• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.123-128
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• 2002

Objective : To examine the relationship between cigarette smoking, alcohol and cancer mortality in men in the Kangwha cohort after 12 years and 10 months of follow up. Methods : The subjects consisted of 2,681 men in the Kangwha cohort aged over 55 in 1985. Number of deaths and the time to death front all cancers and other cause were measured and the data for the smoking and drinking habits were obtained from the baseline survey data in 1985. All subjects were categorized into four groups according to their smoking habits: non-smokers, ex-smokers, mode(ate-smokers (1-19 cigarettes per day), heavy-smokers ($\geq$20 cigarettes per day). In addition, they were also categorized according to their drinking habits: non-drinkers, light-drinkers ($\leq$1 drink per week), moderate-drinkers (<3 drinks per day), heavy-drinkers ($\geq$3 drinks per day). The cancer specific death rates were calculated according to their smoking and drinking status. The adjusted risk ratio for all cancer deaths according to their smoking and drinking status were estimated using the Cox's proportional hazard regression model. Results : Using nonsmokers as the reference category, the adjusted risk ratio for all cancer deaths were 1.573(95% CI=1.003-2.468) for heavy-smokers. For lung cancer deaths, the adjusted risk ratios were 3.540(95% CI=1.251-10.018) for moderate-smoker and 4.114(95% CI=1.275-13.271) for heavy-smokers. Compared to non-drinkers, the adjusted risk ratio for stomach cancer was 2.204(95% CI=1.114-4.361) for light-drinkers. Conclusion : Smoking is the most significant risk factor for cancer deaths particularly lung cancer.

• Korean Journal of Geomatics
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.57-64
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• 2002

Measuring the depth of water is very important in ensuring the protection and safety of seaside. There are many difficulties in making the contour bathymetric map, and contour line due to the limitation of continuous measurement of water depth and collimation with the conventional measuring and positioning methods. But the real-time kinematic GPS (RTK GPS) positioning using a carrier phase enables us to decide a precise position without breaking a signal even under the condition of a moving environment. It is also possible to obtain an accurate depth of water in real time with a fathometer through the measuring of time delay between sending and receiving epochs. This research aims at investigation of accuracy potential of RTK GPS in combination with Echo Sounder(E/S) for the coastal mapping. Apart from this purpose, the accuracy of ambiguity resolution with the OTF(On the Fly) method was tested with respect to the initialization time. The result shows that the accuracy is better than 1cm with 5-minute initialization in the distance of 10km baseline. The seaside topography was measured by the RTK GPS only, on the other hand the seafloor topography was surveyed in combination of RTK GPS and E/S. Comparing to the volume of seaside measured by RTK GPS and digital topographical map, the difference of only 2 % was achieved. This indicates that the coastal mapping with RTK GPS is successfully conducted. In addition it is also demonstrated that the 3-dimensional perspective model resulted from the undersea topography measured by RTK GPS and E/S is very close to that from the digital map. Through this study, it was verified that RTK GPS is to be very useful method in the analysis of coastal morphology owing to its capability of getting the precise DTM for the using of harbor reclamation, dredging, and the estimation of soil movement in a river.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.224-229
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• 2014

Objective : To report long-term clinical and radiological outcomes of minimally invasive posterior cervical foraminotomy (MI-PCF) performed in patients with unilateral single-level cervical radiculopathy. Methods : Of forty-six patients who underwent MI-PCF for unilateral single-level radiculopathy between 2005 and 2013, 33 patients were included in the study, with a mean follow-up of 32.7 months. Patients were regularly followed for clinical and radiological assessment. Clinical outcome was measured by visual analogue scale (VAS) for the neck/shoulder and arm, and the neck disability index (NDI). Radiological outcome was measured by focal/global angulation and disc height index (DHI). Outcomes after MI-PCF were evaluated as changes of clinical and radiological parameters from the baseline. Mixed effect model with random patients' effect was used to test for differences in the clinical and radiological parameters repeat measures. Results : There were no complications and all patients had an uneventful recovery during the early postoperative period. VAS scores for neck/shoulder and arm improved significantly in the early postoperative period (3 months) and were maintained with time (p<0.001). NDI improved significantly post-operatively and tended to decrease gradually during the follow-up period (p<0.001). There were no statistically significant changes in focal and global angulation at follow-up. Percent DHIs of the upper adjacent or operated disc were maintained without significant changes with time. During the follow-up, same site recurrence was not noted and adjacent segment disease requiring additional surgery occurred in two patients (6%) on the contra-lateral side. Conclusion : MI-PCF provides long-term pain relief and functional restoration, accompanied by good long-term radiological outcome.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.39
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• pp.57-81
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• 2008

Motivation has been identified as an important factor predicting long-term outcomes of alcohol abuse treatment. Whether a patient agreed on his/her inpatient treatment at time of hospitalization could be an indicator of their motivation for treatment. This study focused on this aspect of treatment motivation and examined whether this factor predicts post-discharge abstinence. A sample of 145 individuals who were hospitalized for alcohol abuse treatment participated in the baseline data collection, of which only 66 successfully completed the 8 month follow-up telephone interview. The findings of survival analysis suggest that voluntarily admitted individuals had significantly longer duration of post-discharge abstinence compared to their counterparts. A Cox proportional hazards regression model revealed that voluntary admission and family support were significant predictors for post-discharge relapse of drinking, after controlling for the effects of marital status, living alone, and working status. Implications for social work practice are discussed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.579-593
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• 2010

Low-power radio frequency (RF) chip transceiver technology and the associated structural health monitoring platforms have matured recently to enable high-rate, lossless transmission of measurement data across large-scale sensor networks. The intrinsic value of these advanced capabilities is the allowance for high-quality, rapid operational modal analysis of in-service structures using distributed accelerometers to experimentally characterize the dynamic response. From the analysis afforded through these dynamic data sets, structural identification techniques can then be utilized to develop a well calibrated finite element (FE) model of the structure for baseline development, extended analytical structural evaluation, and load response assessment. This paper presents a case study in which operational modal analysis is performed on a three-span prestressed reinforced concrete bridge using a wireless sensor network. The low-power wireless platform deployed supported a high-rate, lossless transmission protocol enabling real-time remote acquisition of the vibration response as recorded by twenty-nine accelerometers at a 256 Sps sampling rate. Several instrumentation layouts were utilized to assess the global multi-span response using a stationary sensor array as well as the spatially refined response of a single span using roving sensors and reference-based techniques. Subsequent structural identification using FE modeling and iterative updating through comparison with the experimental analysis is then documented to demonstrate the inherent value in dynamic response measurement across structural systems using high-rate wireless sensor networks.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.390-395
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• 2021

Background: Health-care providers typically undergo shift work and are subjected to increased stress. Night shift work may induce disturbed sleep cycles and circadian rhythm. The objective of this study was to explore if night shift workers (NSWs) show an increased risk of abnormal thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 574 employees without thyroid disease and abnormal TSH at baseline who underwent annual check-ups between 2007 and 2016 in a medical center. NSWs were defined as those with working time schedules other than daytime hours. We calculated the incidence rate and estimated the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for incident abnormal TSH and subclinical hypothyroidism compared with non-NSWs using a Cox regression model. Results: A total of 56 incident abnormal TSH cases and 39 subclinical hypothyroidism cases in NSWs were identified during 3000 person-years of follow-up. In models adjusted for age, sex, obesity, and working departments, we found no increased relative risk for incident abnormal TSH (HR: 0.72, 95% confidence interval: 0.33-1.60) or subclinical hypothyroidism (HR: 0.52, 95% confidence interval: 0.19-1.45) when comparing NSWs to non-NSWs; nor were incidence rates significantly different among exclusively medical employees after excluding administrative staff. Conclusion: In this hospital-based nine-year follow-up retrospective cohort study, NSWs were not associated with increased relative risk of incident abnormal TSH and subclinical hypothyroidism, in contrast to previous cross-sectional studies.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.466-472
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• 2021

Speaker Change Detection (SCD) refers to finding the moment when the main speaker changes from one person to the next in a speech conversation. In speaker change detection, difficulties arise due to overlapping speakers, inaccuracy in the information labeling, and data imbalance. To solve these problems, TIMIT corpus widely used in speech recognition have been concatenated artificially to obtain a sufficient amount of training data, and the detection of changing speaker has performed after identifying overlapping speakers. In this paper, we propose an speaker change detection system that considers the speaker overlapping. We evaluated and verified the performance using various approaches. As a result, a detection system similar to the X-Vector structure was proposed to remove the speaker overlapping region, while the Bi-LSTM method was selected to model the speaker change system. The experimental results show a relative performance improvement of 4.6 % and 13.8 % respectively, compared to the baseline system. Additionally, we determined that a robust speaker change detection system can be built by conducting related studies based on the experimental results, taking into consideration text and speaker information.

• Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.512-527
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• 2018

This review provides a comprehensive overview of brain imaging studies of the brain-gut interaction in functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs). Functional neuroimaging studies during gut stimulation have shown enhanced brain responses in regions related to sensory processing of the homeostatic condition of the gut (homeostatic afferent) and responses to salience stimuli (salience network), as well as increased and decreased brain activity in the emotional response areas and reduced activation in areas associated with the top-down modulation of visceral afferent signals. Altered central regulation of the endocrine and autonomic nervous responses, the key mediators of the brain-gut axis, has been demonstrated. Studies using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging reported abnormal local and global connectivity in the areas related to pain processing and the default mode network (a physiological baseline of brain activity at rest associated with self-awareness and memory) in FGIDs. Structural imaging with brain morphometry and diffusion imaging demonstrated altered gray- and white-matter structures in areas that also showed changes in functional imaging studies, although this requires replication. Molecular imaging by magnetic resonance spectroscopy and positron emission tomography in FGIDs remains relatively sparse. Progress using analytical methods such as machine learning algorithms may shift neuroimaging studies from brain mapping to predicting clinical outcomes. Because several factors contribute to the pathophysiology of FGIDs and because its population is quite heterogeneous, a new model is needed in future studies to assess the importance of the factors and brain functions that are responsible for an optimal homeostatic state.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.141-149
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• 2019

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: This study examined the association between refined grain consumption by subtype and the incidence of hypertension from the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study data. SUBJECTS/METHODS: In total, 5,018 participants (2,439 men and 2,579 women) from 40 to 69 years without hypertension were recruited at the beginning (2001-2002). Blood pressure and antihypertensive medication use were assessed biennially for the incidence of hypertension during the 8-year follow-up period (2009-2010). Hypertension was diagnosed as systolic blood pressure ${\geq}140mmHg$ or diastolic blood pressure ${\geq}90mmHg$ or antihypertensive medication use. Dietary intake including refined grains was assessed by a food frequency questionnaire at baseline and the follow-up (2005-2006). A multivariate Cox proportional hazard model was used to examine hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for incident hypertension according to refined-grain consumption. RESULTS: A total of 1,377 cases of hypertension (710 men and 667 women) were newly ascertained. Frequent noodle consumers (${\geq}5servings/week$) among the women had a 2.3-fold higher risk of hypertension than infrequent noodle consumers after adjustment for potential confounders (HR = 2.31, 95% CI = 1.33-4.01, P for trend = 0.0001). However, no significant association was found among the men. The intake of other refined grain products such as white rice and breads was not associated with the incidence of hypertension. CONCLUSION: Frequent noodle consumption was positively associated with a risk of incident hypertension in South Korean women.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.105-114
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• 2019

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Several previous studies have investigated whether regular walnut consumption positively changes heart-health-related parameters. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of daily walnut intake on metabolic syndrome (MetS) status and other metabolic parameters among subjects with MetS. SUBJECTS/METHODS: This study was a two-arm, randomized, controlled crossover study with 16 weeks of each intervention (45 g of walnuts or iso-caloric white bread) with a 6 week washout period between interventions. Korean adults with MetS (n = 119) were randomly assigned to one of two sequences; 84 subjects completed the trial. At each clinic visit (at 0, 16, 22, and 38 weeks), MetS components, metabolic parameters including lipid profile, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), adiponectin, leptin, and apolipoprotein B, as well as anthropometric and bioimpedance data were obtained. RESULTS: Daily walnut consumption for 16 weeks improved MetS status, resulting in 28.6%-52.8% reversion rates for individual MetS components and 51.2% of participants with MetS at baseline reverted to a normal status after the walnut intervention. Significant improvements after walnut intake, compared to control intervention, in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (P = 0.028), fasting glucose (P = 0.013), HbA1c (P = 0.021), and adiponectin (P = 0.019) were observed after adjustment for gender, age, body mass index, and sequence using a linear mixed model. CONCLUSION: A dietary supplement of 45 g of walnuts for 16 weeks favorably changed MetS status by increasing the concentration of HDL-C and decreasing fasting glucose level. Furthermore, consuming walnuts on a daily basis changed HbA1c and circulating adiponectin levels among the subjects with MetS. This trial is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT03267901.