• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.678-684
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to figure out and establish the basic data that can help improve management of oral healthcare for the international marriage migrantwomen. In this sense, we surveyed questions on 237 women out of 1,300 immigrant women, who have participated the program in operation by multi-cultural household supporting center, in a fashion of face-to-face investigation and on-the-spot direct cavity inspection simultaneously from May 1th to October 31th, 2010. Collected data were electro-statistically computerized under SPSS 17.0 program and analyzed with frequency analysis, recurrence analysis and logistic regression analysis respectively. Foundings were revealed as follows; On the nationality base, show the data in the ratio of 38.8% for Vietnamese, 29.1% for Philippine, 12.2% for Chinese and 6.8% for Japanese respectively. Current oral cavity status shows in the ratio of 60% with carious tooth symptoms, 40% without carious tooth symptom. Philippine women have irregular sets of tooth in many a case. (i.e., in short of numbers of teeth, due to removing individual tooth.) Japanese ladies are indicated to have less irregular sets of tooth, in comparison with that of the other immigrants from overseas. And lastly, high-income immigrant women in general were found having less numbers of unhealthy sets of tooth. Getting older, it appears that decayed tooth symptom is on the tendency of getting less in the field of dentistry circles. Immigrant ladies living with husbands under higher education background usually are found living a life in the less ratio of having toothache. A full-time immigrant housewives, however, are living everyday life in more times of suffering with tooth disease.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.19
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• pp.8495-8497
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• 2014

Purpose: To investigate whether it is safe to use leucogen tablets 60 mg three times per day (180 mg for a day) and whether this regimen could reduce the incidence of febrile neutropenia caused by chemotherapy. Methods: This prospectively designed study focused on the safety and effectiveness of leucogen tablets 60mg three times per day for a group of cancer patients during chemotherapy for mainly lung or gastric cancers. The tablets were administered from 5 days before until the termination of chemotherapy. Neutropenia and other healthcare encounters were defined as events and occurrence was estimated for comparison. Results: We identified 39 patients receiving leucogen tablets 60mg three times per day, including 11 with gastric, 12 with lung and 16 with other sites of cancer. The mean age was 65 (29-75) years and there were 27 male and 12 female patients. The mean duration of leucogen tablets intake was 59 days. Eighteen patients were treated with taxane-based, 4 with irinotecan-based and 17 with other chemotherapy. The incidence of febrile neutropenia was 0%. Twelve patients were found severe neutropenia (grade III/IV), and the duration of severe neutropenia (grade III/IV) was 5 days. Treatment-emergent adverse events were attributable to complications of myelosuppressive chemotherapy or the primary disease (i.e., alopecia, nausea, asthenia, neutropenia, and severe hepatic renal dysfunction). No chemotherapy was delayed and no treatment related death was observed. Conclusions: This study suggested that leucogen tablets 60mg three times per day (180mg for a day) are safe and could be effective for preventing febrile neutropenia in patients with chemotherapy.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.143-150
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• 2007

Although animal and epidemiological studies have suggested oxidative stress as an etiological factor in pathogenesis including cancer, inflammation, sepsis, fibrosis, cardiovascularlneurodegenerative diseases and aging-related disorders, conflicting results have been obtained in clinical trial with antioxidants. The reason for this discrepancy remains unknown but may be due, in part, to the lack of a validated assay system for evaluating antioxidant capacity. The antioxidant activity of a series of sugar alcohols against peroxyl radicals, hydroxyl radicals and peroxynitrites was determined by the total oxy-radical scavenging capacity (TOSC) assay and cell-based assay using H4IIE cells. Specific TOSC values calculated from the slope of the linear regression for erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol or mannitol against peroxyl radicals was $2.1{\pm}0.2,\;3.7{\pm}0.3,\;9.1{\pm}0.3$ or $8.7{\pm}1.1$ TOSC/mM, respectively. Specific TOSC values for erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol or mannitol against peroxynitrite was $1.9{\pm}0.3,\;3.9{\pm}0.4,\;7.8{\pm}0.7$ or $7.7{\pm}0.5$ TOSC/mM, respectively. These results suggest that oxy-radical scavenging capacity is dependent on the number of aliphatic hydroxyl group in sugar alcohols of monosaccharide. Tert-butylhydroperoxide (t-BHP)-induced cell toxicity determined by MTT assay was marginally attenuated by 10 mM erythritol, but completely inhibited by 10 mM xylitol, 2 mM sorbitol or 0.75 mM maltitol, a disaccharide alcohol. Oxidative stress markers, such as glutathione (GSH) and malondial-dehyde (MDA) levels, were measured in t-BHP-treated cells using HPLC equipped with a fluorescence detector and a reverse phase column. Erythritol did not change the levels of GSH and MDA in H411E cells treated with t-BHP. The t-BHP-induced changes in cellular GSH and MDA levels were ameliorated by 10 mM xylitol and completely blocked by 10 mM sorbitol and maltitol. These results indicate that sugar alcohols protect cells against oxidative stress via scavenging oxy-radical and suggest that TOSC assay in conjunction with cell-based assay is a valid method for evaluating antioxidant capacity of natural and synthetic chemicals.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2020

Today's healthcare, intelligent robots, smart home systems, and car sharing are already innovating with cutting-edge information and communication technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, the Internet of Intelligent Things, and Big data. It is deeply affecting our lives. In the factory, robots have been working for humans more than several decades (FA, OA), AI doctors are also working in hospitals (Dr. Watson), AI speakers (Giga Genie) and AI assistants (Siri, Bixby, Google Assistant) are working to improve Natural Language Process. Now, in order to understand AI, knowledge of mathematics becomes essential, not a choice. Thus, mathematicians have been given a role in explaining such mathematics that make these things possible behind AI. Therefore, the authors wrote a textbook 'Basic Mathematics for Artificial Intelligence' by arranging the mathematics concepts and tools needed to understand AI and machine learning in one or two semesters, and organized lectures for undergraduate and graduate students of various majors to explore careers in artificial intelligence. In this paper, we share our experience of conducting this class with the full contents in http://matrix.skku.ac.kr/math4ai/.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.121-127
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• 2016

Objective: Until now, there is minimal number of research for overall domestic status of orphan drug use in Korea. The purpose of this study is to identify the list of orphan drugs available in Korea and to understand the status of orphan drug usage in tertiary Hospitals and rare incurable disease Hospital. Methods: We made domestic orphan drug lists based on available orphan drugs in Korea. Based on this lists, we conducted e-mail survey from August, 2014 to September, 2014 to identify domestic status of orphan drug usage including the availability and management of orphan drugs. Results: There are three hundred and eighteen orphan drugs (184 ingredients) registered in Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Among the three hundred and eighteen orphan drugs, Two hundred and twenty-eight drugs (102 ingredients) were selected. Information on each item was collected and documented with generic and brand names, manufacturers, wholesalers, indications, FDA approval status and insurance coverage. Forty-three tertiary hospitals and thirty-two rare incurable hospitals responded to the survey questionnaire (57.3%). According to the survey result, the antineoplastics and immunomodulating agents group has the highest percentage (40%) usage in the hospital. Of fortythree tertiary hospitals, thirteen hospitals manage orphan drugs separately (30.2%). Based on the reply, most of the healthcare professionals commented the drug information related to efficacy and safety including medication counseling of orphan drugs is insufficient. Conclusion: Through this study we anticipate providing an understanding of orphan drug usage status in Korea. We found the limited resources to the information on orphan drugs and this information requires updating on a regular basis. This can be the basis for further studies about preparing drug information, educational resources for rare disease patients.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.354-362
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• 2017

Due to population aging and westernized lifestyle, ischemic heart diseases are increasing, and Korea has one of the highest lengths of stay for ischemic heart diseases. Since the increase in the length of stay is a major cause of the increase in medical expenses, it is necessary to prepare a plan to manage the length of stay. Accordingly, this study was conducted to identify the factors influencing the length of stay of ischemic heart disease, and provide the elementary resources necessary for the management of the length of stay. The study subjects were 566 ischemic heart disease patients of a tertiary hospital. As the result of the study, first, the number of inpatients with chest pain as the chief complaint was the largest. Second, the average length of stay was 4.89 days, and the length of stay varied depending on the type of ischemic heart disease. Third, the age of over 75 years, diabetes, and dyspnea were the factors increasing the length of stay. Therefore, for management of adequate length of stay for ischemic heart disease, it is important to prevent the progression of illness through blood sugar control for ischemic heart disease patients with diabetes. Also, it is necessary to prepare a system where patients can visit hospitals as fast as possible if they have any symptoms.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.40-50
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• 2012

Increase in the number of older people due to demographic changes poses great challenges to the social healthcare systems both in the Western and as well as in the Eastern countries. Support for older people by formal care givers leads to enormous temporal and personal efforts. Therefore, one of the most important goals is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of today's care. This can be achieved by the use of assistive technologies. These technologies are able to increase the safety of patients or to reduce the time needed for tasks that do not relate to direct interaction between the care giver and the patient. Motivated by this goal, this contribution focuses on applications of acoustic technologies to support users and care givers in ambient assisted living (AAL) scenarios. Acoustic sensors are small, unobtrusive and can be added to already existing care or living environments easily. The information gathered by the acoustic sensors can be analyzed to calculate the position of the user by localization and the context by detection and classification of acoustic events in the captured acoustic signal. By doing this, possibly dangerous situations like falls, screams or an increased amount of coughs can be detected and appropriate actions can be initialized by an intelligent autonomous system for the acoustic monitoring of older persons. The proposed system is able to reduce the false alarm rate compared to other existing and commercially available approaches that basically rely only on the acoustic level. This is due to the fact that it explicitly distinguishes between the various acoustic events and provides information on the type of emergency that has taken place. Furthermore, the position of the acoustic event can be determined as contextual information by the system that uses only the acoustic signal. By this, the position of the user is known even if she or he does not wear a localization device such as a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.310-320
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• 2014

Backgrounds: Endotoxin, which found in the outer membrane of the gram-negative bacteria cell wall, makes up almost all of the lipopolysaccharide(LPS). When people are exposed to endotoxin,it can result in diverse health effects such as an airway irritation and inflammation, fever, malaise, bronchitis, allergic asthma, toxic pneumonitis, hypersensitivity lung disease. Cases among the elderly, children or pregnant can occur more frequently than a healthy adult if they are repeatedly exposed to the existing endotoxin. Therefore, we investigated and assessed the environmental characteristics associated with the airborne endotoxin concentration level in six hospital lobbies. Method: Endotoxin from indoor air in six hospital lobbies was measured by an area sampling method and analyzed according to American Society for Testing and Materials International(ASTM international) E2144-01. Total suspended particulate(TSP), carbon dioxide($CO_2$), temperature and humidity were also measured by using direct reading measurements or airborne sampling equipment at the same time. Environmental characteristics were appropriately divided into two or three groups for a statistics analysis. One-way analysis variable(one-way ANOVA) was used to examine a difference of the endotoxin concentration, depending on the environmental characteristics. In addition, only variables with p-value(p<0.25) were eventually designed to the best model by using multiple regression analysis. Results: The correlation analysis result indicated that TSP(p=0.003) and $CO_2$(p<0.0001) levels were significantly associated with endotoxin concentration levels. In contrast, temperature(p<0.068) and humidity(p<0.365) were not associated with endotoxin concentration. Levels of endotoxin concentration were statistically different among the environmental characteristics of Service time(p=0.01), Establishment of hospital(p<0.001), Scale of hospital(p=0.01), Day average people using hospital(p=0.03), Cleaning time of lobby(p=0.05), Season(p<0.001), and Cleaning of ventilation system(p<0.001) according to ANOVA. Finally, the best model(Adjusted R-square=72%) that we designed through a multiple regression test included environmental characteristics related to Service time, Area of lobby, Season, Cleaning of ventilation system, and Temperature. Conclusions: According to this study, our result showed a normal level of endotoxin concentration in the hospital lobbies and found environmental management methods to reduce the level of endotoxin concentration to a minimum. Consequently, this study recognized to be requirement for the management of ventilation systems and an indoor temperature in order to reduce the level of endotoxin concentration in the hospital lobbies.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.956-964
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• 2015

Probiotics is known improve the microenvironment of colon; however, the metagenomic DNA study of its lactic acid bacteria in constipation induced by loperamide is not clearly understood. In the present study, we investigated the reduction of the lactic acid bacteria in case of constipation, in normal and loperamide-induced rat. Lactic acid powder (lactic acid bacteria 19) was prepared from Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical Corporation. After 2 weeks of oral administration, the group treated with the higher concentration of lactic acid bacteria ($10^9CFU/mL$ per kg of body weight) following loperamide treatment was the most effective in increasing number, weight, and water content of feces. A similar but significant increase was found in the group treated with lower concentration of lactic acid bacteria ($10^7CFU/mL$ per kg of body weight) after loperamide treatment. The concentrations of acetic acid and propionic acid in feces in the loperamide-induced rat with high concentration lactic acid, were significantly higher than that of others. Furthermore, gastrointestinal transit ratio as well as the length and area of intestinal mucosa were significantly increased after treatment with lactic acid bacteria in loperamide-induced rat. Metagenomics DNA analysis indicated that the microorganism homology in cecum was similar between the groups of normal (NOR) and HIG. Our results show that lactic acid bacteria were effective in improving the constipation.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.15-27
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• 2015

As patient satisfaction is a crucial component of improved health care outcomes, there is a need to evaluate the relationship between physicians' attitude and patients' satisfaction. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between patients' satisfaction and physicians' friendly and caring attitudes by using recent physician ratings by patients. Data from a cross-sectional survey using a convenience sampling was utilized to examine the relationship between physicians' attitudes and patients' satisfaction. The independent variable was the physician's attitude, and the dependent variables were patients' satisfaction with the physician and the office setting. A total of 273,994 patients it the US were included. The patients' average (standard deviation, SD) satisfaction with the physician was 78.08 (0.14), and the average (SD) satisfaction with the office setting was 78.62 (0.12) out of 100. Physicians' attitude was a significant predicting factor impacting the patients' satisfaction with the physician and the office setting (p < 0.001). To facilitate patients' satisfaction with healthcare, a continuous effort to develop physicians' ability to communicate in an empathetic manner should be undertaken so that patients perceive their physicians as empathetic.