• Title/Summary/Keyword: Service Usefulness

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A Study on Acceptance of Blockchain-Based Genetic Information Platform (블록체인 기반 유전자분석 정보플랫폼의 수용에 대한 연구)

  • In Seon Choi;Dong Chan Park;Doo Hee Chung
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.23 no.3
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    • pp.97-125
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    • 2021
  • Blockchain is a core technology to solve personal information leakage and data management issues, which are limitations of existing Genomic Sequencing services. Due to continuous cost reduction and deregulation, the market size of Genomic Sequencing has been increasing, also the potential of services is expected to increase when Blockchain's security and connectivity are combined. We created our research model by combining the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Innovation Resistance Theory also analyzed the factors affecting the acceptance intention and innovation resistance of the Blockchain Based Genomic Sequencing Information Platform. A survey was conducted on 150 potential users of Blockchain and Genomic Sequencing services. The analysis was conducted by setting the four Blockchain variables: Security, transparency, availability, and diversity). Also, we set the Perceived Usefulness, Perceived risk, and Perceived Complexity for Technology Acceptance and Innovation Resistance variables and analyzed the effect of the characteristics of the Blockchain on acceptance intention and innovation resistance through these variables. Through this analysis, key variables that need to be considered important to reduce resistance and increase acceptance intention could be identified. This study presents innovation factors that should be considered in companies preparing a new Blockchain Based Genomic Sequencing Information Platform.

An Intervention Study on Integration of Family Planning and Maternal/Infant Care Services in Rural Korea (가족계획과 모자보건 통합을 위한 조산원의 투입효과 분석 -서산지역의 개입연구 평가보고-)

  • Bang, Sook;Han, Seung-Hyun;Lee, Chung-Ja;Ahn, Moon-Young;Lee, In-Sook;Kim, Eun-Shil;Kim, Chong-Ho
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.20 no.1 s.21
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    • pp.165-203
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    • 1987
  • This project was a service-cum-research effort with a quasi-experimental study design to examine the health benefits of an integrated Family Planning (FP)/Maternal & Child health (MCH) Service approach that provides crucial factors missing in the present on-going programs. The specific objectives were: 1) To test the effectiveness of trained nurse/midwives (MW) assigned as change agents in the Health Sub-Center (HSC) to bring about the changes in the eight FP/MCH indicators, namely; (i)FP/MCH contacts between field workers and their clients (ii) the use of effective FP methods, (iii) the inter-birth interval and/or open interval, (iv) prenatal care by medically qualified personnel, (v) medically supervised deliveries, (vi) the rate of induced abortion, (vii) maternal and infant morbidity, and (viii) preinatal & infant mortality. 2) To measure the integrative linkage (contacts) between MW & HSC workers and between HSC and clients. 3) To examine the organizational or administrative factors influencing integrative linkage between health workers. Study design; The above objectives called for quasi-experimental design setting up a study and control area with and without a midwife. An active intervention program (FP/MCH minimum 'package' program) was conducted for a 2 year period from June 1982-July 1984 in Seosan County and 'before and after' surveys were conducted to measure the change. Service input; This study was undertaken by the Soonchunhyang University in collaboration with WHO. After a baseline survery in 1981, trained nurses/midwives were introduced into two health sub-centers in a rural setting (Seosan county) for a 2 year period from 1982 to 1984. A major service input was the establishment of midwifery services in the existing health delivery system with emphasis on nurse/midwife's role as the link between health workers (nurse aids) and village health workers, and the referral of risk patients to the private physician (OBGY specialist). An evaluation survey was made in August 1984 to assess the effectiveness of this alternative integrated approach in the study areas in comparison with the control area which had normal government services. Method of evaluation; a. In this study, the primary objective was first to examine to what extent the FP/MCH package program brought about changes in the pre-determined eight indicators (outcome and impact measures) and the following relationship was first analyzed; b. Nevertheless, this project did not automatically accept the assumption that if two or more activities were integrated, the results would automatically be better than a non-integrated or categorical program. There is a need to assess the 'integration process' itself within the package program. The process of integration was measured in terms of interactive linkages, or the quantity & quality of contacts between workers & clients and among workers. Intergrative linkages were hypothesized to be influenced by organizational factors at the HSC clinic level including HSC goals, sltrurture, authority, leadership style, resources, and personal characteristics of HSC staff. The extent or degree of integration, as measured by the intensity of integrative linkages, was in turn presumed to influence programme performance. Thus as indicated diagrammatically below, organizational factors constituted the independent variables, integration as the intervening variable and programme performance with respect to family planning and health services as the dependent variable: Concerning organizational factors, however, due to the limited number of HSCs (2 in the study area and 3 in the control area), they were studied by participatory observation of an anthropologist who was independent of the project. In this observation, we examined whether the assumed integration process actually occurred or not. If not, what were the constraints in producing an effective integration process. Summary of Findings; A) Program effects and impact 1. Effects on FP use: During this 2 year action period, FP acceptance increased from 58% in 1981 to 78% in 1984 in both the study and control areas. This increase in both areas was mainly due to the new family planning campaign driven by the Government for the same study period. Therefore, there was no increment of FP acceptance rate due to additional input of MW to the on-going FP program. But in the study area, quality aspects of FP were somewhat improved, having a better continuation rate of IUDs & pills and more use of effective Contraceptive methods in comparison with the control area. 2. Effects of use of MCH services: Between the study and control areas, however, there was a significant difference in maternal and child health care. For example, the coverage of prenatal care was increased from 53% for 1981 birth cohort to 75% for 1984 birth cohort in the study area. In the control area, the same increased from 41% (1981) to 65% (1984). It is noteworthy that almost two thirds of the recent birth cohort received prenatal care even in the control area, indicating that there is a growing demand of MCH care as the size of family norm becomes smaller 3. There has been a substantive increase in delivery care by medical professions in the study area, with an annual increase rate of 10% due to midwives input in the study areas. The project had about two times greater effect on postnatal care (68% vs. 33%) at delivery care(45.2% vs. 26.1%). 4. The study area had better reproductive efficiency (wanted pregancies with FP practice & healthy live births survived by one year old) than the control area, especially among women under 30 (14.1% vs. 9.6%). The proportion of women who preferred the 1st trimester for their first prenatal care rose significantly in the study area as compared to the control area (24% vs 13%). B) Effects on Interactive Linkage 1. This project made a contribution in making several useful steps in the direction of service integration, namely; i) The health workers have become familiar with procedures on how to work together with each other (especially with a midwife) in carrying out their work in FP/MCH and, ii) The health workers have gotten a feeling of the usefulness of family health records (statistical integration) in identifying targets in their own work and their usefulness in caring for family health. 2. On the other hand, because of a lack of required organizational factors, complete linkage was not obtained as the project intended. i) In regards to the government health worker's activities in terms of home visiting there was not much difference between the study & control areas though the MW did more home visiting than Government health workers. ii) In assessing the service performance of MW & health workers, the midwives balanced their workload between 40% FP, 40% MCH & 20% other activities (mainly immunization). However, $85{\sim}90%$ of the services provided by the health workers were other than FP/MCH, mainly for immunizations such as the encephalitis campaign. In the control area, a similar pattern was observed. Over 75% of their service was other than FP/MCH. Therefore, the pattern shows the health workers are a long way from becoming multipurpose workers even though the government is pushing in this direction. 3. Villagers were much more likely to visit the health sub-center clinic in the study area than in the control area (58% vs.31%) and for more combined care (45% vs.23%). C) Organization factors (admistrative integrative issues) 1. When MW (new workers with higher qualification) were introduced to HSC, it was noted that there were conflicts between the existing HSC workers (Nurse aids with less qualification than MW) and the MW for the beginning period of the project. The cause of the conflict was studied by an anthropologist and it was pointed out that these functional integration problems stemmed from the structural inadequacies of the health subcenter organization as indicated below; i) There is still no general consensus about the objectives and goals of the project between the project staff and the existing health workers. ii) There is no formal linkage between the responsibility of each member's job in the health sub-center. iii) There is still little chance for midwives to play a catalytic role or to establish communicative networks between workers in order to link various knowledge and skills to provide better FP/MCH services in the health sub-center. 2. Based on the above findings the project recommended to the County Chief (who has power to control the administrative staff and the technical staff in his county) the following ; i) In order to solve the conflicts between the individual roles and functions in performing health care activities, there must be goals agreed upon by both. ii) The health sub·center must function as an autonomous organization to undertake the integration health project. In order to do that, it is necessary to support administrative considerations, and to establish a communication system for supervision and to control of the health sub-centers. iii) The administrative organization, tentatively, must be organized to bind the health worker's midwive's and director's jobs by an organic relationship in order to achieve the integrative system under the leadership of health sub-center director. After submitting this observation report, there has been better understanding from frequent meetings & communication between HW/MW in FP/MCH work as the program developed. Lessons learned from the Seosan Project (on issues of FP/MCH integration in Korea); 1) A majority or about 80% of the couples are now practicing FP. As indicated by the study, there is a growing demand from clients for the health system to provide more MCH services than FP in order to maintain the achieved small size of family through FP practice. It is fortunate to see that the government is now formulating a MCH policy for the year 2,000 and revising MCH laws and regulations to emphasize more MCH care for achieving a small size family through family planning practice. 2) Goal consensus in FP/MCH shouBd be made among the health workers It administrators, especially to emphasize the need of care of 'wanted' child. But there is a long way to go to realize the 'real' integration of FP into MCH in Korea, unless there is a structural integration FP/MCH because a categorical FP is still first priority to reduce the rate of population growth for economic reasons but not yet for health/welfare reasons in practice. 3) There should be more financial allocation: (i) a midwife should be made available to help to promote the MCH program and coordinate services, (in) there should be a health sub·center director who can provide leadership training for managing the integrated program. There is a need for 'organizational support', if the decision of integration is made to obtain benefit from both FP & MCH. In other words, costs should be paid equally to both FP/MCH. The integration slogan itself, without the commitment of paying such costs, is powerless to advocate it. 4) Need of management training for middle level health personnel is more acute as the Government has already constructed 90 MCH centers attached to the County Health Center but without adequate manpower, facilities, and guidelines for integrating the work of both FP and MCH. 5) The local government still considers these MCH centers only as delivery centers to take care only of those visiting maternity cases. The MCH center should be a center for the managment of all pregnancies occurring in the community and the promotion of FP with a systematic and effective linkage of resources available in the county such as i.e. Village Health Worker, Community Health Practitioner, Health Sub-center Physicians & Health workers, Doctors and Midwives in MCH center, OBGY Specialists in clinics & hospitals as practiced by the Seosan project at primary health care level.

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Analysis of Free Amino Acids and Polyphenol Compounds from Lycopene Variety of Cherry Tomatoes (방울토마토 라이코펜 품종의 유리아미노산 및 폴리페놀 화합물의 분석)

  • Kim, Hyen-Ryung;Ahn, Jun-Bae
    • Culinary science and hospitality research
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.37-49
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    • 2014
  • In order to elucidate the usefulness of Lycopene, a cherry tomato variety, as a food material, the compositions of free amino acids, amino acid metabolites and polyphenol compounds were analyzed using HPLC and LC-MS/MS method. Lycopene contained eighteen free amino acids except for L-Cys and L-Try. L-Glu was the most abundant free amino acid, followed by L-Gln and L-Asp. The percentages of L-Glu, L-Gln and L-Asp of total free amino acid were 55.5%, 15.9% and 9.9% respectively. Lycopene contained essential amino acids with the exception of tryptophan. The following amino acid metabolites were found : ${\gamma}$-aminobutyric acid(GABA), carnitine(L-Car), o-phosphoethanolamine(o-Pea), hydroxylysine(Hyl) phosphoserine (p-Ser), N-methyl-histidine(Me-His), ethanolamine($EtNH_2$). Especially, GABA known as a neurotransmitter was present at a high level(305.99 mg/100 g dry weight). We identified the following polyphenol compounds in the cherry tomatoes : caffeic acid-hexose isomer I (CH I), caffeic acid-hexose isomer II (CH II), 3-caffeoylquinic acid(3-CQA), 5-caffeoylquinic acid(5-CQA), caffeoylquinic acid isomer(CQAI), quercetin-hexose-deoxyhexose-pentose(QTS), quercetin-3-rutinoside(Q-3-R), di-caffeoylquinic acid(di-CQA), tri-caffeoylquinic acid(tri-CQA), naringenin chalcone(NGC). Large quantities of Q-3-R and NGC known as bioactive compounds were found. These results revealed that Lycopene variety contained various nutritional and bioactive compounds and would be a potent functional food material.

A Study on the Application of the Smartphone Hiking Apps for Analyzing the User Characteristics in Forest Recreation Area: Focusing on Daegwallyoung Area (산림휴양공간 이용특성 분석을 위한 국내 스마트폰 산행앱(APP)의 적용성 및 활용방안 연구: 대관령 선자령 일대를 중심으로)

  • Jang, Youn-Sun;Yoo, Rhee-Hwa;Lee, Jeong-Hee
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.108 no.3
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    • pp.382-391
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    • 2019
  • This study was conducted to verify whether smartphone hiking apps, which generate social network data including location information, are useful tools for analyzing the use characteristics of a forest recreation area. For this purpose, the study identified the functions and service characteristics of smartphone hiking apps. Also, the use characteristics of the area of Daegwallyoung were analyzed, compared with the results of the field survey, and the applicability of hiking apps was reviewed. As a result, the service types of hiking apps were analyzed in terms of three categories: "information offering," "hiking record," and "information sharing." This study focused on an app that is one of the "hiking record" types with the greatest number of users. Analysis of the data from hiking apps and a field survey in the Daegwallyoung area showed that both hiking apps and the field survey can be used to identify the movement patterns, but hiking apps based on a global positioning system (GPS) are more efficient and objective tools for understanding the use patterns in a forest recreation area, as well as for extracting user-generated photos. Second, although it is advantageous to analyze the patterns objectively through the walking-speed data generated, field surveys and observation are needed as complements for understanding the types of activities in each space. The hiking apps are based on cellphone use and are specific to "hiking" use, so user bias can limit the usefulness of the data. It is significant that this research shows the applicability of hiking apps for analyzing the use patterns of forest recreation areas through the location-based social network data of app users who record their hiking information voluntarily.

Consumer's Negative Brand Rumor Acceptance and Rumor Diffusion (소비자의 부정적 브랜드 루머의 수용과 확산)

  • Lee, Won-jun;Lee, Han-Suk
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.65-96
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    • 2012
  • Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R2 of adoption of rumor is .476 and R2 of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.

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A Hybrid Recommender System based on Collaborative Filtering with Selective Use of Overall and Multicriteria Ratings (종합 평점과 다기준 평점을 선택적으로 활용하는 협업필터링 기반 하이브리드 추천 시스템)

  • Ku, Min Jung;Ahn, Hyunchul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.85-109
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    • 2018
  • Recommender system recommends the items expected to be purchased by a customer in the future according to his or her previous purchase behaviors. It has been served as a tool for realizing one-to-one personalization for an e-commerce service company. Traditional recommender systems, especially the recommender systems based on collaborative filtering (CF), which is the most popular recommendation algorithm in both academy and industry, are designed to generate the items list for recommendation by using 'overall rating' - a single criterion. However, it has critical limitations in understanding the customers' preferences in detail. Recently, to mitigate these limitations, some leading e-commerce companies have begun to get feedback from their customers in a form of 'multicritera ratings'. Multicriteria ratings enable the companies to understand their customers' preferences from the multidimensional viewpoints. Moreover, it is easy to handle and analyze the multidimensional ratings because they are quantitative. But, the recommendation using multicritera ratings also has limitation that it may omit detail information on a user's preference because it only considers three-to-five predetermined criteria in most cases. Under this background, this study proposes a novel hybrid recommendation system, which selectively uses the results from 'traditional CF' and 'CF using multicriteria ratings'. Our proposed system is based on the premise that some people have holistic preference scheme, whereas others have composite preference scheme. Thus, our system is designed to use traditional CF using overall rating for the users with holistic preference, and to use CF using multicriteria ratings for the users with composite preference. To validate the usefulness of the proposed system, we applied it to a real-world dataset regarding the recommendation for POI (point-of-interests). Providing personalized POI recommendation is getting more attentions as the popularity of the location-based services such as Yelp and Foursquare increases. The dataset was collected from university students via a Web-based online survey system. Using the survey system, we collected the overall ratings as well as the ratings for each criterion for 48 POIs that are located near K university in Seoul, South Korea. The criteria include 'food or taste', 'price' and 'service or mood'. As a result, we obtain 2,878 valid ratings from 112 users. Among 48 items, 38 items (80%) are used as training dataset, and the remaining 10 items (20%) are used as validation dataset. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system (i.e. hybrid selective model), we compared its performance to the performances of two comparison models - the traditional CF and the CF with multicriteria ratings. The performances of recommender systems were evaluated by using two metrics - average MAE(mean absolute error) and precision-in-top-N. Precision-in-top-N represents the percentage of truly high overall ratings among those that the model predicted would be the N most relevant items for each user. The experimental system was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The experimental results showed that our proposed system (avg. MAE = 0.584) outperformed traditional CF (avg. MAE = 0.591) as well as multicriteria CF (avg. AVE = 0.608). We also found that multicriteria CF showed worse performance compared to traditional CF in our data set, which is contradictory to the results in the most previous studies. This result supports the premise of our study that people have two different types of preference schemes - holistic and composite. Besides MAE, the proposed system outperformed all the comparison models in precision-in-top-3, precision-in-top-5, and precision-in-top-7. The results from the paired samples t-test presented that our proposed system outperformed traditional CF with 10% statistical significance level, and multicriteria CF with 1% statistical significance level from the perspective of average MAE. The proposed system sheds light on how to understand and utilize user's preference schemes in recommender systems domain.

The Usefulness Evaluation of Radiation Shielding Devices in PET Scan Procedures (PET 검사 프러시저별 방사선 차폐기구의 유용성 평가)

  • Kim, Yeong-Seon;Seo, Myeong-Deok;Lee, Wan-Kyu;Jeong, Yo-Cheon;Kim, Sang-Wook;Seo, Il-Teak;Song, Jae-Beom
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.65-76
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    • 2010
  • Purpose: he use of PET scanners and the number of patient in Korea have been increased for recent several years dramatically. For this reason, technologists have more possibilities to be exposed to the radiation. The hospitals using PET scanners should make an effort to reduce the radiation exposure dose. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the radiation exposure does when using radiation shielding devices. The evaluation was performed through questionnaire survey and experiment. Materials and Methods: First, the technologists who had experience working in PET center in 2008-2009 were surveyed with questionnaire and TLD Figures, personal opinion of utilization of radiation shielding devices are analyzed. Second, we measured the shielding rate of shielding devices which have been using in PET study procedures. We divided the procedures into four steps; distribution, moving, injection of $^{18}F$-FDG and patient setup. Results: First, the results of this survey, using of L-block+Syringe shield, L-block, Syringe shield, No shield during the injection, were each 58.5%, 20%, 9%, 12.3%. The TLD values according to utilization of radiation shield, using both L-block+Syringe Shield and L-block showed the lower TLD values, and Syringe shield only or No shield showed the higher TLD values. Second, the results of experiments according to PET study procedures measured the shielding rates as follows. The shielding rates during the distribution using L-block, L-block+Apron shield were measured 97.4%, 97.7%. The shielding rates during the $^{18}F$-FDG delivery to the injection room using mobile Syringe shield, Syringe holder, Syringe shield carrier were each 81.7%, 98.9%, 99.7%. The shielding rates during the injection using Syringe shield, L-block, L-block+Syringe shield were measured each 51.9%, 98.3%, 98.7%. The shielding rates of Apron were measured in each 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 cm distance. The measurement were each 16.9%, 14.2%, 16.6%, 17.1%, 18.1%, 18.6%. Conclusion: The most effective method for radiation shielding is to using L-block during the $^{18}F$-FDG distribution and Syringe shield carrier during in moving $^{18}F$-FDG. For the $^{18}F$-FDG injection, L-block+Syringe shield have to be used. The shielding effect of Apron has shown average 16.4%. According to the survey of questionnaire, the operators recognized well risk of the radiation exposure but, tended ignore in working. The radiation dose according to recognition of radiation exposure risk was not relevant. but radiation dose according to utilization of radiation shield lower the more use it. The main reason of no use of shielding devices is cumbersome, 55% of the respondents answered. I'm sure, by use of radiation shield in all PET procedure, radiation exposure will be reduced considerably.

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The Evaluation of Usefulness of 99Mo-99mTc Generator Using(n,γ)99Mo Developed by Korea Atomic Energy Research ((n,γ)99Mo를 이용한 99Mo-99mTc발생기의 유용성 평가)

  • Seo, Han Kyung;Kim, Jeong Ho;Shim, Cheol Min;Kim, Byung Cheol;Choi, Do Cheol;Gwon, Yong Ju;Park, Yung Sun;Kim, Dong Yun
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.48-52
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    • 2013
  • Purpose: The Molybdenum which is the raw material of $^{99}Mo-^{99m}Tc$ generator is produced from the nuclear reactor. However, output has dwindled as the two nuclear reactors supplying the bulk of radioactive material-one in Chalk River, Ontario and the other in Petten, the Netherlands-have been closed for repairs or maintenance. This resulted in the enhancement of its price. So $^{99}Mo-^{99m}Tc$ generator using$(n,{\gamma})^{99}Mo$ is developed by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). Medicinal availability of this generator is evaluated in this study. Materials and Methods: The radioactivity of $^{99m}Tc$ eluted in generator 1, 2 and 3 unit developed by KAERI was measured. The quality control test of generator such as appearance test, pH test, LAL test, sterility test, chemical impurity (Al) test and radiochemical purity test were performed. Planar and SPECT/CT image sof SD rat (6 weeks, Female) at 2 hr after injection of $^{99m}Tc-HDP$ (hydroxymethylenediphosphonate) (TechneScan HDP, Malinckrodt Medical, Dutch) and $^{99m}Tc-DPD$ (diphosphono-1, 2-propanedicarboxylicacid) (TECEOS, CIS bio international, France) which were labeled with $^{99m}Tc$ eluted in KAERI and commercial generator (40.5 GBq, Malinckrodt Medical, Dutch) using SPECT/CT camera (Symbia, Siemense, Germany) were obtained respectively. Results: The mean radioactivity of $^{99m}Tc$ elution generator 1unit was 4.18 GBq (113 mCi), generator 2 unit was 4.73 GBq (128 mCi) and generator 3 unit was 3.33 GBq (90 mCi). All quality control tests were within normal limit except pyrogentest. Pyrogen test was positive. Planar and SPECT/CT images of rat injected $^{99m}Tc-HDP$ which was labeled with $^{99m}Tc$ eluted in commercial generator show increased uptake in bone, stomach and bowl. Planar images show increased uptake in liver and bone in case of $^{99m}Tc-DPD$. However, images of rat injected $^{99m}Tc-HDP$ and $^{99m}Tc-DPD$ which were labelled $^{99m}Tc$ eluted in KAERI generator show increased uptake in bone, liver and spleen. Conclusion: If shortcoming is removed such as pyrogen and liver appearance, domestic role as an alternative generator is thought to be able to fill and to secure the national medical service by supplying $^{99m}Tc$ when the supply of $^{99m}Tc$ be comes short.

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A study on the state of inservice education for dental hygienists and their relevant awareness (치과위생사의 보수교육 실태 및 인식에 관한 연구)

  • Jung, Jae-Yeon;Kim, Kyung-Mi;Cho, Myung-Sook;Ahn, Geum-Sun;Song, Kyoung-Hee;Choi, Hye-Jung;Choi, Youn-Seon;Hwang, Yoon-Sook
    • Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.73-89
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    • 2007
  • The purpose of this study was to examine the reality of inservice education provided to members of Korean Dental Hygienists Association, the state of relevant academic conferences, and the perception of the members about inservice education and academic conference. It's basically meant to help boost their participation in inservice education and their satisfaction with it, and to show some of the right directions for that. The subjects in this study were dental hygienists who attended a symposium on July 1, 2006. After a survey was conducted, the answer sheets from 489 participants were analyzed, and the findings of the study were as follows: 1. General hospitals and university hospitals made up the largest group(91.4%) that gave a monthly leave of absence, and the second largest group was dental hospitals(75.4%), followed by dental clinics(58.3%) and public dental clinics(48.0%). The most common closing time in dental clinics and dental hospitals was 5 p.m., and that was 12 p.m. in general hospitals and university hospitals. The dental hygienists in public dental clinics didn't work on Saturdays. By type of workplace, treatment was the most common duty for the dental hygienists in dental clinics and dental hospitals to perform, and those who worked at general hospitals, university hospitals and public health clinics were in charge of extensive range of jobs. 2. The rates of the dental hygienists who took that education stood at 94.9% in public dental clinics, 78.7% in dental hospitals and 75.3% in dental clinics, general hospitals and university hospitals. Regarding how many marks they got on an yearly basis, those who got eight marks or more made up the largest group(55.6%), followed by four marks or more(11.8%), six marks or more(3.4%), and two marks or more(1.5%). As for the usefulness of inservice education for their job performance, the largest number of the dental hygienists(40.8%) found it to be helpful, and the second greatest group(37.5%) considered its effectiveness to be so-so. The third largest group(8.4%) found it to be of great use, and the fourth biggest group(4.2%) considered it to be of no service. The fifth biggest group(l.3%) thought it was absolutely useless. By type of workplace, the workers in dental clinics, dental hospitals, general hospitals and university hospitals wanted the most to learn how to take care of clinical work(acquisition of up-to-date technology), and those in public health clinics hoped the most to learn about public dental health. By type of workplace, the workers in dental clinics had their sight set on self-development the most, and the dental hygienists in dental hospitals, general hospitals, university hospitals and public health clinics were most in pursuit of acquiring new knowledge. By type of workplace, the specific given conditions at work were most singled out by the dental clinic workers as the reason, and the dental hospital employees pointed out time constraints the most. The dental hygienists in general hospitals and university hospitals cited time constraints and financial burden the most, and the public health clinic personnels mentioned inaccessibility of a place for inservice education as the reason. 3. The public health clinic workers participated in academic conferences the most(90.8%), followed by the general and university hospital personnels(68.8%), dental hospital employees(65.6%) and dental clinic workers(65.5%). By type of workplace, the public health clinic workers(73.5%) expressed the most satisfaction, followed by the general and university hospital employees(67.7%), dental clinic workers(62.3%) and dental hospital personnels(54.1%). By type of workplace, the employees of dental clinics, dental hospitals, general hospitals and university hospitals preferred Saturdays, and the public health clinic workers had a liking for weekdays. As for a favored place, hotels were most preferred, followed by university hospitals, general hospitals, college lecture rooms, district halls and local public institutions. Hotels were most favored regardless of the type of workplace. 4. Regarding outlook on inservice education, they had the highest opinion on the facilities and given conditions of lecture rooms($3.41{\pm}0.83$), followed by the professionalism of lecturers($3.34{\pm}0.83$), procedures of receipt and attendance confirmation($3.34{\pm}0.83$) and class size($3.13{\pm}0.89$). On the contrary, they took the most dismal view of the inaccessibility of a place of inservice education($2.08{\pm}0.92$), followed by limited opportunity and limited date for that education($2.51{\pm}0.99$), extra financial burden($2.53{\pm}1.18$) and high tuition fee($2.57{\pm}0.96$).

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Usefulness of applying Macro for Brain SPECT Processing (Brain SPECT Processing에 있어서 Macro Program 사용의 유용성)

  • Kim, Gye-Hwan;Lee, Hong-Jae;Kim, Jin-Eui;Kim, Hyeon-Joo
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.35-39
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    • 2009
  • Purpose: Diagnostic and functional imaging softwares in Nuclear Medicine have been developed significantly. But, there are some limitations which like take a lot of time. In this article, we introduced that the basic concept of macro to help understanding macro and its application to Brain SPECT processing. We adopted macro software to SPM processing and PACS verify processing of Brain SPECT processing. Materials and Methods: In Brain SPECT, we choose SPM processing and two PACS works which have large portion of a work. SPM is the software package to analyze neuroimaging data. And purpose of SPM is quantitative analysis between groups. Results are made by complicated process such as realignment, normalization, smoothing and mapping. We made this process to be more simple by using macro program. After sending image to PACS, we directly input coordinates of mouse using simple macro program for processes of color mapping, adjustment of gray scale, copy, cut and match. So we compared time for making result by hand with making result by macro program. Finally, we got results by applying times to number of studies in 2007. Results: In 2007, the number of SPM studies were 115 and the number of PACS studies were 834 according to Diamox study. It was taken 10 to 15 minutes for SPM work by hand according to expertness and 5 minutes and a half was uniformly needed using Macro. After applying needed time to the number of studies, we calculated an average time per a year. When using SPM work by hand according to expertness, 1150 to 1725 minutes (19 to 29 hours) were needed and 632 seconds (11 hours) were needed for using Macro. When using PACS work by hand, 2 to 3 minutes were needed and for using Macro, 45 seconds were needed. After applying theses time to the number of studies, when working by hand, 1668 to 2502 minutes (28 to 42 hours) were needed and for using Macro, 625 minutes (10 hours) were needed. Following by these results, it was shown that 1043 to 1877 (17 to 31 hours were saved. Therefore, we could save 45 to 63% for SPM, 62 to 75% for PACS work and 55 to 70% for total brain SPECT processing in 2007. Conclusions: On the basis of the number of studies, there was significant time saved when we applied Macro to brain SPECT processing and also it was shown that even though work is taken a little time, there is a possibility to save lots of time according to the number of studies. It gives time on technologist's side which makes radiological technologist more concentrate for patients and reduce probability of mistake. Appling Macro to brain SPECT processing helps for both of radiological technologists and patients and contribute to improve quality of hospital service.

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