• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.267-275
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• 2007

In this study, relationship between the air pollution of Siheung city and the relative contribution of automobiles to the city's pollution was evaluated for the first time. Then, new air pollution exposure index was developed through simulation. Using the newly developed index, two different urban development scenarios were compared to present a sustainable urban development plan to reduce air pollution from the land utilization point of view. According to the result of this simulation, air quality of the city was found to be affected significantly by human activities. More populated area showed worse level of air quality. Any development in the city resulted in more automobile activity and deterioration of air quality. This simulation result thus explains that a rapid increase of automobiles accompanied by the land development near local roadsides in the city is the major cause of air pollution in Siheung city. In this study, if urban activities are vigorous in an area with high air pollution, people are more likely to be exposed to air pollutant under the bad environmental conditions. On the other hand, if urban activities are less vigorous in an area with high pollution or if urban activities are vigorous in an area with less pollution, the environmental condition was positive. The APEI (Air Pollution Exposure Index) was developed based on these considerations. Scenarios 1 and 2 were compared and analyzed using APEI. In result, scenario 1 is the case in which land is developed and used in an environmentally favorable manner. From this study, it was proved that the impact of air pollution on human health can be minimized with proper land use. The result form the current study can be used as the basic information to solve problems from improper land utilization and air pollution (by road traffic). It also can be utilized to evaluate air pollution level according to land use and road characteristics and to help to choose the best location of land use to comply with the road function and status.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.56-67
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• 2005

Rapid and reckless economical development is causing nationwide deforestation; more and more forest is being developed to be used as a base for economic advancement. While benefiting the national economy, this destruction of forest is creating a serious problem in the National Land Plan. To solve this problem, it is imperative to understand the current condition of damaged forest and make an environment-friendly plan. This paper explains the principles of spatial plan and sets the criteria for the plan, such as patch size, connectivity, and edge of the Landscape Ecology. The paper assesses the conservational value of area that are currently being developed or planned to be developed to figure out the current environmental situation. This conservational value was verified by the field survey. The result of assessment appears that the patch size of the major mountains in site is over 1,000ha and edge is located widely beside roads. The area of the high connectivity is located agriculture area in valley or narrow roads. The research shows that the patch size is related to biodiversity the larger the patch size, the more populated the species are. The research also reveals the conservational value indicated by degree of connection to forest, difference in the structure of vegetation between core area and edge area, and effects of surrounding environment. In further study, we will assess other criteria of conservation value, such as patch shape and fragmentation to the Landscape Ecology, and apply those criteria in biological aspects of the spatial plan.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.282-293
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• 2020

This study investigated a long-term variation trend of water quality, fish compositions, and ecological health conditions in the Gwanpyeong stream located in the nearby Daejeon metropolitan city to understand the impact of urban development projects on the aquatic ecosystem. The sampling was made in four surveys (2009, 2010, 2016, 2019) before and after urbanization. The urban development was conducted in 2008, resulting in the stream's ecological disturbance, and the stream restoration was conducted in 2012. Thus, stream monitoring was conducted to analyze the ecological trends before and after the restoration. The multi-metric models for Fish Assessment Index(FAI) and necropsy-based Health Assessment Index(HAI) were applied in the fish community and organ-level, respectively, to assess the ecological health of the stream. Minimum turbidity and chlorophyll-a(Chl-a) occurred in the mid-stream(St. 2), and this was probably due to rapid current velocity in the riffle zone. We collected 18 fish species, and the dominant species was Zacco platypus (40.6%). In 2016 immediately after the stream restoration, the relative proportions of sensitive species and insectivore species were the highest along with highest values in the species diversity and species richness index, resulting in the best condition in the ecological health, based on FAI model values. However, the ecological health, based on the FAI, became worse in the latest survey conducted in 2019. The analysis of the HAI model based on the organ-level approach showed skin erosion in the fish of upper stream, kidney defects in downstream, and the liver and gill defects observed in all sites, indicating that the anatomical health was also affected.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.30 no.1 s.56
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• pp.195-207
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• 1997

High price equipment is one of the major factors that increases national health expenditure in developed countries. Computerized Tomography(CT), one of the important high price equipment, has been concerns of health service researchers and policy makers in many countries. In Korea, CT, first introduced in 1984, have spreaded nationwide with rapid speed. Though the Committee for Approving Import of High Price Medical Equipment, founded in 1981, tried to regulate the introduction of high price medical equipment including CT, the effort resulted in failure. The exact situation of diffusion of the high price equipment, however, was not yet investigated. We aimed at the description of the diffusion of CT in Korea and analysis of influencing factors on hospitals for the adoption of CT. We mainly used the database of CT, made in 1996 by the National Federation of Medical Insurance for the purpose of insurance payment for CT. Also characteristics of hospitals were gathered from yearbooks published by the central and local governments and by the Korean Hospital Association. We calculated the cumulative number of the CT per one million population year by year. In turn, multiple linear logistic regression was done to find out the contributing factors for the adoption of CT by each hospital. In the logistic regression model, it is regarded as dependent factor whether a hospital retained CT or not in 1988 and 1993. The major categories of the independent factors were hospital characteristics, environmental factors and competitive conditions of hospitals at the period of the adoption. The results are as follows: Number of CT scanners per one million persons in Korea marked more higher level compared with those of most OECD countries. Major influencing factors on the adoption of CT scanners were hospital characteristics, such as hospital referral level, and competitive condition of hospitals, such as number of CT scanners per 10,000 persons in each district where the hospital was located. In Korea, CT diffused with rather rapid speed, comparable with those of the United States and Japan. The major factors contributing on the adoption of CT for hospitals were competitive condition and hospital characteristics rather than regional health care need for CT. In conclusion, a kind of regulating mechanism would be necessary for the prevention of the indiscreet adoption and inefficient use of high price equipment including CT.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.18-29
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• 2021

Purpose: Patients with hematologic malignancy (HM) typically have a high mortality rate when their condition deteriorates. The chronic progressive course of the disease makes it difficult to assess the effect of intervention on acute events. We investigated the effectiveness of a rapid response team (RRT) on in-hospital mortality in patients with HM. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the data of patients with HM who admitted to the medical intensive care unit between 2006 and 2015. Clinical outcomes before and after RRT implementation were evaluated. Results: A total of 228 patients in the pre-RRT period and 781 patients in the post-RRT period were included. The overall in-hospital mortality was 55.4%. Patients in the post-RRT period had improved survival; however, they required more vasopressor therapy, continuous renal replacement therapy, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Multivariate analysis revealed that in-hospital mortality was associated with RRT activation (hazard ratio [HR], 0.634; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.498-0.807; p < .001), neurological disease (HR, 2.007; 95% CI, 1.439-2.800; p < .001), sequential organ failure assessment score (HR, 1.085; 95% CI, 1.057-1.112; p < .001), need for continuous renal replacement therapy (HR, 1.608; 95% CI, 1.206-1.895; p< .001), mechanical ventilation (HR, 1.512; 95% CI, 1.206-1.895; p< .001), vasopressor (HR, 1.598; 95% CI, 1.105-2.311; p = .013), and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (HR, 1.728; 95% CI, 1.105-2.311; p = .030). Conclusion: RRT activation may be associated with improved survival in patients with HM.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.69-78
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• 2005

ARCO and TAO data which supply three dimensional global ocean information are assimilated to the background field from a general circulation model, MOM3. Using a variational Analysis using Filter (VAF), which is a spatial variational filter designed to reduce computational time and space efficiently and economically, observed ARGO and TAO data are assimilated to the OGCM-generated background sea temperature for the generation of initial condition of the model. For the assessment of the assimilation impact, a comparative experiment has been done by integrating the model from different intial conditions: one from ARGO-, TAO-data assimilated initial condition and the other from background state without assimilation. The assimilated analysis field not only depicts major oceanic features more realistically but also reduces several systematic model bias that appear in every current OGCMs experiments. From the 10-month of model integrations with and without assimilated initial conditions, it is found that the major assimilated characteristics in sea temperature appeared in the initial field remain persistently throughout the integration. Such implies that the assimilated characteristics of the reduced sea temperature bias is to last in the integration without rapid restoration to the non-assimilated OGCM integration state by dispersing mass field in the form of internal gravity waves. From our analysis, it is concluded that the data assimilation method adapted in this study to MOM3 is reasonable and applicable with dynamical consistency. The success in generating initial condition with ARGO and TAO data assimilation has significant implication upon the prediction of the long-term climate and weather using ocean-atmosphere coupled model.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.6A
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• pp.765-778
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• 2008

Performance Profiles are essential to predict the performance variation over time for the bridge management system (BMS) based on risk management. In general, condition profiles based on experts opinion and/or visual inspection records have been used widely because obtaining profiles based on real performance is not easy. However, those condition profiles usually don't give a good consistency to the safety of bridges, causing practical problems for the effective bridge management. The accuracy of performance evaluation is directly related to the accuracy of BMS. The reliability of the evaluation is important to produce the optimal solution for distributing maintenance budget reasonably. However, conventional methods of bridge assessment are not suitable for a more sophisticated decision making procedure. In this study, a method to compute quantitative performance profiles has been proposed to overcome the limitations of those conventional models. In Bridge Management Systems, the main role of performance profiles is to compute and predict the performance of bridges subject to lifetime activities with uncertainty. Therefore, the computation time for obtaining an optimal maintenance scenario is closely related to the efficiency of the performance profile. In this study, the Response Surface Method (RSM) based on independent and important design variables is developed for the rapid computation. Steel box bridges have been investigated because the number of independent design variables can be reduced significantly due to the high dependency between design variables.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.353-364
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• 2016

Yangon city is experienced a rapid urban expansion over the last two decades due to accelerate with the socioeconomic development. This research work studied an investigation into the application of the integration of the Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) for observing Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) patterns and evaluate its impact on Land Surface Temperature (LST) of the downtown, suburban 1 and suburban 2 of Yangon city. The main purpose of this paper was to examine and analyze the variation of the spatial distribution property of the LULC of urban spatial information related with the LST and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) using RS and GIS. This paper was observed on image processing of LULC classification, LST and NDVI were extracted from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) image data. Then, LULC pattern was linked with the variation of LST data of the Yangon area for the further connection of the correlation between surface temperature and urban structure. As a result, NDVI values were used to examine the relation between thermal behavior and condition of land cover categories. The spatial distribution of LST has been found mixed pattern and higher LST was located with the scatter pattern, which was related to certain LULC types within downtown, suburban 1 and 2. The result of this paper, LST and NDVI analysis exhibited a strong negative correlation without water bodies for all three portions of Yangon area. The strongest coefficient correlation was found downtown area (-0.8707) and followed suburban 1 (-0.7526) and suburban 2(-0.6923).

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.736-744
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• 2005

Statement of problem. Initial stability of implant is an important factor for predicting osseointegration. It requires a rapid, non-invasive, user-friendly technique to frequently assess the implant stability and the degree of osseointegration. Purpose. The aim of this study was to evaluate the correlation between the resonance frequency analysis (RFA) and the radiographic method for peri-implant bone change under in vitro conditions. Material and Method. Twenty implants of 3.75 mm in diameter(Neoplant, Neobiotech, Korea) were used. To simulate peri-implant bone change, 2 mm-deep $45^{\circ}$ range horizontal defect and 2 mm-deep $90^{\circ}$ range horizontal defect area were serially prepared perpendicular to the X-ray beam after conventional implant insertion. Customized film holding device was fabricated to standardize the projection geometry for serial radiographs of implants and direct digital image was obtained. ISQ values and gray values inside threads were measured before and after peri-implant bone defect preparation. Results. Within a limitation of this study, ISQ value of resonance frequency analysis was changed according to peri-implant bone change (p<0.05) and gray value of radiographic method was changed according to peri-implant bone change (p<0.05). There was no correlation between the ISQ value and the gray value for peri-implant bone change (p>0.05). But, in horizontal defect condition, relatively positive correlation were between ISQ and gray values(r=0.663). Conclusion. This results provided a possibility that peri-implant bone change may be evaluated by both RFA and radiographic method.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.523-528
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• 2014

Background: Numerous statistical models have been developed to accurately predict outcomes in multiple trauma patients. However, such trauma scoring systems reflect the patient's physiological condition, which can only be determined to a limited extent, and are difficult to use when performing a rapid initial assessment. We studied the predictive ability of the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) score compared to other scoring systems. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 229 patients with multiple trauma combined with chest injury from January 2006 to June 2011. A SIRS score was calculated for patients based on their presentation to the emergency room. The patients were divided into two groups: those with an SIRS score of two points or above and those with an SIRS score of one or zero. Then, the outcomes between the two groups were compared. Furthermore, the ability of the SIRS score and other injury severity scoring systems to predict mortality was compared. Results: Hospital death occurred in 12 patients (5.2%). There were no significant differences in the general characteristics of patients, but the trauma severity scores were significantly different between the two groups. The SIRS scores, number of complications, and mortality rate were significantly higher in those with a SIRS score of two or above (p<0.001). In the multivariant analysis, the SIRS score was the only independent factor related to mortality. Conclusion: The SIRS score is easily calculated on admission and may accurately predict mortality in patients with multiple traumas.