• Journal of the Korean Orthopaedic Association
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.208-214
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• 2021

Purpose: Verifying a reliable predictor of the progression of vertebral deformity in patients with acute osteoporotic fractures of the lumbar spine may be useful. A qualitative analysis of the muscle near the spine was performed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and its correlation with a spinal deformity was determined under the hypothesis that the causes of the kyphotic deformity are associated with muscle reduction in the multifidus and erector spinae. Materials and Methods: The study was performed in a retrospective manner using the electronic medical records of patients who presented to the author's institution between January 2007 and March 2018, and were diagnosed with an acute lumbar fracture. The fat infiltration rates of the multifidus and erector spinae were measured using MRI taken at the time of injury, and the mean value was defined as the total fat infiltration rate (TFI). Based on lateral radiographs of the lumbar spine at the one-year follow-up, the loss of height of the vertebral body, the kyphotic angle and the wedge angle were measured. The statistical significance was confirmed by calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: One hundred twenty-nine patients, of which 30 were male and 99 were female, were examined. The mean age was 71.28 years. The mean T-score was -3.53±0.79 g/cm², and the mean fat infiltration was 15.20%±11.99%. TFI was positively correlated with age (R=0.373, p<0.001), compression rate (R=0.369, p<0.001), and Cobb's angle (R=0.386, p<0.001) after a one year follow-up, but negatively correlated with the BMD score (R=-0.252, p=0.004). As the fracture progressed to the lower lumbar level, the compression rate (R=-0191, p=0.030) and wedge angle (R=-0.428, p<0.001) at the time of injury tended to decrease. Conclusion: In patients with osteoporotic vertebral fractures, the fat infiltration rate may be an important predictor of conservative treatment. The prognosis of patients with a high-fat infiltration rate should be explained during patient education, and the patients must be monitored closely through short-term outpatient follow-up.

• Journal of the Korean Orthopaedic Association
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.318-323
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• 2020

Purpose: To examine the relationship between total fat infiltration (TFI) rate, which quantifies the reduction of muscles around the spine and is an important factor for sarcopenia, and the factors affecting osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture. Materials and Methods: Patients treated for osteoporotic compression fractures of the lumber spine from January 2012 to December 2016 were analyzed retrospectively. Among them, this study included ninety-eight patients who were 1) diagnosed with osteoporosis with a bone mineral density (BMD) T score of less than 2.5 g/cm², 2) received vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty for lumbar fractures, 3) involved one segment of the lumbar spine, and 4) were followed-up for more than one year. The TFI rate confirmed by analyzing magnetic resonance imagings with the Image J program was studied. Based on this, the relationship between the TFI of the multifidus and erector spinae muscles and the factors of osteoporosis were analyzed. Results: The mean TFI of the multifidus and erector spinae was 14.66±10.16. The spine BMD showed a positive correlation with the hip BMD, but a negative correlation with the TFI. A positive correlation was observed between the hip BMD and body mass index. In addition, vitamin D was positively correlated with both the hip and spine BMD but negatively correlated with the TFI rate. Conclusion: Muscle growth helps treat osteoporosis, and can prevent fractures that occur frequently in osteoporosis patients. Increasing the vitamin intake can also slow the progression of muscle atrophy.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.193-206
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• 2023

In a workplace, workers exhaust their resources due to workplace adversity or acquire resources through job-related passion. The purpose of this study is to verify the factors that affect the conversion of workers to entrepreneurs and through what paths entrepreneurial intention is generated. To this end, the effects of workplace adversity and job-related passion on entrepreneurial intention were explored with workers in Korea. Also, by empirically analyzing the effects of workplace adversity and job-related passion on entrepreneurial intention through the mediation of job-related creativity, this author attempted to derive the factors and implications associated with the conversion of workers to entrepreneurs. Analyzing 333 workers' data acquired through online surveys with the statistical packages of SPSS and AMOS, this study has gained the following results. First, workplace adversity is found to have positive(+) effects on entrepreneurial intention. This implies that workplace adversity that is negatively regarded is rather a crucial variable that increases entrepreneurial intention. Second, workplace adversity has positive(+) effects on job-related creativity. It means that job-related creativity is an effective factor to overcome workplace adversity. Third, job-related passion is found to have positive(+) effects on entrepreneurial intention. The passion to concentrate on the resources secured is an important factor to elevate entrepreneurial intention. Fourth, job-related passion is verified to have positive(+) effects on job-related creativity. It implies that creative methods can be effective in achieving the goal. Fifth, job-related creativity is found to have positive(+) effects on entrepreneurial intention. Creativity is an intention or action that precedes starting up a business, and it is judged that high job-related creativity reflects high expectation about the possibility of success in starting up a business. Sixth, job-related creativity is found to have mediating effects in correlation between workplace adversity and entrepreneurial intention. Seventh, job-related creativity is found to have mediating effects in correlation between job-related passion and entrepreneurial intention. This means that job-related creativity is an effective factor to alleviate the adversity of workers and increase job-related passion in the process of becoming entrepreneurs. Academically, there were few previous studies related to the adversity of workers in Korea. As this study targets office workers, it can be said that it is a differentiated study extending the range of subjects. Also, practically, it has been learned that negative workplace adversity, too, is an important variable that affect entrepreneurial intention positively. This is practically meaningful in terms of office workers' career management because even in adverse situations that are negative, starting up a business through work experiences may work as an alternative.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.880-890
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• 2020

Objective: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are known to be at risk of osteoporosis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between thoracic vertebral bone density measured on chest CT (D_Thorax) and clinical variables, including survival, in patients with COPD. Materials and Methods: A total of 322 patients with COPD were selected from the Korean Obstructive Lung Disease (KOLD) cohort. D_Thorax was measured by averaging the CT values of three consecutive vertebral bodies at the level of the left main coronary artery with a round region of interest as large as possible within the anterior column of each vertebral body using an in-house software. Associations between D_Thorax and clinical variables, including survival, pulmonary function test (PFT) results, and CT densitometry, were evaluated. Results: The median follow-up time was 7.3 years (range: 0.1-12.4 years). Fifty-six patients (17.4%) died. D_Thorax differed significantly between the different Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease stages. D_Thorax correlated positively with body mass index (BMI), some PFT results, and the six-minute walk distance, and correlated negatively with the emphysema index (EI) (all p < 0.05). In the univariate Cox analysis, older age (hazard ratio [HR], 3.617; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.119-6.173, p < 0.001), lower BMI (HR, 3.589; 95% CI, 2.122-6.071, p < 0.001), lower forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV₁) (HR, 2.975; 95% CI, 1.682-5.262, p < 0.001), lower diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide corrected with hemoglobin (DL_CO) (HR, 4.595; 95% CI, 2.665-7.924, p < 0.001), higher EI (HR, 3.722; 95% CI, 2.192-6.319, p < 0.001), presence of vertebral fractures (HR, 2.062; 95% CI, 1.154-3.683, p = 0.015), and lower D_Thorax (HR, 2.773; 95% CI, 1.620-4.746, p < 0.001) were significantly associated with all-cause mortality and lung-related mortality. In the multivariate Cox analysis, lower D_Thorax (HR, 1.957; 95% CI, 1.075-3.563, p = 0.028) along with older age, lower BMI, lower FEV₁, and lower DL_CO were independent predictors of all-cause mortality. Conclusion: The thoracic vertebral bone density measured on chest CT demonstrated significant associations with the patients' mortality and clinical variables of disease severity in the COPD patients included in KOLD cohort.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.247-269
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• 2007

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.

• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.625-636
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between bone health and sodium intake in female university students using a dish frequency questionnaire (DFQ 125), anthropometric checkups, food records for 3 days, and ultrasound measurement of calcaneus bone mineral density. Subjects were divided into two groups: normal (n=196) and osteopenia (n=52). There were no significant differences in age or height between the two groups. The average weight, body mass index, and body fat in the normal group were significantly higher than in the osteopenia group. The sodium intake of DFQ was positively correlated with the sodium intake of 3 days of dietary records (p=0.0003). There were no significant differences in the sodium intake between the two groups from DFQ. The dishes were ranked by sodium intake: kimchies were 17.68%, noodles and mandu were 16.36%, stews were 13.69%, main dishes such as meat, egg, and beans were 11.47%, and fish and shellfish were 11.07%. The frequency of eating noodles and mandu (p=0.0116), stews (p=0.0008), kimchies (p=0.0482), fish and shellfish (p=0.0362), vegetables (p=0.0064) and seasoning (p=0.0347) were negatively associated with bone mineral density. Bone health was not significantly different with increasing quartiles of sodium intake. As excessive sodium intakes may indirectly affect bone mineral density, these results suggest that to prevent osteoporosis, university students needed to be more educated about diets containing less sodium through nutrition education programs.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.18
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• pp.54-87
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• 1975

The effects of various weather factors on yield components of rice, year variation of yield components within regions, and regional differences of yield components within year were investigated at three Crop Experiment Stations O.R.D., Suweon, Iri, Milyang, and at nine provincial Offices of Rural Development for eight years from 1966 to 1973 for the purpose of providing information required in improving cultural practices and predicting the yield level of rice. The experimental results analyzed by standard partial regression analysis are summarized as follows: 1. When rice was grown in ordinary seasonal culture the number of panicles greatly affected rice yield compared to other yield components. However, when rice was seeded in ordinary season and transplanted late, and transplanted in ordinary season in the northern area the ratio of ripening was closely related to the rice yield. 2. The number of panicles showed the greatest year variation when the Jinheung variety was grown in the northern area. The ripening ratio or 1, 000 grain weight also greatly varied due to years. However, the number of spikelets per unit area showed the greatest effects on yield of the Tongil variety. 2. Regional variation of yield components was classified into five groups; 1) Vegetation dependable type (V), 2) Partial vegetation dependable type (P), 3) Medium type (M), 4) Partial ripening dependable type (P.R), and 5) Ripening dependable type (R). In general, the number of kernel of rice in the southern area showed the greatest partial regression coefficient among yield components. However, in the mid-northern part of country the ripening ratio was one of the component!; affecting rice yield most. 4. A multivariate equation was obtained for both normal planting and late planting by log-transforming from the multiplication of each component of four yield components to additive fashion. It revealed that a more accurate yield could be estimated from the above equation in both cases of ordinary seasonal culture and late transplanting. 5. A highly positive correlation coefficient was obtained between the number of tillers from 20 days after transplanting and the number of panicles at each(tillering) stage 20 days after transplanting in normal planting and late planting methods. 6. A close relationship was found between the number of panicles and weather factors 21 to 30 days, after transplanting. 7. The average temperature 31 to 40 days after transplanting was greatly responsible for the maximum number of tillers while the number of duration of sunshine hours per day 11 to 30 days after transplantation was responsible for that character. The effect of water temperature was negligible. 8. No reasonable prediction for number of panicles was calculated from using either number of tillers or climatic factors. The number of panicles could early be estimated formulating a multiple equation using number of tillers 20 days after transplantation and maximum temperature, temperature range and duration of sunshine for the period of 20 days from 20 to 40 days after transplantation. 9. The effects of maximum temperature and day length 25 to 34 days before heading, on kernel number per panicle, were great in the mid-northern area. However, the minimum temperature and day length greatly affected the kernel number per panicle in the southern area. The maximum temperature had a negative relationship with the kernel number per panicle in the southern area. 10. The maximum temperature was highly responsible for an increased ripening ratio. On the other hand, the minimum temperature at pre-heading and early ripening stages showed an adverse effect on ripening ratio. 11. The 1, 000 grain weight was greatly affected by the maximum temperature during pre- or mid-ripening stage and was negatively associated with the minimum temperature over the entire ripening period.