• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.2607-2612
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• 2014

Background: Cancer screening rates in Japan are much lower than those in Western countries. This study evaluated the relationship between cancer screening rates and strategies used to improve screening rates, and determined which strategy is the most effective. Materials and Methods: All municipalities are responsible for conducting gastric, lung, colorectal, cervical, and breast cancer screenings in Japan. Of the 1,746 municipalities in total, 92-99% were included in the analyses for each cancer screening. Using national data in 2009, the correlations between cancer screening rates and strategies for improving screening rates of all municipalities, both large (populations of over 30,000) and small (populations of under 30,000), were determined. The strategies used were as follows: sending personal invitation letters, personal visits by community health workers, use of a clinical setting for screening, and free screening. Results: Of all four strategies used to improve cancer screening rates, sending personal invitation letters had the highest correlations with all screening rates, with the exception of breast cancer screening. The partial correlation coefficients linking this strategy with the screening rates in all municipalities were 0.28, 0.32, 0.30, and 0.26 for gastric, lung, colorectal, and cervical cancer screening, respectively. In large municipalities, the correlations between the number of examinees in a clinical setting and the screening rates were also relatively high, particularly for cervical cancer screening (r=0.41). Conclusions: Sending personal invitation letters appears to be particularly effective in improving cancer screening rates in all municipalities. All municipalities should implement a system that sends personal invitation letters for cancer screening. In large municipalities, increasing the availability of screening in a clinical setting is also effective in improving cancer screening rates.

• Journal of KIEE
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.55-61
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• 2001

SIME(Single Machine Equivalent) method has been recognized as a useful tool to determine transient stability of power system. In this paper, SIME method is used to develop the KEPCO transient stability assessment (TSA) tool. A new screening algorithm that can be generators are identified by a new index in the early stage of the time domain simulation. Thus, computational time require to find OMIB(One Machine Infinite Bus) can be reduced significantly. Second, clustering critical machines can be performed even in very stable cases. It enables to be avoid extra calculation of time trajectory that is needed in SIME for classifying the stable cases. This algorithm is applied to the fast TSA of the KEPCO system in the year of 2010.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.637-643
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• 2015

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Malnutrition in the elderly is a serious problem, prevalent in both hospitals and care homes. Due to the absence of a gold standard for malnutrition, herein we evaluate the efficacy of five nutritional screening tools developed or used for the elderly. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Elected medical records of 141 elderly patients (86 men and 55 women, aged $73.5{\pm}5.2years$) hospitalized at a geriatric care hospital were analyzed. Nutritional screening was performed using the following tools: Mini Nutrition Assessment (MNA), Mini Nutrition Assessment-Short Form (MNA-SF), Geriatric Nutritional Risk Index (GNRI), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) and Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002). A combined index for malnutrition was also calculated as a reference tool. Each patient evaluated as malnourished to any degree or at risk of malnutrition according to at least four out of five of the aforementioned tools was categorized as malnourished in the combined index classification. RESULTS: According to the combined index, 44.0% of the patients were at risk of malnutrition to some degree. While the nutritional risk and/or malnutrition varied greatly depending on the tool applied, ranging from 36.2% (MUST) to 72.3% (MNA-SF). MUST showed good validity (sensitivity 80.6%, specificity 98.7%) and almost perfect agreement (k = 0.81) with the combined index. In contrast, MNA-SF showed poor validity (sensitivity 100%, specificity 49.4%) and only moderate agreement (k = 0.46) with the combined index. CONCLUSIONS: MNA-SF was found to overestimate the nutritional risk in the elderly. MUST appeared to be the most valid and useful screening tool to predict malnutrition in the elderly at a geriatric care hospital.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.779-784
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• 2006

Several studies about hospital malnutrition have been reported that about more than 40% of hospitalized patients are having nutritional risk factors and hospital malnutrition presents a high prevalence. People in a more severe nutritional status ended up with a longer length of hospital stay and higher hospital cost. Nutrition screening tools identify individuals who are malnourished or at risk of becoming malnourished and who may benefit from nutritional support. For the early detection and treatment of malnourished hospital patients , few valid screening instruments fur Koreans exist. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a simple, reliable and valid malnutrition screening tool that could be used at hospital admission to identify adult patients at risk of malnutrition using medical electrical record data. Two hundred and one patients of the university affiliated medical center were assessed on nutritional status and classified as well nourished, moderately or severely malnourished by a Patient-Generated subjective global assessment (PG-SGA) being chosen as the 'gold standard' for defining malnutrition. The combination of nutrition screening questions with the highest sensitivity and specificity at prediction PG-SGA was termed the nutrition screening index (NSI). Odd ratio, and binary logistic regression were used to predict the best nutritional status predictors. Based on regression coefficient score, albumin less than 3.5 g/dl, body mass index (BMI) less than $18.5kg/m^2$, total lymphocyte count less than 900 and age over 65 were determined as the best set of NSI. By using best nutritional predictors receiver operating characteristic curve with the area under the curve, sensitivity and 1-specificity were analyzed to determine the best optimal cut-off point to decide normal or abnormal in nutritional status. Therefore simple and beneficial NSI was developed for identifying patients with severe malnutrition. Using NSI, nutritional information of the severe malnutrition patient should be shared with physicians and they should be cared for by clinical dietitians to improve their nutritional status.

• Journal of mucopolysaccharidosis and rare diseases
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.9-13
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• 2017

Tandem mass spectrometry and other new technologies for the multiplex and quantitative analysis of dried blood spots have emerged as powerful techniques for the early screening and assessment of newborns for lysosomal storage diseases (LSDs). Screening newborns for these diseases is important, since treatment options, including enzyme replacement therapy or hematopoietic transplantation, are available for some LSDs, such as infant-onset Pompe disease, Fabry disease, some types of mucopolysaccharidoses (MPSs), and Krabbe disease. For these diseases, early initiation of treatment, before symptoms worsen, often leads to better clinical outcomes. Several problems, however, are associated with newborn screening for LSDs, including the development of accurate test methods to reduce low false-positive rates and treatment guidelines for late-onset or mild disease variants, the high costs associated with multiplex assays, and ethical issues. In this review, we discuss the history, current status, and ethical problems associated with the newborn screening for LSDs, including MPSs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.365-368
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• 2006

The implementation of a screening procedure for removing non-conforming products has become a common practice especially in high-tech manufacturing industries. Screening procedures involve a measurement on the quality characteristic of interest since decisions regarding the conformance to specifications are usually made on the basis of the realization of measurement. A significant variability in measurement procedures may result in the misclassification of an outgoing product (that is, falsely accepting defectives or falsely rejecting conforming items), which may lead to wrong interpretation on product quality, It may thus be necessary to consider the impacts of misclassification errors due to measurement variability when designing screening procedures. Along this line, this article investigates the design of screening procedures based on the assessment of misclassification errors. The main objective is to determine the screening limits on measured values so that two types of misclassification errors may properly be compromised.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.73-78
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• 2008

For a given soil-contaminated site, a level of soil contamination is characterized and decisions on risk may be made from the risk assessment. The study evaluated critical design factors for the determination of sample size in the sampling design plan and the assessment of soil contaminant- leaching to groundwater. Two variables, the minimum relative detectable difference (T) and coefficient of variation (CV) were evaluated for the sample size determination. The minimum number of samples can be appropriately determined by CV under a T value greater than or equal to 0.2. Soil-contaminant leaching to groundwater was evaluated by using the Soil Screening Level equation of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Risk Based Screening Level equation of American Society for Testing and Materials, with the same input parameters. The groundwater concentrations estimated from soil contaminant concentrations were significantly affected by the Darcy velocity of groundwater and the organic content of soil.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.40 no.spc
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• pp.19-31
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• 2010

Orally administrated drugs permeate the biological membrane by various transport mechanisms. The oral absorption potential is closely related to the physicochemical properties of the drug and interaction with the physiological factors surrounding the site of absorption. Assessment of the drug membrane permeability is an integral part of the early stage drug developmental process. Appropriate selection of the permeability screening method at the right stage of drug development process is important in achieving successful developmental outcomes. This review aims at introducing currently available in vitro and in vivo screening methods for the membrane permeability assessment.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.391-399
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• 2017

This study investigates the effects of soft story, short columns, heavy overhangs, pounding, and construction and workmanship quality parameters on seismic response of reinforced concrete buildings through nonlinear static and dynamic procedures. The accounted parameters are selected for their common use in rapid screening of RC buildings. The 4- and 7-story buildings designed according to pre-modern codes are used to reflect majority of the existing building stock. The relative penalty scores are employed in this study to evaluate relative importance of certain irregularities in the existing rapid seismic assessment procedures. Comparison of relative scores for the irregularities considered in this study show that the overall trend is similar. The relatively small differences may be accounted for regional construction practices. It is concluded that initial-phase seismic assessment procedures based on architectural features yield in somewhat similar results independent of their bases. However, the differences in the scores emphasize the proper selection of the method based on the regional structure characteristics.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.3641-3645
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• 2013

Background: Assessment of the nursing staff knowledge, attitude and practices about cervical cancer screening in a tertiary care teaching institute of rural India. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional, descriptive, interview-based survey was conducted with a pretested questionnaire among 262 staff nurses of a tertiary care teaching and research institute. Results: In this study 77% respondents knew that Pap smear is used for detection of cervical cancer, but less than half knew that Pap smear can detect even precancerous lesions of cervix. Only 23.4% knew human papilloma virus infection as a risk factor. Only 26.7% of the respondents were judged as having adequate knowledge based on scores allotted for questions evaluating knowledge about cervical cancer and screening. Only 17 (7%) of the staff nurses had themselves been screened by Pap smear, while 85% had never taken a Pap smear of a patient. Adequate knowledge of cervical cancer and screening, higher parity and age >30 years were significantly associated with self screening for cervical cancer. Most nurese held a view that Pap test is a doctor procedure, and nearly 90% of nurses had never referred a patient for Pap testing. Conclusions: The majority of nursing staff in rural India may have inadequate knowledge about cervical cancer screening, and their attitude and practices towards cervical cancer screening could not be termed positive.