• Health Policy and Management
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.112-123
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• 2013

Background: Under the risk of financial sustainability of National Health Insurance, Korean government attempted a series of regulations over pharmaceutical prices. The first price-cut was implemented to the hyperlipidemial treatments, and the prices of statins were reduced on 15th, April in 2009. The purposes of this study are 1) to investigate the impact of this price-cut on pharmaceutical expenditure, and 2) to identify the factors associated with drug-switch among statins. Methods: Using the national patients sample data, this study conducted time series analysis on the expenditures, prices, and volumes of statin drugs. To understand the factors associated with drug-switch, the multinomial logit model was analyzed at the patients level. Results: The results of time series analysis demonstrated that the price-cut of hyperlipidemic medicines did not lead to the reduced expenditure, suggesting the increased volume was the major cause. The multinomial logit analysis identified the switch of healthcare provider as the significant factor that was highly associated with drug-switch, implying the physicians' preference was the major motivation of drug-switch. Conclusion: Without control of utilization, price regulation itself could not reduce pharmaceutical expenditure. This suggests that the pharmaceutical regulations should be implemented on the basis of understanding of provider behaviors. The findings of this study will form the first step for further empirical studies.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.127-135
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• 2008

The mission of the Forest Inventory and Analyis (FIA) program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, is to conduct the national forest inventory of the United States of America for purposes of estimating the area of forest land; the volume, growth, and removal of forest resources; and the health of the forest. Users of FIA data, estimates, and related products include land managers, policy and decision-makers, forest industry, environmental organizations, and university researchers. To accomplish its mission, the FIA program has established a sampling design with an intensity of approximately one permanent plot per 2,400 ha across the entire country. Depending on the region of the country, each plot is remeasured at intervals of five or 10 years. The program releases data annually and reports estimates at the county level for each state every five years. Due to budgetary constraints and natural variability among plot observations, sufficient numbers of plots cannot be measured to satisfy precision guidelines for the estimates of many variables unless the estimation process is enhanced using ancillary data. Classified satellite imagery has been demonstrated to be a source of ancillary data that can be used with stratified estimation techniques to increase the precision of estimates with little corresponding increase in costs. A crucial factor restricting the utility of FIA data is that the exact locations of inventory plots cannot be released to the public. Thus, users are generally not able to obtain estimates for small areas or for their own areas of interest if exact plot locations are required. To compensate, satellite imagery, inventory plot data, and the k-Nearest Neighbors technique are being used to construct Internet-based maps of forest attributes from which estimates for arbitrary user-defined areas of interest may be obtained.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.933-939
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• 2015

Malignant tumors are often accompanied by increased risk of hematological abnormalities. However, few studies have reported any prognostic impact of preoperative thrombocytosis, leukocytosis and anemia in epithelia ovarian cancer (EOC). This study aimed to investigate preoperative hematological parameters for anemia, leukocytosis and thombocytosis in relation to established prognostic factors and survival in EOC cases. A total of 816 Chinese women treated for EOC were retrospectively included in the study focusing on the relationship between preoperative hemoglobin, leukocyte and platelet counts, and a panel of clinicopathologic characteristics and outcome. Preoperative anemia was present in 13.4%, leukocytosis in 16.7% and thrombocytosis in 22.8%. Additionally, EOC patients with low differentiation grade, advanced stage, lymph node (LN) metastasis, residual disease ${\geq}1cm$, ascites volume >1,000ml, serum cancer antigen 125 (CA125) >675U/ml, and disease recurrence had the higher prevalence of preoperative anemia, leukocytosis and thrombocytosis (all p<0.05). Moreover, EOC patients with older age or postmenopausal EOC patients had the higher prevalence of thrombocytosis (28.7% vs 17.3% or 26.0% vs 17.7%). Furthermore, in a Cox proportional hazard model, thrombocytosis was an independent factor for progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) (p<0.001). Conclusively, preoperative anemia, leukocytosis or thrombocytosis in EOC patients is closely associated with more malignant disease phenotype and poorer prognosis. Significantly, thrombocytosis may independently predict the disease-specific survival for EOC patients.

• Journal of ILASS-Korea
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.28-34
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• 2015

Recently, some researchers have been carried out risk assessment of vehicles exhaust on human health. Especially, some of VOCs which is non-controlled, was classified to hazardous pollutant, such as 1,3-Butadiene and BTEX(Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylene). Therefore, the profile on non-controlled pollutant may be needed in the future, because it would be critical data or information to control them. Additionally, with increasing amount of motorcycle, the source profiling is essential for estimating emission factor and amount on motorcycle exhaust. For these, in this study, imported motorcycles (8 vehicles) were selected as a test model while considering the increasing ratio on sales volume between 2013 and 2014; it was also compared with domestic motorcycles on those. The experiment was conducted by driving mode, UDC and ECE+EUDC that made from EURO III. In addition, it was performed at cold start driving mode without effect by displacement, for evaluating only correlation of BTEX with HC. In order to apply the ratio (m,p-Xylene/o-Xylene) as a marker, the ratio was compared with those of tunnel, road side and residential area. As a result, it showed best correlation ($R^2=0.98$) among those. In the future, it has to be considered as a marker for effect evaluation to atmospheric environment by exhaust emission.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.214-223
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• 2010

Information & Communication Technology(ICT), called ubiquitous computing, changes our environment in many ways. It also acts on educational environment in concert with new pedagogy. Korean Government gives an efforts to set up the u-School as the educational environment supported by ICT. This study aims to find efficient uses of ICT to cope with the changing education environment and emerging needs of users. The survey research follows the pilot study on the model of future school. The students and teachers in six schools located in Busan answered the questionnaire and 752 individuals were analyzed by the statistical method including frequencies, crosstabs, ANOVA, and factor analysis. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Highly demanded were the u-School facilities to provide pleasant environment as the teachers and students have to spend most of time in classroom, or school premises. In addition, the infrastructures were so desperately required that students are able to control their textbooks and belongings, and efficiently utilize a variety of data. (2) The classroom volume should be planned a bit smaller than the current number of students so that teachers are relieved from the burden of too many student. The needs of students to interact with more students can be bolstered by utilization of ICT. (3) The respondents feel the high needs of computer for student, electronic blackboard, electronic lecture desk, microphone and computer for teacher as the teaching and learning facilities. This showed high needs for teaching and learning facilities enabling the active and individual learning through the use of ICT at education environment. In conclusion, the study proposes the fundamental data to combine u-School elements proper to the current learning and school environment, from the analysis on the use of school facilities, with the subjects, the users of education environment.

• Journal of the korean society of oceanography
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.93-102
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• 1997

Coastal circulations during the (surface condition of an) idealized cold-air outbreak are numerically investigated with two-dimensional, non-hydrostatic model in which a constant bottom-slope exists. The atmospheric forcing during a cold-air outbreak is incorporated as the surface cooling and the wind stress. When the offshore angle of the wind-stress vector, defined as the angle measured from the alongshore axis, is smaller than 45 degrees, a strong downwelling circulation develops near the coast. A sharp density front, which separates the vertically homogeneous region from the offshore stratified region, is formed near the coast and propagates offshore with time. Onshore side of the density front, small-scale circulation cells which are aligned in the direction perpendicular to the bottom begin to develop as the near-coast homogeneous region broadens. The surface cooling enhances greatly the development of the surface mixed layer by convective motions due to hydrostatic instability. The convective motions reach far below the hydrostatically unstable layer which is attached to the surface. The small-scale circulation cells are appreciably modified by the convetion cell and the density front develops far offshore compared to the case of no surface cooling. As to the effect of the bottom slope, the offshore distance of the density front increases (decreases) as the bottom slope decreases (increases), which results from the fact that the onshore volume-transport (Ekman transport) of the low-density upper seawater remains almost constant when the wind-stress is maintained constant. It is shown that the bottom slope is an essential factor for the formation of both the density front and the alongshore current when the surface cooling is the only forcing.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.949-953
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• 1999

Because epoxy molding compound(EMC) for semi-conductor encapsulants contains high concentrations of fillers, its flow behaviors are affected much by the concentrations and properties of those fillers. This paper reports the effects of a filler concentration, shape, size, and size distributions on the viscosity behavior of EMC(epoxy/silica). In addition, the prediction of viscosity behavior was performed using the Mooney equation. The maximum packing volume in the Mooney equation was calculated by Ouchiyama's packing model and Taguchi's optimization method, while the shpae factor was determined by fitting the experimental data. The results showed that the Mooney equation predicted the viscosity behavior of EMC very well.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.309-311
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• 2001

Strong thermal X-ray emission, called Galactic Ridge X-ray Emission, is observed along the Galactic plane (Koyama et al. 1986). The origin of hot ($\~$7 keV) component of GRXE is not known, while cool ($\~$0.8 keV) one is associated with supernovae (Kaneda et al. 1997, Sugizaki et al. 2001). We propose a possible mechanism to explain the origin; locally strong magnetic fields of $B_{local}\;\~30{\mu}G$ heat interstellar gas to $\~$7 keV via magnetic reconnection (Tanuma et al. 1999). There will be the small-scale (< 10 pc) strong magnetic fields, which can be observed as $(B)_{obs} \;\~3{\mu}G$ by integration of Faraday Rotation Measure, if it is localized by a volume filling factor of f $\~$ 0.1. In order to examine this model, we solved three-dimensional (3D) resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations numerically to examine the magnetic reconnect ion triggered by a supernova shock (fig.l). We assume that the magnetic field is Bx = 30tanh(y/20pc) $\mu$G, By = Bz = 0, and the temperature is uniform, at the initial condition. We put a supernova explosion outside the current sheet. The supernova-shock, as a result, triggers the magnetic reconnect ion, and the gas is heatd to > 7 keV. The magnetic reconnect ion heats the interstellar gas to $\~$7 keV in the Galactic plane, if it occurs in the locally strong magnetic fields of $B_{local}\;\~30{\mu}G$. The heated plasma is confined by the magnetic field for $\~10^{5.5} yr$. The required interval of the magnetic reconnect ions (triggered by anything) is $\~$1 - 10 yr. The magnetic reconnect ion will explain the origin of X-rays from the Galactic ridge, furthermore the Galactic halo, and clusters of galaxies.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.63 no.10
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• pp.1377-1383
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• 2014

This paper deals with eddy current loss of magnetic coupling with radial permanent magnet (PM) using analytical method such as a space harmonic method. Superposition of two kinds analysis model is used to analyze eddy current loss induced in inner PM and outer PM of magnetic coupling. When the eddy current is induced, the environmental temperature increases, and the permanent magnet(PM) characteristics are degraded because the performance of PM is greatly influenced by temperature rise. Hence, the calculation of eddy current loss becomes an important factor in the magnetic coupling. In order to analyze eddy current loss, first, on the basis of the magnetic vector potential and two-dimensional(2-D) polar-coordinate system, the magnetic field solutions of the radial magnetized PM are obtained. And we obtain the analytical solutions for the eddy current density produced by permanent magnet. Lastly, analytical solutions for eddy current loss are derived by using equivalent, electrical resistance calculated from magnet volume and analytical solution for eddy current density. This analytical results are validated by comparing with the 2-D finite element analysis (FEA).

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.75-82
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• 2007

This study was performed to investigate impacts of truck lane restrictions on multilane highways on traffic flow variables such as average speed, the frequency of lane changes, and change in traffic volume and also to verify whether or not different lane restriction scenarios were proper. Two types of hypothetical highway networks and OD demands were developed for traffic simulation models in order to conduct the experimental study. Three types of scenarios were also developed according to the number of restricted lanes for trucks. The PARAMICS microscopic traffic simulation software package was used as the primary analytical tool. Statistical analysis was conducted with simulation outputs. Results showed that truck lane restrictions may lead to positive impacts on traffic flow on multilane highways. In addition, this study demonstrated that the number of restricted lanes can be very an important factor to lead successful implementation of truck lane restrictions.