• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.31-48
• /
• 2005

Purpose: Studies focus on cancer control, prevention, or assessment of psychosocial problems and intervention methods. However, few studies exist concerning psychosocial problems, measuring tools for those problems, and interventions for cancer patients in Korea. One of the purposes of this study was to review studies in this area, to examine various psychosocial problems experienced by cancer patients. This is a crucial area to investigate, since psychosocial problems in turn negatively influence the patients' immune function, which speeds the progress of the disease. Another goal was to identify instruments used to measure psychosocial functioning and problems in cancer patients, to analyze their validity and reliability, with the aim to discover the best instruments. A final goal was to explore and compare the effects of psychosocial interventions, to determine the most effective practices. Method: Journal articles published since 1995 were searched from PubMed Data base, Google search engine, and published cancer-related studies, using search keywords "psychosocial function and intervention for the cancer patients"; whole articles of selected references were reviewed and analyzed. Result: Most common psychosocial problems were depression, fatigue, nausea, pain, distress, resulting in a low quality of life. The seven scales found in the literature to assess the psychosocial functioning were Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Symptom Checklist 90-R, Profile of Mood States, Psychosocial Adjustment to Illness Scale, Brief Symptom Inventory, and SF-36 HRQOL(Health Related Quality of Life). Social support interventions for cancer patients were effective in improving quality of life scores. Conclusion: It is necessary to apply support intervention strategies to help cancer patients in Korea. These strategies can help to reduce the effects of psychosocial symptoms, which in turn affect the development and control of cancer. Strategies developed in Western countries may need to be modified for use within Korea. Further studies are warranted to review the support intervention strategies that were being used to for cancer patients

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
• /
• v.3 no.2 s.6
• /
• pp.1-27
• /
• 2003

Complexity paradigm is a scientific amalgam that aims to unite a range of theoretical perspectives and research agendas across natural and social sciences. Proponents of complexity paradigm lay claims to an increasing number of areas of study, including artificial life, interpersonal networks, internal/international patterning of organizations, mapping of cyberspace, etc. All of those can be subsumed under the title, 'complexity turn.' Owing to the idea of open system, complexity paradigm has developed a number of new concepts/themes/perspectives that help to account for the complex mechanism of living and non-living creatures. A complex system comprises a number of properties such as disequilibrium, nonlinearity, dissipative structure, self-organization fractal geometry, autopoiesis, coevolution. Following a brief introduction to theoretical development, those properties are succinctly discussed. The complexity turn has provided a wealth of insights that enable to analyze system operations of any kind. It contributes a lot to illuminating the working of social system as well. The most remarkable attempt may be Niklas Luhmann's 'neofunctional system theory.' Merits and shortcomings of complexity paradigm were examined and its future prospect were assessed with the conclusion that complexity paradigm would continue to be useful both as effective transdisciplinary framework and powerful analytical tool.

• Journal of Korean language education
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.53-82
• /
• 2014

This study aims to find the method to promote interaction in L2 classrooms. Active interaction between learner-to-learner and learner-to-teacher in L2 classroom plays an important role in language acquisition. In light of this, L2 classroom would benefit with the help of learning tools such as Clickers which helps learners to express their level of understanding during the process of learning itself. This is because the anonymity of Clickers allows learners to express their needs without the social risks associated with speaking up in the class. It allows for an evaluative feedback loop where both learners and teachers understand the level of progress of the learners, better enabling classrooms to adapt to the learners' needs. Eventually this tool promotes participation from learners, This is in turn, believed to be effective in fostering classroom interaction, allowing learning to take place in a more comfortable yet vibrant way. This study is finalized by presenting the result of an experiment conducted to verify the effectiveness of this approach when teaching pragmatic aspect of the Korean expressions with similar semantic functions. As a result of the research, the learning achievement of learners in the experimental group was found higher than the learners' in a control group. Analyzing the data collected from a questionnaire given to the learners, the study presented data suggesting that this approach increased the scope of interactivity in the classroom, thus enhancing more active participation among learners. This active participation in turn led to a marked improvement in their communicative abilities.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.77-86
• /
• 2012

In recent years, micro-blogging services such as 'Twitter' and 'Me2day' have rapidly become major social networking services. However, it is difficult to grasp the relationship between a user and his/her friends in these micro-blogging services because they simply list messages between them in chronological order. In this paper, we propose a visual analytics system that can help the user intuitively understand relationships with their friends on micro-blogging services by enabling them to analyze the messages quantitatively, qualitatively and temporally. In the visual analytics system, we also present a tool to provide the user with valuable advices after classifying the changing relation patterns with his/her friends, which in turn contributes to improving relationships with friends. The proposed system was successfully implemented as smartphone applications to show its potential to be a tool for analyses and improvement of social relations in micro-blogging services.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.53-67
• /
• 2017

Objective: The purpose of this study is to build basic data to systematically develop a hand function evaluation tool by determining the effects of age, gender and target force level on the difference in hand function according to the target force level. Background: Precise and objective evaluation of hand functionality is a very important factor in quantifying treatment progress in patients or elderly people, and in verifying treatment effects. However, most hand function evaluations lack objectivity and accuracy, and therefore it is difficult to properly treat patients according to the given situation. Method: Sixteen healthy subjects (eight elderly and eight young people) participated in this study to evaluate the effects of age, gender, and target force level on tracking performance through rRMSE in terms of the tracking force and actual exerted force, by carrying out a task of maintaining six different target force levels for 20 seconds. Results: The result of this experiment indicated that elderly people and women had a lower ability to maintain a certain level of force than young people and men by 16% and 10%, respectively. The target force level results showed that the tracking error of the lowest force level (5% MVC) was significantly higher than that of 15% MVC, which in turn showed a higher tracking error than that of the higher target force levels. Conclusion: The results of this study can thus be utilized to develop a rehabilitation program for elderly people or other patients. Application: The authors expect that the results of the present study will be valuable to develop a rehabilitation program and hand function evaluation tool.

• Physical Therapy Korea
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.46-54
• /
• 2016

Background: Rasch analysis estimates the probability that a respondent will endorse an item and select a particular rating for that item. It has the advantage of placing both the items and the person along a single ration scale and calibrates person ability and item difficulty onto an interval scale by logits. In addition, Rasch analysis is a useful tool for exploring the validity of questionnaires that have been developed using traditional methods. Therefore, it has been recommended as a method for developing and evaluating functional outcome measures. Objects: The purpose of this study was to investigate the item fit, item difficulty, and rating scale of the Korean version of the Fullerton Advanced Balance Scale (KFAB) using Rasch analysis. Methods: Total 97 subjects (39 males and 58 females) with dwelling elderly adults were participated, but 3 people were excluded for misfit persons. Rasch analysis was then done by means of the Winsteps program to determine the item fit, item difficulty, rating scale, and reliability of the KFAB. Results: In this study, the 'standing with feet together and eyes closed', 'two-footed jump', 'walk with head turns', and 'stand on foam, eyes closed' items shown misfit statistics. The most difficult item was 'stand on one leg', whereas the easiest item was 'turn in full circle'. The rating scale was acceptable with all criteria. Both item and person separation indices and reliability showed acceptable values. This would indicated that each domain covers a useful range of item difficulty that is appropriate for measuring a person with a wide range of functional ability. Conclusion: The KFAB has been proven reliable, valid and an appropriate tool with which to evaluate the balance of the elderly people.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.11B no.1
• /
• pp.35-44
• /
• 2004

Web contents created for desktop screens give rise to problems when they are to be displayed on the small screens of mobile terminals. While in some cases some of the objects of a page may not be displayable due to the lack of browser capability, the entire page may not be displayable due to the incompatibility with the browser in other cases. In this paper, we introduce a new mobile content adaptation approach based on web clipping, which transforms an original page into one that is optimally displayed on a mobile terminal. In this method, a source page is automatically clipped and transformed according to the clip specification made by the content provider using a clip editing tool. The clip editing tool allows the user to specify group clips, multi-level cups and dynamic clips as well as simple clips, and the presentation layout through a graphic user interface. Based on the clip specifications, each clip is transformed into an intermediate meta-language document, which in turn is transformed into a presentation page in the target markup language. Transcoding of image objects in major image file formats is also supported.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.72-111
• /
• 1996

Background: Group occupational health program by non-for-profit agency, started five years ago, for management of health problems in small and medium sized industries, is one of the measures to cope with limited human and financial resources in occupational health. The program has been rapidly expanding to include 54 participating institutions, private as well as public, all over the country. In spite of its potential impact on health of employees and practice of occupational health in small and medium sized industries, comprehensive evaluation in terms of quality has not been tried. Objectives : The aim of this study are to develop and apply criteria to assess quality of newly developed Korean group occupational health program. Methods : By defining occupational health services, in particular for small and medium sized industries, as one of the primary health care, we included followings as core elements of sound occupational health program; accessibility, continuity, intersectoral collaboration, comprehensiveness, community participation, technical quality, adequacy, focus on preventive services, acceptability, and workers' satisfaction. Again we divided each elements into five major components of national health system infrastructures developed by World Health Organization; development of health resources organized arrangement or resources, delivery of health care, economic support, and management. In turn, we categorized each component into input, process and outcome aspects. After discussions in expert panel, several criteria were selected for evaluation of program. The criteria were modified according to each group of interviewees. Results: We developed five sets of questionnaire that evaluate the quality of 'Group occupational health program'. Conclusion : The refining of the measurement tool and the continuing evaluation process for the 'Group occupational health institute' should be done further.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.327-340
• /
• 2015

General Circulation Models (GCMs) are the basic tool used for modelling climate. However, the spatio-temporal discrepancy between GCM and observed value, therefore, the models deliver output that are generally required calibration for applied studies. Which is generally done by Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) approach. Stochastic downscaling methods have been used extensively to generate long-term weather sequences from finite observed records. A primary objective of this study is to develop a forecasting scheme which is able to make use of a MME of different GCMs. This study employed a Nonstationary Hidden Markov Chain Model (NHMM) as a main tool for downscaling seasonal ensemble forecasts over 3 month period, providing daily forecasts. Our results showed that the proposed downscaling scheme can provide the skillful forecasts as inputs for hydrologic modeling, which in turn may improve water resources management. An application to the Nakdong watershed in South Korea illustrates how the proposed approach can lead to potentially reliable information for water resources management.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.10B no.5
• /
• pp.491-496
• /
• 2003

We present a new watermark design tool for digital images and digital videos that are based on human visual system (HVS) characteristics. In this tool, basic mechanisms (inhibitory and excitatory behaviour of cells) of HVS are used to determine image dependent upper bound values on watermark insertion. This allows us to insert maximai allowable transparent watermark, which in turn is extremely hard to attack with common image processing, Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) compression. As the number of details (e.g. edges) increases in an image, the HVS decrease its sensitivity to the details. In the same manner, as the number of motion increases in a video signal, the HVS decrease its sensitivity to the motions. We model this decreased sensitivity to the details and motions as an (motion) entropy masking. Entropy masking model can be efficiently used to increase the robustness of image and video watermarks. We have shown that our entropy-masking model provides watermark scheme with increased transparency and henceforth increased robustness.