• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.116-127
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• 1998

Background: The natural course of sarcoidosis is variable from spontaneous remission to significant morbidity or death. So the assessment of disease activity is important but no single parameter was generally accepted as a good marker. Recently several studies suggested that adhesion molecules, especially ICAM-1 can be a marker, but there are some controversies. And only few data are available about the relationship of ICAM-1 with clinical follow-up course. Methods: We measured the expression of adhesion molecules on BAL cells by flow cytometry and the level of soluble ICAM-1(sICAM-1) in serum and BALF at the time of diagnosis in 12 patients with active disease and 7 inactive sarcoidosis(5 male, 14 female, mean age: $39.4{\pm}10.7$ years, mean follow-up : $20{\pm}15$ months). Follow-up clinical course were compared with the changes in serum sICAMA-1 level and the adhesion molecule on BAL cells. Results: In the patients with active disease, the ICAM-1 on AM(RMFI: $3.68{\pm}1.71$) and sICAM-1 level in serum($582{\pm}193$ng/ml) and BAL fluid($47.8{\pm}16.5$ng/ml) were all higher than those of 7 inactive disease(RMFI: $1.89{\pm}0.75$, p=0.0298, serum: $294{\pm}117$ ng/ml, p=0.0049, BALF: $20.9{\pm}8.3$ ng/ml). In the active sarcoidosis, ICAM-1 on AM(RMFI : $1.51{\pm}0.84$) and serum sICAM-1 were decreased after the therapy($250{\pm}147$ ng/ml) but no significant change was noted in inactive disease. Also we found the initial ICAM-1 on AM and serum sICAM-1 had a significant correlation with the degree of improvement in PFT after the therapy. During the follow-up, the disease relapsed in 4 patients after the discontinuation of steroid and the serum sICAM-1 level went-up again at the time of relapse. Conclusion: Our data suggest that the serum sICAM-1 level and the ICAM-1 expression on AM can be a good marker of disease activity and also a predictor of outcome in sarcoidosis.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.43-65
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• 2010

Facing a complex environment driven by a decade, many companies are adopting new strategic frameworks such as Customer Relationship Management system to achieve sustainable profitability as well as overcome serious competition for survival. In many business areas, CRM system advanced a great deal in a matter of continuous compensating the defect and overall integration. However, pharmaceutical companies in Korea were slow to accept them for usesince they still have a tendency of holding fast to traditional way of sales and marketing based on individual networks of sales representatives. In the circumstance, this article tried to empirically address current status of CRM system as well as the effects of the system on the performance of pharmaceutical companies by applying BSC method's four perspectives, from financial, customer, learning and growth and internal process. Survey by e-mail and post to employers and employees who were working in pharma firms were undergone for the purpose. Total 113 cases among collected 140 ones were used for the statistical analysis by SPSS ver. 15 package. Reliability, Factor analysis, regression were done. This study revealed that CRM system had a significant effect on improving financial and non-financial performance of pharmaceutical companies as expected. Proposed regression model fits well and among them, CRM marketing information system shed the light on substantial impact on companies' outcome given profitability, growth and investment. Useful analytical information by CRM marketing information system appears to enable pharmaceutical firms to set up effective marketing and sales strategies, these result in favorable financial performance by enhancing values for stakeholderseventually, not to mention short-term profit and/or mid-term potential to growth. CRM system depicted its influence on not only financial performance, but also non-financial fruit of pharmaceutical companies. Further analysis for each component showed that CRM marketing information system were able to demonstrate statistically significant effect on the performance like the result of financial outcome. CRM system is believed to provide the companies with efficient way of customers managing by valuable standardized business process prompt coping with specific customers' needs. It consequently induces customer satisfaction and retentionto improve performance for long period. That is, there is a virtuous circle for creating value as the cornerstone for sustainable growth. However, the research failed to put forward to evidence to support hypothesis regarding favorable influence of CRM sales representative's records assessment system and CRM customer analysis system on the management performance. The analysis is regarded to reflect the lack of understanding of sales people and respondents between actual work duties and far-sighted goal in strategic analysis framework. Ordinary salesmen seem to dedicate short-term goal for the purpose of meeting sales target, receiving incentive bonus in a manner-of-fact style, as such, they tend to avail themselves of personal network and sales and promotional expense rather than CRM system. The study finding proposed a link between CRM information system and performance. It empirically indicated that pharmaceutical companies had been implementing CRM system as an effective strategic business framework in order for more balanced achievements based on the grounded understanding of both CRM system and integrated performance. It suggests a positive impact of supportive CRM system on firm performance, especially for pharmaceutical industry through the initial empirical evidence. Also, it brings out unmet needs for more practical system design, improvement of employees' awareness, increase of system utilization in the field. On the basis of the insight from this exploratory study, confirmatory research by more appropriate measurement tool and increased sample size should be further examined.

• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.435-444
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• 2016

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of natural preservatives (G3, G3-1, F3, and F3-1) using Cordyceps militaris on improvement of food quality and safety of noodle during storage. Wheat flour noodle were prepared using three different concentrations of natural preservatives (0.100, 0.200, and 0.400%). Changes in microbial populations, pH value, titratable acidity, and sensory evaluation were measured during storage at $12{\pm}2^{\circ}C$ for 3 days. Overall, use of natural preservatives resulted in lower levels of total mesophilic bacteria, coliform, yeast and mold in noodle compared to the control. In particular, natural preservatives using $2{\times}$ MIC concentrations (0.400%) of F3 and F3-1 were effective at maintaining levels of total mesophilic bacteria for noodle during storage. The pH values of noodle made with F3 and F3-1 were higher than the others. The titratable acidity of noodle with natural preservatives did not significantly change during storage. In sensory evaluation, appearance, color, and overall acceptability of noodle with F3 and F3-1 were preferred than the control. These results could provide useful information for developing an alternative preservation method to improve food quality and shelf-life of noodle using natural preservatives.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.269-278
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• 2012

Aquaplast Thermoplastic (AT) is a tissue-equivalent oral compensator that has been developed to improve dose uniformity at the common boundary and around the treated area during radiotherapy in patients with head and neck cancer. In order to assess the usefulness of AT, the degree of improvement in dose distribution and physical properties were compared to those of oral compensators made using paraffin, alginate, and putty, which are materials conventionally used in dental imprinting. To assess the physical properties, strength evaluations (compression and drop evaluations) and natural deformation evaluations (volume change over time) were performed; a Gafchromic EBT2 film and a glass dosimeter inserted into a developed phantom for dose verification were used to measure the common boundary dose and the beam profile to assess the dose delivery. When the natural deformation of the oral compensators was assessed over a two-month period, alginate exhibited a maximum of 80% change in volume from moisture evaporation, while the remaining tissue-equivalent properties, including those of AT, showed a change in volume that was less than 3%. In a free-fall test at a height of 1.5 m (repeated 5 times as a strength evaluation), paraffin was easily damaged by the impact, but AT exhibited no damage from the fall. In compressive strength testing, AT was not destroyed even at 8 times the force needed for paraffin. In dose verification using a glass dosimeter, the results showed that in a single test, the tissue-equivalent (about 80 Hounsfield Units [HU]) AT delivered about 4.9% lower surface dose in terms of delivery of an output coefficient (monitor unit), which was 4% lower than putty and exhibited a value of about 1,000 HU or higher during a dose delivery of the same formulation. In addition, when the incident direction of the beam was used as a reference, the uniformity of the dose, as assessed from the beam profile at the boundary after passing through the oral compensators, was 11.41, 3.98, and 4.30 for air, AT, and putty, respectively. The AT oral compensator had a higher strength and lower probability of material transformation than the oral compensators conventionally used as a tissue-equivalent material, and a uniform dose distribution was successfully formed at the boundary and surrounding area including the mouth. It was also possible to deliver a uniformly formulated dose and reduce the skin dose delivery.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.31-39
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• 2009

Purpose : This study proposes the keyhole method in order to improve the time resolution of the proton resonance frequency(PRF) MR temperature monitoring technique. The values of Root Mean Square (RMS) error of measured temperature value and Signal-to-Noise Ratio(SNR) obtained from the keyhole and full phase encoded temperature images were compared. Materials and Methods : The PRF method combined with GRE sequence was used to get MR temperature images using a clinical 1.5T MR scanner. It was conducted on the tissue-mimic 2% agarose gel phantom and swine's hock tissue. A MR compatible coaxial slot antenna driven by microwave power generator at 2.45GHz was used to heat the object in the magnetic bore for 5 minutes followed by a sequential acquisition of MR raw data during 10 minutes of cooling period. The acquired raw data were transferred to PC after then the keyhole images were reconstructed by taking the central part of K-space data with 128, 64, 32 and 16 phase encoding lines while the remaining peripheral parts were taken from the 1st reference raw data. The RMS errors were compared with the 256 full encoded self-reference temperature image while the SNR values were compared with the zero filling images. Results : As phase encoding number at the center part on the keyhole temperature images decreased to 128, 64, 32 and 16, the RMS errors of the measured temperature increased to 0.538, 0.712, 0.768 and 0.845$^{\circ}C$, meanwhile SNR values were maintained as the phase encoding number of keyhole part is reduced. Conclusion : This study shows that the keyhole technique is successfully applied to temperature monitoring procedure to increases the temporal resolution by standardizing the matrix size, thus maintained the SNR values. In future, it is expected to implement the MR real time thermal imaging using keyhole method which is able to reduce the scan time with minimal thermal variations.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.126-134
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• 2015

Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fischer is one of the most commonly used herbs. Recently, the stem and leave of the plant have been interested in physiological activities because the aerial parts have been thrown away. Finding out cultivation method of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fischer to improve chemical ingredients and biological activities has been tried these days. In this study, different wavelengths of light emitting diode (LED) were used for a cultivation of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fischer. Antioxidant activities and inhibitory effect on mutagenecity of samples were evaluated. The stem and leave cultivated under blue light (BL-0) showed the strongest antioxidant activities of $3.02{\pm}0.13{\mu}g/ml$ ($EC_{50}$) and $2.18{\pm}0.18{\mu}g/ml$ ($EC_{50}$) in DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging test, respectively. Total phenolic content of BL-0 was $2.93{\pm}0.11g/100g$, the highest value between cultivation conditions. However, antioxidant activities of the stem and leave cultivated under red light were the weakest between samples. All of the stem and leave used in this study showed inhibitory effect on mutagenecity of 1-nitropyrene. BL-0 showed stronger inhibitory effects on mutagenicity of Trp-P-1, Trp-P-2, and AFB1 than samples cultivated under other conditions. Only on mutagenecity of 2-aminoanthracene, the stem and leave cultivated at 1 m apart from red light (RL-1) showed the strongest inhibitory effect. These results indicate that blue LED might be the most effective condition for improvement of physiological activities for the aerial parts of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fischer in cultivation. The components were identified with GC/MS. Cytidine was detected only in RL-1 at 25 min of retention time and 2-bromotrimethylene glycol was detected only in BL-0 at 37 min.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.85-98
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• 2013

In order to propose effective conservation management plan, this study verified ecological characteristics, humanities and Social characteristics. The research site is private property which is owned belonging to the Kim's of Gimhae that have long history. The study site is more than a thousand years old and was created for protecting from typhoon. There held the religious ritual what is called Dongsinje until 1960s. There have been protected and managed by the villagers. As the results of analysis, the area of windbreak are $12,392.69m^2$. The windbreak is dominated old years deciduous broad-leaved tree such as Zelkova serrata, Celtis sinensis, Aphananthe aspera. Around there were farmlands(52.1%), urbanized area(26.3%), forest area(16.6%). The vegetation communities of windbreak were classified by considering the dominant species and current status of forest. The forest types are following as; A. aspera community(I) which is using less pressure, Platycarya strobilacea-Carpinus coreana-Z. serrata community(II). Z. serrata community(III) which is using high pressure, Z. serrata-A. aspera community(IV), Z. serrata community(V) which is damaged under canopy trees. The windbreak was in good condition whereas, there were concerns the some wrong status was being undermined such as the wrong forest restoration projects in the past, the trails that is penetrating inside the forest, building up education facilities. Therefore, in order to restore the value of windbreak what is so called Suwol forest, we should improve the problems of forest ecosystem such as wrong management, forest fragmentation by facilities and decline in forest by lack of growing the next generation trees. In addition, we should remove excessive resting facilities and lead to passive use of forest. to improve the way of wrong management, moreover, we should close off he trails that is penetrating inside the forest for improving fragmentation. We should restore vegetation restoration and fostering the next generation trees for forest ecosystem. In order to restore unique of histo-cultural and ecological forest landscape, the next generation trees should be grown up that is the dominant species in Suwol forest. Moreover, as a results of comparing the between good vegetation communities and damaged vegetation communities, it is necessary to complementary planting for demeged vegetation communities, therefore there needs to 10.8 under canopy trees, 79.7 shrubs.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.51-68
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• 2016

In this paper, we aim to analyze the effect of accounting policy change subsequent to the adoption of K-IFRS in Korea, whereby the firms are required to recognize impairment losses on goodwill on a periodic basis rather than to amortize over a specific period. As a principle-based accounting standard, the K-IFRS expands the scope of fair value measurement with a view to enhance the relevance and timeliness of accounting information. In the same vein, intangibles with indefinite useful life, of which goodwill is an example, are subject to regulatory impairment tests at least once a year. Related literature on the impact of mandatory change in goodwill policy document that impairment recognition is more likely to be practiced opportunistically, mainly because managers have a greater discretion to conduct the tests under K-IFRS. However, existing literature examined the frequency and/or magnitude of the goodwill impairment before versus after the K-IFRS adoption, failing to notice the impairment symptoms at individual firm level. Borrowing the definition of impairment symptoms suggested by Ramanna and Watts(2012), this study performs a series of tests to determine whether the goodwill impairment recognition achieves the goal of communicating timelier information under the K-IFRS regime. Using 947 firm-year observations from domestic companies listed in KRX and KOSDAQ markets from 2008 to 2011, we document overall delays in recognizing impairment losses on goodwill after the adoption of K-IFRS relative to prior period, based on logistic and OLS regression analyses. The results are qualitatively similar in robustness tests, which use alternative proxy for goodwill impairment symptom. Afore-mentioned results indicate that managers are likely to take advantage of the increased discretion to recognize the impairment losses on goodwill rather than to provide timelier information on impairment, inconsistent with the goal of regulatory authority, which is in line with the improvement of timeliness and relevance of accounting information in conjunction with the full implementation of K-IFRS. This study contributes to the extant literature on goodwill impairment from a methodological viewpoint. We believe that the method employed in this paper potentially diminishes the bias inherent in researches relying on ex post impairment recognition, by conducting tests based on ex ante impairment symptoms, which allows direct examination of the timeliness changes between before and after K-IFRS adoption.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.26-33
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• 2006

Background: Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation(NPPV) has been increasingly used over the past decade in the management of acute or chronic respiratory failure and weaning of mechanical ventilation. We performed this clinical study to evaluate the usefulness of NPPV in patients who developed acute respiratory failure or post-extubation respiratory failure. Methods: We analysed thirty four patients(sixteen males and eighteen females, mean ages 58 years) who applied NPPV(BIPAP S/T, Respironics co., USA) for respiratory failure or weaning difficulty at medical intensive care unit(MICU), emergency room and general ward of a tertiary hospital. We evaluated the underlying causes of respiratory failure, duration of treatment, the degree of adaptation, complication and predictive parameters of successful outcome. Results: The overall success rate of NPPV was seventy-one percent. The duration of NPPV applying time, baseline blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration rate, $PaO_2$, $PaCO_2$, $SaO_2$ were not different between success group and failure group. But, the baseline pH was higher in the success group. Predictors of success were higher baseline pH, patients with underlying disease of COPD, improvement of vital sign and arterial blood gas value after NPPV application. The success rate in patients with post-extubation respiratory failure was eighty percent. There were no serious complication on applying NPPV except minor complications such as facial skin erythema, abdominal distension & dry mouth. Conclusion: NPPV may be effective treatment in patients with acute respiratory failure or post-extubation respiratory failure in selected cases.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.132-141
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• 2012

This study was carried out to test seed germination responses to temperatures and pre-treatments in Hippophae rhamnoides, which has many abilities in antioxidant activity, soil improvement and erosion control. H. rhamnoides seeds were placed at 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and $35^{\circ}C$ under light condition. As the results, germination percentage (GP) was the highest at 15 and $20^{\circ}C$, and mean germination time (MGT), germination rate (GR) and germination value (GV) were the highest at $25^{\circ}C$. Quadratic and linear regression model were used to determine the cardinal temperatures such as base ($T_b$), maximum ($T_m$) and optimum ($T_o$) temperature for germination. In quadratic regression model using PG, $T_b$, $T_m$ and $T_o$ was estimated as 0.6, 36.4 and $18.5^{\circ}C$, respectively, and temperature range for germination was $35.8^{\circ}C$. In linear regression model using GR, $T_b$, $T_m$ and $T_o$ was estimated as 8.3, 35.4 and $25.3^{\circ}C$, respectively, and temperature range for germination was $27.2^{\circ}C$. Germination properties were investigated after H. rhamnoides seeds were treated by prechilling (1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 weeks), stratification (2, 4, 6 and 8 weeks), solid matrix priming (seed : carrier : water = 5 : 1 : 7, 8, 9 and 10), osmo-priming (-0.25, -0.5, -1.0 and -1.5 MPa) and calcium chloride ($CaCl_2$) -priming (100, 200, 300 and 400 mM). The highest GP was observed in $CaCl_2$ 300 and 400 mM treatments, and MGT was the shortest in stratification 6 and 8 weeks treatments. GR and GV were the highest and GP was the second highest when seeds were prechilled for 1 and 2 weeks. Consequently, prechilling 1 or 2 weeks treatment was considered as the appropriate method when we contemplate qualitative and quantitative effects in seedling production.