• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.401-407
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• 2011

Purpose: A number of flap for nipple reconstruction have been well described in the literature. However, most of these techniques do not permit the reconstruction of a projecting nipple and all are hampered to some extent by long-term loss of nipple projection. The objective of this study is to evaluate the long-term result and clinical efficacy of nipple reconstruction using skate flap technique after breast reconstruction. Methods: A retrospective chart review was carried out on 23 patients who underwent 25 nipple reconstructions. In those patients with greater than 10 mm nipple projection, reconstruction with skate flap and full-thickness skin graft and/or tattooing was performed. Maintenance of nipple projection was then carefully assessed over one-year follow-up. The following factors were analyzed: type of breast reconstruction, type of areola reconstruction, followup period, decrease in nipple projection, complication, and whether secondary nipple reconstruction was necessary and/or performed. Results: Breast reconstructions were performed in 17 patients with free transverse rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flap, 3 patients with extended latissimus dorsi musculocutaneous flap, and 3 patients with expander and implant. The mean follow-up after nipple reconstruction was 17 months. Mean loss of projection were $17.0{\pm}13.99%$, $25.0{\pm}12.70%$, $30.0{\pm}12.57%$ and $30.8{\pm}12.49%$ at 3, 6, 9 months and over one year, respectively. The greatest decrease in projection was noted in the first 3 months following surgery. Conclusion: These results indicated that nipple reconstruction with skate flap showed about 70 percent of the projection achieved over one year postoperation. Therefore, the skate flap may be a reliable method of nipple reconstruction in those patients with greater than 10 mm nipple projection.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.470-473
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• 2016

Nipple-areolar complex (NAC) reconstruction is the final step in the long journey of breast reconstruction for mastectomy patients. Successful NAC reconstruction depends on the use of appropriate surgical techniques that are simple and reliable. To date, numerous techniques have been used for nipple reconstruction, including contralateral nipple sharing and various local flaps. Recently, it has been common to utilize local flaps. However, the most common nipple reconstruction problem encountered with local flaps is the loss of nipple projection; there can be approximately 50% projection loss in reconstructed nipples over long-term follow-up. Several factors might contribute to nipple projection loss, and we tried to overcome these factors by performing nipple reconstructions using a boomerang flap technique, which is a modified C-V flap that utilizes the previous mastectomy scar to maintain long-term nipple projection.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.393-410
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• 2021

The Korean Long-Term Care Insurance (K-LTCI) provides financial support for long-term care service to people who need various types of assistance with daily activities. As the number of elderly people in Korea is expected to increase in the future, the demand for long-term care insurance would also increase over time. Projection of future expenditure on K-LTCI depends on the number of beneficiaries within the grading system of K-LTCI based on the test scores of applicants. This study investigated the suitability of mixture distributions to the model K-LTCI score distribution using recent empirical data on K-LTCI, provided by the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS). Based on the developed mixture models, the number of beneficiaries in each grade and its variability under the current grading system were estimated by simulation. It was observed that a mixture model is suitable for K-LTCI score distribution and may prove useful in devising a funding plan for K-LTCI benefit payment and investigating the effects of any possible revision in the K-LTCI grading system.

• 한국노년학
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.1047-1065
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• 2011

The main purpose of this study is to provide the sustainability and continuous development of Long-term care Insurance in projecting changes of the Long-term care Insurance beneficiary population and Cost. We conducted a transformed cohort-component projection method that are employed for the beneficiary population projection and applied the previous experiences in Japan and German. A transformed cohort-component method means that we also projected the increasing beneficiary of long-term care insurance for using the data of geriatric disease in NHIC and estimated the cost of insurance's financial resources. First of all, beneficiary increase and strategy of extending to level 4 are categorized 2 and the expense account projection are categorized 2. If it is thought experience of Japan and German, The Level 4 extend of insuree is projected 2012 or 2013. With the results of this study, we proposed that extended level 4 insuree include the 40%~90% of geriatric disease in elderly people. The number of beneficiaries in 2011 is expected to reach to about 342,896 and in 2015 is 415,905 on scenario 1. Scenario 2(40%of geriatric disease in elderly people), the number of beneficiaries in 2011 is 342,896 and in 2015 is 483,453. Scenario 3(90%of geriatric disease in elderly people), the number of beneficiaries in 2012 is 545,068 and in 2015 is 565,565. The cost of beneficiaries insurance benefit of scenario 1 are projected from 3,000billion in 2012 to 3,500billion won in 2015. Scenario 2 are projected from 3,100billion in 2012 to 4,000billion won 2015. Finally, The cost of Level 4 extending are need minimum 300billion to maximum 1,400billion won.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.46 no.8
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• pp.833-842
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• 2013

The quantile mapping is utilized to reproduce reliable GCM(Global Climate Model) data by correct systematic biases included in the original data set. This scheme, in general, projects the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of the underlying data set into the target CDF assuming that parameters of target distribution function is stationary. Therefore, the application of stationary quantile mapping for nonstationary long-term time series data of future precipitation scenario computed by GCM can show biased projection. In this research the Nonstationary Quantile Mapping (NSQM) scheme was suggested for bias correction of nonstationary long-term time series data. The proposed scheme uses the statistical parameters with nonstationary long-term trends. The Gamma distribution was assumed for the object and target probability distribution. As the climate change scenario, the 20C3M(baseline scenario) and SRES A2 scenario (projection scenario) of CGCM3.1/T63 model from CCCma (Canadian Centre for Climate modeling and analysis) were utilized. The precipitation data were collected from 10 rain gauge stations in the Han-river basin. In order to consider seasonal characteristics, the study was performed separately for the flood (June~October) and nonflood (November~May) seasons. The periods for baseline and projection scenario were set as 1973~2000 and 2011~2100, respectively. This study evaluated the performance of NSQM by experimenting various ways of setting parameters of target distribution. The projection scenarios were shown for 3 different periods of FF scenario (Foreseeable Future Scenario, 2011~2040 yr), MF scenario (Mid-term Future Scenario, 2041~2070 yr), LF scenario (Long-term Future Scenario, 2071~2100 yr). The trend test for the annual precipitation projection using NSQM shows 330.1 mm (25.2%), 564.5 mm (43.1%), and 634.3 mm (48.5%) increase for FF, MF, and LF scenarios, respectively. The application of stationary scheme shows overestimated projection for FF scenario and underestimated projection for LF scenario. This problem could be improved by applying nonstationary quantile mapping.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.29-41
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• 2017

Korea is expected to become a super-aged society by 2050. Given an aging population and the increasing pressure for the early retirement, a sufficient social safety net for elderly population becomes important. The Korean government introduced public reverse mortgage program in 2007, which is a product for aging seniors and the elderly, The number of reverse mortgage subscribers has also steadily grown. The demand continues to grow, but the reverse mortgage over a long period of time is a highly uncertain and risky product in the position of guarantee or lending institution. Thus, suitable demand prediction of the reverse mortgage subscribers is necessary for stable and sustainable operation. This study uses a Bass diffusion model to forecast the long-term demand for reverse mortgage and provides insight into reverse mortgage by forecasting demand for stability and substantiality of the loan product. We represent the projections of new subscribers on the basis of the data obtained from Korea Housing Finance Corporation. Results show that potential market size of Korean reverse mortgage reaches approximately 760,000-1,160,000 households by 2020. We validate the results by comparing the estimate of the cumulative number of subscribers with that found in literature.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.158-162
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• 2014

Background Loss of nipple projection is a common problem following nipple reconstruction. The aim of this study was to demonstrate that the use of a tightly rolled dermal graft is effective in the long-term maintenance of nipple projection. Methods Nipple reconstruction was performed using the C-V flap technique. A dermal graft was harvested from the dog-ear portion of previous scars. The graft was rolled tightly into a compact cylinder and used to augment the nipple reconstruction. Postoperatively, stacked Allevyn dressing was used for protecting the nipple from compression for a minimum of two months. Nipple projection was measured at the time of surgery and at 12 months postoperatively. Results Forty nipple reconstructions were performed using this technique. There were 19 transverse rectus abdominis musculocutaneous (TRAM) flaps, 10 latissimus dorsi (LD) flaps, and 11 tissue-expanded breast mounds. At one year, the mean projection was 0.80 cm (range, 0.62-1.22 cm). The twelve-month average maintenance of nipple projection was 70.2% for the TRAM flap group, 76.3% for the LD flap group, and 61.8% for the tissue-expanded group. In two patients with previous irradiation of the reconstructed breasts, relatively poor maintenance of nipple projection was noted (45.7%). No complications were noted, and all of the donor sites healed well primarily. Conclusions Our results demonstrated that the use of a C-V flap with a tightly rolled dermal graft for nipple reconstruction improves the long-term maintenance of nipple projection. Its advantages include reproducibility, technical simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and minimal donor site morbidity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1630-1643
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• 2023

The correct situation awareness (SA) of operators is important for managing nuclear power plants (NPPs), particularly in accident-related situations. Among the three levels of SA suggested by Ensley, Level 3 SA (i.e., projection of the future status of the situation) is challenging because of the complexity of NPPs as well as the uncertainty of accidents. Hence, several prediction methods using artificial intelligence techniques have been proposed to assist operators in accident prediction. However, these methods only predict short-term plant status (e.g., the status after a few minutes) and do not provide information regarding the uncertainty associated with the prediction. This paper proposes an algorithm that can predict the multivariate and long-term behavior of plant parameters for 2 h with 120 steps and provide the uncertainty of the prediction. The algorithm applies bidirectional long short-term memory and an attention mechanism, which enable the algorithm to predict the precise long-term trends of the parameters with high prediction accuracy. A conditional variational autoencoder was used to provide uncertainty information about the network prediction. The algorithm was trained, optimized, and validated using a compact nuclear simulator for a Westinghouse 900 MWe NPP.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.65-69
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• 1998

The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are regarded as the highest-order association cortices. The hippocampus has been proposed to store "cognitive maps" of external environments, and the prefrontal cortex is known to be involved in the planning of behavior, among other functions. Considering the prominent functional roles played by these structures, it is not surprising to find direct monosynaptic projections from the hippocampus to the prefrontal cortex. Rhythmic stimulation of this projection patterned after the hippocampal EEG theta rhythm induced stable long-term potentiation of field potentials in the prefrontal cortex. Comparison of behavioral correlates of hippocampal and prefrontal cortical neurons during an a-arm radial maze, working memory task shows a striking contrast. Hippocampal neurons exhibit clear place-specific firing patterns, whereas prefrontal cortical neurons do not show spatial selectivity, but are correlated to different stages of the behavioral task. These data lead to the hypothesis that the role of hippocampal projection to the prefrontal cortex is not to impose spatial representations upon prefrontal activity, but to provide a mechanism for learning the spatial context in which particular behaviors are appropriate.propriate.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.63-64
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• 2007