• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.55-66
• /
• 2018

Purpose In PET/CT exam, washed-out artifact could occur due to severe motion of the patient and high specific activity, it results in lowering not only qualitative reading but also quantitative analysis. Scatter limitation correction by GE is an algorism to correct washed-out artifact and recover the images in PET scan. The purpose of this study is to measure the threshold of specific activity which can recovers to original uptake values on the image shown with washed-out artifact from phantom experiment and to compare the quantitative analysis of the clinical patient's data before and after correction. Materials and Methods PET and CT images were acquired in having no misalignment(D0) and in 1, 2, 3, 4 cm distance of misalignment(D1, D2, D3, D4) respectively, with 20 steps of each specific activity from 20 to 20,000 kBq/ml on $^{68}Ge$ cylinder phantom. Also, we measured the distance of misalignment of foley catheter line between CT and PET images, the specific activity which makes washed-out artifact, $SUV_{mean}$ of muscle in artifact slice and $SUV_{max}$ of lesion in artifact slice and $SUV_{max}$ of the other lesion out of artifact slice before and after correction respectively from 34 patients who underwent $^{18}F-FDG$ Fusion Whole Body PET/CT exam. SPSS 21 was used to analyze the difference in the SUV between before and after scatter limitation correction by paired t-test. Results In phantom experiment, $SUV_{mean}$ of $^{68}Ge$ cylinder decreased as specific activity of $^{18}F$ increased. $SUV_{mean}$ more and more decreased as the distance of misalignment between CT and PET more increased. On the other hand, the effect of correction increased as the distance more increased. From phantom experiments, there was no washed-out artifact below 50 kBq/ml and $SUV_{mean}$ was same from origin. On D0 and D1, $SUV_{mean}$ recovered to origin(0.95) below 120 kBq/ml when applying scatter limitation correction. On D2 and D3, $SUV_{mean}$ recovered to origin below 100 kBq/ml. On D4, $SUV_{mean}$ recovered to origin below 80 kBq/ml. From 34 clinical patient's data, the average distance of misalignment was 2.02 cm and the average specific activity which makes washed-out artifact was 490.15 kBq/ml. The average $SUV_{mean}$ of muscles and the average $SUV_{max}$ of lesions in artifact slice before and after the correction show a significant difference according to a paired t-test respectively(t=-13.805, p=0.000)(t=-2.851, p=0.012), but the average $SUV_{max}$ of lesions out of artifact slice show a no significant difference (t=-1.173, p=0.250). Conclusion Scatter limitation correction algorism by GE PET/CT scanner helps to correct washed-out artifact from motion of a patient or high specific activity and to recover the PET images. When we read the image occurred with washed-out artifact by measuring the distance of misalignment between CT and PET image, specific activity after applying scatter limitation algorism, we can analyze the images more accurately without repeating scan.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.67
• /
• pp.177-208
• /
• 2014

This study inquires how human interest news on society section of newspapers had been modulated as multi-layered political narratives that would consistently have Koreans consider, realize and question on colonial situation as well as ethnic identity. Under totalitarian censorship of the colonial government, newspapers could not publish reports on political issues and current affairs, so society page of human interest such as crime, accident, conflict, disaster, and many kinds of sufferings of peoples to death would take great public attention and consequently be considered as a substitute of political section. Society page had enjoyed its influence on formation of public opinion of the colonized ethnic society and had maintained cultural-nationalist position ever since the founding of newspaper in mother-tongue in 1920. In colonial context, there is nothing non-political to the lives of the colonized, social facts would be necessary and happen to be modulated into a narrative that could trigger nationalist sentiment. For this end, news reporting of society section usually concentrated on aspects of 'Les Mis${\acute{e}}$rqbles', dramatic quality, and psychological factors in detail. Narrative style of news reporting got used to modulate factual informations with a proper taste of exaggeration, emotional expression, and commercial touch of exciting words. Even in a case of death by drug abuse, news was written to indicate what made him/her drive to miserable death on street, that is, what is de facto reason of all of social problems like as migration, hunger, leaving home, crime, suicide, violence, gambling, love affairs to death, adultery, and even opium habit. Those social problems and personal sufferings appeared up on newspaper 3rd page at daily base. Readers could acknowledge and identify what the real matter that should be resolved and then blame colonialism, capitalism, and militarism for those social problems. Journalists put values on inciting the colonized to realize the national and ethnic situation and feel sympathy for their people tied up by a common destiny. In this terms, news on society section of newspaper under Colonial Occupation were encoded as narratives of politically layered text and then decoded as intriguing sentiments against colonial dominance. I argue that society page of newspaper of colonial period engaged in a sort of cultural politics of sentiment and emotion which is a private area outside of imperial sight.

• KSBB Journal
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.231-238
• /
• 2008

The second family member of tissue inhibitors of matrix metalloproteinases, TIMP-2, is a 21kDa protein which inhibits matrix metalloproteinases 2 (MMP-2). Expression of mammalian proteins in E. coli often forms inclusion bodies that are made up of mis-folded or insoluble protein aggregates. The requirement for the formation of 6 disulfide bonds in the process of the TIMP-2 folding is likely to be incompatible with the reducing environment of E. coli. However, this incompatibility can be often overcome by introducing a mutagenesis that could lead to enhancement of the protein solubility. In this reason, we have attempted to express the soluble TIMP-2 in E. coli by applying a modified staggered extension process (StEP), one of the in vitro PCR-based recombinant mutagenesis methods, and error-prone PCR. C-terminally located CAT fusion protein with respect to mutated TIMP-2 proteins enables us to differentiate the soluble TIMP-2 from the insoluble in E. coli by virtue of chloramphenicol resistance. According to this scheme, E. coli harboring properly-folded CAT fused to TIMP-2 protein was selected, and some of the resulting colonies exhibited an enhanced, soluble expression of TIMP-2 compared to the wild type, implying (i) the StEP technique is successfully employed to enhance the proper folding thereby increasing the solubility of TIMP-2, and (ii) the CAT dependent screening may be a simple and effective method to differentiate the soluble protein expression in E. coli.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.115-137
• /
• 2010

Information technology (IT) outsourcing, the use of a third-party vendor to provide IT services, started in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Korea, and has increased rapidly since 2000. Recently, firms have increased their efforts to capture greater value from IT outsourcing. To date, there have been a large number of studies on IT outsourcing. Most prior studies on IT outsourcing have focused on outsourcing practices and decisions, and little attention has been paid to objectively measuring the value of IT outsourcing. In addition, studies that examined the performance of IT outsourcing have mainly relied on anecdotal evidence or practitioners' perceptions. Our study examines the contribution of IT outsourcing to economic growth in Korean industries over the 1990 to 2007 period, using a production function framework and a panel data set for 54 industries constructed from input-output tables, fixed-capital formation tables, and employment tables. Based on the framework and estimation procedures that Han, Kauffman and Nault (2010) used to examine the economic impact of IT outsourcing in U.S. industries, we evaluate the impact of IT outsourcing on output and productivity in Korean industries. Because IT outsourcing started to grow at a significantly more rapid pace in 2000, we compare the impact of IT outsourcing in pre- and post-2000 periods. Our industry-level panel data cover a large proportion of Korean economy-54 out of 58 Korean industries. This allows us greater opportunity to assess the impacts of IT outsourcing on objective performance measures, such as output and productivity. Using IT outsourcing and IT capital as our primary independent variables, we employ an extended Cobb-Douglas production function in which both variables are treated as factor inputs. We also derive and estimate a labor productivity equation to assess the impact of our IT variables on labor productivity. We use data from seven years (1990, 1993, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007) for which both input-output tables and fixed-capital formation tables are available. Combining the input-output tables and fixed-capital formation tables resulted in 54 industries. IT outsourcing is measured as the value of computer-related services purchased by each industry in a given year. All the variables have been converted to 2000 Korean Won using GDP deflators. To calculate labor hours, we use the average work hours for each sector provided by the OECD. To effectively control for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation present in our dataset, we use the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) procedures. Because the AR1 process may be industry-specific (i.e., panel-specific), we consider both common AR1 and panel-specific AR1 (PSAR1) processes in our estimations. We also include year dummies to control for year-specific effects common across industries, and sector dummies (as defined in the GDP deflator) to control for time-invariant sector-specific effects. Based on the full sample of 378 observations, we find that a 1% increase in IT outsourcing is associated with a 0.012~0.014% increase in gross output and a 1% increase in IT capital is associated with a 0.024~0.027% increase in gross output. To compare the contribution of IT outsourcing relative to that of IT capital, we examined gross marginal product (GMP). The average GMP of IT outsourcing was 6.423, which is substantially greater than that of IT capital at 2.093. This indicates that on average if an industry invests KRW 1 millon, it can increase its output by KRW 6.4 million. In terms of the contribution to labor productivity, we find that a 1% increase in IT outsourcing is associated with a 0.009~0.01% increase in labor productivity while a 1% increase in IT capital is associated with a 0.024~0.025% increase in labor productivity. Overall, our results indicate that IT outsourcing has made positive and economically meaningful contributions to output and productivity in Korean industries over the 1990 to 2007 period. The average GMP of IT outsourcing we report about Korean industries is 1.44 times greater than that in U.S. industries reported in Han et al. (2010). Further, we find that the contribution of IT outsourcing has been significantly greater in the 2000~2007 period during which the growth of IT outsourcing accelerated. Our study provides implication for policymakers and managers. First, our results suggest that Korean industries can capture further benefits by increasing investments in IT outsourcing. Second, our analyses and results provide a basis for managers to assess the impact of investments in IT outsourcing and IT capital in an objective and quantitative manner. Building on our study, future research should examine the impact of IT outsourcing at a more detailed industry level and the firm level.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
• /
• v.40 no.3
• /
• pp.155-162
• /
• 2006

Purpose: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a critical disease with higher rates of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality due to myocardial ischemia and infarction. There is glowing interest in how to determine high-risk patients who are candidates for screening testing. This study was performed to evaluate the incidence of coronary artery disease (CAD) in diabetic patients detected by Tc-99m MIBI myocardial perfusion SPECT (MPS) and to assess risk factors of CAD and cardiac hard events. Subjects and Methods: 203 diabetic patients (64 male, mean age $64.1{\pm}9.0$ years) who underwent MPS were included between Jan 2000 and July 2004. Cardiac death and nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) were considered as hard events, and coronary angioplasty and bypass surgery >60 days after testing were considered as soft events. The mean follow-up period was $36{\pm}18$ months. Patients underwent exercise (n=6) or adenosine stress (n=197) myocardial perfusion SPECT. Results: Perfusion defects on MPS were detected in 28.6% (58/203) of the patients. There was no cardiac death but 11 hard events were observed. The annual cardiac hard event rate was 1.1%. In univariate analysis of clinical factors, typical anginal pain, peripheral vascular disease, peripheral polyneuropathy, and resting ECG abnormality were significantly associated with the ocurrence of hard events. Anginal pain, peripheral vascular disease, and resting ECG abnormality remained independent predictors of nonfatal MIs with multivariate analysis. Abnormal SPECT results were significantly associated with high prevalence of hard events but not independent predictors on uni- and multivariate analyses. Conclusion: Patients who were male, had longer diabetes duration (especially over 20 years), peripheral vascular disease, peripheral polyneuropathy, or resting ECG abnormality had higher incidence of CAD. Among clinical factors in diabetic patients, typical angina, peripheral vascular disease, peripheral polyneuropathy, and resting ECG abnormality were strong predictors of hard events.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.155-164
• /
• 1997

A comprehensive and systematic field monitoring program was initiated since October 1989, in order to investigate the temporal and spatial variation of shoreline position at northern part of Pea Island, North Carolina. Aerial photographs were taken every two months on the shoreline extending from the US Coast Guard Station at the northern end of Pea Island to a point 6 miles to the south. Aerial photographs taken were digitized initially to obtain the shoreline position data. in which a wet-dry line visible on the beach was used to identify the position of shoreline. Since the wet-dry line does not represent the “true" shoreline .position but includes the errors due to the variations of wave run-up heights and tidal elevations at the time the photos taken, it is required to eliminate the tide and wave runup effects from the initially digitized shoreline .position data. Runup heights on the beach and tidal elevations at the time the aerial photographs taken were estimated using tide data collected at the end of the FRF pier and wave data measured from wave-rider gage installed at 4 km offshore, respectively A runup formula by Hunt (1957) was used to compute the run-up heights on the beach from the given deepwater wave conditions. With shoreline position data corrected for .wave runup and tide, both spatial and temporal variations of the shoreline positions for the monitoring shoreline were analyzed by examining local differences in shoreline movement and their time dependent variability. Six years data of one-mile-average shoreline indicated that there was an apparent seasonal variation of shoreline, that is, progradation of shoreline at summer (August) and recession at winter (February) at Pea Island. which was unclear with the uncorrected shoreline position data. Determination of shoreline position from aerial photograph, without regard to the effects of wave runup and tide, can lead to mis-interpretation for the temporal and spatial variation of shoreline changes.nges.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.217-229
• /
• 2015

In this study, we explored the development of scientific model through the social-construction process on "combustion." Students were 8th graders from one middle school class. Each student engaged in small group discussions three times and made a group model on combustion. Discourses between peers and teacher were videotaped, audiotaped, and transcribed. The results show that the small groups constructed an initial concept: 'Conditions of combustion', which they then evaluated and revised the initial concept through combustion experiment. Following the discussions, some small groups evaluated their model and made a revised model. Then, the small groups compared various models and constructed a scientific model through consensus within the small group and as a whole class. Finally, students kept revising their model to 'Burning needs oxygen.' This tells us that the social construction process of scientific model made a meaningful role to build scientific model through diverse discussion between the students and their teacher, although they have had some difficult process to reach the final consensus. The data also showed some group features: the members were open to other's ideas. They analyzed the differences between their own ideas from others and revised their model after the whole class discussion. Lastly, they showed the tendency to make a good use of teacher's guidance. This study implies the importance of having social interaction process for students to understand the scientific model and learn the nature of scientific inquiry in class.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.37-44
• /
• 2001

Background: Sleep disorders are prevalent in the general population and in medical practice. Three diagnostic classifications for sleep disorders have been developed recently: The International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD), The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th edition (DSM-IV) and The International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition (ICD-10). Few data have yet been published regarding how the diagnostic systems are related to each other. To address these issues, we evaluated the frequency of sleep disorder diagnoses by DSM-IV and ICSD and compared the DSM-IV with the ICSD diagnoses. Method: Two interviewers assessed 284 inpatients who had been referred for sleep problems in general units of Anam Hospital, holding an unstructured clinical interview with each patient and assigning clinical diagnoses using ICSD and DSM-IV classifications. Results: The most frequent DSM-IV primary diagnoses were "insomnia related to another mental disorder (61.1% of cases)" and "delirium due to general medical condition (26.8%)". "Sleep disorder associated with neurologic disorder (38.4% of cases)" was the most frequent ICSD primary diagnosis, followed by "sleep disorder associated with mental disorder (33.1%)". In comparing the DSM-IV diagnoses with the ICSD diagnoses, sleep disorder unrelated with general medical condition or another mental disorder in DSM-IV categories corresponded with these in ICSD categories. But DSM-IV "primary insomnia" fell into two major categories of ICSD, "psychophysiologic insomni" and "inadequate sleep hygiene". Of 269 subjects, 62 diagnosed with DSM-IV sleep disorder related to general medical condition or another mental disorder disagreed with ICSD diagnoses, which were sleep disorders not associated with general medical condition or mental disorder, i. e., "inadequate sleep hygiene", "environmental sleep disorder", "adjustment sleep disorder" and "insufficient sleep disorder". Conclusion: In this study, we found not only a similar pattern between DSM-IV and ICSD diagnoses but also disagreements, which should not be overlooked by clinicians and resulted from various degrees of understanding of the pathophysiology of the sleep disorders among clinicians. Non-diagnosis or mis-diagnosis leas to inappropriate treatment, therefore the clinicians' understanding of the classification and pathophysiology of sleep disorders is important.

• Management & Information Systems Review
• /
• v.36 no.3
• /
• pp.37-49
• /
• 2017

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between KOSPI200 stock index and stock index futures and stock index option markets which is its derived from KOSPI200 stock index. We use 5-minutes rate of return data from 2012. 06 to 2014. 12. To empirical analysis, this study use autocorrelation and cross-correlation analysis as a preliminary analysis and then following Stoll and Whaley(1990) and Chan(1992), the multiple regression is estimated to examine the lead-lag patterns between the stock index and stock index futures and option markets by Newey and West's(1987) Empirical results of our study shows as follows. First, there exist a strong autocorrelation in the KOSPI200 stock index before 10minutes but a very weak autocorrelation in the stock index futures and option markets. Second, there is a strong evidence that stock index future and option markets lead KOSPI200 stock index in the cross-correlation analysis. Third, based on the multiple regression, the stock index futures and option markets lead the stock index prior to 10-15 minutes and weak evidence that the stock index leads the future and option markets. This results show that the market efficient of KOSPI200 stock index market is improved as compared to the early stage of stock index future and option market.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.23-38
• /
• 2012

There is a large difference between purchasing patterns in an online shopping mall and in an offline market. This difference may be caused mainly by the difference in accessibility of online and offline markets. It means that an interval between the initial purchasing decision and its realization appears to be relatively short in an online shopping mall, because a customer can make an order immediately. Because of the short interval between a purchasing decision and its realization, an online shopping mall transaction usually contains fewer items than that of an offline market. In an offline market, customers usually keep some items in mind and buy them all at once a few days after deciding to buy them, instead of buying each item individually and immediately. On the contrary, more than 70% of online shopping mall transactions contain only one item. This statistic implies that traditional data mining techniques cannot be directly applied to online market analysis, because hardly any association rules can survive with an acceptable level of Support because of too many Null Transactions. Most market basket analyses on online shopping mall transactions, therefore, have been performed by expanding the co-occurrence criteria of traditional association rule mining. While the traditional co-occurrence criteria defines items purchased in one transaction as concurrently purchased items, the expanded co-occurrence criteria regards items purchased by a customer during some predefined period (e.g., a day) as concurrently purchased items. In studies using expanded co-occurrence criteria, however, the criteria has been defined arbitrarily by researchers without any theoretical grounds or agreement. The lack of clear grounds of adopting a certain co-occurrence criteria degrades the reliability of the analytical results. Moreover, it is hard to derive new meaningful findings by combining the outcomes of previous individual studies. In this paper, we attempt to compare expanded co-occurrence criteria and propose a guideline for selecting an appropriate one. First of all, we compare the accuracy of association rules discovered according to various co-occurrence criteria. By doing this experiment we expect that we can provide a guideline for selecting appropriate co-occurrence criteria that corresponds to the purpose of the analysis. Additionally, we will perform similar experiments with several groups of customers that are segmented by each customer's average duration between orders. By this experiment, we attempt to discover the relationship between the optimal co-occurrence criteria and the customer's average duration between orders. Finally, by a series of experiments, we expect that we can provide basic guidelines for developing customized recommendation systems. Our experiments use a real dataset acquired from one of the largest internet shopping malls in Korea. We use 66,278 transactions of 3,847 customers conducted during the last two years. Overall results show that the accuracy of association rules of frequent shoppers (whose average duration between orders is relatively short) is higher than that of causal shoppers. In addition we discover that with frequent shoppers, the accuracy of association rules appears very high when the co-occurrence criteria of the training set corresponds to the validation set (i.e., target set). It implies that the co-occurrence criteria of frequent shoppers should be set according to the application purpose period. For example, an analyzer should use a day as a co-occurrence criterion if he/she wants to offer a coupon valid only for a day to potential customers who will use the coupon. On the contrary, an analyzer should use a month as a co-occurrence criterion if he/she wants to publish a coupon book that can be used for a month. In the case of causal shoppers, the accuracy of association rules appears to not be affected by the period of the application purposes. The accuracy of the causal shoppers' association rules becomes higher when the longer co-occurrence criterion has been adopted. It implies that an analyzer has to set the co-occurrence criterion for as long as possible, regardless of the application purpose period.