• Title/Summary/Keyword: Selection Tool

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A Study on the Simplification of Questionnaire for Sasang Constitution Classification(QSCC II) (사상체질진단검사(QSCC II) 설문지 간소화 연구)

  • Park, Jee-Won;Kim, Jeong-Ah;Wang, Myung-Ja
    • Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.334-350
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    • 2003
  • The purpose of this descriptive study was to evaluate the clinical validity of QSCCII (Questionnaire for the Sasang Constitution Classification), whose high accuracy as a constitutional diagnostic tool has been recognized by medical professionals. The subjects of this study were 568 clients from an A university hospital in Suwon. Of the subjects, 259 were health center visitors and 292 were ambulatory clinic visitors. Data were collected using self-reported questionnaire and were analyzed by $X^2$-test and one-way ANOVA. The results of this study as follows: 1. In 4 types of constitution, Soeumin type was found in 41.5% of the subjects. Taeumin type in 39.2%.,and Soyangin type in 19.2%, respectively. There was no Tayangin type found in this study. There were no significant differences on types of constitution by demographic characteristics such as age, sex, marital status, education, religion, and economic status. 2. As for 15 item-selective questionnaire, there were statistically significant differences on the response rate of the 12 items, except items such as A4, A11 and A14, by the types of constitution. When the subjects' own criteria on their constitution were compared to the given constitutional criteria on each item, 4 items such as A6, A11, A13 and A14 were advisable to be excluded from the questionnaire or to be reunited to the other criteria. In the meanwhile, 3 items such as A7, A18 and A15 were desirable to be re-categorized to the other constitutional types and reconstructed to the QSCC II questionnaire. 3. In terms of 106 true-false questionnaire, there were statistically significant differences on the response rate of 46 items by the types of constitution. The 46 items include 15 items (32.6%) of the domain of 'handling something/strength and weakness', 4 items (8.7%) of the domain of 'interpersonal relationship', 9 items (19.6%) of the domain of 'state of mind at ordinary times', 2 items (4.3%) of the domain of 'distinctive emotional characteristics' area, 11 items (23.9%) of the domain of 'specific behavioral trait' and 5 items (10.9%) of the domain of 'physical characteristics'. Therefore, the areas of 'handling something/strength and weakness' and' specific behavioral trait' mainly contributed to the classification of constitutional type. 4. When the 106 true-false items were simplified to the 46 items, statistically significant differences were found on the rate of items allocated to the 3 types of constitution. The rate of selection assigned to the 3 constitutional types of the simplified 46-item questionnaire was higher than that of the original 106-item questionnaire. Conclusions; It was concluded that the rate of selection of each lay person about his own constitutional type would be still higher even though the simplified items of QSCC II questionnaire were applied. If more replicated studies are conducted on the diverse population using the simplifying QSCC II questionnaire in the future, a more simplified standardized Sasang Constitution Questionnaire that is available to the public rather than to medical staffs in the clinical settings could be developed. Moreover, the simplified scale will help nurses deliver more efficient nursing care by providing a more rapid way of health assessment.

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The Prediction of DEA based Efficiency Rating for Venture Business Using Multi-class SVM (다분류 SVM을 이용한 DEA기반 벤처기업 효율성등급 예측모형)

  • Park, Ji-Young;Hong, Tae-Ho
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.139-155
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    • 2009
  • For the last few decades, many studies have tried to explore and unveil venture companies' success factors and unique features in order to identify the sources of such companies' competitive advantages over their rivals. Such venture companies have shown tendency to give high returns for investors generally making the best use of information technology. For this reason, many venture companies are keen on attracting avid investors' attention. Investors generally make their investment decisions by carefully examining the evaluation criteria of the alternatives. To them, credit rating information provided by international rating agencies, such as Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch is crucial source as to such pivotal concerns as companies stability, growth, and risk status. But these types of information are generated only for the companies issuing corporate bonds, not venture companies. Therefore, this study proposes a method for evaluating venture businesses by presenting our recent empirical results using financial data of Korean venture companies listed on KOSDAQ in Korea exchange. In addition, this paper used multi-class SVM for the prediction of DEA-based efficiency rating for venture businesses, which was derived from our proposed method. Our approach sheds light on ways to locate efficient companies generating high level of profits. Above all, in determining effective ways to evaluate a venture firm's efficiency, it is important to understand the major contributing factors of such efficiency. Therefore, this paper is constructed on the basis of following two ideas to classify which companies are more efficient venture companies: i) making DEA based multi-class rating for sample companies and ii) developing multi-class SVM-based efficiency prediction model for classifying all companies. First, the Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is a non-parametric multiple input-output efficiency technique that measures the relative efficiency of decision making units(DMUs) using a linear programming based model. It is non-parametric because it requires no assumption on the shape or parameters of the underlying production function. DEA has been already widely applied for evaluating the relative efficiency of DMUs. Recently, a number of DEA based studies have evaluated the efficiency of various types of companies, such as internet companies and venture companies. It has been also applied to corporate credit ratings. In this study we utilized DEA for sorting venture companies by efficiency based ratings. The Support Vector Machine(SVM), on the other hand, is a popular technique for solving data classification problems. In this paper, we employed SVM to classify the efficiency ratings in IT venture companies according to the results of DEA. The SVM method was first developed by Vapnik (1995). As one of many machine learning techniques, SVM is based on a statistical theory. Thus far, the method has shown good performances especially in generalizing capacity in classification tasks, resulting in numerous applications in many areas of business, SVM is basically the algorithm that finds the maximum margin hyperplane, which is the maximum separation between classes. According to this method, support vectors are the closest to the maximum margin hyperplane. If it is impossible to classify, we can use the kernel function. In the case of nonlinear class boundaries, we can transform the inputs into a high-dimensional feature space, This is the original input space and is mapped into a high-dimensional dot-product space. Many studies applied SVM to the prediction of bankruptcy, the forecast a financial time series, and the problem of estimating credit rating, In this study we employed SVM for developing data mining-based efficiency prediction model. We used the Gaussian radial function as a kernel function of SVM. In multi-class SVM, we adopted one-against-one approach between binary classification method and two all-together methods, proposed by Weston and Watkins(1999) and Crammer and Singer(2000), respectively. In this research, we used corporate information of 154 companies listed on KOSDAQ market in Korea exchange. We obtained companies' financial information of 2005 from the KIS(Korea Information Service, Inc.). Using this data, we made multi-class rating with DEA efficiency and built multi-class prediction model based data mining. Among three manners of multi-classification, the hit ratio of the Weston and Watkins method is the best in the test data set. In multi classification problems as efficiency ratings of venture business, it is very useful for investors to know the class with errors, one class difference, when it is difficult to find out the accurate class in the actual market. So we presented accuracy results within 1-class errors, and the Weston and Watkins method showed 85.7% accuracy in our test samples. We conclude that the DEA based multi-class approach in venture business generates more information than the binary classification problem, notwithstanding its efficiency level. We believe this model can help investors in decision making as it provides a reliably tool to evaluate venture companies in the financial domain. For the future research, we perceive the need to enhance such areas as the variable selection process, the parameter selection of kernel function, the generalization, and the sample size of multi-class.

Market Structure Analysis of Automobile Market in U.S.A (미국자동차시장의 구조분석)

  • Choi, In-Hye;Lee, Seo-Goo;Yi, Seong-Keun
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.141-156
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    • 2008
  • Market structure analysis is a very useful tool to analyze the competition boundary of the brand or the company. But most of the studies in market structure analysis, the concern lies in nondurable goods such as candies, soft drink and etc. because of the their availability of the data. In the field of durable goods, the limitation of the data availability and the repurchase time period constrain the study. In the analysis of the automobile market, those of views might be more persuasive. The purpose of this study is to analyze the structure of automobile market based on some idea suggested by prior studies. Usually the buyers of the automobile tend to buy upper tier when they buy in the next time. That kind of behavior make it impossible to analyze the structure of automobile market under the level of automobile model. For that reason I tried to analyze the market structure in the brand or company level. In this study, consideration data was used for market structure analysis. The reasons why we used the consideration data are summarized as following. Firstly, as the repurchase time cycle is too long, brand switching data which is used for the market analysis of nondurable good is not avaliable. Secondly, as we mentioned, the buyers of the automobile tend to buy upper tier when they buy in the next time. We used survey data collected in the U.S.A. market in the year of 2005 through questionaire. The sample size was 8,291. The number of brand analyzed in this study was 9 among 37 which was being sold in U.S.A. market. Their market share was around 50%. The brands considered were BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Honda, Mercedes, and Toyota. �� ratio was derived from frequency of the consideration set. Actually the frequency is different from the brand switch concept. In this study to compute the �� ratio, the frequency of the consideration set was used like a frequency of brand switch for convenience. The study can be divided into 2 steps. The first step is to build hypothetical market structures. The second step is to choose the best structure based on the hypothetical market structures, Usually logit analysis is used for the choice best structure. In this study we built 3 hypothetical market structure. They are type-cost, cost-type, and unstructured. We classified the automobile into 5 types, sedan, SUV(Sport Utility Vehicle), Pickup, Mini Van, and Full-size Van. As for purchasing cost, we classified it 2 groups based on the median value. The median value was $28,800. To decide best structure among them, maximum likelihood test was used. Resulting from market structure analysis, we find that the automobile market of USA is hierarchically structured in the form of 'automobile type - purchasing cost'. That is, result showed that automobile buyers considered function or usage first and purchasing cost next. This study has some limitations in the analysis level and variable selection. First, in this study only type of the automobile and purchasing cost were as attributes considered for purchase. Considering other attributes is very needful. Because of the attributes considered, only 3 hypothetical structure could be analyzed. Second, due to the data, brand level analysis was tried. But model level analysis would be better because automobile buyers consider model not brand. To conduct model level study more cases should be obtained. That is for acquiring the better practical meaning, brand level analysis should be conducted when we consider the actual competition which occurred in the real market. Third, the variable selection for building nested logit model was very limited to some avaliable data. In spite of those limitations, the importance of this study lies in the trial of market structure analysis of durable good.

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Korean Buddhist Pictures and Performances-Focused on Ttangseolbeop performed at Samcheok Anjeongsa Temple (한국의 불교그림과 공연 - 삼척 안정사에서 연행되는 땅설법을 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Hyung-Kun
    • (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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    • no.41
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    • pp.219-255
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    • 2020
  • This article was triggered by Victor H. Mair's book 'Painting and performance'. The book explained that Buddhist paintings are common in the area where Buddhism was spread, and there are also performances using them. And although it has nothing to do with Buddhism, it has been shown that this form of performance can be global. However, the problem was not 'Korea'. It was because there was no record or transmission of the corresponding performance soon. In this situation, the landing method of Samcheok stable temple was announced in 2018. On the one hand, the academic community is very pleased, but on the other hand, it is troubled. The worries are summed up as 'synchronic and diachronic universality'. Is the landing method inherited from the Samcheok stable temple a unique type of temple? Otherwise, it is a question of whether it has been passed down or is it universal at the national level. However, prior to this essential question, we do not yet know the full picture of the stable landing method. So this article was prepared to show the overall outline of the stable landing method. There is a 'picture' in common throughout the landing method, and understanding how to operate it in various ways is the first step in understanding the landing method. There are five repertoires (which are called main halls) that are considered important, and more than that. What these repertoires have in common is the narrative structure of a Buddhist character. In this narrative, the most important thing is the revised figure, and it was the earthly method to inform the contents of the revised figure in various ways. In the case of Byeonsangdo, which serves as a clue to the narrative, there was a problem that could not be seen in the evening without light, which required special design. It is the way of shadow play and Yeongdeung. In other words, there are three types of performances in the landing method. The first is the method of using reparation, and the second is the method of using shadow. The third is the way of eternity. This method is not a selection based on the contents of the repertoire, but a selection based on the performance environment. If there is light and you can see the picture, use reparation. However, in the evening, it was impossible to see it dark (when there was no electricity in the past). The use of the visual method as a tool in this method is to confirm the transition to a visual culture that is a step further from the level of culture. Moreover, unlike the epic narrative, the power of the implied image provided an opportunity for viewers to experience the mystery of Buddhism through emotional stimulation.

North Korean folk Operas and Musical Politics of Selection - Focused on National Operas Prior to Revolutionary Operas (북한 초기 고전 각색 가극과 선별의 음악 정치 - 혁명가극 이전 민족 가극을 중심으로)

  • Chung, Myung-Mun
    • (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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    • no.39
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    • pp.69-96
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    • 2019
  • North Korea has conserved operas in a selective manner. The subject matters of operas recorded in the history of North Korea can be divided into classical tales, translated foreign works, Korean War and war against Japan. Operas that adapted folk classics of the 1950s are considered valuable materials to verify the changes of genres posterior to division of regime between North and South Korea. The officially confirmed works include "Kumgangsan Palseonnyeo (Gyeonwoo Jiknyeo)," "Chunhyangjeon." "Kongjwi Patjwi (Kotsin)," "Ondal," and "Geumnaneui Dal." These works had gone through recreation in terms of realistic situation setting, abolition of class difference, adjustment of social rank and punishment of evil while the base lies in the original folk classics. People emphasized in adapted folk operas are described as those who are hard-working souls without giving importance of difference of social rank, content with the currently living space, devoted to their parents and full of patriotic spirit, and members of community who participate in organized fights against unfair exploitation. This was the fruit of encouragement of work creation supporting union between labor and individual life, destruction of old things and fight promoting this destruction. Folk operas of South and North Korea posterior to Korean War have similarities in that both deal with a love story transcending social ranks and the concomitant conflicts and they focus on the audience who enjoy the operas. Nonetheless, they are different in that this love in North Korea became a tool of educating people wished by the regime, while it became an object of securing the audience by adding the tragic element to love in South Korea. North Korean operas of the initial stage are characterized by playwriting method emphasizing difficult life and compensation of common people, realistic stage expression, accentuation of melody and agreement between notes and lyrics. This was efforts designed to continuously lead senses concentrated from the theater to everyday life of people. In effect, this is in line with the playwriting method of revolutionary operas. Adapted folk operas were subject matters ideal for easily approaching the audience and leaving them good memories at the same time. To realize socialist realism, they went through an experiment of reviewing "people" through the classic folk operas. The possibility of continuation of a work was determined by thorough evaluation after carrying out an experiment in terms of subject matters, theme, music and operation plans from the moment of which the work was on the stage. The sign consisted in the possibility of visit of "Kim Il-sung" to appreciate the work and presentation of directionality. By proposing the clear directionality of which hard-working people who deny social status system can be duly compensated, it encouraged the audience who saw the opera to voluntarily put this in practice. Thus, operas established the directionality through selective processes for creating public communion even before revolutionary operas.

Occurrence and Behavior Analysis of Soil Erosion by Applying Coefficient and Exponent of MUSLE Runoff Factor Depending on Land Use (국내 토지이용별 MUSLE 유출인자의 계수 및 지수 적용을 통한 토양유실 발생 및 거동 분석)

  • Lee, Seoro;Lee, Gwanjae;Yang, Dongseok;Choi, Yujin;Lim, Kyoung Jae;Jang, Won Seok
    • Journal of Wetlands Research
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    • v.21 no.spc
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    • pp.98-106
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    • 2019
  • The coefficient and exponent of the MUSLE(Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation) runoff factor in the SWAT(Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model are 11.8 and 0.56 respectively, which are equally applied to the estimation of soil erosion regardless of land use. they could derive overestimation or underestimation of soil erosion, which can cause problems in the selection of soil erosion-vulnerable area and evaluation of reduction management. However, there are no studies about the estimation of coefficients and exponent for the MUSLE runoff factor by land use and their applicability to the SWAT model. Thus, in order to predict soil erosion and sediment behavior accurately through SWAT model, it is necessary to estimate the coefficient and exponent of the MUSLE runoff factor by land use and evaluate its applicability. In this study, the coefficient and exponent of MUSLE runoff factor by land use were estimated for Gaa-cheon Watershed, and the differences in soil erosion and sediment from SWAT model were analyzed. The coefficient and exponent of runoff factor estimated by this study well reflected the characteristics of soil erosion in domestic highland watershed. Therefore, in order to apply the MUSLE which developed based on observed data of US agricultural basin to the domestic watershed, it is considered that a sufficient modification and supplementation process for the coefficient and exponent of the MUSLE runoff factor depending on land use is necessary. The results of this study can be used as a basic data for selecting soil erosion vulnerable area in the non-point source management areas and establishing and evaluating soil erosion reduction management.

Development of a Genetic Map of Chili Pepper Using Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Markers Generated from Next Generation Resequencing of Parents (양친의 대량 염기서열 해독을 통해 개발된 SNP 분자표지를 이용한 고추 유전자지도 작성)

  • Lee, Jundae;Park, Seok Jin;Do, Jae Wahng;Han, Jung-Heon;Choi, Doil;Yoon, Jae Bok
    • Horticultural Science & Technology
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    • v.31 no.4
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    • pp.473-482
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    • 2013
  • Molecular markers, as an efficient selection tool, have been and is being used for practical breeding program in chili pepper (Capsicum annuum L.). Recently, a lot of researches on inheritance and genetic analysis for quantitative traits including capsaicinoids, carotenoids, and sugar content in pepper are being performed worldwide. It has been also reported that QTL mapping is a necessary tool to develop molecular markers associated with the quantitative traits. In this study, we suggested a new method to construct a pepper genetic map using SNP (HRM) markers generated from NGS resequencing of female and male parents. Plant materials were C. annuum 'NB1' (female parent), C. chinense 'Jolokia' (male parent), and their $F_2$ population consisting of 94 progenies. Sequences of 4.6 Gbp and 6.2 Gbp were obtained from NGS resequencing of 'NB1' and 'Jolokia', respectively. Totally, 4.29 million SNPs between 'NB1' and 'Jolokia' were detected and the 1.76 million SNPs were clearly identified. Among them, total 145 SNP (HRM) primer pairs covering pepper genetic map were selected, and the 116 SNP (HRM) markers of them were located on this map. Total distance of the map, which consisted of 12 linkage groups and matched with basic chromosome numbers of pepper, was 1,167.9 cM. According to the mapping result, we concluded that our mapping method was suitable to construct a pepper genetic map fast and accurately. In addition, the genetic map could be directly used for QTL analysis of traits different between both parents.

An Integrated VR Platform for 3D and Image based Models: A Step toward Interactivity with Photo Realism (상호작용 및 사실감을 위한 3D/IBR 기반의 통합 VR환경)

  • Yoon, Jayoung;Kim, Gerard Jounghyun
    • Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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    • v.6 no.4
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    • pp.1-7
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    • 2000
  • Traditionally, three dimension model s have been used for building virtual worlds, and a data structure called the "scene graph" is often employed to organize these 3D objects in the virtual space. On the other hand, image-based rendering has recently been suggested as a probable alternative VR platform for its photo-realism, however, due to limited interactivity. it has only been used for simple navigation systems. To combine the merits of these two approaches to object/scene representations, this paper proposes for a scene graph structure in which both 3D models and various image-based scenes/objects can be defined. traversed, and rendered together. In fact, as suggested by Shade et al. [1]. these different representations can be used as different LOD's for a given object. For in stance, an object might be rendered using a 3D model at close range, a billboard at an intermediate range. and as part of an environment map at far range. The ultimate objective of this mixed platform is to breath more interactivity into the image based rendered VE's by employing 3D models as well. There are several technical challenges in devising such a platform : designing scene graph nodes for various types of image based techniques, establishing criteria for LOD/representation selection. handling their transition s. implementing appropriate interaction schemes. and correctly rendering the overall scene. Currently, we have extended the scene graph structure of the Sense8's WorldToolKit. to accommodate new node types for environment maps. billboards, moving textures and sprites, "Tour-into-the-Picture" structure, and view interpolated objects. As for choosing the right LOD level, the usual viewing distance and image space criteria are used, however, the switching between the image and 3D model occurs at a distance from the user where the user starts to perceive the object's internal depth. Also. during interaction, regardless of the viewing distance. a 3D representation would be used, if it exists. Finally. we carried out experiments to verify the theoretical derivation of the switching rule and obtained positive results.

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Discrimination of African Yams Containing High Functional Compounds Using FT-IR Fingerprinting Combined by Multivariate Analysis and Quantitative Prediction of Functional Compounds by PLS Regression Modeling (FT-IR 스펙트럼 데이터의 다변량 통계분석을 이용한 고기능성 아프리칸 얌 식별 및 기능성 성분 함량 예측 모델링)

  • Song, Seung Yeob;Jie, Eun Yee;Ahn, Myung Suk;Kim, Dong Jin;Kim, In Jung;Kim, Suk Weon
    • Horticultural Science & Technology
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    • v.32 no.1
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    • pp.105-114
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    • 2014
  • We established a high throughput screening system of African yam tuber lines which contain high contents of total carotenoids, flavonoids, and phenolic compounds using ultraviolet-visible (UV-VIS) spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy in combination with multivariate analysis. The total carotenoids contents from 62 African yam tubers varied from 0.01 to $0.91{\mu}g{\cdot}g^{-1}$ dry weight (wt). The total flavonoids and phenolic compounds also varied from 12.9 to $229{\mu}g{\cdot}g^{-1}$ and from 0.29 to $5.2mg{\cdot}g^{-1}$dry wt. FT-IR spectra confirmed typical spectral differences between the frequency regions of 1,700-1,500, 1,500-1,300 and $1,100-950cm^{-1}$, respectively. These spectral regions were reflecting the quantitative and qualitative variations of amide I, II from amino acids and proteins ($1,700-1,500cm^{-1}$), phosphodiester groups from nucleic acid and phospholipid ($1,500-1,300cm^{-1}$) and carbohydrate compounds ($1,100-950cm^{-1}$). Principal component analysis (PCA) and subsequent partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were able to discriminate the 62 African yam tuber lines into three separate clusters corresponding to their taxonomic relationship. The quantitative prediction modeling of total carotenoids, flavonoids, and phenolic compounds from African yam tuber lines were established using partial least square regression algorithm from FT-IR spectra. The regression coefficients ($R^2$) between predicted values and estimated values of total carotenoids, flavonoids and phenolic compounds were 0.83, 0.86, and 0.72, respectively. These results showed that quantitative predictions of total carotenoids, flavonoids, and phenolic compounds were possible from FT-IR spectra of African yam tuber lines with higher accuracy. Therefore we suggested that quantitative prediction system established in this study could be applied as a rapid selection tool for high yielding African yam lines.

Variation of Hospital Costs and Product Heterogeneity

  • Shin, Young-Soo
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.123-127
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    • 1978
  • The major objective of this research is to identify those hospital characteristics that best explain cost variation among hospitals and to formulate linear models that can predict hospital costs. Specific emphasis is placed on hospital output, that is, the identification of diagnosis related patient groups (DRGs) which are medically meaningful and demonstrate similar patterns of hospital resource consumption. A casemix index is developed based on the DRGs identified. Considering the common problems encountered in previous hospital cost research, the following study requirements are estab-lished for fulfilling the objectives of this research: 1. Selection of hospitals that exercise similar medical and fiscal practices. 2. Identification of an appropriate data collection mechanism in which demographic and medical characteristics of individual patients as well as accurate and comparable cost information can be derived. 3. Development of a patient classification system in which all the patients treated in hospitals are able to be split into mutually exclusive categories with consistent and stable patterns of resource consumption. 4. Development of a cost finding mechanism through which patient groups' costs can be made comparable across hospitals. A data set of Medicare patients prepared by the Social Security Administration was selected for the study analysis. The data set contained 27,229 record abstracts of Medicare patients discharged from all but one short-term general hospital in Connecticut during the period from January 1, 1971, to December 31, 1972. Each record abstract contained demographic and diagnostic information, as well as charges for specific medical services received. The 'AUT-OGRP System' was used to generate 198 DRGs in which the entire range of Medicare patients were split into mutually exclusive categories, each of which shows a consistent and stable pattern of resource consumption. The 'Departmental Method' was used to generate cost information for the groups of Medicare patients that would be comparable across hospitals. To fulfill the study objectives, an extensive analysis was conducted in the following areas: 1. Analysis of DRGs: in which the level of resource use of each DRG was determined, the length of stay or death rate of each DRG in relation to resource use was characterized, and underlying patterns of the relationships among DRG costs were explained. 2. Exploration of resource use profiles of hospitals; in which the magnitude of differences in the resource uses or death rates incurred in the treatment of Medicare patients among the study hospitals was explored. 3. Casemix analysis; in which four types of casemix-related indices were generated, and the significance of these indices in the explanation of hospital costs was examined. 4. Formulation of linear models to predict hospital costs of Medicare patients; in which nine independent variables (i. e., casemix index, hospital size, complexity of service, teaching activity, location, casemix-adjusted death. rate index, occupancy rate, and casemix-adjusted length of stay index) were used for determining factors in hospital costs. Results from the study analysis indicated that: 1. The system of 198 DRGs for Medicare patient classification was demonstrated not only as a strong tool for determining the pattern of hospital resource utilization of Medicare patients, but also for categorizing patients by their severity of illness. 2. The wei틴fed mean total case cost (TOTC) of the study hospitals for Medicare patients during the study years was $11,27.02 with a standard deviation of $117.20. The hospital with the highest average TOTC ($1538.15) was 2.08 times more expensive than the hospital with the lowest average TOTC ($743.45). The weighted mean per diem total cost (DTOC) of the study hospitals for Medicare patients during the sutdy years was $107.98 with a standard deviation of $15.18. The hospital with the highest average DTOC ($147.23) was 1.87 times more expensive than the hospital with the lowest average DTOC ($78.49). 3. The linear models for each of the six types of hospital costs were formulated using the casemix index and the eight other hospital variables as the determinants. These models explained variance to the extent of 68.7 percent of total case cost (TOTC), 63.5 percent of room and board cost (RMC), 66.2 percent of total ancillary service cost (TANC), 66.3 percent of per diem total cost (DTOC), 56.9 percent of per diem room and board cost (DRMC), and 65.5 percent of per diem ancillary service cost (DTANC). The casemix index alone explained approximately one half of interhospital cost variation: 59.1 percent for TOTC and 44.3 percent for DTOC. Thsee results demonstrate that the casemix index is the most importand determinant of interhospital cost variation Future research and policy implications in regard to the results of this study is envisioned in the following three areas: 1. Utilization of casemix related indices in the Medicare data systems. 2. Refinement of data for hospital cost evaluation. 3. Development of a system for reimbursement and cost control in hospitals.

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