• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.20
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• pp.8993-9004
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• 2014

Background: The incidence rate and the treatment costs of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are high, especially in Thailand. Previous studies indicated that early detection by a surveillance program could help by down-staging. This study aimed to compare the costs and health outcomes associated with the introduction of a HCC surveillance program with no program and to estimate the budget impact if the HCC surveillance program were implemented. Materials and Methods: A cost utility analysis using a decision tree and Markov models was used to compare costs and outcomes during the lifetime period based on a societal perspective between alternative HCC surveillance strategies with no program. Costs included direct medical, direct non-medical, and indirect costs. Health outcomes were measured as life years (LYs), and quality adjusted life years (QALYs). The results were presented in terms of the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) in Thai THB per QALY gained. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were applied to investigate parameter uncertainties. Budget impact analysis (BIA) was performed based on the governmental perspective. Results: Semi-annual ultrasonography (US) and semi-annual ultrasonography plus alpha-fetoprotein (US plus AFP) as the first screening for HCC surveillance would be cost-effective options at the willingness to pay (WTP) threshold of 160,000 THB per QALY gained compared with no surveillance program (ICER=118,796 and ICER=123,451 THB/QALY), respectively. The semi-annual US plus AFP yielded more net monetary benefit, but caused a substantially higher budget (237 to 502 million THB) than semi-annual US (81 to 201 million THB) during the next ten fiscal years. Conclusions: Our results suggested that a semi-annual US program should be used as the first screening for HCC surveillance and included in the benefit package of Thai health insurance schemes for both chronic hepatitis B males and females aged between 40-50 years. In addition, policy makers considered the program could be feasible, but additional evidence is needed to support the whole prevention system before the implementation of a strategic plan.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.26-34
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• 1991

Migration studies that assume that decision making is done on an individual basis is overlooking the importance of the family factor. Considering that must people belong to families, it is more appropriate to view migration decision from the perspective of the family. This study analyzes the household migration decision whereby the alternatives are to stay, 10 undertake family migration or to undertake single migration of a member. In developing a conceptual model of household migration decision, it is assumed that the household's objective is to maximize household income which is a function of individual members' earnings. The benefits and costs of household migration and individual migration are identified and the household chooses the migration strategy that maximizes expected household income. When household members have conflicting earning prospects in the potential destination, the household considers single migration of the member with the best earning potentials. However, lone migration by a household member involves cost of family separation which is both monetary and psychic, and this study shows that lone migration is undertaken only when its net gains to the family are greater than the separation cost of the family. The major benefit of choosing single migration is the retention of home base in the place of origin which can serve as an insurance against the uncertainty of obtaining a job in the destination, the benefit that is unavailable in family migration. The conceptual analysis shows how a household's migration decision would depend on its members' economic roles and prospects in the destination. Besides the economic variables, social and life cycle variables of the family translate into separation costs and benefits of migration. This study indicates that one - earner family in low economic status but with good earning prospects and high separation costs is more likely to choose family migration over single migration.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.65-72
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• 1999

A methodology for determining the optimal durations of the use of contaminated crops as feedstuffs of cattle was designed based on the cost-benefit analysis method. The results of application for pigs, an omnivorous cattle, were discussed for the hypothetical deposition of radionuclides on August 15 when a number of crops are fully developed in Korean agricultural conditions. For investigating the relative cost-effectiveness of the use of contaminated crops as feedstuffs, the net benefit was compared with the case of the direct disposal of contaminated crops. The time-dependent radionuclide concentration in crops after the deposition was predicted using a dynamic food chain model DYNACON. The net benefit from the actions was quantitatively evaluated in terms of cost equivalent of doses and monetary costs of implementing the action. It depended on a number of factors such as radionuclides, variety of crops supplied as feedstuffs and duration of the actions. The use of contaminated crops as feedstuffs was more cost effective for $^{90}Sr\;or\;^{131}I$ deposition than for $^{137}Cs$ deposition.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.283-290
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• 2020

In 2018, 647 thousand tons of eggs were produced and consumed. However, the issue of pesticides used for egg in 2017 made Korean consumers worry about the food safety of eggs, and the volume of egg consumption decreased. The Korean egg industry also has another problem due to an unclear and inefficient marketing structure at the farm level. This marketing situation of eggs at the farm level in Korea needs a large-scale restructuring of the market structure, including introducing an EPC (egg processing center). Especially, the introduction of an EPC has been discussed by government officers and specialists, but the social benefit of an EPC, which will be the driving point for approving an EPC, has not been measured yet. The purpose of this study was to measure the effect of introducing an EPC in Korea. Through an analysis using EDM (equilibrium displacement model), a few findings are presented. First, the introduction of an EPC may increase the transparency of price discovery and decrease the transaction cost. And thus, it results in a higher producer price, lower consumer price, and larger quantity at market equilibrium. Second, an EPC will improve the level of food safety of eggs, which can increase the satisfaction of domestic producers and consumers. Third, the introduction of an EPC may create new consumption of eggs. Based on these three effects, the new social benefits in monetary terms from the introduction of an EPC in Korea could be 23.9 - 35.2 billion won.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.11
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• pp.123-148
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• 1998

Every purchase involves both the cost of the item and the monetary and nonmonetary secondary costs of shopping, arranging the purchase and getting the purchased item home. Along with the cost of the item secondary costs in time, money and effort can be important determinants of shopper's behavior. Studies of shopper's movements within urban areas suggest there are important differences between shoppers in their willingness to incur the secondary costs of shopping downtown or in distance sections of the city. The purpose of this paper is identifies difference purchase activities between inshoppers and outshoppers. and This paper has two major objectives. (1) It seeks to provide answers to the reasons of the outshbpping based on the findings of a study undertaken in a medium-sized city. (2) It seeks to provide information to the outshopper's characteristics. based on the analysis of the data for consumer's demographic, life style characteristics.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.141-157
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• 2007

This paper evaluates the effects of privatization and deregulation on the firm-specific efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the Korean and Japanese railways. Using a stochastic frontier approach and a generalized translog functional form, the paper specifies the equation system consisting of a multiproduct variable cost function and input share equations which is estimated with Zellner's iterative seemingly unrelated regression and the corrected least squares method. The Korean and Japanese railway firms are assumed to produce three outputs (Shinkansen passenger-kilometers, incumbent railway passenger-kilometers, ton-kilometers of freight) using three input factors (labor, fuel, maintenance and rolling stock). A monetary value of the ways and fixed installations held by the railroad firm is also included as a quasi-fixed input. The empirical results indicate that the average estimate of cost inefficiency is 2.57% for the total sample and on the average, JNR and JR Kyushu are found to be worst efficient while the most efficient railway firm in the sample is JR West. Also the cost efficiency levels of seven JRs have been improved after the reform and privatization of JNR. The findings also indicate that TFP growth of the privately-owned JRs are higher than those of the government-owned KNR and JNR. Three-island JRs and JR Freight have slightly higher TFP growth than Honshu JRs as well. Thus, the results suggest that managerial autonomy and increased competition via deregulation have improved efficiency and TFP growth.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.3 s.43
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• pp.1-8
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• 2005

This paper describes a new objective methodology of seismic building damage assessment which is called Advanced Component Method(ACM). ACM is a major attempt to replace the conventional loss estimation procedure, which is based on subjective measures and the opinions of experts, with one that objectively measures both earthquake intensity and the response ol buildings. First, response of typical buildings is obtained analytically by nonlinear seismic static analysis, push-over analyses. The spectral displacement Is used as a measure of earthquake intensity in order to use Capacity Spectrum Method and the damage functions for each building component, both structural and non-structural, are developed as a function of component deformation. Examples of components Include columns, beams, floors, partitions, glazing, etc. A repair/replacement cost model is developed that maps the physical damage to monetary damage for each component. Finally, building response, component damage functions, and cost model were combined probabilistically, using Wonte Carlo simulation techniques, to develop the final damage functions for each building type. Uncertainties in building response resulting from variability in material properties and load assumptions were incorporated in the Latin Hypercube sampling technique. The paper also presents and compares ACM and conventional building loss estimation based on historical damage data and reported loss data.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.394-401
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to : (a) examine diabetic patients' sensory evaluation and food preferences, (b) analyze the portion sizes & plate wastes, (c) investigate the factors affecting plate wastes, and (d) determine the nutritional & mometary values of the plate wastes. A questionnaire for determining food preference and sensory evaluation was developed. Thirty-three diabetic patients who were hospitalized in Sanggye Paik hospital in Seoul were studied. Serving sizes and plate wastes were weighed by using an electric scale, and the CAN-Pro program was used to evaluate the nutritional value or the food consumed. The data were analyzed using the SAS package program for descriptive analysis, t-test, ANOVA, and the Pearson correlation. Using a five-point Likeu-type scale, the temperature s[ore ranged from 3.1 to 3.3 (1 : very poor, 5 : excellent), the preference store was 3.0-3.2 (1 : very dislike, 5:very like), the taste score was 2.9-3.2 (1 : very poor, 5 : excellent), and the amount of food served score was 2.8-3.0 (1 : too little, 5 : too much). Serving sizes were considered insufficient by patients because most of the DM diet was low in calories. Average plate waste for the DM diet was 26.2% of the total served, by weight, and was lower than that for patients consuming a normal diet, which was 30.3%, found in previous research. Those subjects who had been previously hospitalized and who wished to participate in a campaign for food waste reduction produced less plate waste than other groups (p<.05). Plate wastes of the DM diet were negatively correlated with taste, temperature, and preference, and were positively correlated with the amount served: however, these results were not statistically significant. It was found that diabetic patients consumed adequate levels of energy, protein, Ca, Fe, Vitamin B$_1$, Vitamin B$_2$, and niacin, but inadequate levels of Phosphorus, Vitamin A and Vitamin C. The plate wastes were calculated to be 26.2% of the total cost (￦ 3,489), which is ￦9l5. This represents a significant wastage of resources from the hospital. The results of this study could assist foodservice managers in both controlling food wastage, and improving the quality of hospital food services.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.178-188
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• 2024

In the near future, it is expected that there will be billions of connected devices using fifth generation (5G) network services. The recently available base stations (BSs) need to mitigate their loads without changing and at the least monetary cost. The available spectrum resources are limited and need to be exploited in an efficient way to meet the ever-increasing demand for services. Device to Device communication (D2D) technology will likely help satisfy the rapidly increasing capacity and also effectively offload traffic from the BS by distributing the transmission between D2D users from one side and the cellular users and the BS from the other side. In this paper, we propose to apply D2D overlay communication with cognitive radio capability in 5G networks to exploit unused spectrum resources taking into account the dynamic spectrum access. The performance metrics; throughput and delay are formulated and analyzed for CSMA-based medium access control (MAC) protocol that utilizes a common control channel for device users to negotiate the data channel and address the contention between those users. Device users can exploit the cognitive radio to access the data channels concurrently in the common interference area. Estimating the achievable throughput and delay in D2D communication in 5G networks is not exploited in previous studies using cognitive radio with CSMA-based MAC protocol to address the contention. From performance analysis, applying cognitive radio capability in D2D communication and allocating a common control channel for device users effectively improve the total aggregated network throughput by more than 60% compared to the individual D2D throughput without adding harmful interference to cellular network users. This approach can also reduce the delay.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.89-97
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• 2004

The Korea Air Force(KAF) has operated freight flights based on the prefixed time and route schedule, which is adjusted once in a month. The major purpose of the operation of freight flights in the KAF is to distribute necessary supplies from the home air base to other air bases. The secondary purpose is to train the young pilots to get more experiences in navigation. Each freight flight starts from and returned to the home air base everyday except holidays, while it visits several other air bases to accomplish its missions. The study aims to forecast freight demand at each base by using time series analysis, and then it tried to optimize the cost of operating flights by solving vehicle routing problem. For more specifically, first, several constraints in operating cargos were defined by reviewing the Korea Air Force manuals and regulation. With such constraints, an integer programming problem was formulated for this specific routing problem allowing several visits in a tour with limitation of maximum number of visits. Then, an algorithm to solve the routing problem was developed. Second, the time series analysis method was applied to find out the freight demand at each air base from the mother air base in the next month. With the forecasted demands and the developed solution algorithm, the oprimum routes are calculated for each flight. Finally, the study compared the solved routing system by the developed algorithm with the existing routing system of the Korea Air Force. Through this comparison, the study proved that the proposed method can provide more (economically) efficient routing system than the existing system in terms of computing and monetary cost. In summary, the study suggested objective criteria for air routing plan in the KAF. It also developed the methods which could forecast properly the freight demands at each bases by using time series analysis and which could find the optimum routing which minimizes number of cargo needed. Finally, the study showed the economical savings with the optimized routing system by using real case example.