• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.283-291
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• 1993

Background: Long-term low flow oxygen therapy not only increases survival, but also improves the quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with chronic hypoxemia. For the assessment and improvement of the status of home oxygen therapy, we analyzed clinical experience of 26 patients who have been administered low flow oxygen at home. Method: Twenty-six patients (18 men and 8 women) who have been received long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) at home were examined. We reviewed physical characteristics, clinical history, pulmonary function test, ECG, arterial blood gas analysis, hemoglobin and hematocrit, types of oxygen devices, inhalation time per day, concentration of administered $O_2$, duration of $O_2$ therapy, and problems in the home oxygen therapy. Results: The underlying diseases of patients were COPD 14 cases, far advanced old pulmonary tuberculosis 9 cases, bronchiectasis 2 cases, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis 1 case. The reasons for LTOT at home were noted for cor pulmonale 21 cases, for dyspnea on exertion and severe ventilatory impairment 4 cases, and for oxygen desaturation during sleep 1 case. The mean values of aterial blood gas analysis before home oxygen therapy were $PaO_2$ 57.7 mmHg, $PaCO_2$ 48.2 mmHg, and $SaO_2$ 87.7%. And the mean values of each parameters in the pulmonary function test were VC 2.05 L, $FEV_1$ 0.92 L, and $FEV_1$/FVC% 51.9%. Nineteen patients have used oxygen tanks as oxygen devices, 1 patient oxygen concentrator, 2 patients oxygen tank and liquid oxygen, and other 4 patients oxygen tank together with portable oxygen. The duration of oxygen therapy was below 1 year in 3 cases, 1~2 years in 15 cases, 3~5 years in 6 cases, 9 years in 1 case, and 10 years in 1 case. All patients have inhalated oxygen with flow rate less than 2.5 L/min. And only 10 patients have inhalated oxygen more than 15 hours per day, but most of them short time per day. Conclusion: For the effective oxygen administration, it is necessary that education for long-term low flow oxygen therapy to patients, their family and neighbor should be done, and also the institutional backup for getting convenient oxygen devices is required.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.309-341
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• 2009

According to a case of Supreme Court's Sentence No. 2009DA17417 (May 21, 2009), the Supreme Court judges that 'the right to life is the ultimate one of basic human rights stipulated in the Constitution, so it is required to very limitedly and conservatively determine whether to discontinue any medical practice on which patient's life depends directly.' In addition, the Supreme Court admits that 'only if a patient who comes to a fatal phase before death due to attack of any irreversible disease may execute his or her right of self-determination based on human respect and values and human right to pursue happiness, it is permissible to discontinue life-sustaining treatment for him or her, unless there is any special circumstance.' Furthermore, the Supreme Court finds that 'if a patient who is attacked by any irreversible disease informs medical personnel of his or her intention to agree on the refusal or discontinuance of life-sustaining treatment in advance of his or her potential irreversible loss of consciousness, it is justifiable that he or she already executes the right of self-determination according to prior medical instructions, unless there is any special circumstance where it is reasonably concluded that his or her physician is changed after prior medical instructions for him or her.' The Supreme Court also finds that 'if a patient remains at irreversible loss of consciousness without any prior medical instruction, he or she cannot express his or her intentions at all, so it is rational and complying with social norms to admit possibility of estimating his or her own intentions on withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, provided that such a withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment meets his or her interests in view of his or her usual sense of values or beliefs and it is reasonably concluded that he or she could likely choose to discontinue life-sustaining treatment, even if he or she were given any chance to execute his or her right of self-determination.' This judgment is very significant in a sense that it suggests the reasonable orientation of solutions for issues posed concerning withdrawal of meaningless life-sustaining medical efforts. The issues concerning removal of medical instruments for meaningless life-sustaining treatment and discontinuance of such treatment in regard to medical treatment for terminal cases don't seem to be so much big deal when a patient has clear consciousness enough to express his or her intentions, but it counts that there is any issue regarding a patient who comes to irreversible loss of consciousness and cannot express his or her intentions. Therefore, it is required to develop an institutional instrument that allows relevant authority to estimate the scope of physician's medical duties for terminal patients as well as a patient's intentions to withdraw any meaningless treatment during his or her terminal phase involving loss of consciousness. However, Korean judicial authority has yet to clarify detailed cases where it is permissible to discontinue any life-sustaining treatment for a patient in accordance with his or her right of self-determination. In this context, it is inevitable and challenging to make better legislation to improve relevant systems concerning withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. The State must assure the human basic rights for its citizens and needs to prepare a system to assure such basic rights through legislative efforts. In this sense, simply entrusting physician, patient or his or her family with any critical issue like the withdrawal of meaningless life-sustaining treatment, even without any reasonable standard established for such entrustment, means the neglect of official duties by the State. Nevertheless, this issue is not a matter that can be resolved simply by legislative efforts. In order for our society to accept judicial system for withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, it is important to form a social consensus about this issue and also make proactive discussions on it from a variety of standpoints.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.442-447
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to establish norm-referenced criteria for the isokinetic strength of the elbow joint in Korean high school baseball players. Two hundred and one high school baseball players participated in this study, none of whom had any medical problem with their upper limbs. The elbow flexion/extension test was conducted four times at a speed of $60^{\circ}/sec$. The HUMAC NORM (CSMI, USA) system was used to obtain the values of the peak torque and peak torque per body weight. The results were presented as norm-referenced criterion valuesusing the 5-point scale of Cajori which consists of five stages (6.06%, 24.17%, 38.30%, 24.17%, and 6.06%). In the results of this study, the peak torques of the elbow (flexor and extensor?) at an angular velocity of $60^{\circ}/sec$ were $37.88{\pm}8.14Nm$ and $44.59{\pm}11.79Nm$, and the peak torque per body weight of the elbow (flexor and extensor?) were $50.06{\pm}8.66Nm$ and $58.28{\pm}12.84Nm$, respectively. The reference values of the peak torque and peak torque per body weight of the elbow flexor and extensor were setat an angular velocity of $60^{\circ}/sec$. On the basis of the results analyzed in this study, the following conclusions were drawn. There is a lack of proper studies on the elbow joint strength, even though the most common injury in baseball players occurs in the elbow joint. Therefore, we need to establish a standard muscle strength in order to prevent elbow joint injuries and improve their performance. The criteria for the peak torque and peak torque per body weight established here in will provide useful information for high school baseball players, baseball coaches, athletic trainers and sports injury rehabilitation specialists in injury recovery and return to rehabilitation, which can beutilized as objective clinical assessment data.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.65 no.1
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• pp.80-91
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• 1984

The purposes of this study are to analyze and forecast the domestic demand for papers by regression models with time-series data (1965-81). For the period of 1965-81, the real GNP of Korea grew at annual average increase rate of 8.8 percent. On the other hand, the domestic demand of papers grew at annual average increase rate of 17.9 percent in this period. Especially, the annual average increase rate for board-papers accounted to 25.8 percent. To analyze domestic demand for papers, GNP, per capita GNP, price findex of papers, production activity index of the major papers consuming industries and price index of substitutive goods were selected as independent variables. The expected values of domestic demand for papers were computed by forecasting equations as follows. T-values are in parentheses. ${\ell}nDDP=2.452+1.986{\ell}nPG-0.844{\ell}nPWI$ $(33.397)^*\;(-6.149)^*\;R^2=0.997$ ${\ell}nDDP=6.468+0.827{\ell}nPDA$ $(17.403)^*\;R^2=0.950$ DDP : Domestic demand for papers PG : Real GNP per capita (1,000 won) PWI : Real price index of papers (1980 = 100) PDAV : Production activity index of the major papers consuming industries The results analyzed and forecasted by these models are summarized as follows: The domestic demand for papers had positive correlation toward per capita GNP and production activity index of the major papers consuming industries. Per capita GNP elasticity of the domestic demand for papers was the most elastic among independent variables. The price elasticity of domestic demand for papers had negative sign and inelastic. These were not only statistically significant but theoretically compatible. The domestic demand for papers was projected to be 3,152-4,470 thousand mit in 1991, representing at annual increase rate of 5.0-12.4 percent during the period of 1982-91. Domestic demand for papers per capita was projected to be 69.1-98.0 kg in 1991.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.38 no.1 s.110
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• pp.45-53
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• 2005

The environmental change of Yong-nup in Mt. Dae-Am, which is located at the northern part of Kangwon-Do, Korea, was assesed with peat sedimentary carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis. The surface layer of the peat (0 ${\sim}$ 5 cm) was 190 year BP, and the middle layers (30 ${\sim}$ 35 cm and 50 ${\sim}$ 55 cm) were 870 year BP and 1900 year BP, respectively. Bulk sedimentation rate was estimated to be about 0.4 mm $year^{-1}$ for 0 cm to 30 cm and 0.15 mm $year^{-1}$ for 35 cm to 50 cm. The $^{14}C$ age of the bottom sediment (75 ${\sim}$ 80 cm) collected and measured in this study was about 1900 year BP, although it was measured that the $^{14}C$ of the lowest bottom sediment in Yong-nup was 4105 ${\pm}$ 175 year BP (GX-23200). Since the $^{14}C$ ages for 50 ${\sim}$ 55 cm and 75 ${\sim}$ 80 cm layers were almost the same as 1890 ${\pm}$ 80 fear BP (NUTA 5364) and 1850 ${\pm}$ 90 year BP (NUTA 5462), respectively, we have estimated that the deep layers (55 ${\sim}$ 80 cm) in the high moor were the original forest soil. The low organic C and N contents in the deeper layers supported the inference. The sediment of 50 ${\sim}$ 55 cm layer contains much sandy material and showed very low organic content, suggesting the erosion (flooding) from the surrounding area. In this context, the Yong-nup, high moor, of Mt. Dae-Am, might have developed to the sampling site at about 1900 year BP. The ${\delta}^{13}C$ values of organic carbon and the ${\delta}^{15}N$ values of total nitrogen in the peat sediments fluctuated with the depths. The profile of ${\delta}^{13}C$ may indicate that the Yong-nup of Mt. Dae-Am have experienced the dry-wet and cool-warm period cycles during the development of the high moor. The ${\delta}^{15}N$ may indicate that the nitrogen cycling in the Yong-nup have changed from the closed (regeneration depending) system to the open (rain $NO_3\;^-$ and $N_2$ fixation depending) system during the development of the high moor.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.49-60
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• 2002

Receive dynamic focusing with an array transducer can provide near optimum resolution only in the vicinity of transmit focal depth. A customary method to increase the depth of field is to combine several beams with different focal depths, with an accompanying decrease in the frame rate. In this Paper. we Present a simultaneous multiple transmit focusing method in which chirp signals focused at different depths are transmitted at the same time. These chirp signals are mutually orthogonal in a sense that the autocorrelation function of each signal has a narrow mainlobe width and low sidelobe levels. and the crossorelation function of any Pair of the signals has values smaller than the sidelobe levels of each autocorrelation function. This means that each chirp signal can be separated from the combined received signals and compressed into a short pulse. which is then individually focused on a separate receive beamformer. Next. the individually focused beams are combined to form a frame of image. Theoretically, any two chirp signals defined over two nonoverlapped frequency bands are mutually orthogonal In the present work. however, a tractional overlap of adjacent frequency bands is permitted to design more chirp signals within a given transducer bandwidth. The elevation of the rosscorrelation values due to the frequency overlap could be reduced by alternating the direction of frequency sweep of the adjacent chirp signals We also observe that the Proposed method provides better images when the low frequency chirp is focused at a near Point and the high frequency chirp at a far point along the depth. better lateral resolution is obtained at the far field with reasonable SNR due to the SNR gain in Pulse compression Imaging .

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.253-260
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• 2016

This research aimed to quantitatively measure the environmental values of Taebaeksan, Naksan, and Gyeongpo provincial parks located in Gangwon-do. The research was based on the CVM technique which estimates the economic values for all kinds of ecosystem. Also, the estimated value of environment goods can suggest the magnitude of additional utility other than the cost people pay when they visit the provincial parks. Such result can be used as basic data in addition to information on natural ecology or cultural landscape to decide whether the park should be promoted as a national park. The questionnaires-collected from Taebaeksan(180 copies), Naksan(179 copies), and Gyeongpo(180 copies) provincial parks were used to measure the environmental value of each provincial park. Variables that affect the response of 'yes(Y)' or 'no(N)' to the cost suggestion for the economic valuation of environment are estimated under the catagories of environment conservation status (env.), degree of park management (manage.), environmental conservation effort, education (edu.), and income (inc.) of the respondents (execu.), pertaining to the 3 provincial parks in Gangwon-do. The value of natural environment to 1 visitor to the 3 Gangwon provincial parks was estimated by the Logit method that Hanemann proposed using the average of inserted variables. The results showed that the additional environmental value that 1 visitor can gain is 44,060 won for Taebaeksan Provincial Park, 41,191 won for Naksan, and 41,844 won for the Gyeongpo Provincial Park. Taebaeksan Provincial Park's environmental value is estimated at the highest as the respondents judge that its natural environment is well preserved and the facilities are managed well.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.52-60
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• 1999

Objectives: With the object of finding the appropriate conditions and algorithms for dimensional analysis of human EEG, we calculated correlation dimensions in the various condition of sampling rate and data aquisition time and improved the computation algorithm by taking advantage of bit operation instead of log operation. Methods: EEG signals from 13 scalp lead of a man were digitized with A-D converter under the condition of 12 bit resolution and 1000 Hertz of sampling rate during 32 seconds. From the original data, we made 15 time series data which have different sampling rate of 62.5, 125, 250, 500, 1000 hertz and data acqusition time of 10, 20, 30 second, respectively. New algorithm to shorten the calculation time using bit operation and the Least Trimmed Squares(LTS) estimator to get the optimal slope was applied to these data. Results: The values of the correlation dimension showed the increasing pattern as the data acquisition time becomes longer. The data with sampling rate of 62.5 Hz showed the highest value of correlation dimension regardless of sampling time but the correlation dimension at other sampling rates revealed similar values. The computation with bit operation instead of log operation had a statistically significant effect of shortening of calculation time and LTS method estimated more stably the slope of correlation dimension than the Least Squares estimator. Conclusion: The bit operation and LTS methods were successfully utilized to time-saving and efficient calculation of correlation dimension. In addition, time series of 20-sec length with sampling rate of 125 Hz was adequate to estimate the dimensional complexity of human EEG.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.405-411
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• 2007

Background: The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical applicability of the repeatability criteria recommended by the American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society (ATS/ERS) spirometry guidelines and to determine which factors affect the repeatability of spirometry in Korean adults. Methods: We reviewed the spirometry data of 4,663 Korean adults from the Korean National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (KNHANES) Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Cohort (COPD cohort) and the Community-based Cohort Study VI-Fishing village/Islands (community cohort). We measured the anthropometric factors and differences between the highest and second-highest FVC (dFVC) and $FEV_1$ ($dFEV_1$) from prebronchodilator spirometry. Analyses included the distribution of dFVC and $dFEV_1$, comparison of the values meeting the 1994 ATS repeatability criteria with the values meeting the 2005 ATS/ERS repeatability criteria, and the performance of linear regression for evaluating the influence of subject characteristics and the change of criteria on the spiro-metric variability. Results: About 95% of subjects were able to reproduce FVC and $FEV_1$ within 150 ml. The KNHANES based on the 1994 ATS guidelines showed poorer repeatability than the COPD cohort and community cohort based on the 2005 ATS/ERS guidelines. Demographic and anthropometric factors had little effect on repeatability, explaining only 0.5 to 3%. Conclusion: We conclude that the new spirometry repeatability criteria recommended by the 2005 ATS/ERS guidelines is also applicable to Korean adults. The repeatability of spirometry depends little on individual characteristics when an experienced technician performs testing. Therefore, we suggest that sustained efforts for public awareness of new repeatability criteria, quality control of spirograms, and education of personnel are needed for reliable spirometric results.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.215-222
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• 2012

Objective: A prediabetes hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) level of 5.7%-6.4% is considered a risk factor for diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the USA. In this study, we assessed the HbA1c and visceral fat levels as CVD risk factors in health check-up examinees who were not yet diagnosed with diabetes. Methods: Totally, 507 study subject were categorized as per criteria of the American Diabetes Association, depending on whether the HbA1c level was ${\geq}5.7%$ or <5.7%. Lipid levels, blood pressure, BMI (kg/$m^2$), total abdominal, and visceral fat levels were measured by computed tomography. Results: The mean of HbA1c in the male group was larger than the mean in the female group and their values were, respectively, $6.03{\pm}0.82%$ and $5.88{\pm}0.72%$(p<0.05). Only the mean values of age and visceral fat area were different between $HbA1c{\geq}5.7%$ and <5.7% in both male and female group(p<0.05). Visceral fat levels were significantly associated with HbA1c in the group of HbA1c ${\geq}5.7%$ (odds ratio=1.005, 95% CI 1.002~1.008). Conclusions: Visceral fat levels were significantly higher and correlated with the group which HbA1c level is ${\geq}5.7%$. This finding suggests that subjects who have high levels of HbA1c should be carefully monitored during prediabetes and should have chance to have health education programs.