• Health Policy and Management
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.205-218
• /
• 2014

Background: Most studies on the national health insurance benefit expansion policy have focused on policy tools or decision-making process. Hence there was not enough understanding on how policies are actually implemented within the specific policy context in Korea which has a national mandatory health insurance system with a dominant proportion of private providers. The main objectives of this study is to understand the implementation process of the benefit coverage expansion policy. Unlike other implementation studies, we tried to examine both the process of implementation and decision making and how they interact with each other. Methods: Interviews were conducted with the ex-members of the Health Insurance Policy Review Committee. Medical doctors who implement the policy at the 'street-level' were also interviewed. To figure out major variables and the degree of their influences, the data were analyzed with Winter's Policy Implementation Model which integrates the decision making and implementation phases. Results: As predicted by the Winter model, problems in the decision making phase, such as conflicts among the members of committee, lack of applicable causal theories application of highly symbolic activities, and limited attention of citizen to the issue are key variables that cause the 'implementation failure.' In the implementation phase, hospitals' own financial interests and practitioners' dependence on the hospitals' guidance were barriers to meeting the policy goals of providing a better coverage for patients. Patients, the target group, tend to prefer physicians who prescribe more treatment and medicine. To note, 'fixers' who can link and fill the gap between the decision-makers and implementers were not present. Conclusion: For achieving the policy goal of providing a better and more coverage to patients, the critical roles of medical providers as street-level implementers should be noted. Also decision making process of benefit package expansion policy should incorporate its influence on the implementation phase.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.20 no.7_spc
• /
• pp.485-494
• /
• 2016

The risk-based assessment, also called time-based assessment of structure is usually performed to provide seismic risk evaluation of a target structure for its entire life-cycle, e.g. 50 years. The prediction of collapse probability is the estimator in the risk-based assessment. While the risk-based assessment is the key in the performance-based earthquake engineering, its application is very limited because this evaluation method is very expensive in terms of simulation and computational efforts. So the evaluation database for many archetype structures usually serve as representative of the specific system. However, there is no such an assessment performed for building stocks in Korea. Consequently, the performance objective of current building code, KBC is not clear at least in a quantitative way. This shortcoming gives an unresolved issue to insurance industry, socio-economic impact, seismic safety policy in national and local governments. In this study, we evaluate the comprehensive seismic performance of an low-rise residential buildings with discontinuous structural walls, so called piloti-type structure which is commonly found in low-rise domestic building stocks. The collapse probability is obtained using the risk integral of a conditioned collapse capacity function and regression of current hazard curve. Based on this approach it is expected to provide a robust tool to seismic safety policy as well as seismic risk analysis such as Probable Maximum Loss (PML) commonly used in the insurance industry.

• BMB Reports
• /
• v.53 no.6
• /
• pp.291-298
• /
• 2020

Tumor angiogenesis is an essential process for growth and metastasis of cancer cells as it supplies tumors with oxygen and nutrients. During tumor angiogenesis, many pro-angiogenic factors are secreted by tumor cells to induce their own vascularization via activation of pre-existing host endothelium. However, accumulating evidence suggests that vasculogenic mimicry (VM) is a key alternative mechanism for tumor vascularization when tumors are faced with insufficient supply of oxygen and nutrients. VM is a tumor vascularization mechanism in which tumors create a blood supply system, in contrast to tumor angiogenesis mechanisms that depend on pre-existing host endothelium. VM is closely associated with tumor progression and poor prognosis in many cancers. Therefore, inhibition of VM may be a promising therapeutic strategy and may overcome the limitations of anti-angiogenesis therapy for cancer patients. In this review, we provide an overview of the current anti-angiogenic therapies for ovarian cancer and the current state of knowledge regarding the links between microRNAs and the VM process, with a focus on the mechanism that regulates associated signaling pathways in ovarian cancer. Moreover, we discuss the potential for VM as a therapeutic strategy against ovarian cancer.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.10 no.4 s.36
• /
• pp.355-364
• /
• 2005

An example of such a new device is a mobile phone. The demand for wireless data communication is growing rapidly. However, agencies have not yet completed the standardization of the markup language. Due to the evolution of the Mobile Device, the agencies in this field have provided different data formats with each Mobile Device Platform. Traditionally, contents are hand-tailored to suit the target devices. A key problem is that the characteristics and capabilities of mobile devices are too diverse to service the most suitable mobile contents. Owing to this problem, the need for a reusable document description language increases. In this paper, we defined Template file that is common data to service mobile devices. We proposed method that could be effective wireless web service though design and the implementation of the Call Manager & the XSL Generator. In the methodology, when requesting wireless internet service, the mobile device finds out Markup language and hardware specification of the mobile device through the Call Manager component supports. The XSL Generator component creates XSL file dynamically that is the most suitable to device. Finally, contents is serviced to each device by XSLT.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.65-74
• /
• 2016

Ship ad-hoc network (SANET) extends the coverage of the maritime communication among ships with the reduced cost. To fulfill the growing demands of real-time services, the SANET requires an efficient clock time synchronization algorithm which has not been carefully investigated under the ad-hoc maritime environment. This is mainly because the conventional algorithms only suggest to decrease the beacon collision probability that diminishes the clock drift among the units. However, the SANET is a very large-scale network in terms of geographic scope, e.g., with 100 km coverage. The key factor to affect the synchronization performance is the signal propagation delay, which has not being carefully considered in the existing algorithms. Therefore, it requires a robust multi-hop synchronization algorithm to support the communication among hundreds of the ships under the maritime environment. The proposed algorithm has to face and overcome several challenges, i.e., physical clock, e.g., coordinated universal time (UTC)/global positioning system (GPS) unavailable due to the atrocious weather, network link stability, and large propagation delay in the SANET. In this paper, we propose a logical clock synchronization algorithm with multi-hop function for the SANET, namely multi-hop clock synchronization for SANET (MCSS). It works in an ad-hoc manner in case of no UTC/GPS being available, and the multi-hop function makes sure the link stability of the network. For the proposed MCSS, the synchronization time reference nodes (STRNs) are efficiently selected by considering the propagation delay, and the beacon collision can be decreased by the combination of adaptive timing synchronization procedure (ATSP) with the proposed STRN selection procedure. Based on the simulation results, we finalize the multi-hop frame structure of the SANET by considering the clock synchronization, where the physical layer parameters are contrived to meet the requirements of target applications.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2004

Urban parks provide good services to the community, and they are enhanced by citizen participation. For that especially, organizational and continued volunteering can be a key strategy. The purpose of this study is to establish factors on promoting the continuity of volunteering in voulatary associations of urban parks. Variables of continuity are continual will, continual time, and psychological continuance motive. To add to this, this study is intended to inquiry about recognition and compensation that volunteers want to receive. The major findings are as follows: First, The main participantes were housewives with high education. Second, Continual will was influenced by gender, profession, the satisfactory degree for individual pursuit an ideal, and the degree of confidence with members. Third, Continual time was influenced by profession and individual network in community. Forth, Continual motive was influenced by individual network in community, the result-analysis behavior of related government organ, the degree of confidence and the degree of ties with members. Finally, Volunteers wanted to receive the volunteering expenses, the compensation about accident, and emotional recognitions. In sum : to ensure the continuity of volunteering, first, recruiting of volunteers is demanded to select a major target group in the community. Second, a voulatary association helps to make confidence and ties with members. Third, the related government organ strives for volunteers to have a positive recognition of the organ's attitudes, for the volunteer association to have a clearly distinguished area of action from the organ's one, and a co-operative system. Finally, an institution needs to be established to give emotional recognitions as well as volunteering expenses and acompensation for accidents.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Navigation
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.101-127
• /
• 1986

Transportation provides an infrastructure vital to economic growth, and it is an integral part of production . As a port is the interface between the maritime transport and domestic transport sectors, it certainly plays a key role in any economic development. Therefore, it is doubtless that inadequacy of a nation's port will depress the level of throughput, to the level where it fails to meet the target set by the national economic planning schemes. Korea is surrounded by the seas and the economic structure of Korea consists of processing trades, so that it cannot be overstated that substantial economy in maritime transport coasts can be achieved through the improvement of the port transport system. This paper treats the transportation process in Pusan Port by Queueing Simulation method, and the reasonable size of Pusan Port is suggested from the point of view of efficiency maximization. The results of the analysis are summarized as follows; 1) the utility rate is 47.91 percents in general piers, 85-52 percents in container piers, and waiting time 5.2hrs, in general piers, 0.8 hrs, in container piers, and the probability of maximum queue length 12 ships in general piers, 2 ships in container piers, and the probability of waiting is 44 percents in general piers, 8 percents in container pier. 2) in general piers, the improvement of app. 30 percents in port capacity is desirable for operating effectively concerning the current arrival rate. By introducing the traffic control ion container piers, there is no apparent necessity of port investment, but I is expected to reduce invisible congestion occurred along the waiting line. 3) On Pusan Port, the optimal utility rate and the optimal arrival rate for reducing waiting time are 3.5 to 4.0(hrs./ship) in general piers, 5.1 to 6.0(hrs./ship) in container piers.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.109-115
• /
• 2019

The probability of lethality of personnel targets inside a room is a key issue at assessing effectiveness of a weapon system. In this study, the minimum charge weight to achieve 100% lethality of personnel targets inside a box-type room is proposed at each side length of a base of a room. A fast running blast wave model is used to simulate the pressure-time histories of the blast generated by an internal explosion inside a room, and Axelsson SP method is used to evaluate the lethality of personnel targets under the blast. 176 different internal explosion scenarios are simulated for cases of TNT weights ranging from 20kg to 170kg inside a room whose square base has a side length ranging from 5m to 15m. A linear model and a charge-density model were developed to predict the minimum charge weight to achieve 100% lethality inside a room given a length of a base of a room.

• Journal of Gynecologic Oncology
• /
• v.29 no.6
• /
• pp.93.1-93.11
• /
• 2018

The introduction of checkpoint inhibitors revolutionized immuno-oncology. The efficacy of traditional immunotherapeutics, like vaccines and immunostimulants was very limited due to persistent immune-escape strategies of cancer cells. Checkpoint inhibitors target these escape mechanisms and re-direct the immune system to anti-tumor toxicity. Phenomenal results have been reported in entities like melanoma, where no other therapy was able to demonstrate survival benefit, before the introduction of immunotherapeutics. The first experience in ovarian cancer (OC) was reported for nivolumab, a fully human anti-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1) antibody, in 2015. While the data are extraordinary for a mono-immunotherapeutic agent and very promising, they do not match up to the revolutionary results in entities like melanoma. The key to exceptional treatment response in OC, could be the identification of the most immunogenic patients. We hypothyse that BRCA mutation could be a predictor of improved response in OC. The underlying DNA-repair-deficiancy should result in increased immunogenicity because of higher mutational load and more neoantigen presentation. This hypothesis was not tested to date and should be subject to future trials. The present article gives an overview of the immunologic background of checkpoint inhibition (CI). It presents current data on nivolumab and other checkpoint-inhibitors in solid tumors and OC specifically and depicts important topics in the management of this novel substance group, such as side effect control, diagnostic PD-1/programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression assessment and management of pseudoprogression.

• BMB Reports
• /
• v.54 no.1
• /
• pp.44-58
• /
• 2021

Natural killer (NK) cells, key antitumor effectors of the innate immune system, are endowed with the unique ability to spontaneously eliminate cells undergoing a neoplastic transformation. Given their broad reactivity against diverse types of cancer and close association with cancer prognosis, NK cells have gained considerable attention as a promising therapeutic target for cancer immunotherapy. NK cell-based therapies have demonstrated favorable clinical efficacies in several hematological malignancies but limited success in solid tumors, thus highlighting the need to develop new therapeutic strategies to restore and optimize anti-tumor activity while preventing tumor immune escape. The current therapeutic modalities yielding encouraging results in clinical trials include the blockade of immune checkpoint receptors to overcome the immune-evasion mechanism used by tumors and the incorporation of tumor-directed chimeric antigen receptors to enhance NK cell anti-tumor specificity and activity. These observations, together with recent advances in the understanding of NK cell activation within the tumor microenvironment, will facilitate the optimal design of NK cell-based therapy against a broad range of cancers and, more desirably, refractory cancers.