• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.44-65
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• 2023

Purposes: As super-aging population and low fertility rates are threatening the sustainability of the National Health Insurance funds, enhancing the efficiency of hospital management is paramount. In the past, studies analyzing the efficiencies of hospitals primarily made inter-hospital comparisons, but it is important to assess hospitals' internal efficiency and develop improvement measures in order to attain practical improvements in hospital efficiencies. The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficiencies of specialists by medical specialty in a hospital in order to provide foundational data for efficient hospital management. Methodology/Approach: We used the activity-based costing (ABC) data and hospital statistical data from one tertiary hospital in Seoul to analyze the efficiency of specialists by medical specialty. Efficiency was analyzed and compared among specialists using the data envelopment analysis developed by Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (DEA-CCR) model and the slacks-based measure (SBM) models. The input variables were labor cost, material cost, and operational expenses, and the output variables were the number of outpatients, number of inpatients, outpatient revenue, and inpatient revenue. Findings: First, there was a marked deviation in efficiency across specialists. Second, there was a marked deviation in efficiency across medical specialties. Third, there was little difference in efficiency according to the specialist's sex, age, and job position. Fourth, the SBM model produced more conservative results and better explained efficiency parameters than the CCR model. Practical Implications: The efficiency of a specialist was more influenced by their medical specialty than their personal characteristics, namely sex, age, and job position. Therefore, Further research is needed to analyze the efficiencies of each subspecialty and identify factors that contribute to the variations in efficiencies across medical specialties, such as clinical practices and fee structures.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.18-26
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• 2014

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to estimate the cost of dental implant using the bottom-up approach with the current data from dental clinics. Materials and methods: In this study, direct and indirect costs required for each treatment were calculated using the bottom-up approach. In the bottom-up costing, the average monthly total cost of dental clinic includes labor and material costs, administrative expenses, medical malpractice costs, and opportunity costs of invested capital. For the dental implant cost components, those include direct costs (labor costs, laboratory costs, material costs, depreciation or other operating costs), indirect costs (administrative costs), and the opportunity costs of investment for dental clinic. Results: Dental implant costs of metal crown, porcelain crown and over-denture were 1,449,000 won, 1,583,000 won, and 2,471,000 won respectively. The proportion of cost components was as follows. The labor cost were 50%, and material, administrative and other cost were 33%, 15% and 2%, respectively. For direct, indirect and investment cost, the ratio were 83%, 15% and 2%, respectively. Conclusion: The labor costs were evaluated to comprise largest proportion (about 50%, 730,000 won). Dental implant cost using Bottom-up costing was 1,450,000 won for metal crown and 1,580,000 won for porcelain crown.

• Mycobiology
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.57-62
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• 2015

${\beta}$-Glucosidase, which hydrolyzes cellobiose into two glucoses, plays an important role in the process of saccharification of the lignocellulosic biomass. In this study, we optimized the activity of ${\beta}$-glucosidase of brown-rot fungus Fomitopsis pinicola KCTC 6208 using the response surface methodology (RSM) with various concentrations of glucose, yeast extract and ascorbic acid, which are the most significant nutrients for activity of ${\beta}$-glucosidase. The highest activity of ${\beta}$-glucosidase was achieved 3.02% of glucose, 4.35% of yeast extract, and 7.41% ascorbic acid where ascorbic acid was most effective. The maximum activity of ${\beta}$-glucosidase predicted by the RSM was 15.34 U/mg, which was similar to the experimental value 14.90 U/mg at the 16th day of incubation. This optimized activity of ${\beta}$-glucosidase was 23.6 times higher than the preliminary activity value, 0.63 U/mg, and was also much higher than previous values reported in other fungi strains. Therefore, a simplified medium supplemented with a cheap vitamin source, such as ascorbic acid, could be a cost effective mean of increasing ${\beta}$-glucosidase activity.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.715-739
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• 2009

Technology innovation activity plays an important role in increasing a sales by bringing on the improvement of product's performance and a profitability by reducing the cost of production. Thus, technology innovation activity can reduce the default risk of firms. However, in spite of these effects of technology innovation activity, this activity can make the default risk of firm because it induce a firm to much investment of resources. This study examines the effect of technology innovation activity on the sales, profitability, and default risk of firms. This study's sample consists of manufacturing firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2008. The results show that technology innovation activity has a positive effect on the sales (profitability) but a negative effect on the default risk of firms. Also there is the significant mediation effect of sales and profitability.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.92-110
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• 2012

Due to the social problems including recent economic crisis and unemployment rate increase, the demand of business foundation market has been increased and, in the meantime, on the basis of the business foundation support policy of the government including youth foundation support policy and Small & Medium Business Administration foundation planning, business foundation market has been showing steady growth trend. With this enlargement of foundation market, as the accompanied increase of franchise market is expected, it is considered that the importance of more realistic and concrete research about franchise market be larger than before. This study considered brand image, main office support, foundation cost, information search activity as the advanced variable of effect on brand selection and established the cause of effect on brand selection by improving the existing advanced research, and its result is as follows. First, according to foundation business kind, age, sex, yes or no of marriage, there is some difference III the thought about brand image and foundation possibility. Second, Second, the most important factor of franchise contract intention is economical specificity. It is difficult to consider brand image, franchise support and information search activity as the property having a big effect on preliminary founder, and it was shown that the cost for franchise management(Consistency with initial foundation cost and self-capital, promotion cost, management fund, facility/equipment reinvestment, etc.) is an important property. Specially, it was shown that consistency with initial foundation cost and self-capital is the most important factor for preliminary founder.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.78-89
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• 2020

Human activity recognition (HAR) has become effective as a computer vision tool for video surveillance systems. In this paper, a novel biometric system that can detect human activities in 3D space is proposed. In order to implement HAR, joint angles obtained using an RGB-depth sensor are used as features. Because HAR is operated in the time domain, angle information is stored using the sliding kernel method. Haar-wavelet transform (HWT) is applied to preserve the information of the features before reducing the data dimension. Dimension reduction using an averaging algorithm is also applied to decrease the computational cost, which provides faster performance while maintaining high accuracy. Before the classification, a proposed thresholding method with inverse HWT is conducted to extract the final feature set. Finally, the K-nearest neighbor (k-NN) algorithm is used to recognize the activity with respect to the given data. The method compares favorably with the results using other machine learning algorithms.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.699-703
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• 2016

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a serious clinical and an urgent problem worldwide. Few new drugs are available against MRSA, because MRSA has the ability to acquire resistance to most antibiotics, which consequently increases the cost of medication. In the present study, the antibacterial activity of Hydnocarpi Semen was investigated. The most effective method is to develop antibiotics from the natural products without having any toxic or side effects. Therefore, there is a need to develop alternative antibacterial drugs for the treatment of infectious diseases. Five Clinical isolates (MRSA) were obtained from five different patients at Wonkwang University Hospital (Iksan, South Korea). The Other 2 strains were ATCC 33591 (Methicillin-resistant strain) and ATCC 25923 (Methicillin-susceptible strain). Antibacterial activity (Minimal Inhibitory Concentrations, MICs) was determined by broth dilution method, disk diffusion method, MTT test, and checkerboard dilution test. Antibacterial activity of n-hexane fraction was remarkable, and had a MICs ranging from $31.25-125{\mu}g/m{\ell}$. FICI values for HFH+AM and HFH+OX were 0.13-0.19 and 0.04-0.29, showing the increase of synergistic effect. When combined together, these antibacterial effects were dramatically increased.

• Textile Coloration and Finishing
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.29-38
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• 2009

Natural dyes seem to be more profitable on human and environment, and recently they could be considered as a better alternative to synthesized dyes. The aim of the current work was to investigate the dyeing property and antimicrobial activity of commercial cotton fabrics dyed with kumazasa (usually called in japan) which is known as conventional japan bamboo leaves. Actually, the dyeability and antimicrobial property of dyed fabric with natural mordant/dyeing was compared with synthetic mordant/dye process. The results of this study obtained are as follows. The apparently colour of kumazasa leaves extract dyed fabrics showed with light green or slightly yellow-green. In colorfastness to washing, ${\Delta}E$ and K/S values of dyed fabrics with natural chitosan as mordant used was shown to be more excellent results, than was synthetic mordant used. However, the decrease rate was recorded nearly 50% when washing repeated 20 cycles. In result of antimicrobial effect for bacteria, the dyed fabrics didn't show the significant antimicrobial activity to the both dyed with and without mordant. Results of this investigation considered that low-cost, natural, bio-mordant are relatively effective in natural coloration.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.494-499
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• 2008

The role of antibody in the fungal infections is controversial. However, our previous reports showed a certain epitope in Candida albicans cell wall (CACW) induces protective antibody. A major problem is that the epitope isolation requires tremendous time with high cost. This aspect led us to investigate a simple way inducing protective antibodies against C. albicans. In the present study, we determined if $18{\beta}$-glycyrrhetinic acid ($18{\beta}$-GA) from Glabrae Radix (a family of Leguminosae) has immunoadjuvant activity. Data displayed that the $18{\beta}$-GA suppressed proliferations of both T- and Blymphocytes at high concentrations, whereas below 20 ${\mu}M$ concentration the compound supported the proliferations. These observations indicate that $18{\beta}$-GA has immunoregulatory activity. Based on this observation, an immunoadjuvant effect was examined at the low concentration. Results from animal experiments showed that CACW combined with or without $18{\beta}$-GA produced the anti-C. albicans antiserum in mice. Nevertheless, the CACW combined with $18{\beta}$-GA formula only protected mice against disseminated candidiasis (P<0.05). These data implicate that $18{\beta}$-GA has immunoadjuvant activity, which may provoke the CACW antigen to induce protective antibody. Currently, we are investigating possible mechanism of how the $18{\beta}$-GA provokes such protective immunity against the disseminated disease.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.594-601
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• 2022

This study evaluated the biological properties of lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) extracts. The EtOAc extract of lemongrass had DPPH, TEAC, and nitric oxide-scavenging activity assay results of 58.06, 44.14, and 41.08% at the concentration of 50, 10, and 50 ㎍/ml, respectively. The EtOAc extract had higher elastase and collagenase inhibitory activities than the 80% MeOH, n-hexane, BuOH, and water extracts and comparable whitening activity toward monophenolase or diphenolase. Also, the EtOAc fraction had higher lipase inhibitory and antimicrobial activities against Cutibacterium acnes among extracts which is known to an important contributor to the progression of inflammatory acne vulgaris, and an opportunistic pathogen present in human skin. Total phenolic and flavonoid concentrations in the EtOAc extract were 132.31 mg CAE/g extract and 104.50 mg NE/g extract, respectively. Biologically active compounds in lemongrass extracts were analyzed by LC-MS. This study confirms that lemongrass extracts have potential use as cosmetic skincare ingredients. Thus, lemongrass can be considered a promising natural source of readily available, low-cost extracts rich in antioxidant, skincare, and antimicrobial compounds that might be suitable for replacing synthetic compounds in the cosmeceutical industry.