• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.171-181
• /
• 2008

Home care, known also as domiciliary care, is part of the community care service that is a responsibility of the local government authorities in the UK as well as many other countries around the world. The aim is to provide the care and support needed to assist people, particularly older people, people with physical or learning disabilities and people who need assistance due to illness to live as independently as possible in their own homes. It is performed primarily by care workers visiting clients' homes where they provide help with daily activities. This paper is concerned with the dispatching of care workers to clients in an efficient manner. The optimized routine for each care worker determines a schedule to achieve the minimum total cost (in terms of distance traveled) without violating the capacity and time window constraints. A collaborative population-based meta-heuristic called Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is applied to solve the problem. A particle is defined as a multi-dimensional point in space which represents the corresponding schedule for care workers and their clients. Each dimension of a particle represents a care activity and the corresponding, allocated care worker. The continuous position value of each dimension determines the care worker to be assigned and also the assignment priority. A heuristic assignment scheme is specially designed to transform the continuous position value to the discrete job schedule. This job schedule represents the potential feasible solution to the problem. The Earliest Start Time Priority with Minimum Distance Assignment (ESTPMDA) technique is developed for generating an initial solution which guides the search direction of the particle. Local improvement procedures (LIP), insertion and swap, are embedded in the PSO algorithm in order to further improve the quality of the solution. The proposed methodology is implemented, tested, and compared with existing solutions for some 'real' problem instances.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
• /
• v.33 no.5
• /
• pp.627-631
• /
• 2006

Purpose: Ischial region is common site of pressure sore as well as greater trochanteric area. In general, ischial pressure sore associated with a large subcutaneous bursa often requires radical surgical treatment. The authors performed sclerotherapy using absolute ethanol which was considered as an alternative in treating recurrent ischial pressure sore. Methods: From may 2005 to February 2006, 11 ischial pressure sore patients were treated sclerotherapy using absolute ethanol. The authors performed sclerotherapy using absolute ethanol in 11 patients in whom the ischial sore has recurred despite of multiple radical surgical treatment. The patients' original disorders were spinal cord injury in 9 patients, cerebral palsy in 1 patient and giant cell tumor in thoracic vertebrae 1 patient. Results: Recurrence of pressure sore was not found in any patient during the follow-up period. The swap of the bursa taken before the surgery was germ cultured and compared with the discharge from an end of the inserted drain tube. The germ cultured results after the surgery were tested negative in all patients. Conclusion: This method involves causing the bursa to become scarred and closing it up by sterilizing, fixing, and denaturing by the pharmacologic effect of absolute ethanol instead of surgical excision of the bursa. We felt that aforementioned treatment modality may be considered as an alternative in treating recurrent ischial pressure sore.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
• /
• v.59 no.2
• /
• pp.37-47
• /
• 2017

In this study, we analyzed the variability of irrigation water amounts based on the combination of various crops and soil textures using the Irrigation Water Management Model (IWMM). IWMM evaluates the degree of agricultural drought using the Soil Moisture Deficit Index (SMDI). When crops are damaged by the water scarcity under the drought condition indicating that the SMDI values are in negative (SMDI<0), IWMM irrigates appropriate water amounts that can shift the negative SMDI values to "0" to crop fields. To test the IWMM model, we selected the Bandong-ri (BDR) and Jucheon (JC) sites in Gangwon-do and Jeollabuk-do provinces. We derived the soil hydraulic properties using the near-surface data assimilation scheme form the Time Domain Reflectrometry (TDR)-based soil moisture measurements. The daily root zone soil moisture dynamics (R: 0.792/0.588 and RMSE: 0.013/0.018 for BDR/JC) estimated by the derived soil parameters were matched well with the TDR-based measurements for validation. During the long-term (2001~2015) period, IWMM irrigated the minimum water amounts to crop fields, while there were no irrigation events during the rainy days. Also, Sandy Loam (SL) and Silt (Si) soils require more irrigation water amounts than others, while the irrigation water were higher in the order of radish, wheat, soybean, and potato, respectively. Thus, the IWMM model can provide efficient irrigation water amounts to crop fields and be useful for regions at where limited water resources are available.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.7 no.8
• /
• pp.59-65
• /
• 2007

Overlay Multicast is an effective method for efficient utilization of system resources and network bandwidth without a need for hardware customization. Multicast tree reconstruction is required when a non-leaf node leaves or fails. However frequent multicast tree reconstruction introduces serious degradation in performance. In this paper, we propose a tree performance optimization algorithm to solve this defect by using information(RTCP-probing) that becomes a periodic feedback to a source node from each child node. The proposed model is a mechanism performed when a parent node seems to cause deterioration in the tree performance. We have improved the performance of the whole service tree using the mechanism and hence composing an optimization tree. The simulation results show that our proposal stands to be an effective method that can be applied to not only the proposed model but also to existing techniques.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.63-72
• /
• 2015

Avatars are a visual representation of users in a virtual world such as an MMORPG. These avatars are often seen as representations or idealizations of the user's actual self. However, this view does not account for the prevalence of two behaviors: multiple avatars and 'gender swapping'. An exercise and questionnaire were created to study avatar customization practices across players outside the context of any particular game to understand better user motivations in creating their virtual selves. A preliminary trial of the exercise showed little correlation between age or gender and gender swapping. While those of non-traditional sexuality were more likely to gender swap, half of traditional sexuality also swapped. Finally, the personality trait, Openness to Experience, showed promising correlation with gender swapping.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.67-74
• /
• 2009

Exposures to environmental chemicals that mimic endogenous hormones are proposed for a number of adverse health effects, including infertility, abnormal prenatal and childhood development and above all cancers. In addition, recently miRNA (micro RNA) has been recognized to play an important role in various diseases and in cellular and molecular responses to toxicants. In this study, endocrine disrupting environmental toxicant, nonylphenol (NP) was treated to MCF-7 (Human breast cancer cell) and HepG2 (Human hepatocellular liver carcinoma) cell line at 3 hrs and 48 hrs time point and miRNA analysis using $mirVana^{TM}$ miRNA bioarray was performed and compared with total mRNA microarray data for the same cell line and treatment. Robust data quality was achieved through the use of dye-swap. Analysis of microarray data identifies a total of 20 and 11 miRNA expressions at 3 hrs and 48 hrs exposure to NP in MCF-7 cell line and a total of 14 and 47 miRNA expression at 3 hrs and 48 hrs exposure respectively to NP in HepG2 cell line. Expression profiling of the selected miRNA (let-7c, miR-16, miR-195, miR-200b, miR200c, miR-205, and miR-589) reveals changes in the expression of target genes related to metabolism, immune response, apoptosis, and cell differentiation. The present study can be informative and helpful to understand the role of miRNA in molecular mechanism of chemical toxicity and their influence on hormone dependent disease. Also this study may prove to be a valuable tool for screening potential estrogen mimicking pollutants in the environment.

• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.45-59
• /
• 2007

We describe the gene expression profile of third leaves of rice (cv. Nipponbare) seedlings subjected to salt stress (130 mM NaCl). Transcripts of Mn-SOD, Cu/Zn-SOD, cytosolic and stromal APX, GR and CatB were up-regulated, whereas expression of thylakoid-bound APX and CatA were down-regulated. The levels of the compatible solute proline and of transcripts of its biosynthetic gene, ${\Delta}^1$-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthetase (P5CS), were strongly increased by salt stress. Interestingly, a potential compatible solute, ${\gamma}$-aminobutyric acid (GABA), was also found to be strongly induced by salt stress along with marked up-regulation of transcripts of GABA-transaminase. A dye-swap rice DNA microarray analysis identified a large number of genes whose expression in third leaves was altered by salt stress. Among 149 genes whose expression was altered at all the times assayed (3, 4 and 6 days) during salt stress, there were 47 annotated novel genes and 76 unknown genes. These results provide new insight into the effect of salt stress on the expression of genes related to antioxidant enzymes, proline and GABA as well as of genes in several functional categories.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.17 no.10
• /
• pp.155-165
• /
• 2012

This paper suggests traveling salesman problem algorithm that have been unsolved problem with NP-Hard. The proposed algorithm is a heuristic with edge-swap method. The classical method finds the initial solution starts with first node and visits to mostly adjacent nodes then decides the traveling path. This paper selects minimum weight edge for each nodes, then perform Min-Min method that start from minimum weight edge among the selected edges and Min-Max method that starts from maximum weight edges among it. Then we decide tie initial solution to minimum path length between Min-Min and Min-Max method. To get the final optimal solution, we apply previous two-opt to initial solution. Also, we suggest extended 3-opt and 4-opt additionally. For the 7 actual experimental data, this algorithm can be get the optimal solutions of state-of-the-art with fast and correct.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.19 no.12
• /
• pp.171-175
• /
• 2014

Gu$\acute{e}$ret et al. tries to obtain the solution using linear programming with $O(m^4)$ time complexity for cane sugar production problem a kind of bin packing problem that is classified as NP-complete problem. On the other hand, this paper suggests the maximum loss of lot first production greedy rule algorithm with O(mlogm) polynomial time complexity underlying assumption of the polynomial time rule to find the solution is exist. The proposed algorithm sorts the lots of sugar loss slope into descending order. Then, we select the lots for each slot production capacity only, and swap the exhausted life span of lots for lastly selected lots. As a result of experiments, this algorithm reduces the $O(m^4)$ of linear programming to O(mlogm) time complexity. Also, this algorithm better result than linear programming.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.83-92
• /
• 2004

In this paper, we introduce the development of the large storage system in order to record the observed space radio signal in the Korean VLBI Network(KVN) with high-speed. The KVN is the Very Long Baseline Interferometery(VLBI) to observe the birth of star, the structure of space by constructing radio telescope with diameter 21m at the Seoul, Ulsan, Jeju from 2001 to 2007 years. To do this, Korea Astronomy Observatory joined the international consortium for developing the high-speed large storage system(Mark 5), which is developed by MIT Haystack observatory. The Mark 5 system based on hard disk has to record up to 1 Gbps the observed space radio signal. The main features of Mark 5 system are as follows; First it is able to directly record the input data to the hard disk without PC1(Peripheral Component Interconnect) internal bus, and the second, it has two hard disk banks, which are able to hot-swap ATA/IDE type very cheap up to 1 Gbps recording and playback. The third is that it follows the international VLBI standard interface hardware(VSI-H). Therefore it can be connect directly the VSI-H type system at the input/output. Finally it also supports e- VLBI(Electronic-VLBI) through the standard Gigabits Ethernet connection.