• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.116-133
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• 2002

Background : It is very common in Korea to take care of non-acute patients in an acute setting, due to the lack of long-term facilities. Long term hospitalization increase medical expenses and decreases the bed utilization, which can affect the urgent and emergent admissions, and eventually jeopardize the hospital financially. In this study, strategies for effective transfers to the lower levels of care, and to decrease the length of stay were presented by surveying and analyzing the patient's knowledge of the transfer needs, and the willingness to transfer those whose hospital length of stay was more than 30days. Method : The survey is subject to a group of 251 patients who have been hospitalized over 30 days in a general hospital in Seoul. Excluding those that were in the Intensive Care Unit and psychiatric ward, 214 in-patients were used as participants. They were surveyed from April 9, 2002 to April 17, 2002. One hundred and thirty seven out of 214 were responded which made the response rate 64%. Data were analyzed by SAS and SPSS. Result : Multi-variable Logistic Regression Analysis showed a significant effect in medical expenses, knowledge of referral system and the information of the receiving hospital. The financial burden in medical expenses made the patient 10.7 times more willing to be transferred, knowledge of the referral system made them 5 times more willing to be transferred, and the information of receiving hospital makes 6.5 times more willing to be transferred. Reasons for willing to be transferred to a lower level of care were the phase of physical therapy, the distance from home, the attending physician's advice and being unable to be treated as an out patient. Reasons for refusing to be transferred were the following. The attending physician's competency, not being ready to be discharged, not trusting the receiving hospital's competency due to the lack of information, or never hearing about the referring system by the attending physician. Conclusion : Based on this, strategies for the effective transfer to the lower levels of care were suggested. It is desirable for the attending physician to be actively involved by making an effort to explain the transfer need, and referring to the Healthcare Coordinating Center, which can help the patient make the right decision. Nationwide networking for the referral system is the another key factor that may need to be suggested as an alternative to decrease the medical expenses. Collaborating with the Home Health Agency for the early discharge planning and the Social Service Department for financial aid are also needed. It is recommended that the hospital should expedite the transfer process by prioritizing the cost and the information as medical expenses, knowledge of referring system and the information of the receiving hospital, are the most important factors to the willingness to transfer to a lower level of care.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.45-66
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• 2016

Firms can make scale of economy and scope of economy by internalizing and using new advanced technology and knowledge from technology cooperation network, decrease risk and cost with partner firm of technology cooperation network, and increase market advantage of product & strengthen firms' position in the market. Due to the advantages of technology cooperation network, the related studies have focused on the positive effect of technology cooperation network. However, the related studies investigating the relationship between technology cooperation network and firm performance have only examined the role of technology cooperation network. Safeguarding mechanism, relationship learning, and relationship performance are categorized into the process of technology cooperation network, and this categorization is applied as resources, capability, and performance by resource based view. The empirical results are reported as belows. First, relationship specific investment and relationship capital positively affect on relationship learning as capability. Second, information sharing, common information understanding, and relationship specific memory development positively affect on long-term orientation, but information sharing has no impact on efficiency and effectiveness. Third, relationship specific investment positively affects on relationship capital and efficiency and effectiveness have positive effects on long-term orientation. Applying technology cooperation network in asymmetric technology dependency with resource based theory, this study suggested the importance of both safeguarding and relationship learning by investigating the relationship among safeguarding, relationship learning, and relationship performance. And it is worthy that this study investigated how firms' behavior change affects relationship performance in the relationship of technology cooperation partner.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.299-308
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• 2014

Nowadays, dental tourism becomes phenomenon because of its cost-effectiveness, improvement of quality and technology, dental infrastructure, and attractive tourism. Korea as one of popular destination country had established dental system. On the other hand, Indonesia with high number of population is potential market for dental tourism. The aim of this study is to compare the knowledge, attitude, and experience towards dental tourism among Indonesian and Korean. Two cross-sectional descriptive surveys were conducted to collect the data. This study was used one questionnaire in two different languages due to nature of the study population. Data from a total 923 of Indonesian from 33 provinces in Indonesia was collected during the period from April through July 2010. On the other hand, during May until August 2010 data from a total of 312 Korean were obtained. It was found that the majority of participants in both countries had never heard about dental tourism. Among those who had heard about dental tourism, the most common source was internet. Ownership of dental insurance had significant relationship with knowledge of dental tourism among Indonesian while level of education and monthly internet usage had it among Korean (p<0.05). Attitudes of Indonesian and Korean people about dental tourism were negative due to assumption that dental services in their home country were satisfactory. 100% of Korean had no experience on dental treatment in other countries while 2.4% of Indonesian had experience with it. In conclusion, regarding all these evidences, comprehensive and positive information about dental tourism is needed to enhance people's knowledge, attitude, and experience.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.1 no.2 s.2
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• pp.291-309
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• 2001

Let us critique the common notion that ethical examination retards the development of science and technology. First, I shall reformulate such a notion in the following statements: 'To survive the competitive society, we must develop science and technology before others do. It will cost too much time to examine ethically the influence of developing science and technology. Therefore, we cannot but suspend the ethical matters until we have developed science and technology.' I will then show that even if we reconstruct the above argument in a deductively valid form, the second premise is not necessarily true and that we cannot accept the conclusion because the meaning of 'competing for better lives', in the first premise, is diverse. Especially if we are to take into account all the areas of ethics and base them upon the autonomous ethics of democratic societies, it cannot be concluded that ethics is an enemy of developing science and technology. In addition, I will argue that our moral considerations must be based upon autonomous ethics in order to make the development of science and technology contribute to enhancing the desirable science culture. In the midst of making the above argument, it is proposed that the title of the 1aw of bio-ethics be changed, for it has a mistaken implication that acting against ethics results in legal punishments.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.28 no.10C
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• pp.967-983
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• 2003

In wireless spread-spectrum communication systems utilizing PN (pseudo noise) sequences, a variety of noise sources from the channel affect the data reception performance. Among them, in this paper we are concerned with the narrowband interference that may arise from the use of the spectral bands overlapped by the existing narrowband users or the intentional jammers as in military communication. The effect of this interference can be reduced to some extent at the receiver with the PN demodulation by processing gain. It is known, however, that when the interferers are strong, the reduction cannot be sufficient and thereby requiring the extra use of narrowband interference cancellers (NIC's) at the receivers. A class of adaptive NIC's are studied here based on different two cost functions. One is the chip mean-squared error (MSE) computed prior to the PN demodulation and used in the conventional cancellers. Since thses conventional cancellers should be operated at the chip rate, the computational requirements are enormous. The other is the symbol MSE computed after the PN demodulation in which case the weights of the NIC's can be updated at a lot lower symbol rate. To compare the performance of these NIC's, we derive a common measure of performance, i.e., the symbol MSE after the PN demodulation. The analytical results are verified by computer simulation. As a result, it is shown that the cancellation capability of the symbol-rate NIC's are similar or better than the conventional one while the computational complexity can be reduced a lot.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.96-107
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• 2015

Brownfield sites are beginning to be considered as potentially useful areas for landscape design and planning, with post-industrial areas such as water treatment facilities and military training bases being converted into useful landscapes such as parks and recreation areas. These redevelopments bring broad benefits through revitalizing communities and increasing property values, thus, increasing the demand for comprehensive management and planning policies. This study examines changes in U.S. brownfield policies and programs and, identifies their periodic characteristics over the thirty years since the Superfund program was introduced in 1980. A descriptive and interpretive approach was utilized, focusing specifically on a time sequential analysis of the data gathered from the overview of the Environmental Protection Agency's web-based documents and related literature. The primary changes in and characteristics of programs and policies were analyzed and divided into three periods : environmental protection, remediation and reuse, and comprehensive planning. Four major features were identified: relaxation and readjustment of regulation, diversification of support programs, a mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches, and database system building. The study examines how common brownfield problems such as site identification difficulties and assessment and remediation cost have been dealt with in the regulatory context and has implications for future policies and programs for effective brownfield planning and management in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.323-332
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• 2019

Non-curable rubberized polymer asphalt waterproof coating materials in Korea and China are manufactured without advanced quality control techniques and common standard, And they are exposed consistent water leakage problems. Import and application of Korean waterproofing products and installation methods is difficult in the present situation as the Chinese standard(JC/T 2428) is different in nature with the Korean counterpart products, And quality assurance is inevitable based on mutual standards. In order to resolve this issue, alternatives such as using standards provided by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) are generally employed, but there is no such ISO standard as a waterproof material for non-curable rubberized polymer asphalt material. Furthermore, it is unreasonable to develop the ISO standard for rubber asphalt seals for exchange in terms of time and cost. This study proposes that the establishment of a quality standard that can be applied for both countries will be required via an joint international standard that outlines the properties of materials if applied in mutual trade exchange.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.671-679
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• 2016

Bridges, which constitute one of the key facilities in a social infrastructure, are easily accessed and used by users, so that keeping their performance above a certain level is essential. According to various cases in the U.S., Japan and Europe with a long construction history, it is expected that the maintenance cost of bridges in Korea will increase continuously in the future, so a rational decision making system based on engineering factors is necessary to optimize the performance of and maintain them by allocating the limited budget efficiently. This study is a preliminary basic study for the purpose of developing a common asset management system for managing all of the bridges and maintaining the level of service provided by them. The scope of this preliminary study is limited to bridges in urban areas. The bridge asset management system for bridges in urban areas, their level of service (LOS) and performance measure (PM) were developed by carrying out a workshop consisting of both experts and stakeholders. The analysis on the weights of the value and performance measure for each performance indicator was carried out by using the multi-attribute utility theory and the AHP method. In order to confirm the application of the weight of the performance measure and value of the performance indicator, six bridges in an example city were selected, LOS analysis was applied and its results were reviewed.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.535-544
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• 2003

Integrated services networks should guarantee end-to-end delay bounds for real-time applications to provide high quality services. A real-time scheduler is installed on all the output ports to provide such guaranteed service. However, scheduling algorithms studied so far have problems with either network utilization or scalability. Here, network utilization indicates how many real-time sessions can be admitted. In this paper, we propose service curve allocation schemes that result in both high network utilization and scalability in a service curve algorithm. In service curve algorithm, an adopted service curve allocation scheme determines both network utilization and scalability. Contrary to the common belief, we have proved that only a part of a service curve is used to compute deadlines, not the entire curve. From this fact, we propose service curve allocation schemes that result in a constant time for computing deadlines. We through a simulation study that our proposed schemes can achieve better network utilizations than Generalized processor Sharing (GPS) algorithms including the multirate algorithm. To our knowledge, the service curve algorithm adopting our schemes can achieve the widest network utilization among existing scheduling algorithms that have the same scalability.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.391-395
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• 2010

Purpose: Given that the critical nature of the microvascular anastomosis to what is often a long and difficult reconstructive operation, trainees need to have a high level of microsurgical competence before being allowed to perform microsurgery on patients. Some artificial substitutes and dead or live animal models have been used to improve manual dexterity under the operating microscope. Yet, most surgeons are not equipped with such models, so search for easy available and appropriate microsurgical practice model have been an issue. Umbilical artery, placental vessels and gastroepiploic arteries have been previously suggested as a microsurgical training model, which involves other surgical departments. The purpose of this article is to introduce that saphenous vein specimen obtained from varicose vein surgery is useful and has many advantages as training model for the practice of microvascular anastomosis. Methods: The conventional technique using perforation/inversion method with a metallic stripper is widely performed for varicose vein patients. The stripper is inserted through disconnected safeno-femoral junction and retrieved at the knee or the medial side of ankle. The length of saphenous vein specimens removed is about that of one's leg and inversed from inside out. Obtained saphenous vein specimens are re-inversed and cleansed with normal saline, to be readily available for microsurgical practice. Preserved in a squeezed wet saline gauze and refrigerated, frozen or glycerated specimens were investigated into their comparative quality for microsurgical practice. Results: Varicose vein surgery remains one of the common operations performed in the field of plastic surgery. Convenient informed consent regarding the vessel donation can be easily signed. The diameter of the obtained saphenous vein is as variable as 1.5 to 6 mm, which is already stripped, and is in sufficient length corresponding to that of patient's leg. Vessels specimens were available for microsurgical practice within 1 week period when preserved with squeezed wet saline gauze, and the preservation period could be extended monthly by freezing it. Conclusion: Saphenous vein obtained from varicose vein patients provide with variable size of vessel lumen with sufficient length. The practice can be cost effective and does not require microsurgical laboratory. Additionally there is no need of involving other surgical departments in acquiring vessel specimens. Furthermore, simple preservation method of refrigerating for a week or freezing with squeezed wet saline gauze for a month period, allow the saphenous vein obtained after varicose vein surgery as an excellent model for the microsurgical practice.