• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.152-165
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• 2017

The greater long-tail hamster, Tscherskia triton, is widely distributed in Northern China, Korea and adjacent areas of Russia. Except for its distribution, biological characteristics related to life history, behavior, and ecological influences for this species are rarely studied in Korea. This study was conducted to obtain biological information on breeding, growth and development that are basic to species-specific studies. The study adopted laboratory management of a breeding programme for T. triton collected in Jeju Island from March, 2015 to December, 2016. According to the study results, the conception rate was 31.67% and the mice in the large cages had a higher rate of conception than those in the small cages (56.7 vs. 6.7%). The gestation period was $22{\pm}1.6days$ (ranges from 21 to27 days), and litter size ranged from 2 to 7, with a mean of $4.26{\pm}1.37$ in the species. The minimum age for weaning was between $19.2{\pm}1.4days$ (range of 18-21 days). There were no significant differences by sex between mean body weight and external body measurements at birth. However, a significant sexual difference was found from the period of weaning (21 days old) in head and body length, as well as tail length (HBL-weaning, $106.50{\pm}6.02$ vs. $113.34{\pm}4.72mm$, p<0.05; HBL-4 months, $163.93{\pm}5.42$ vs. $182.83{\pm}4.32mm$, p<0.05; TL-4 months, $107.23{\pm}3.25$ vs. $93.95{\pm}2.15mm$, p<0.05). Gompertz and Logistic growth curves were fitted to data for body weight and lengths of head and body, tail, ear, and hind foot. In two types of growth curves, males exhibited greater asymptotic values ($164.840{\pm}7.453$ vs. $182.830{\pm}4.319mm$, p<0.0001; $163.936{\pm}5.415$ vs. $182.840{\pm}4.333mm$, p<0.0001), faster maximum growth rates ($1.351{\pm}0.065$ vs. $1.435{\pm}0.085$, p<0.05; $2.870{\pm}0.253$ vs. $3.211{\pm}0.635$, p<0.05), and a later age of maximum growth than females in head and body length ($5.121{\pm}0.318$ vs. $5.520{\pm}0.333$, p<0.05; $6.884{\pm}0.336$ vs. $7.503{\pm}0.453$, p<0.05). However, females exhibited greater asymptotic values ($105.695{\pm}5.938$ vs. $94.150{\pm}2.507mm$, p<0.001; $111.609{\pm}14.881$ vs. $93.960{\pm}2.150mm$, p<0.05) and longer length of inflection ($60.306{\pm}1.992$ vs. $67.859{\pm}1.330mm$, p<0.0001; $55.714{\pm}7.458$ vs. $46.975{\pm}1.074mm$, p<0.05) than males in tail length. These growth rate constants, viz. the morphological characters and weights of the males and females, were similar to each other in two types of growth curves. These results will be used as necessary data to study species specificity of T. triton with biological foundations.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.83-102
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• 2021

The government recently announced various policies for developing big-data and artificial intelligence fields to provide a great opportunity to the public with respect to disclosure of high-quality data within public institutions. KSURE(Korea Trade Insurance Corporation) is a major public institution for financial policy in Korea, and thus the company is strongly committed to backing export companies with various systems. Nevertheless, there are still fewer cases of realized business model based on big-data analyses. In this situation, this paper aims to develop a new business model which can be applied to an ex-ante prediction for the likelihood of the insurance accident of credit guarantee. We utilize internal data from KSURE which supports export companies in Korea and apply machine learning models. Then, we conduct performance comparison among the predictive models including Logistic Regression, Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, and DNN(Deep Neural Network). For decades, many researchers have tried to find better models which can help to predict bankruptcy since the ex-ante prediction is crucial for corporate managers, investors, creditors, and other stakeholders. The development of the prediction for financial distress or bankruptcy was originated from Smith(1930), Fitzpatrick(1932), or Merwin(1942). One of the most famous models is the Altman's Z-score model(Altman, 1968) which was based on the multiple discriminant analysis. This model is widely used in both research and practice by this time. The author suggests the score model that utilizes five key financial ratios to predict the probability of bankruptcy in the next two years. Ohlson(1980) introduces logit model to complement some limitations of previous models. Furthermore, Elmer and Borowski(1988) develop and examine a rule-based, automated system which conducts the financial analysis of savings and loans. Since the 1980s, researchers in Korea have started to examine analyses on the prediction of financial distress or bankruptcy. Kim(1987) analyzes financial ratios and develops the prediction model. Also, Han et al.(1995, 1996, 1997, 2003, 2005, 2006) construct the prediction model using various techniques including artificial neural network. Yang(1996) introduces multiple discriminant analysis and logit model. Besides, Kim and Kim(2001) utilize artificial neural network techniques for ex-ante prediction of insolvent enterprises. After that, many scholars have been trying to predict financial distress or bankruptcy more precisely based on diverse models such as Random Forest or SVM. One major distinction of our research from the previous research is that we focus on examining the predicted probability of default for each sample case, not only on investigating the classification accuracy of each model for the entire sample. Most predictive models in this paper show that the level of the accuracy of classification is about 70% based on the entire sample. To be specific, LightGBM model shows the highest accuracy of 71.1% and Logit model indicates the lowest accuracy of 69%. However, we confirm that there are open to multiple interpretations. In the context of the business, we have to put more emphasis on efforts to minimize type 2 error which causes more harmful operating losses for the guaranty company. Thus, we also compare the classification accuracy by splitting predicted probability of the default into ten equal intervals. When we examine the classification accuracy for each interval, Logit model has the highest accuracy of 100% for 0~10% of the predicted probability of the default, however, Logit model has a relatively lower accuracy of 61.5% for 90~100% of the predicted probability of the default. On the other hand, Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, and DNN indicate more desirable results since they indicate a higher level of accuracy for both 0~10% and 90~100% of the predicted probability of the default but have a lower level of accuracy around 50% of the predicted probability of the default. When it comes to the distribution of samples for each predicted probability of the default, both LightGBM and XGBoost models have a relatively large number of samples for both 0~10% and 90~100% of the predicted probability of the default. Although Random Forest model has an advantage with regard to the perspective of classification accuracy with small number of cases, LightGBM or XGBoost could become a more desirable model since they classify large number of cases into the two extreme intervals of the predicted probability of the default, even allowing for their relatively low classification accuracy. Considering the importance of type 2 error and total prediction accuracy, XGBoost and DNN show superior performance. Next, Random Forest and LightGBM show good results, but logistic regression shows the worst performance. However, each predictive model has a comparative advantage in terms of various evaluation standards. For instance, Random Forest model shows almost 100% accuracy for samples which are expected to have a high level of the probability of default. Collectively, we can construct more comprehensive ensemble models which contain multiple classification machine learning models and conduct majority voting for maximizing its overall performance.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.

• The Korean Journal of Rehabilitation Nursing
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.257-270
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to investigate factors related to the intent of using home nursing of chronic disease patients who got out of a university hospital. For the purpose, the study selected 153 patients who were hospitalized and left K university hospital with diagnoses of cancer, hypertension, diabetes and cerebral vascular accident and ordered to be discharged and performed interviews with them and surveys on their medical records to obtain the following results. For this study a direct-interview survey and medical record review was conducted from June 28 to Aug. 30, 1998. The frequency and mean values were computed to find the characteristics of the study subjects, and $X^2$-test, t-test, factor analysis and multiple logistic regession analysis were applied for the analysis of the data. The following results were obtained. 1) When characteristics of the subjects were examined, men and women occupied for 58.8% and 41.2%, respectively. The subjects were 41.3 years old in aver age and had the monthly aver age earning of 0.99 million won or below, which was the most out of the total subjects at 34.6%. Among the total, 87.6% resided in cities and 12.4 in counties. The most left the hospital with diagnosis of cancer at 51.6%, followed by hyper tension at 24.2%, diabetes at 13.7% and cerebral vascular accident at 7.2%. 2) 93.5% of the selected patients had the intent of using home nursing and 6.5%, didn't. Among those patients having the intent, 85.6% had the intent of paying for home nursing and 14.4%, didn't. The subjects expected that the nursing would be paid 9,143 won in aver age and 47.7% of them preferred national authorities as the main servers. 86.3% of the subjects thought that home nursing business had the main advantage of making it possible to learn nursing methods at home and thereby contributing to improving the ability of patients and their facilities to solve health problems. 3) Relations between the intent of use and characteristics of the subjects such as demography-related social, home environment, disease and physical function characteristics did not show statistically significant differences among one another. Compared to those who had no intent of using home nursing, the group having the intent had more cases of male patients, the age of 39 or below, residence in cities, 5 family member s or more, no existence of home nursing servers, leaving the hospital from a non-hospitalized building, disease development for five months or below, hospitalization for ten days or more, non-hospitalization with in the recent one month, two times or over of hospitalization, leaving the hospital with no demand of special treatment, operation underwent, poor results of treatment, leaving the hospital with demand of rehabilitation services, physical disablement and high evaluation point of daily life. 4) Among those patients having the intent of using home nursing, 47.6% demanded technical nursing and 55.9%, supportive nursing. As technical nursing,' inject into a blood vessel ' and 'treat pustule and teach basic prevention methods occupied for 57.4%, respectively, topping the list. Among demands of supportive nursing, 'observe patients 'status and refer them to hospitals or community resources as available, if necessary' was the most with percent age point of 59.5. Regarding the intent of paying for home nursing, 39.2% of those patients wishing to use the nursing responded paying for technical services and 20.2, supportive services. In detail, 70.0% wanted to pay for a service stated as 'inject into a blood vessel', highest among the former services and 30.7%, a service referred to as 'teaching exercises needed to make the body of patients move', highest among the latter. When this was analyzed in terms of a relation between the need(the need for home nursing) and the demand(the intent of paying for home nursing), The rate of the need to the demand was found two or three times higher in technical nursing(0.82) than in supportive nursing(0.35). In aspects of tech ical nursing, muscle injection(1.26, the 1st rank) was highest in the rate while among aspects of supportive nursing, a service referred to as 'teach exercises needed for making patients move their bodies normally'(0.58, the 1st rank). 5) factors I(satisfaction with hospital services), II(recognition of disease state), III(economy) and IV(period of disease) occupied for 34.4, 13.8, 11.9 and 9.2 percents, respectively among factors related to the intent by the subjects of using home nursing, totaled 59.3%. In conclusion, most of chronic disease patients have the intent of using hospital-based home nursing and satisfaction with hospital services is a factor affecting the intent most. Thus a post-management system is needed to continue providing health management to those patients after they leave the hospital. Further, supportive services should be provided in order that those who are satisfied with hospital services return to their community and live their in dependent lives. Based on these results, the researcher would make the following recommendation. 1) Because home nursing becomes more and more needed due to a sharp increase in chronic disease patients and elderly people, related rules and regulations should be made and implemented. 2) Hospital nurses specializing in home nursing should be cultivated.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.221-237
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• 2011

This study aims to investigate the environmental equity of the accessibility to urban neighborhood parks in the city of Daegu. The spatial distribution of urban neighborhood parks was explored by spatial statistics and the spatial accessibility to them was then evaluated by both minimum distance and coverage approaches. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as proximity ratio, Mann Whitney U test, and logistic regression were used for comparing the socioeconomic characteristics over different accessibilities to the neighborhood parks and then testing the distributional inequity hypothesis. The results from the minimum distance method indicated that Dalseo-gu had the best accessibility to the neighborhood parks while Dong-gu had the worst accessibility. It was apparent with the coverage method that Dalseo-gu had the best accessibility whereas Dong-gu and Nam-gu had the worst accessibility to the neighborhood parks at 500m and 1,000m buffer distances. There existed the spatial pattern of environmental inequity in old towns with respect to population density and the percentage of people under the age of 18. The spatial pattern of environmental inequity in new towns was explored on the basis of the percentage of people over the age of 65, the percentage of people below the poverty level, and the percentage of free of charge rental housing. These results were closely related to the development process of urban parks in Daegu stimulated by the quantitative urban park policy, urban development process, and residential location pattern such as permanent rental housing and free of charge rental housing. This study further extends the existing research topics of environmental justice related to the distributional inequity of environmental disamenities and hazards by focusing on environmental amenities such as urban neighborhood parks. The results from this study can be used in making the decisions for urban park management and setting up urban park policy with considering the social geography of Daegu.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.61 no.3
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• pp.233-238
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• 2006

Study objectives: To determine the factors associated with mortality after an in-hospital diagnosis of tuberculosis in a region with low levels of HIV coinfection. Methods: From January 2003 to December 2004, all subjects who were > 15 years of age and had received a diagnosis of tuberculosis were registered. The clinical, radiological and laboratory aspects of the patients who died (n=27) were compared with those of an age and gender matched control population(n=54). Logistic regression analyses were carried out, which included age, gender, hospital admission source, initial site of admission, dyspnea, general weakness and initial laboratory data. Results: The mean age of the patients was $60{\pm}16$ years and male patients outnumbered female patients. Univariate analysis identified hemoglobin, blood urea nitrogen, albumin, cholesterol, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), C-reactive protein and the risk factors for tuberculosis to be significantly associated with mortality. Among the characteristics of disease presentation and treatment, emergency department admission, intensive care unit, disease severity, general weakness and dyspnea at the time of admission were associated with mortality. Multiple regression analysis revealed the initial management in the intensive care unit and lower serum albumin to be independently associated with mortality. Conclusion: The markers of disease chronicity and severity appear to be associated with in-hospital mortality. Identifying potentially reversible factors such as malnutrition and respiratory failure suggests specific intervention that might lead to an improvement in the patients' outcomes.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.2293-2303
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• 2013

Objective: This study aims to determine whether national patient safety indicators (PSIs) can be calculated. Methods: Using PSI criteria from Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Health Technical Papers 19 based on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), PSIs were identified in the Korean National Hospital Discharge In-depth Injury Survey (KNHDIIS) database for 875,622 inpatient admissions between 2004 and 2008. Logistic regression was used to estimate factors of variations for PSIs. Results: From 2004 to 2008, 3,084 PSI events of 8 PSIs occurred for over 80 thousands discharges. Rates per 1,000 events for decubitus ulcer (PSI3, 4.88), foreign body left during procedure (PSI5, 0.05), postoperative sepsis (PSI13, 1.32), birth trauma-injury to neonate (PSI17, 7.92) and obstetric trauma-vaginal delivery (PSI18, 32.81) are all identified between ranges from maximum to minimum of OECD rates, respectively. However, rates per 1,000 events for selected infections due to medical care (PSI7, 0.22), postoperative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis (PSI12, 0.90) and accidental puncture or laceration (PSI15, 0.71) are below the minimum of OECD range. 7 PSIs except PSI 18 showed statistically significant relationship with number of secondary diagnoses. When adjusting patient characteristics, there are statistically significant different rates according to bed size or location of hospitals. Conclusion: This is the first empirical study to identify nationally number of adverse events and PSIs using administrative database. While many factors influencing these results such as quality of data, clinical data and so on are remain, the results indicate opportunities for estimate national statistics for patient safety. Furthermore outcome research such as mortality related to adverse events is needed based on results of this study.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2009

Background: The treatment of tracheal stenosis includes less invasive bronchoscopic intervention and more invasive segmental resection & anastomosis. Depending on the patient's clinical features, sometimes all these methods are inappropriate. Silicone T-tube stenting has recently been used as an alternative, safe management of tracheal stenosis. We studied the short term and Intermediate term results of using T-tubes in patients with tracheal stenosis, and this tracheal stenosis was caused by various underlying diseases. Material and Method: We retrospectively reviewed 57 patients with tracheal stenosis and who were treated with T-tubes between Jan 1997 and Apr 2007. Based on the patient's medical records and the imaging studies, we evaluated the clinical findings and status of T-tube removal. Result: There was no T-tube related morbidity or mortality in this series. On follow-up, one patient underwent sleeve resection and end-to-end anastomosis. The T-tube could be successfully removed from 13 patients (13/57, 22.8%) without additional interventions. For another four patients, a T-tube was again inserted after removal of the first T-tube due to tracheomalacia or recurrent stenosis. Four patients died of underlying disease and cancer. The patients' gender and previous tracheostomy significantly affected T-tube removal. By contrast, multiple logistic regression analysis identified gender as a predictor of successfully removing a T-tube. Gender (p=0.033) and previous tracheostomy (p=0.036) were the two factors for success or failure of T-tube removal. Conclusion: A T-tube provided reliable patency of a stenotic airway that was caused by any etiology. We have proven that using a T-tube is safe and effective therapy for patients with tracheal stenosis for the short term or the intermediate term.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.498-508
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• 2017

Purpose: The present study investigated nutrient supplement intake to examine the relationship between the health behaviors of nutrient supplement users and nonusers and nutrient supplement users and other drug users. The results provide baseline data to understand whether nutrient supplements actually perform as expected in view of the fact that healthy people that take nutritional supplements may become healthier, but may also develop nutritional supplement abuse problems. Among 7,006 household heads of 24,614 household members from the Korea Health Panel data in 2008, a total of 6,009 household heads were the respondents of the Korea Health Panel Survey (appendix) in 2009. Method: The subjects of the present study were targeted household heads. The respondents who reported that they had taken (planned to take) life/health promotion-related drugs (01. vitamins/nutritional supplements) for more than three months that were purchased at pharmacies during the past one year at the time of the survey were defined as nutritional supplement users. Those who took other drugs (05. hair-loss treatments, 06. obesity treatments, 10. others) were regarded as other drug users. A chi-squared test was performed to analyze the sociodemographic characteristics of the subjects and differences between groups. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to analyze health behaviors according to nutrient supplement intake. Result: Comparison of (A) nutritional supplement users and nonusers revealed that those who were women, 50 years or older, and spent more than average living expenses were more likely to take nutritional supplements, which was not significant in health behavior variables. Analysis of nutritional supplement users and other drug users (B) revealed that those who were high school graduates or above, had a spouse, were non-smokers, took drugs, ate regular meals, and were not stressed by economic or family conflicts were more likely to take nutritional supplements. Conclusion: The results of the present study indicated that people take nutritional supplements because of their psychological desire to be healthy, not because they are not healthy, have problems, or believe supplements will make them healthier.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.5660-5667
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• 2014

The aim of this study was to assess the association of metabolic syndrome, metabolic syndrome score (MSS) and pulse pressure (PP) in Korean adults. The study subjects were Korean adults 20 years or older (n=5,889) who participated in the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2012. After adjusting for factors, such as year and gender and BMI, the mean PP increased with increasing MSS (MSS 0, $41.30{\pm}0.34mmHg$ and MSS 1, $42.16{\pm}0.31mmHg$ and MSS 2, $44.73{\pm}0.34mmHg$ and MSS, 3, $46.46{\pm}0.42mmHg$ and MSS 4, $48.62{\pm}0.58mmHg$ and MSS 5, $53.50{\pm}1.05mmHg$), and the mean PP for metabolic syndrome($47.25{\pm}0.34mmHg$) increased in comparison to Non-Metabolic syndrome ($42.77{\pm}0.19mmHg$). When logistic regression analysis was performed, the odds ratio (OR) of Hyper-PP (61> PP) for MSS 0 was 4.49 in MSS 1 (95% confidence interval[CI], 2.68-7.57) and 8.01 in MSS 2 (95% CI, 4.77-13.47) and 11.37 in MSS 3 (95% CI, 6.67-19.35) and 19.69 in MSS 4 (95% CI, 11.20-34.60) and 34.07 in MSS 5 (95% CI, 17.44-66.52), metabolic syndrome was associated with an increased Hyper-PP(OR 4.6, 95% CI, 2.0-10.4). Conclusion. These results suggest that an increase in MSS or metabolic syndrome might increase the pulse pressure.