• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.330-340
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• 2010

Objectives: This study aims to evaluate and explain the socioeconomic inequalities of all-cause mortality after breast cancer surgery in South Korea. Methods: This population based study included all 8868 females who underwent radical mastectomy for breast cancer between January 2002 and June 2003. Follow-up for mortality continued from January 2002 to June 2006. The patients were divided into 4 socioeconomic classes according to their socioeconomic status as defined by the National Health Insurance contribution rate. The relationship between socioeconomic status and all-cause mortality after breast cancer surgery was assessed using the Cox proportional hazards model with adjusting for age, the Charlson’s index score, emergency hospitalization, the type of hospital and the hospital ownership. Results: Those in the lowest socioeconomic status group had a significantly higher hazard ratio of 2.09 (95% CI =1.50 - 2.91) compared with those in the highest socioeconomic group after controlling for all the identifiable confounding variables. For allcause mortality after radical mastectomy, all the other income groups showed significantly higher 3-year mortality rates than did the highest income group. Conclusions: The socioeconomic status of breast cancer patients should be considered as an independent prognostic factor that affects all-cause mortality after radical mastectomy, and this is possibly due to a delayed diagnosis, limited access or minimal treatment leading to higher mortality. This study may provide tangible support to intensify surveillance and treatment for breast cancer among low socioeconomic class women.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.771-783
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• 2018

The life insurance industry is interested in various factors that influence the long-term extensions of insurance contracts such as the necessity for the advisors' long-term management of consumers, product consulting, and improvement of the investment aspects. This paper investigates important factors leading to a long-term contract that forms an important part of the life insurance industry in Korea. For this purpose we used the data of contents (i.e., data from Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, 2016) of the contracts of xxx insurance company. In this paper, we present how to select important variables to influence the duration of the contract maintenance via a penalized Cox's proportional hazards (PH) modelling approach using insurance life data. As the result of analysis, we found that the selected important factors were the advisor's status, the reward type 2 (annuity insurance) and tendency 4 (safety-pursuing type).

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.43-57
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• 2018

Purpose : The act of reporting child abuse by people obliged to report child abuse is a way to detect long-term incidents of child abuse in early stages and to prevent a vicious cycle of social crimes. Thus, this study intends to enhance the reporting of child abuse through a study on the perception of people obliged to report child abuse through the public service announcement on child abuse. Methods : First, in order to identify the demographic characteristics of the subjects, the frequency and percentage were calculated. Second, in order to verify the reliability of the variables, Cronbach ${\alpha}$ was calculated. Third, in order to examine the perception of people obliged to report child abuse and the perception of reporting, a t-test (verification) and One-way ANOVA were conducted. Fourth, in order to identify the relationship between variables, a Correlation analysis was conducted. Result : The results show that people obliged to report child abuse did not perceive the public service announcement on child abuse positively and it varied depending on their jobs. The correlation between the public service announcement on child abuse and sub-factor of perceptions of reporting showed that a positive correlation was found in reliability, interest, understanding, perceiving the public service announcement on child abuse, perceiving severity and effectiveness, whereas a negative correlation was found in perceiving hazards. Conclusion : The education for preventing child abuse is required by the job type of people obliged to report. It is necessary to convey the message of effective public service announcement. The public service announcements on child abuse must be nationwide and long-term projects.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.13
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• pp.5537-5540
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• 2015

Purpose: To research the association between pre-treatment elevated platelet count and clinicopathologic characteristics in breast cancer (BC), as well as explore the relationship between pre-treatment elevated platelet count and HER2 status and prognosis of BC patients. Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort of BC patients who were newly diagnosed or treated by surgery only and had pathological detection results and platelet values in the Department of Oncology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Liaoning Medical College were enrolled from 1/1/2008 until 31/12/2009, and followed up until 31/12/2014. Age, thrombocyte parameters before chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, immunohistochemical (IHM) indexes, and regional lymph node (LN) involvement and progression-free survival (PFS) were recorded. Results: A total of 447 eligible subjects were included in this research. As we analyzed, for HER2, positive and negative, the incidence rates of elevated platelet count were 25.8% and 14.7% (P<0.05). In the Cox proportional hazards model both variables were independent risk factors for BC (for HER2, OR, 0.592, 95% confidence interval, CI, 0.355 to 0.985, P=0.044;f or PLT, OR, 0.998, 95% CI, 0.996 to 1.000, P=0.042). For ER, PR, Ki67 and LN involvement, the differences were not statistically significant (P>0.05). Conclusions: In this research, pre-treatment elevated level of platelet count demostrated a significantrelationship with HER2 amplification/overexpression, and both variables significantly influenced the prognosis of BC. However, elevated platelet count did not exhibit any association with ER, PR, Ki67 and LN involvement.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.67-116
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• 2006

This study directly analyzes the wage distributions rather than indirectly looking at a few of their moments. It also investigates wage distributions using various descriptive and semi-parametric methods. The wage distributions of Korean manufacturing industries can in general be represented by three distinct forms, underdeveloped, advanced and the medium of the two. The discrepancies in these distribution forms are explained by differences in the labor-type distributions and their weights in the composition of wage distribution forms, and further clarified through various descriptive statistics based on them. However, the descriptive statistical analysis has a limit in that it shows mixed outcomes of different categoric variables. Then, this problem is resolved by applying a semi-parametric estimation of hazard function and the marginal effect evaluations of variable changes on estimated distributions not on the function. As a result of this marginal analysis, the common features and differences of categoric variables and their intensities of effects on distributions are revealed.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.107-115
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• 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify factors associated with smoking relapse within six months after quit attempts among workers in small and medium-sized enterprises in South Korea. Methods: The analysis was conducted for a total of 194 people who attempted to quit smoking by applying for a smoking cessation support service at the Regional Tobacco Control Center. The data used in the study were extracted from the Smoking Cessation Service Integrated Information System. Kaplan-Meier estimator and Cox proportional hazards regression model were used to identify variables associated with smoking relapse within six months' time period. Results: Smoking relapse rate within six months was 66.0%, and variables associated with relapse included the cases such as carbon monoxide (CO) at the time of registration (HR: 2.15, 95% CI: 1.10~4.22 for CO ≥20 ppm or more vs.CO <10 ppm), the average number of cigarettes smoked per day (HR: 1.04, 95% CI: 1.00~1.07), and the number of counseling(HR: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.54~0.67). Conclusion: Smoking characteristics and counseling showed one of the strongest correlations with relapse within six months. This implies that it is necessary to understand the smoking characteristics and patterns of workers and to provide continuous smoking cessation counseling tailored to individual characteristics for effective smoking relapse prevention.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.123-129
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• 2022

Background: The Environmental Health Action Program was a national project carried out from 2012~2021. It was aimed at developing public technologies to protect people's health from various environmental hazards. Objectives: One of the final goals of the project was "creating health benefits worth more than 179.2 billion won by reducing the environmental burden of disease." This study aims to evaluate whether the program sufficiently achieved the planned benefits. Methods: In order to secure consistency in evaluation, we applied the same equation used in the goal-setting process. It is comprised of six parameters to estimate the benefit: 1. The amount of medical expenses for environmental diseases; 2. The attributable proportion of environmental risk factors' 3. The rate of reduction in medical expenses for environmental diseases; 4. R&D project contribution; 5. The proportion of successful policy reflection; and 6. The contributions of the project. The corresponding variables were estimated at the end of the project, and the health benefits of the project were recalculated using the newly estimated variables. Results: It was estimated that a total of 195 billion won in health benefits occurred or will occur from 2015 to 2026. The main contributors for achieving the target were an increase in medical expenses for environmental diseases, a high score in the R&D project contribution, and the proportion of successful policy reflection. Conclusions: Technically, the equation used in the project is about medical expenses for environmental diseases rather than about the environmental burden of disease. There are several benefits of using the environmental burden of disease in the evaluation of public health policies. In further studies, developing a policy evaluation framework using indicators such as population attributable fraction would be needed.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.145-157
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• 2015

Objectives : This study identified factors that influenced social nicotine dependence in university students using descriptive methods. Methods : Data were collected 429 university students from 2 universities in B metropolitan city. The analytical methods were the t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe's test, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient and multiple regression analysis. Results : There were significant differences in social nicotine dependence according to gender (t=3.359, p=.001), smoking status (t=8.915, p=.000), religion (t=3.841, p=.022), economic status (t=3.632, p=.027) and grade (t=8.466, p=.000). Social nicotine dependence was weakly correlated with anxiety (r=.113, p<.05). Meaningful variables that explain social nicotine dependence were anxiety, self-efficacy self-esteem, female, smokers and no religion. Conclusions : It is necessary to develop a comprehensive smoke-free policy that considers social nicotine dependence to improve the cultural and social awareness of the associated health hazards of smoking, and to develop smoking cessation education and smoking prevention programs that improve the self-efficacy and self-esteem of university students.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.547-560
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• 2018

This paper investigates the operation of the $H_{\infty}$ static output-feedback controller to reduce dynamic responses under seismic excitation on the five-story and benchmark 20 story building with parametric uncertainties. Linear matrix inequality (LMI) control theory is applied in this system and then to achieve the desired LMI formulations, some transformations of the LMI variables is used. Conversely uncertainties due to material properties, environmental loads such as earthquake and wind hazards make the uncertain system. This problem and its effects are studied in this research. Also to decrease the transition of large amount of data between sensors and controller, avoiding the disruption of whole control system and economy problems, the operation of the decentralized controllers is investigated in this paper. For this purpose the comparison between the performance of the centralized, fully decentralized and partial decentralized controllers in uncoupled and coupled cases is performed. Also, the effect of the changing the number of stories in substructures is considered. Based on the numerical results, the used control algorithm is very robust against the parametric uncertainties and structural responses are decreased considerably in all the control cases but partial decentralized controller in coupled form gets the closest results to the centralized case. The results indicate the high applicability of the used control algorithm in the tall shear buildings to reduce the structural responses and its robustness against the uncertainties.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.49-56
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• 2015

Dynamic compaction (DC) is a useful method for improvement of granular soils. The method is based on falling a tamper (weighting 5 to 40 ton) from the height of 15 to 30 meters on loose soil that results in stress distribution, vibration of soil particles and desirable compaction of the soil. Propagation of the waves during tamping affects adjacent structures and causes structural damage or loss of performance. Therefore, determination of the safe or critical distance from tamping point to prevent structural hazards is necessary. According to FHWA, the critical distance is defined as the limit of a particle velocity of 76 mm/s. In present study, the ABAQUS software was used for numerical modeling of DC process and determination of the safe distance based on particle velocity criterion. Different variables like alluvium depth, relative density, and impact energy were considered in finite element modeling. It was concluded that for alluvium depths less than 10 m, reflection of the body waves from lower boundaries back to the soil and resonance phenomenon increases the critical distance. However, the critical distance decreases for alluvium depths more than 10 m. Moreover, it was observed that relative density of the alluvium does not significantly influence the critical distance value.