• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-40
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• 2022

PURPOSE: This study examined the effects of an exercise program for the thoracic spine and scapula rather than the neck, which is the primary site of pain. METHODS: Thirty-two elementary school teachers with a forward head posture (FHP) were assigned randomly to either the experimental group (n = 16) or the control group (n = 16). The experimental group performed scapular stabilization exercise (SSE) and thoracic extension exercise (TEE), and the control group performed cervical self-myofascial release exercise and stretching exercise. The pulmonary functions, pain, craniovertebral angle (CVA), and cervical range of motion (CROM) were measured before the intervention and six weeks after. RESULTS: The within-group comparisons showed that the VAS and CROM (except for extension) in both groups were significantly different before and after the intervention (p < .05). The changes in the maximum inspiratory pressure (MIP), maximum expiratory pressure (MEP), forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume at 1 sec (FEV1), and CVA were significant only in the experimental group (p < .05). The between-group comparisons showed a significant difference in the FVC, FEV1, VAS, CVA, and left lateral flexion (p < .05). CONCLUSION: The combination of SSE and TEE in the experimental group was more effective in improving the FHP and breathing ability. Moreover, the experimental group and control combination appeared to be effective in reducing pain and improving the CROM. The combination of SSE and TEE, which are exercises that do not target the cervical spine directly, was effective in improving the posture, respiration, neck pain, and CROM in elementary school teachers with FHP.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1055-1065
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• 2023

Recently, various studies using deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) technology have been conducted to solve complex problems using big data collected at industrial internet of things. Deep RL uses reinforcement learning"s trial-and-error algorithms and cumulative compensation functions to generate and learn its own data and quickly explore neural network structures and parameter decisions. However, studies so far have shown that the larger the size of the learning data is, the higher are the memory usage and search time, and the lower is the accuracy. In this study, model-agnostic learning for efficient federated deep RL was utilized to solve privacy invasion by increasing robustness as 55.9% and achieve 97.8% accuracy, an improvement of 5.5% compared with the comparative optimization-based meta learning models, and to reduce the delay time by 28.9% on average.

• Composites Research
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.416-421
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• 2023

Multifunctional composite materials capable of both load-carrying and energy functions are promising innovative candidates for the advancement of contemporary technologies owing to their relative feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and optimized performance. Carbon fiber (CF)-based structural batteries utilize the graphitic inherent structure to enable the employment of carbon fibers as electrodes, current collectors, and reinforcement, while the matrix system is an ion-conduction and load transfer medium. Although it is possible to enhance performance through the modification of constituents, there remains a need for a systematic design methodology scheme to streamline the commercialization of structural batteries. In this work, a bi-phasic epoxy-based ionic liquid (IL) modified structural battery electrolyte (SBE) was developed via thermally initiated phase separation. The polymer's morphological, mechanical, and electrochemical characteristics were studied. In addition, the interfacial shear strength (IFSS) between CF/SBE was investigated via microdroplet tests. The results accentuated the significance of considering IFSS and matrix plasticity in designing composite structural batteries. This approach is expected to lay the foundation for realizing smart structures with optimized performance while minimizing the need for extensive trial and error, by paving the way for a streamlined computational design scheme in the future.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.611-618
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• 2004

Background : Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis(IPF), a subtype of IIP(idiopathic interstitial pneumonia), is a fatal disease with a 3-5 year median survival. Many attempts at treating this condition have failed to demonstrate a survival benefit in IPF. Recently Ziesche et $al^{12}$ reported the efficacy of IFN-${\gamma}$ for treating IPF but there is still some controversy. The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of IFN-${\gamma}$ in patients with advanced IPF who had not been responsive to steroid and cytotoxic agents. Method : Nine patients with advanced IPF(age: $55.4{\pm}15.3$ years, Male: Female=8:1) were enrolled. One year treatment regime with 2 million IU of IFN-${\gamma}$ administered subcutaneously three times a week, and low dose prednisolone(10-30 mg/d) was also used. In the case of a definite aggravation and serious side effects, the IFN-${\gamma}$ was discontinued. During the IFN-${\gamma}$ trial, a pulmonary function test and chest radiography were checked every three month throughout the study. Result : 1) Among 9 patients, only 4 patients were able to complete the 12 month treatment with IFN-${\gamma}$, and 5 patients died during the treatment period. 2) No improvement either in the respiratory symptoms or pulmonary functions were observed any of the patients, even in those who completed the 12 months trial of IFN-${\gamma}$, 3) At the time of IFN-${\gamma}$ trial, the survivors who finished the IFN-${\gamma}$ treatment for 12 months had a higher oxygen level($81.3{\pm}2.8$ vs. $67.4{\pm}8.4$, P=0.024) and a better pulmonary function(FVC: $61.3{\pm}5.1$ % predicted vs. $45.7{\pm}12.3%$, P=0.048, and $D_Lco$: $45.0{\pm}5.0%$ predicted vs. $30.8{\pm}11.2%$, P=0.048) than the non-survivors. Conclusion : Our data suggested that IFN-${\gamma}$ therapy was not effective in the patients with advanced IPF refractory compared with other therapeutic agents. Furthermore, these results suggest that severe impairment of the pulmonary function and hypoxemia during the IFN-${\gamma}$ therapy requires special attention.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2012

Personalized smart devices such as smartphones and smart pads are widely used. Unlike traditional feature phones, theses smart devices allow users to choose a variety of functions, which support not only daily experiences but also business operations. Actually, there exist a huge number of applications accessible by smart device users in online and mobile application markets. Users can choose apps that fit their own tastes and needs, which is impossible for conventional phone users. With the increase in app demand, the tastes and needs of app users are becoming more diverse. To meet these requirements, numerous apps with diverse functions are being released on the market, which leads to fierce competition. Unlike offline markets, online markets have a limitation in that purchasing decisions should be made without experiencing the items. Therefore, online customers rely more on item-related information that can be seen on the item page in which online markets commonly provide details about each item. Customers can feel confident about the quality of an item through the online information and decide whether to purchase it. The same is true of online app markets. To win the sales competition against other apps that perform similar functions, app developers need to focus on writing app descriptions to attract the attention of customers. If we can measure the effect of app descriptions on sales without regard to the app's price and quality, app descriptions that facilitate the sale of apps can be identified. This study intends to provide such a quantitative result for app developers who want to promote the sales of their apps. For this purpose, we collected app details including the descriptions written in Korean from one of the largest app markets in Korea, and then extracted keywords from the descriptions. Next, the impact of the keywords on sales performance was measured through our econometric model. Through this analysis, we were able to analyze the impact of each keyword itself, apart from that of the design or quality. The keywords, comprised of the attribute and evaluation of each app, are extracted by a morpheme analyzer. Our model with the keywords as its input variables was established to analyze their impact on sales performance. A regression analysis was conducted for each category in which apps are included. This analysis was required because we found the keywords, which are emphasized in app descriptions, different category-by-category. The analysis conducted not only for free apps but also for paid apps showed which keywords have more impact on sales performance for each type of app. In the analysis of paid apps in the education category, keywords such as 'search+easy' and 'words+abundant' showed higher effectiveness. In the same category, free apps whose keywords emphasize the quality of apps showed higher sales performance. One interesting fact is that keywords describing not only the app but also the need for the app have asignificant impact. Language learning apps, regardless of whether they are sold free or paid, showed higher sales performance by including the keywords 'foreign language study+important'. This result shows that motivation for the purchase affected sales. While item reviews are widely researched in online markets, item descriptions are not very actively studied. In the case of the mobile app markets, newly introduced apps may not have many item reviews because of the low quantity sold. In such cases, item descriptions can be regarded more important when customers make a decision about purchasing items. This study is the first trial to quantitatively analyze the relationship between an item description and its impact on sales performance. The results show that our research framework successfully provides a list of the most effective sales key terms with the estimates of their effectiveness. Although this study is performed for a specified type of item (i.e., mobile apps), our model can be applied to almost all of the items traded in online markets.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.93-108
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• 2014

To support business decision making, interests and efforts to analyze and use transaction data in different perspectives are increasing. Such efforts are not only limited to customer management or marketing, but also used for monitoring and detecting fraud transactions. Fraud transactions are evolving into various patterns by taking advantage of information technology. To reflect the evolution of fraud transactions, there are many efforts on fraud detection methods and advanced application systems in order to improve the accuracy and ease of fraud detection. As a case of fraud detection, this study aims to provide effective fraud detection methods for auction exception agricultural products in the largest Korean agricultural wholesale market. Auction exception products policy exists to complement auction-based trades in agricultural wholesale market. That is, most trades on agricultural products are performed by auction; however, specific products are assigned as auction exception products when total volumes of products are relatively small, the number of wholesalers is small, or there are difficulties for wholesalers to purchase the products. However, auction exception products policy makes several problems on fairness and transparency of transaction, which requires help of fraud detection. In this study, to generate fraud detection rules, real huge agricultural products trade transaction data from 2008 to 2010 in the market are analyzed, which increase more than 1 million transactions and 1 billion US dollar in transaction volume. Agricultural transaction data has unique characteristics such as frequent changes in supply volumes and turbulent time-dependent changes in price. Since this was the first trial to identify fraud transactions in this domain, there was no training data set for supervised learning. So, fraud detection rules are generated using outlier detection approach. We assume that outlier transactions have more possibility of fraud transactions than normal transactions. The outlier transactions are identified to compare daily average unit price, weekly average unit price, and quarterly average unit price of product items. Also quarterly averages unit price of product items of the specific wholesalers are used to identify outlier transactions. The reliability of generated fraud detection rules are confirmed by domain experts. To determine whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, normal distribution and normalized Z-value concept are applied. That is, a unit price of a transaction is transformed to Z-value to calculate the occurrence probability when we approximate the distribution of unit prices to normal distribution. The modified Z-value of the unit price in the transaction is used rather than using the original Z-value of it. The reason is that in the case of auction exception agricultural products, Z-values are influenced by outlier fraud transactions themselves because the number of wholesalers is small. The modified Z-values are called Self-Eliminated Z-scores because they are calculated excluding the unit price of the specific transaction which is subject to check whether it is fraud transaction or not. To show the usefulness of the proposed approach, a prototype of fraud transaction detection system is developed using Delphi. The system consists of five main menus and related submenus. First functionalities of the system is to import transaction databases. Next important functions are to set up fraud detection parameters. By changing fraud detection parameters, system users can control the number of potential fraud transactions. Execution functions provide fraud detection results which are found based on fraud detection parameters. The potential fraud transactions can be viewed on screen or exported as files. The study is an initial trial to identify fraud transactions in Auction Exception Agricultural Products. There are still many remained research topics of the issue. First, the scope of analysis data was limited due to the availability of data. It is necessary to include more data on transactions, wholesalers, and producers to detect fraud transactions more accurately. Next, we need to extend the scope of fraud transaction detection to fishery products. Also there are many possibilities to apply different data mining techniques for fraud detection. For example, time series approach is a potential technique to apply the problem. Even though outlier transactions are detected based on unit prices of transactions, however it is possible to derive fraud detection rules based on transaction volumes.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.40 no.12
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• pp.1726-1733
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• 2011

We performed a randomized placebo-controlled trial to determine whether or not Ishige okamurae extract supplements modulate blood glucose and antioxidant systems in type 2 diabetic patients. A total of 46 patients were randomized to either an Ishige okamurae extract group or a placebo group. The patients consumed either 1,600 mg of Ishige okamurae extract or cornstarch supplement per day for 10 weeks. The lifestyle factors and dietary intake of patients were not altered during the 10 week trial period. After 10 weeks, the fasting blood glucose level was slightly decreased in the Ishige okamurae extract group, but a significant decrease was not observed. Also, glycosylated hemoglobin was significantly (p<0.01) decreased. Especially, low-glycosylated hemoglobin ($7.12{\pm}0.38%$ to $6.56{\pm}0.53%$) was significantly decreased compared to high-glycosylated hemoglobin ($8.65{\pm}0.92%$ to $8.60{\pm}0.85%$) in that group. The superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase levels were increased in the Ishige okamurae extract group compared to the placebo group. The increase of these enzymes was associated with the decrease of MDA concentration in the Ishige okamurae extract group, but a significant decrease was not observed. The Ishige okamurae extract supplement showed no adverse effects on liver and kidney functions. Findings from this study suggest that an Ishige okamurae extract supplement can help blood glucose status in type 2 diabetic patients without adverse effects.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.144-160
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• 2013

This study is a proposal, which is the trial to explicate, in neurology, on how critical thinking as a creative method of sciences functions. The creative methods of sciences, even at present, are mostly the hypothetical insistences concerning with the logical processes of researches suggested from the philosophers of science; Popper, Kuhn, Hempel, or Lakatos. These insistences do excavate what process or approach can be scoped out of scientists' creativity. I call the tendency or approach of the researches, "Process Approach of Creativity (PAC)". From my view point, any PAC trial does not concern with how creative theories can actually be invented. On the other hand, this study is focused on the philosophical thinking abilities of scientists who invented new great theories. They mostly had some experiences to study philosophy while studying their science fields, thus had critical thinking abilities on their studies. From my point of view, critical thinking in philosophy raised questions as to their fundamental and basic (old) concepts and principles, and thus gave them new creative theories. I will try to explain this from the point of neurophilosophy. From the perspectives coming from "the state space theory of representation" of Paul & Patricia Churchland, the pioneers of neurophilosphy, the "creative theories" are the networks of topographic maps giving new comprehensive explanations and predictions. From these perspectives, I presuppose that the attitude of critical questioning revises the old networks of maps with back-propagation or feedback, and thus, is the generative power of searching new networks of maps. From the presupposition, I can say, it is important that scientists reflect on the basic premises in their academic branches for issuing out extraordinary creativity. The critical attitude of philosophy can make scientists construct the maps of new conceptual scheme by shaking the maps of the old basic premises. From this context, I am able to propose "Critical Thinking Approach of Creativity (CTAC)".

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.29 no.10
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• pp.1470-1476
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• 2016

Octacosanol, which has prominent physiological activities and functions, has been recognized as a potential growth promoter in animals. A total of 392 1-d-old male Arbor Acres broiler chicks with similar body weight were randomly distributed into four dietary groups of seven replicates with 14 birds each supplemented with 0, 12, 24, or 36 mg octacosanol (extracted from rice bran, purity >92%)/kg feed. The feeding trial lasted for six weeks and was divided into the starter (day 1 to 21) and the grower (day 22 to 42) phases. The results showed that the feed conversion ratio (FCR) was significantly improved in broilers fed a diet containing 24 mg/kg octacosanol compared with those fed the control diet in the overall phase (day 1 to 42, p = 0.042). The average daily gain and FCR both showed linear effects in response to dietary supplementation of octacosanol during the overall phase (p = 0.031 and 0.018, respectively). Broilers fed with 24 or 36 mg/kg octacosanol diet showed a higher eviscerated yield, which increased by 5.88% and 4.26% respectively, than those fed the control diet (p = 0.030). The breast muscle yield of broilers fed with 24 mg/kg octacosanol diet increased significantly by 12.15% compared with those fed the control diet (p = 0.047). Eviscerated and breast muscle yield increased linearly with the increase in dietary octacosanol supplementation (p = 0.013 and 0.021, respectively). Broilers fed with 24 or 36 mg/kg octacosanol diet had a greater (p = 0.021) $pH_{45min}$ value in the breast muscle, which was maintained linearly in response to dietary octacosanol supplementation (p = 0.003). There was a significant decrease (p = 0.007) in drip loss value between the octacosanol-added and the control groups. The drip loss showed linear (p = 0.004) and quadratic (p = 0.041) responses with dietary supplementation of octacosanol. These studies indicate that octacosanol is a potentially effective and safe feed additive which may improve feed efficiency and meat quality, and increase eviscerated and breast muscle yield, in broiler chicks. Dietary supplementation of octacosanol at 24 mg/kg diet is regarded as the recommended dosage in the broilers' diet.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.19-25
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• 2008

Lipid soluble ginseng extract was administered by oral route in doses of 600 mg/patient daily in cancer patients over 2 months and 6 months. The administration of ginseng extract in cancer patients maintained the ratio of CD4/CD8 and number of the natural killer cell in the normal range during the administration period. Also its administration showed a positive effect on tumor values in 87.5% of patients in 2 month-group and in 50% of patients in 6 month-group, as determined by various cancer markers. Liver and kidney functions maintained normal condition during administration period of 6 months. Although there was no statistical significance, these data suggest that lipid soluble ginseng extract may be useful as an adjuvant therapeutic agent and nutritional supplement for the improvement of immune function and health in cancer patients. This study would provide the basis for the research in which the antitumor and immunopotential activity of lipid soluble ginseng extract for cancer patients are evaluated in formal clinical trial with statistically significant patient number.