar bins that is immune to ground clutter contaminations and significant beam blockage. Two HSR techniques, static and dynamic HSRs, were compared and evaluated in this study. Static HSR technique utilizes beam blockage map and ground clutter map to yield the hybrid surface whereas dynamic HSR technique additionally applies quality index map that are derived from the fuzzy logic algorithm for a quality control in real time. The performances of two HSRs were evaluated by correlation coefficient (CORR), total ratio (RATIO), mean bias (BIAS), normalized standard deviation (NSD), and mean relative error (MRE) for ten rain cases. Dynamic HSR (CORR=0.88, BIAS= $-0.24mm\;hr^{-1}$, NSD=0.41, MRE=37.6%) shows better performances than static HSR without correction of reflectivity calibration bias (CORR=0.87, BIAS= $-2.94mm\;hr^{-1}$, NSD=0.76, MRE=58.4%) for all skill scores. Dynamic HSR technique overestimates surface rainfall at near range whereas it underestimates rainfall at far ranges due to the effects of beam broadening and increasing the radar beam height. In terms of NSD and MRE, dynamic HSR shows the best results regardless of the distance from radar. Static HSR significantly overestimates a surface rainfall at weaker rainfall intensity. However, RATIO of dynamic HSR remains almost 1.0 for all ranges of rainfall intensity. After correcting system bias of reflectivity, NSD and MRE of dynamic HSR are improved by about 20 and 15%, respectively.

A Study on Practices and Improvement Factors of Financial Disclosures in early stages of IFRS Adoption - An Integrative Approach of Korean Cases: Embracing Views of Reporting Entities and Users of Financial Statements (IFRS 공시 실태 개선방안에 대한 소고 - 보고기업, 정보이용자 요인을 고려한 통합적 접근 -)

  • Kim, Hee-Suk
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.113-127
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    • 2012
  • From the end of 1st quarter of 2012, Korean mandatory firms had started releasing financial reports conforming to the K-IFRS(Korean adopted International Financial Reporting Standards). Major characteristics of IFRS, such as 'principles based' features, consolidated reporting, 'fair value' measurement, increased pressure for non-financial disclosures have resulted in brief and various disclosure practices regarding the main body of each statements and vast amount of note description requirements. Meanwhile, a host of previous studies on IFRS disclosures have incorporated regulatory and/or 'compete information' perspectives, mainly focusing on suggesting further enforcement of strengthened requirements and providing guidelines for specific treatments. Thus, as an extension of prior findings and suggestions this study had explored to conduct an integrative approach embracing views of the reporting entities and the users of financial information. In spite of all the state-driven efforts for faithful representation and comparability of corporate financial reports, an overhaul of disclosure practices of fiscal year 2010 and 2011 had revealed numerous cases of insufficiency and discordance in terms of mandatory norms and market expectations. As to the causes of such shortcomings, this study identified several factors from the corporate side and the users of the information; some inherent aspects of IFRS, industry/corporate-specific context, expenditures related to internalizing IFRS system, reduced time frame for presentation. lack of clarity and details to meet the quality of information - understandability, comparability etc. - commonly requested by the user group. In order to improve current disclosure practices, dual approach had been suggested; Firstly, to encourage and facilitate implementation, (1) further segmentation and differentiation of mandates among companies, (2) redefining the scope and depth of note descriptions, (3) diversification and coordination of reporting periods, (4) providing support for equipping disclosure systems and granting incentives for best practices had been discussed. Secondly, as for the hard measures, (5) regularizing active involvement of corporate and user group delegations in the establishment and amendment process of K-IFRS (6) enforcing detailed and standardized disclosure on reporting entities had been recommended.

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Improvement of Heat Pump Heating Performance by Selective Heat Storage Using Air Heat of Inside and Outside Greenhouse (온실 내외부 공기열의 선택적 축열에 의한 히트펌프 난방성능 개선)

  • Kwon, Jin Kyung;Kim, Seung Hee;Jeon, Jong Gil;Kang, Youn Koo;Jang, Kab Yeol
    • Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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    • v.26 no.4
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    • pp.353-360
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    • 2017
  • In this study, the design and performance test of the air to water heat pump capable of producing hot water for greenhouse heating by using the surplus solar heat inside the greenhouse and the air heat outside greenhouse as the selective heat source were conducted. The heat storage operations using the surplus solar heat and the outside air heat were designed to be switched according to the setting temperature of the greenhouse in consideration of the optimum temperature range of the crop. In the developed system, it was possible to automatically control the switching of heat storage operation, heating and ventilation by setting 12 reference temperatures on the control panel. In the selective heat storage operation with the surplus solar heat and outside air heat, the temperature of thermal storage tank was controlled variably from $35^{\circ}C$ to $52^{\circ}C$ according to the heat storage rate and heating load. The heat storage operation times using the surplus solar heat and outside air heat were 23.1% and 30.7% of the experimental time respectively and the heat pump pause time was 46.2%. COP(coefficient of performance) of the heat pump of the heat storage operation using the surplus solar heat and outside air heat were 3.83 and 2.77 respectively and was 3.24 for whole selective heat storage operation. For the comparative experiment, the heat storage operation using the outside air heat only was performed under the condition that the temperature of the thermal storage tank was controlled constantly from 50 to $52^{\circ}C$, and COP was analyzed to be 2.33. As a result, it was confirmed that the COP of the heat storage operation using the surplus solar heat and outside air heat as selective heat source and the variable temperature control of the thermal storage tank was 39% higher than that of the general heat storage operation using the outside air heat only and the constant temperature control of the thermal storage tank.

The Evaluation of Image Correction Methods for SPECT/CT in Various Radioisotopes with Different Energy Levels (SPECT/CT에서 서로 다른 에너지의 방사성동위원소 사용시 영상보정기법의 유용성 평가)

  • Shin, Byung Ho;Kim, Seung Jeong;Yun, Seok Hwan;Kim, Tae Yeop;Lim, Jung Jin;Woo, Jae Ryong;Oh, So Won;Kim, Yu Kyeong
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.53-58
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    • 2013
  • Purpose: To optimize correction method for SPECT/CT, image quality consisting of resolution and contrast was evaluated using three radioisotopes ($^{99m}Tc$, $^{201}Tl$ and $^{131}I$) and three different correction methods; attenuation correction (AC), scatter correction (SC) and both attenuation and scatter correction (ACSC). Materials and Methods: Images were acquired with a SPECT/CT scanner and a conventional CT protocol with an OESM reconstruction algorithm (2 iterations and 10 subsets). For resolution measurement, fixed radioactivity (2.22 kBq) was infused into a spatial resolution phantom and full width at half maximum (FWHM) was measured using a vendor-provided software. For contrast evaluation, radioactive source with a ratio of 1:8 to background was filled in a Flanged Jaszczak phantom and percent contrast (%) were calculated. All the parameters for image quality were compared with non-correction (NC) method. Results: As compared with NC, image resolution of all three isotopes were significantly improved by AC and ACSC, not by SC. In particular, ACSC showed better resolution than AC alone for $^{99m}Tc$ and $^{201}Tl$. Image contrast of all three radioisotopes in a sphere with the largest diameter were enhanced by all correction methods. ACSC showed the highest contrast in all three radioisotopes, which was the most accurate in $^{99m}Tc$ (85.9%). Conclusion: Image quality of SPECT/CT was improved in all the radioisotopes by CT-based attenuation correction methods, except SC alone. SC failed to improve resolution in any radioisotopes, but it was effective in contrast enhancement. ACSC would be the best correction method as it improved resolution in radioisotopes with low energy levels and contrast in radioisotope with low energy levels. However, in radioisotope with high energy level, AC would be better than ACSC for resolution improvement.

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