• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.374-386
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• 2023

Background: The heightened morbidity and mortality associated with repeat cardiac surgery are well documented. Redo median sternotomy (MS) and minimally invasive valve surgery are options for patients with prior cardiac surgery who require mitral valve surgery (MVS). We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis comparing the outcomes of redo MS and minimally invasive MVS (MIMVS) in this population. Methods: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and Scopus for studies comparing outcomes of redo MS and MIMVS for MVS. To calculate risk ratios (RRs) for binary outcomes and weighted mean differences (MDs) for continuous data, we employed a random-effects model. Results: We included 12 retrospective observational studies, comprising 4157 participants (675 for MIMVS; 3482 for redo MS). Reductions in mortality (RR, 0.54; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.37-0.80), length of hospital stay (MD, -4.23; 95% CI, -5.77 to -2.68), length of intensive care unit (ICU) stay (MD, -2.02; 95% CI, -3.17 to -0.88), and new-onset acute kidney injury (AKI) risk (odds ratio, 0.34; 95% CI, 0.19 to 0.61) were statistically significant and favored MIMVS (p<0.05). No significant differences were observed in aortic cross-clamp time, cardiopulmonary bypass time, or risk of perioperative stroke, new-onset atrial fibrillation, surgical site infection, or reoperation for bleeding (p>0.05). Conclusion: The current literature, which primarily consists of retrospective comparisons, underscores certain benefits of MIMVS over redo MS. These include decreased mortality, shorter hospital and ICU stays, and reduced AKI risk. Given the lack of high-quality evidence, prospective randomized control trials with adequate power are necessary to investigate long-term outcomes.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.223-233
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• 2024

Objectives: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has exacerbated the rate of tuberculosis (TB) infection among close contacts of TB patients in remote regions. However, research on preventive behaviors, guided by the Health Belief Model (HBM), among household contacts of TB cases is scarce. This study aimed to employ the HBM as a framework to predict TB preventive behaviors among household contacts of TB patients in the border areas of Northern Thailand. Methods: A cross-sectional study with multi-stage random sampling was conducted in Chiang Rai Province. The study included 422 TB patients' household contacts aged 18 years or older who had available chest X-ray (CXR) results. A self-administered questionnaire was used to conduct the survey. Results: The participants' mean age was 42.93 years. Pearson correlation analysis showed that TB preventive behavior scores were significantly correlated with TB knowledge (r=0.397), perceived susceptibility (r=0.565), perceived severity (r=0.452), perceived benefits (r=0.581), self-efficacy (r=0.526), and cues to action (r=0.179). Binary logistic regression revealed that the modeled odds of having an abnormal CXR decreased by 30.0% for each 1-point score increase in preventive behavior (odds ratio, 0.70; 95% confidence interval, 0.61 to 0.79). Conclusions: HBM constructs were able to explain preventive behaviors among TB patients' household contacts. The HBM could be used in health promotion programs to improve TB preventive behaviors and avoid negative outcomes.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.39-53
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• 2007

Generally, fractured medium can be described with some key parameters, such as hydraulic conductivities or random field of hydraulic conductivities (continuum model), spatial and statistical distribution of permeable fractures (discrete fracture network model). Investigating the practical applicability of the well-known conceptual models for the description of groundwater flow in fractured media, various types of hydraulic tests were applied to studies on the highly fractured media in Geumsan, Korea. Results from single-hole packer test show that the horizontal hydraulic conductivities in the permeable media are between $7.67{\times}10^{-10}{\sim}3.16{\times}10^{-6}$ m/sec, with $7.70{\times}10^{-7}$ m/sec arithmetic mean and $2.16{\times}10^{-7}$ m/sec geometric mean. Total number of test interval is 110 at 8 holes. The number of completely impermeable interval is 9, and the low permeable interval - below $1.0{\times}10^{-8}$ m/sec is 14. In other words, most of test intervals are permeable. The vertical distribution of hydraulic conductivities shows apparently the good correlation with the results of flowmeter test. But the results from the cross-hole test show some different features. The results from the cross-hole test are highly related to the connectivity and/or the binary properties of fractured media; permeable and impermeable. From the viewpoint of the connection, the application of the general stochastic approach with a single continuum model may not be appropriate even in the moderately or highly permeable fractured medium. Then, further studies on the investigation method and the analysis procedures should be required for the reasonable and practical design of the conceptual model, with which the binary properties, including permeable/impermeable features, can be described.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.255-255
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• 2016

Resistive random access memory (ReRAM)는 낮은 동작 전압, 빠른 동작 속도, 고집적화 등의 장점으로 인해 차세대 비휘발성 메모리 소자로써 많은 관심을 받고 있다. 최근에 ReRAM 절연막으로 NiOx, TiOx, AlOx TaOx, HfOx와 같은 binary metal oxide 물질들을 적용하는 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있다. 특히, HfOx는 안정적인 동작 특성을 나타낸다는 점에서 ReRAM 절연막 물질로 적합하다고 보고되고 있다. ReRAM 절연막을 형성할 때, 물리 기상 증착 방법 (PVD)이나 화학 기상 증착법 (CVD)과 같은 방법이 많이 이용된다. 이러한 증착 방법들은 고품질의 박막을 형성시킬 수 있는 장점이 있다. 하지만, 높은 온도에서의 공정과 고가의 진공 장비가 이용되기 때문에 경제적인 문제가 있으며, 기판 또는 금속에 플라즈마 손상으로 인한 문제가 발생할 수 있다. 따라서 이러한 문제점들을 개선하기 위해 용액 공정이 많은 관심을 받고 있다. 용액 공정은 공정과정이 간단할 뿐만 아니라 소자의 대면적화가 가능하고 공정온도가 낮으며 고가의 진공장비가 필요하지 않은 장점을 가진다. 따라서 본 연구에서는, 용액공정을 이용하여 HfOx 기반의 ReRAM 제작하였고 $25^{\circ}C$와 $85^{\circ}C$에서 ReRAM의 동작특성에 미치는 compliance current의 영향을 평가하였다. 실험 방법으로는, hafnium chloride (0.1 M)를 2-methoxyethanol에 충분히 용해시켜서 precursor를 제작하였다. 이후, p-type Si 기판 위에 습식산화를 통하여 300 nm 두께의 SiO2 절연층을 성장시킨 후, 하부전극을 형성하기 위해 electron beam evaporation을 이용하여 10/100 nm 두께의 Ti/Pt 전극을 증착하였다. 순차적으로, 제작된 산화물 precursor를 이용하여 Pt 위에 spin coating 방법으로 1000 rpm 10 초, 6000 rpm 30초의 조건으로 두께 35 nm의 HfOx 막을 증착하였다. 최종적으로, solvent 및 불순물을 제거하기 위해 $180^{\circ}C$의 온도에서 10 분 동안 열처리를 진행하였으며, 상부 전극을 형성하기 위해 electron beam evaporation을 이용하여 Ti와 Al을 각각 50 nm, 100 nm의 두께로 증착하였다. ReRAM 동작에서 compliance current가 미치는 영향을 평가하기 위하여 compliance current를 10mA에서 1mA까지 변화시키면서 측정한 결과, $25^{\circ}C$에서는 compliance current의 크기와 상관없이 일정한 메모리 윈도우와 우수한 endurance 특성을 얻는 것을 확인하였다. 한편, $85^{\circ}C$의 고온에서 측정한 경우에는 1mA의 compliance current를 적용하였을 때, $25^{\circ}C$에서 측정된 메모리 윈도우 크기를 비슷하게 유지하면서 더 우수한 endurance 특성을 얻는 것을 확인하였다. 결과적으로, 용액공정 방법으로 제작된 ReRAM을 측정하는데 있어서 compliance current를 줄이면 보다 우수한 endurance 특성을 얻을 수 있으며, ReRAM 소자의 전력소비감소에 효과적이라고 기대된다.

• The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.205-216
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• 2014

Objectives The purpose of this study is to help improve the management of traditional Korean medical(TKM) clinics and the policies for supporting them, by conducting a survey of the practitioners of TKM. Methods Stratified sampling was conducted based on regional location, and 700 samples were selected in a random manner from the membership list. The questionnaire was delivered and returned by mail. The survey was conducted between 20 July and 31 August 2010. A total of 177 questionnaires (recovery rate: 25.28%) were recovered and analyzed for the study. Results 1. The the survey indicate that the overall size of TKM clinics has fallen compared with previous survey, while the average number of beds per clinic has remained unchanged at 7.9. The sale of medicine as a proportion of total monthly sales has increased. 2. There has been no change in the composition of clinical staff as there are three nursing assistants. Although the average daily number of patients to clinics has remained at around 33.90 compared with ten years ago, the number of patients requiring seeking acupuncture treatment has increased while the number of those treated with medication has decreased. 3. Clinicians in TKM have indicated their preference for a binary system that separates TKM from western medicine (57.4%). The respondents do not favor the separation of dispensary from medical practice (81.5%), marks of origin for medicinal herbs (68.9%), disclosure of the prescriptions (67.2%), and the overseas expansion of Korean medical services (70.4%). However, they indicated that they are very much in favor of being granted the authority to employ and give orders to medical technicians (96.0%). 4. The respondents selected Korea as the country that maintains a proper academic system for traditional medicine (45.5%), and are not in favor of opening Korea's traditional medicine market under an Free Trade Agreement(FTA) with China (72.7%). Conclusion The overall status of the management of TKM clinics has declined compared with the preceding decade. There has been only a slight change in clinicians' opinion of the related policies and regulatory issues.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.58-79
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• 2020

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to predict the weight loss by applying machine learning using real-world clinical data from overweight and obese adults on weight loss program in 4 Korean Medicine obesity clinics. Methods: From January, 2017 to May, 2019, we collected data from overweight and obese adults (BMI≥23 kg/m2) who registered for a 3-month Gamitaeeumjowi-tang prescription program. Predictive analysis was conducted at the time of three prescriptions, and the expected reduced rate and reduced weight at the next order of prescription were predicted as binary classification (classification benchmark: highest quartile, median, lowest quartile). For the median, further analysis was conducted after using the variable selection method. The data set for each analysis was 25,988 in the first, 6,304 in the second, and 833 in the third. 5-fold cross validation was used to prevent overfitting. Results: Prediction accuracy was increased from 1^st to 2^nd and 3^rd analysis. After selecting the variables based on the median, artificial neural network showed the highest accuracy in 1^st (54.69%), 2^nd (73.52%), and 3^rd (81.88%) prediction analysis based on reduced rate. The prediction performance was additionally confirmed through AUC, Random Forest showed the highest in 1^st (0.640), 2^nd (0.816), and 3^rd (0.939) prediction analysis based on reduced weight. Conclusions: The prediction of weight loss by applying machine learning showed that the accuracy was improved by using the initial weight loss information. There is a possibility that it can be used to screen patients who need intensive intervention when expected weight loss is low.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.91-105
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• 2016

Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistors (CNTFETs) have been studied as candidates for post Si CMOS owing to the better electrostatic control and high mobility. To enhance the immunity against short - channel effects (SCEs), the novel channel and gate engineered architectures have been proposed to improve CNTFETs performance. This work presents a comprehensive study of the influence of channel and gate engineering on the CNTFET switching, high frequency and circuit level performance of carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNTFETs). At device level, the effects of channel and gate engineering on the switching and high frequency characteristics for CNTFET have been theoretically investigated by using a quantum kinetic model. This model is based on two-dimensional non-equilibrium Green's functions (NEGF) solved self - consistently with Poisson's equations. It is revealed that hetero - material - gate and lightly doped drain and source CNTFET (HMG - LDDS - CNTFET) structure can significantly reduce leakage current, enhance control ability of the gate on channel, improve the switching speed, and is more suitable for use in low power, high frequency circuits. At circuit level, using the HSPICE with look - up table(LUT) based Verilog - A models, the impact of the channel and gate engineering on basic digital circuits (inverter, static random access memory cell) have been investigated systematically. The performance parameters of circuits have been calculated and the optimum metal gate workfunction combinations of ${\Phi}_{M1}/{\Phi}_{M2}$ have been concluded in terms of power consumption, average delay, stability, energy consumption and power - delay product (PDP). In addition, we discuss and compare the CNTFET-based circuit designs of various logic gates, including ternary and binary logic. Simulation results indicate that LDDS - HMG - CNTFET circuits with ternary logic gate design have significantly better performance in comparison with other structures.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.1142-1149
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• 2007

In this paper, the development of wideband MIMO channel sounder and a pilot measurement result is described for research on the multi antenna radio propagation characteristics considering urban environment at microwave frequencies. We developed $4{\times}4$ MIMO(BW:100 MHz) channel sounder using the high speed switching mechanism and periodic pseudo random binary signals method considering next generation mobile communication system. A pilot measurement campaign at the urban area of Bundang is presented for confirmation of system performance. From the analysis of measurement data, wideband path loss exponent of 3.7 and 8 GHz band is 1.79 and 1.76. Average RMS delay spread is 200 ns and 42 ns respectively. From the experiment results, operation of this measurement system is confirmed considering research for a coverage, SNR and channel capacity in urban environment at microwave frequencies.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.93-100
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• 2007

Since Koblitz and Miller suggested the use of elliptic curves in cryptography, there has been an extensive literature on elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC). The use of ECC is based on the observation that the points on an elliptic curve form an additive group under point addition operation. To realize secure cryptosystems using these groups, it is very important to find an elliptic curve whose group order is divisible by a large prime, and also to find a base point whose order equals this prime. While there have been many dramatic improvements on finding an elliptic curve and computing its group order efficiently, there are not many results on finding an adequate base point for a given curve. In this paper, we propose an efficient method to find a random base point on an elliptic curve defined over $GF(p^m)$. We first show that the critical operation in finding a base point is exponentiation. Then we present efficient algorithms to accelerate exponentiation in $GF(p^m)$. Finally, we implement our algorithms and give experimental results on various practical elliptic curves, which show that the new algorithms make the process of searching for a base point 1.62-6.55 times faster, compared to the searching algorithm based on the binary exponentiation.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.270-277
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• 2002

Text filtering is a task of deciding whether a document has relevance to a specified topic. As Internet and Web becomes wide-spread and the number of documents delivered by e-mail explosively grows the importance of text filtering increases as well. The aim of this paper is to improve the accuracy of text filtering systems by using machine learning techniques. We apply AdaBoost algorithms to the filtering task. An AdaBoost algorithm generates and combines a series of simple hypotheses. Each of the hypotheses decides the relevance of a document to a topic on the basis of whether or not the document includes a certain word. We begin with an existing AdaBoost algorithm which uses weak hypotheses with their output of 1 or -1. Then we extend the algorithm to use weak hypotheses with real-valued outputs which was proposed recently to improve error reduction rates and final filtering performance. Next, we attempt to achieve further improvement in the AdaBoost's performance by first setting weights randomly according to the continuous Poisson distribution, executing AdaBoost, repeating these steps several times, and then combining all the hypotheses learned. This has the effect of mitigating the ovefitting problem which may occur when learning from a small number of data. Experiments have been performed on the real document collections used in TREC-8, a well-established text retrieval contest. This dataset includes Financial Times articles from 1992 to 1994. The experimental results show that AdaBoost with real-valued hypotheses outperforms AdaBoost with binary-valued hypotheses, and that AdaBoost iterated with random weights further improves filtering accuracy. Comparison results of all the participants of the TREC-8 filtering task are also provided.