• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.233-242
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• 2018

Purpose: To identify risk factors for premature birth among premature obstetric labor women. Methods: Participants were 129 hospitalized women who were diagnosed with potential premature obstetric labor with 20 weeks to 37 weeks of gestation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, $x^2$ test, t-test, and binary logistic regression. Results: Of 129 women, 78(60.5%) gave premature birth and 51 (39.5%) gave full-term birth. Risk factors for premature birth were education level (${\leq}$bachelor's degree), abnormal bowel condition (constipation or diarrhea), time firstly diagnosed with a premature obstetric labor (below 28 weeks of pregnancy), and multiple pregnancy. There were also increased risks of premature birth for participants with high level of anxiety and high level of prenatal stress. In social support, there was an increased risk of premature birth for participants with low level of social support. Conclusion: Prenatal nursing programs should consider not only psychosocial factors such as anxiety, prenatal stress, and social support, but also some general and obstetric factors such as education level, abnormal bowel condition, time firstly diagnosed with a premature obstetric labor, and multiple pregnancy to increase maternal and child health.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.1-18
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• 2019

The virtual reality (VR) is an immerging technology used in the serious games industry to treat psychological disorders like dementia. We created a system named as Virtual Reality Home (VRH) for the elderly who lived with Alzheimer's disease (or other form of dementia) and cognitive impairment using virtual reality technology. The purpose of our study is to measure the long-time immersion and retention of VRH on the moods and apathy, enhancement in physical and brain stimulation as well as a decision making with peoples of dementia and explore the experience of aged care home staff's member. The VRH shows a positive impact on the elderly participants and staff members. During the VRH experience, excitement and a great level of alertness were observed among the participants but few of them were feeling anxiety. Furthermore, we observed the improvement in physical, memory and brain stimulation, but the participants have a low focus on decision making because they wanted to explore all interactable objects in the VRH. This study suggests that the VR may have the potential to improve the quality of life, and these results can assist to expand the future development in the enhancement of efficiency of people with dementia.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.276-284
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• 2023

Objectives: Previous studies have shown that anger can lead to frontal lobe α (8-13 Hz) band asymmetry (FAA) in electroencephalogram (EEG), in accordance with motivational direction. This pilot study aimed to investigate the impact of acupuncture on FAA elicited by anger. Methods: Thirty-four right-handed participants scoring above 75 points on the Novaco Anger Scale were included. Baseline EEG signals were recorded for eight minutes using a 32-channel cap under comfortable conditions. Anger was induced through a nine-minute sequence of Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) task. Following that, participants received acupuncture at GB20 and GB21 for 10 minutes. Fast Fourier transform was employed for frequency analysis, and repeated measure ANOVA was conducted for statistical analysis. Results: The results revealed that participants exhibited significantly higher FAA (p = 0.026), particularly in the left hemisphere, after the ATSS task sequence compared to the baseline. During acupuncture treatment, the greater left-sided FAA was significantly reduced (p = 0.027) and reversed. Upon the cessation of acupuncture, FAA returned to a value between the baseline and the anger-evoked stage (p = 0.046). Conclusion: The EEG results of this study revealed that anger stimulation induced an increase in left-sided FAA, which was effectively alleviated by acupuncture. This led to an immediate restoration of FAA asymmetry induced by anger. These findings suggest the potential of acupuncture as a treatment option for reducing FAA associated with anger.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.1209-1216
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• 2022

The majority of construction site incidents occur due to a lack of hazard awareness among workers on job sites. This lack of awareness is despite mandatory construction safety training, typically in the form of written content (safety manuals) or of images depicting hazards. To reduce job-site injuries and fatalities, general contractors have started adopting Virtual Reality (VR) to impart safety training to job site personnel. VR safety training can take the form of an immersive simulation comprising potential safety hazards intentionally embedded into a virtual job site; users are required to identify these hazards within a specified time frame with the expectation that they will be more adept at recognizing hazards on an actual job-site, resulting in fewer accidents. This research study seeks to identify the actual impacts of VR on construction safety awareness among participants. The research addresses the following question: Does VR improve hazard recognition awareness? The primary objective is to evaluate participants' performance of past construction safety awareness against present construction safety awareness after receiving VR training. Participants were asked to complete a multiple-choice Qualtrics™ questionnaire. The results of the study showed a statistically significant knowledge gain advantage with respect to hazard recognition and construction safety awareness with the use of interactive, immersive VR over a more conventional and passive safety training method.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.171-180
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• 2009

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship of students' attachment to parents and their self control to Internet addiction. The participants in this study included 338 elementary students, 371 junior high students, and 342 high school students of Kyunggi province. They were categorized into 3 groups by their aptitude to Internet addiction: serious addicts, potential addicts, and non-addicts. According to the results, older students showed higher tendency toward Internet addiction, and more insecure attachment to their parents. More than 20% of participants were disposed to addiction to the Internet, indicating that immediate intervention should be applied. Significant variables to explain students' Internet addiction were differentiated along their developmental levels. Attachment to parents was related to the Internet addiction of elementary and junior high students, while self control was more critical for high school students' addiction.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.67-88
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• 2004

Given the noteworthy increase in the number of native-born English-speaking. EFL instructors teaching overseas, this research examined 6 American EFL instructors who had taught English abroad with special reference to their experience as foreigner instructors in their respective host countries. With the use of interviews as the major technique employed, this research was centered on identifying conflicts or difficulties the research participants encountered as novice instructors, both internal and external to the classroom settings of their host countries. Research findings revealed that the current participants were not adequately prepared to cope with new and unfamiliar physical settings of their host countries, or to familiarize themselves with their new classroom settings and students. Studying the various the conflicts which native EFL instructors encountered, both internal and external to the classroom environment, will hopefully shed light on, and provide a more accurate portrayal of EFL professionals' teaching overseas and may provide possible insights into potential solutions to them. Furthermore, the research findings were considered and discussed in terms of acculturation theory.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.1-25
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of peer coaching for EFL teachers' professional development. For this study, 12 college teachers in Korea participated in a 10-week program. They were 7 males and 5 females, ranging in age from 24 to 37 years. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Reflective analysis was used to analyze individual interview data. From the findings, two significant categories of peer coaching were identified: positive and negative responses to peer coaching experience. However, the overriding themes that emerged from the data were the benefits of peer coaching. The participants were almost unanimous in their acknowledgement of the advantages of peer coaching, such as reflective support through other's eyes, improved working environments, greater teaching strategies, higher professional self-esteem, and awareness of self-directed learning. Negative responses also appeared, mostly in regard to the working principles of implementation; the major issues of difficulties were time management, complexities of implementation procedure, stress and personal vulnerability, and relative lack of reflection and feedback skills. Demonstrating the participants' experiences towards the peer coaching program, this study provides EFL teachers with useful insights into peer coaching as an effective tool of their professional development.

• Educational Technology International
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.81-114
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• 2023

The study aimed to qualitatively examine middle school students' engagement in distance instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants comprised 119 students from a girls' middle school in Seoul, South Korea. To gain an in-depth understanding of the students' experiences, we collected their reflective journals, which included structured items about their learning engagement at three timepoints in 2020: April, July, and December. The following are the results: 10 themes and 18 concepts were derived, and they were integrated into causal conditions (sudden transition due to COVID-19), contextual condition (technology readiness, school education context), central phenomena (high level of behavioral engagement, low emotional engagement), interventional conditions (recognizing the potential of online learning, situational awareness about COVID-19 and online learning), action/interaction phenomena (development and use of self-regulated learning strategies), and consequences (changes in practices and perception towards online learning). Based on the findings, engagement patterns of the participants were classified into five types: proactive, conservative, receptive, reactive, passive learners. The present study demonstrated important findings that are essential for the improvement and development of engaging online learning strategies in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.13-21
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• 2023

PURPOSE: This study examined the specific clinical risk factors in middle-aged men with age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass (ALSMM). METHODS: The present research analyzed the data from a cross-sectional study of 1,564 community-dwelling participants aged between 40 to 49 years old. The participants were screened for ALSMM. The study examined various risk factors, including age, height, weight, body mass index, waist circumference, skeletal muscle mass index, smoking and drinking status, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, fasting glucose levels, and triglyceride and cholesterol levels. RESULTS: The risk factors of ALSMM were height, body mass index, waist circumference, skeletal muscle mass index, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, drinking status, fasting glucose, and triglyceride levels (p < .05). The weight, triglyceride, and smoking status variables were non-significant (p > .05). CONCLUSION: The risk factors for ALSMM among community-dwelling adults were determined. These results are expected to contribute to the existing literature on ALSMM and provide potential risk factors associated with the development of ALSMM in middle-aged males.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.96-105
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• 2024

We propose a method to automatically predict Alzheimer's disease from speech data using the ChatGPT large language model. Alzheimer's disease patients often exhibit distinctive characteristics when describing images, such as difficulties in recalling words, grammar errors, repetitive language, and incoherent narratives. For prediction, we initially employ a speech recognition system to transcribe participants' speech into text. We then gather opinions by inputting the transcribed text into ChatGPT as well as a prompt designed to solicit fluency evaluations. Subsequently, we extract embeddings from the speech, text, and opinions by the pretrained models. Finally, we use a classifier consisting of transformer blocks and linear layers to identify participants with this type of dementia. Experiments are conducted using the extensively used ADReSSo dataset. The results yield a maximum accuracy of 87.3% when speech, text, and opinions are used in conjunction. This finding suggests the potential of leveraging evaluation feedback from language models to address challenges in Alzheimer's disease recognition.