• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1757-1762
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• 2023

Radiological hazards from external exposure of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) scales residues, generated during the extraction process of oil and gas production in southern Algeria, are evaluated. The activity concentrations of ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K were measured using high-purity gamma-ray spectrometry (GeHP). Mean activity concentration of ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K, found in scale samples are 4082 ± 41, 1060 ± 38 and 568 ± 36 Bq kg^-1, respectively. Radiological hazard parameters, such as radium equivalent (Ra_eq), external and internal hazard indices (H_ex, H_in), and gamma index (I_γ) are also evaluated. All hazard parameter values were greater than the permissible and recommended limits and the average annual effective dose value exceeded the dose constraint (0.3 mSv y^-1). However, for occasionally exposed workers, the dose rate of 0.65 ± 0.02 mSv y^-1 is lower than recommended limit of 1 mSv y^-1 for public.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.5643-5646
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• 2012

Background and Objectives: Increase of mortality rates of gastric cancer in Iran and the world in recent years reveal necessity of studies on this disease. Here, hazard function for gastric cancer patients was estimated using Wavelet and Kernel methods and some related factors were assessed. Materials and Methods: Ninety-five gastric cancer patients in Fayazbakhsh Hospital between 1996 and 2003 were studied. The effects of age of patients, gender, stage of disease and treatment method on patient's lifetime were assessed. For data analyses, survival analyses using Wavelet method and Log-rank test in R software were used. Results: Nearly 25.3% of patients were female. Fourteen percent had surgery treatment and the rest had treatment without surgery. Three fourths died and the rest were censored. Almost 9.5% of patients were in early stages of the disease, 53.7% in locally advance stage and 36.8% in metastatic stage. Hazard function estimation with the wavelet method showed significant difference for stages of disease (P<0.001) and did not reveal any significant difference for age, gender and treatment method. Conclusion: Only stage of disease had effects on hazard and most patients were diagnosed in late stages of disease, which is possibly one of the most reasons for high hazard rate and low survival. Therefore, it seems to be necessary a public education about symptoms of disease by media and regular tests and screening for early diagnosis.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.285-294
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• 2016

In general, employment duration is influenced by the individual characteristics (level-1) as well as type of the occupational characteristics (level-2). That is, the data has hierarchical structure in the sense that individual employment duration is influenced by the individual-level variables (level-1) and the job-level (level-2) variables. In this paper, we study the determinants of the employment duration of youth-intern in the SMEs (small and medium enterprises) using Cox's mixed effect model. Major results at level-1 variables are as followings. First, the hazard rate of treatment group is lower than that of control group. Second, the hazard rate of woman is lower than that of man. Also, the hazard rate is lower, for the older and the workers working in the bigger company. Investigation of level-2 variables has shown that random effect for job-level is statistically significant.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.164-172
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• 2012

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the prognostic significance of tumor size for 5-year survival rate in patients with gastric cancer. Materials and Methods: A total of 1,697 patients with gastric cancer, who underwent potentially curative gastrectomy, were evaluated. Patients were divided into 4 groups as follows, according to the median size of early and advanced gastric cancer, respectively: small early gastric cancer (tumor size ${\leq}3$ cm), large early gastric cancer (tumor size >3 cm), small advanced gastric cancer (tumor size ${\leq}$ 6 cm), and large advanced gastric cancer (tumor size >6 cm). The prognostic value of tumor size for 5-year survival rate was investigated. Results: In a univariate analysis, tumor size is a significant prognostic factor in advanced gastric cancer, but not in early gastric cancer. Multivariate analysis showed that tumor size is an independent prognostic factor for 5-year survival rate in advanced gastric cancer (P=0.003, hazard ratio=1.372, 95% confidence interval=1.115~1.690). When advanced gastric cancer is subdivided into 2 groups, according to serosa invasion: Group 1; serosa negative (T2 and T3, 7th AJCC), and Group 2; serosa positive (T4a and T4b, 7th AJCC), tumor size is an independent prognostic factor in Group 1 (P=0.011, hazard ratio=1.810, 95% confidence interval=1.149~2.852) and in Group 2 (P=0.033, hazard ratio=1.288, 95% confidence interval=1.020~1.627), respectively. Conclusions: Tumor size is an independent prognostic factor in advanced gastric cancer irrespective of the serosa invasion, but not in early gastric cancer.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6751-6755
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• 2013

Background: Research on cancers with a high rate of mortality such as those occurring in the stomach requires using models which can provide a closer examination of disease processes and provide researchers with more accurate data. Various models have been designed based on this issue and the present study aimed at evaluating such models. Materials and Methods: Data from 330 patients with gastric cancer undergoing surgery at Iran Cancer Institute from 1995 to 1999 were analyzed. Cox-Snell Residuals and Akaike Information Criterion were used to compare parametric and semi-parametric Cox models in modeling transition rates among different states of a multi-state model. R 2.15.1 software was used for all data analyses. Results: Analysis of Cox-Snell Residuals and Akaike Information Criterion for all probable transitions among different states revealed that parametric models represented a better fitness. Log-logistic, Gompertz and Log-normal models were good choices for modeling transition rate for relapse hazard (state $1{\rightarrow}state$ 2), death hazard without a relapse (state $1{\rightarrow}state$ 3) and death hazard with a relapse (state $2{\rightarrow}state$ 3), respectively. Conclusions: Although the semi-parametric Cox model is often used by most cancer researchers in modeling transition rates of multistate models, parametric models in similar situations- as they do not need proportional hazards assumption and consider a specific statistical distribution for time to occurrence of next state in case this assumption is not made - are more credible alternatives.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Rural Architecture
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.95-102
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• 2014

The number of industrial accident victims in the construction industry accounts for 1/3 of those in the entire industries and about 30% of the total compensation costs are spent in the construction industry. As such, the construction industry is a typical industry causing numerous safety accidents. This study analyzes the status of industrial accidents in small scale construction sites to build maximum five-story buildings by examining statistical data for the past five years, investigating those construction sites and conducting interviews with the workers. This study also seeks the causes of and measures for industrial accidents in the small scale construction industry through comparison with relevant systems. The findings are as follows: (1) To reduce hazard rate, shaping the working environment and safety measures that take into account the physically weak classes of the middle aged and the aging are urgently required, because 62.9% of the industrial accidents in the construction industry occurred to those who are 50 years of age or older. (2) The hazard rate at small scale construction sites with less than 10 construction workers accounts for 55% of that of the entire industries. The government, in this context, needs to support finance or technology and improve system by selecting the small scale construction sites, where industrial accidents occur frequently. (3) Because the hazard rate of unskilled workers with less than 6 months of work experience accounts for 90.95% of the total, safety education needs to be concentrated on those unskilled workers. (4) The relevant standards need to be segmented and revised and bolstered, given that 64.79% of death disaster in the construction industry occurs in the temporary structures including scaffolds and ladders.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.8
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• pp.1752-1757
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• 2017

The aim of this study is to evaluate the radioactivity levels and radiological impacts of representative black sand samples collected from different locations in the Rashid area, Egypt. These samples were prepared and then analyzed using the high-resolution gamma ray spectroscopy technique with a high-purity germanium detector. The activity concentration ($A_c$), minimum detectable activity, absorbed gamma dose rate, external hazard index ($H_{ex}$), annual effective dose rate equivalent, radium equivalent, as well as external and internal hazard index ($H_{ex}$ and $H_{in}$, respectively) were estimated based on the measured radionuclide concentration of the $^{238}U$($^{226}Ra$) and $^{232}Th$ decay chains and $^{40}K$. The activity concentrations of the $^{238}U$, $^{232}Th$ decay series and $^{40}K$ of these samples varied from $45.11{\pm}3.1Bq/kg$ to $252.38{\pm}34.3Bq/kg$, from $64.65{\pm}6.1Bq/kg$ to $579.84{\pm}53.1Bq/kg$, and from $403.36{\pm}20.8Bq/kg$ to $527.47{\pm}23.1Bq/kg$, respectively. The activity concentration of $^{232}Th$ in Sample 1 has the highest value compared to the other samples; this value is also higher than the worldwide mean range as reported by UNSCEAR 2000. The total absorbed gamma dose rate and the annual effective dose for these samples were found to vary from 81.19 nGy/h to 497.81 nGy/h and from $99.86{\mu}Sv/y$ to $612.31{\mu}Sv/y$, which are higher than the world average values of 59 nGy/h and $70{\mu}Sv/y$, respectively. The $H_{ex}$ values were also calculated to be 3.02, 0.47, 0.63, 0.87, 0.87, 0.51 and 0.91. It was found that the calculated value of $H_{ex}$ for Sample 1 is significantly higher than the international acceptable limit of <1. The results are tabulated, depicted, and discussed within national and international frameworks, levels, and approaches.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.75-80
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• 2015

Aluminum dusts, from micro to nano-scale, are widely used in various applications such as propulsion and pyrotechnic compounds because of high burning rate. In this study, the pyrolysis hazard of aluminum dusts with different median size (sized by 70 nm, 100 nm, $6{\mu}m$, $15{\mu}m$) were investigated experimentally. The thermal decomposition characteristics of aluminum dusts with the variation of heating rate were investigated using TGA (Thermo gravimetric analysis) and was estimated the minimum ignition temperature from temperature of weight gain in nano and micro-sized aluminum dusts with different diameter. In the same condition of heating rate, the temperature of weight gain in aluminum dust layers increased with increasing of particle size and increased with increasing of heating rates in air. From the results, it was estimated that the pyrolysis hazard of aluminum dusts decrease with increasing of mean diameter.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.47-74
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• 2002

Since the Economic Crisis at the end of 1997, unemployment rate soared up to the record-high 8.6% (February 1999) and, for youth aged 15~29, it was 14.6% (27.8% for aged 15~19). In spite of economic recovery after the crisis, new participants in labor market at the school-to-work transition have faced with difficulties in finding their first jobs and, even further, the ratio of youth at out-of the labor force but not in school has remained at a higher level. It is important to calibrate the negative effects of nonemployment in the short-run as well as in the long-run, but there has been few study on the school-to-work transition in Korea. This study focus on the nonemployment duration to first job after formal education and comparison of its pattern before and after the crisis. A proportional hazard model, considering job prenaration before graduation (21.4% of the sample), with the semi-parametric baseline hazard is applied to the sample from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Survey(1998~2000) and its Youth Supplemental survey(2000). Interview of the Survey is conducted, by the Korea Labor Institute, to the same 5,000 household and 13,738 individual sample, guaranteeing nationwide representativeness. The Supplemental Survey consists of 3,302 young individuals aged 15 to 29 at the time of survey and 1,615 of them who are not in school and provide appropriate information is used for the analysis. The empirical results show that there exists negative duration dependence at the first three or for months at the transition period and no duration dependence since a turning point of the baseline hazard rate and that unemployment rate reflecting labor demand conditions has a positive effect on exiting the nonemployment state, which is inconsistent with a theoretical conclusion. Estimation with samples separated by the date of graduation before and after the crisis shows that the effect of unemployment rate on the hazard was negative for the pre-crisis sample but positive for the post-crisis sample.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.278-284
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• 2016

Software reliability in the software development process is an important issue. In infinite failure NHPP software reliability models, the fault occurrence rates may have constant, monotonic increasing or monotonic decreasing pattern. In this paper, infinite failures NHPP models that the situation was reflected for the fault occurs in the repair time, were presented about comparing property. Commonly, the software model of the infinite failures using the linear hazard rate distribution software reliability based on intercept parameter was used in business economics and actuarial modeling, was presented for comparison problem. The result is that a relatively large intercept parameter was appeared effectively form. The parameters estimation using maximum likelihood estimation was conducted and model selection was performed using the mean square error and the coefficient of determination. The linear hazard rate distribution model is also efficient in terms of reliability because it (the coefficient of determination is 90% or more) in the field of the conventional model can be used as an alternative model could be confirmed. From this paper, the software developers have to consider intercept parameter of life distribution by prior knowledge of the software to identify failure modes which can be able to help.