• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.107-118
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• 2016

The advent of 5G mobile communications, which is expected in 2020, will provide many services such as Internet of Things (IoT) and vehicle-to-infra/vehicle/nomadic (V2X) communication. There are many requirements to realizing these services: reduced latency, high data rate and reliability, and real-time service. In particular, a high level of reliability and delay sensitivity with an increased data rate are very important for M2M, IoT, and Factory 4.0. Around the world, 5G standardization organizations have considered these services and grouped them to finally derive the technical requirements and service scenarios. The first scenario is broadcast services that use a high data rate for multiple cases of sporting events or emergencies. The second scenario is as support for e-Health, car reliability, etc.; the third scenario is related to VR games with delay sensitivity and real-time techniques. Recently, these groups have been forming agreements on the requirements for such scenarios and the target level. Various techniques are being studied to satisfy such requirements and are being discussed in the context of software-defined networking (SDN) as the next-generation network architecture. SDN is being used to standardize ONF and basically refers to a structure that separates signals for the control plane from the packets for the data plane. One of the best examples for low latency and high reliability is an intelligent traffic system (ITS) using V2X. Because a car passes a small cell of the 5G network very rapidly, the messages to be delivered in the event of an emergency have to be transported in a very short time. This is a typical example requiring high delay sensitivity. 5G has to support a high reliability and delay sensitivity requirements for V2X in the field of traffic control. For these reasons, V2X is a major application of critical delay. V2X (vehicle-to-infra/vehicle/nomadic) represents all types of communication methods applicable to road and vehicles. It refers to a connected or networked vehicle. V2X can be divided into three kinds of communications. First is the communication between a vehicle and infrastructure (vehicle-to-infrastructure; V2I). Second is the communication between a vehicle and another vehicle (vehicle-to-vehicle; V2V). Third is the communication between a vehicle and mobile equipment (vehicle-to-nomadic devices; V2N). This will be added in the future in various fields. Because the SDN structure is under consideration as the next-generation network architecture, the SDN architecture is significant. However, the centralized architecture of SDN can be considered as an unfavorable structure for delay-sensitive services because a centralized architecture is needed to communicate with many nodes and provide processing power. Therefore, in the case of emergency V2X communications, delay-related control functions require a tree supporting structure. For such a scenario, the architecture of the network processing the vehicle information is a major variable affecting delay. Because it is difficult to meet the desired level of delay sensitivity with a typical fully centralized SDN structure, research on the optimal size of an SDN for processing information is needed. This study examined the SDN architecture considering the V2X emergency delay requirements of a 5G network in the worst-case scenario and performed a system-level simulation on the speed of the car, radius, and cell tier to derive a range of cells for information transfer in SDN network. In the simulation, because 5G provides a sufficiently high data rate, the information for neighboring vehicle support to the car was assumed to be without errors. Furthermore, the 5G small cell was assumed to have a cell radius of 50-100 m, and the maximum speed of the vehicle was considered to be 30-200 km/h in order to examine the network architecture to minimize the delay.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.143-163
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• 2016

The demographics of Internet users are the most basic and important sources for target marketing or personalized advertisements on the digital marketing channels which include email, mobile, and social media. However, it gradually has become difficult to collect the demographics of Internet users because their activities are anonymous in many cases. Although the marketing department is able to get the demographics using online or offline surveys, these approaches are very expensive, long processes, and likely to include false statements. Clickstream data is the recording an Internet user leaves behind while visiting websites. As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage, the activity is logged in semi-structured website log files. Such data allows us to see what pages users visited, how long they stayed there, how often they visited, when they usually visited, which site they prefer, what keywords they used to find the site, whether they purchased any, and so forth. For such a reason, some researchers tried to guess the demographics of Internet users by using their clickstream data. They derived various independent variables likely to be correlated to the demographics. The variables include search keyword, frequency and intensity for time, day and month, variety of websites visited, text information for web pages visited, etc. The demographic attributes to predict are also diverse according to the paper, and cover gender, age, job, location, income, education, marital status, presence of children. A variety of data mining methods, such as LSA, SVM, decision tree, neural network, logistic regression, and k-nearest neighbors, were used for prediction model building. However, this research has not yet identified which data mining method is appropriate to predict each demographic variable. Moreover, it is required to review independent variables studied so far and combine them as needed, and evaluate them for building the best prediction model. The objective of this study is to choose clickstream attributes mostly likely to be correlated to the demographics from the results of previous research, and then to identify which data mining method is fitting to predict each demographic attribute. Among the demographic attributes, this paper focus on predicting gender, age, marital status, residence, and job. And from the results of previous research, 64 clickstream attributes are applied to predict the demographic attributes. The overall process of predictive model building is compose of 4 steps. In the first step, we create user profiles which include 64 clickstream attributes and 5 demographic attributes. The second step performs the dimension reduction of clickstream variables to solve the curse of dimensionality and overfitting problem. We utilize three approaches which are based on decision tree, PCA, and cluster analysis. We build alternative predictive models for each demographic variable in the third step. SVM, neural network, and logistic regression are used for modeling. The last step evaluates the alternative models in view of model accuracy and selects the best model. For the experiments, we used clickstream data which represents 5 demographics and 16,962,705 online activities for 5,000 Internet users. IBM SPSS Modeler 17.0 was used for our prediction process, and the 5-fold cross validation was conducted to enhance the reliability of our experiments. As the experimental results, we can verify that there are a specific data mining method well-suited for each demographic variable. For example, age prediction is best performed when using the decision tree based dimension reduction and neural network whereas the prediction of gender and marital status is the most accurate by applying SVM without dimension reduction. We conclude that the online behaviors of the Internet users, captured from the clickstream data analysis, could be well used to predict their demographics, thereby being utilized to the digital marketing.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.3-33
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• 1991

Since the early 1980's, the Korean government has gradually been widening the Korean market to foreign consumer goods. This, combined with the increased purchasing power of the Korean consumers resulting from the continued economic growth of the country, has sparked a spectacular influx of foreign consumer goods into Korea, ranging from BMW's to chopsticks. Import of foreign consumer goods amounted to more than 6 billion dollars in 1989 and is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. The increased import of foreign consumer goods doubtlessly improved the overall welfare of the Korean consumers by providing them with a wider range of options to choose from, by lowering the prices of some of the consumer goods domestically produced, and also by forcing the producers of some Korean goods to face competition with better foreign goods, thus giving them an incentive to raise the quality of their products. However, it is agreed by most economists that this increase in general welfare has been much smaller than what they had expected at the outset. Consumer prices of most imported consumer goods are easily double the import price, and in some cases, more than treble the import prices. Further, there has not been a noticeable drop in the prices of domestically produced consumer goods. Much of the blame has been attributed to the distribution sector of Korea. The objective of this paper is to analyze the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea, focusing on the possible sources of the poor performance of that sector, and to make policy suggestions that could potentially increase the welfare. This paper differs from all the previous research by others on this subject in that it analyzes the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea as a vertical structure. The distribution sector of an imported consumer good is a vertical structure since it consists of an international market, an import stage, and domestic wholesale and retail markets, in that order vertically. Our study naturally includes the analysis of the vertical restraints as well as the analysis of the industrial organization of each horizontal stage in the vertical structure. Each horizontal component of the imported consumer goods distribution sector is basically a monopolistically competitive market differentiated by characteristics of goods and by the locations and the services of firms. Further, restrictive dealership and resale price maintenance are found to be widely in use. Our main findings are the follwing; First, most consumer goods are imported monopolistically or oligopolistically through restrictive dealership contracts between foreign producers and domestic importers. Such restrictive dealership gives importers market power in the domestic market and explains many of the large discrepancies betwen the consumer prices and the import prices of many goods. Korean anti - trust law does not cover the issues arising from the market power of an importer resulting from a restrictive dealership contract. Second, some major producers of Korean goods are also importers of foreign goods that are substitutes of their products. The import of substitutes by major domestic producers is anti - competitive because it tends to raise the prices of both domestic goods and foreign goods, and also because it reduces the incentive of the domestic producers to raise the quality of their products. Third, wholesalers and retailers widely use resale price maintenance as a price fixing mechanism, and while this is against the anti- trust law, it seldom gets noticed. Fourth, the high level of rents of real estate for commercial use works as an entry barrier to the distribution sector and results in reduced competition by the firms in that sector. Finally, there are information problems. Consumers have inferior information to firms about the quality of a foreign consumer good that they have not tried before. Such information asymmetry often enables firms to raise prices. In addition, information asymmetry between importers frequently delays the import of cheaper substitutes. In order to alleviate the problems indentified above, we suggest the following policy changes. The government should strengthen the anti - trust law and its enforcement to regulate restrictive import contracts, import of competing goods by major domestic producers, and RPM by wholesalers and retailers that is aimed at price fixing. In addition, the government should loosen its tight real estate policy to encourage investment in the distribution sector. Finally, we suggest that the import price revelation policy that has been in use for some items since 1990 be expanded to most imported consumer goods that are introduced for the first time to give consumer better information and be used only for the period of time needed to inform sufficient number of consumers.

• Journal of fish pathology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.5-30
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• 1988

This is a comprehensive study for considering the effective treatment and control program of bacterial disease occurring in common carp, israel carp, color carp, crucian carp, eel and tilapia by clarifying the causes, mechanism of infection and onset and the diagnostic criteria. As a first step, the authors investigated the external views, gross and histopathologic findings of diseased fish using 450 infected fishes obtained from various farmer of Korea. This infection was characterized by hyperemia, hemorrhage and swelling of body surface and fins, congestion of liver, spleen, kidney, inflammation of intestine, hemorrhagic inflammation of various tissues, and necrosis and ulcer of various tissues were accompanied in serious cases. Bacteriologically, Aeromonas hydrophila and Edwardsiella tarda were isoiated from these fishes. Particularly in the regular check on 222 eels, 177 strains were isolated as 29.94% of Aeromonas hydrophila, 48.58% of Edwardsiella tarda and 21.47% of Flexibacter columnaris. Hexibacter columnaris was isolated from corroded gill of eels. The identical disease was occurred by innoculating the isolated Aeromonas hydrophila and Edwardsiella tarda and the identical strains were isolated from infected experimental fishes. The eels which were diagnosed Aeromonas disease from Kwangju, Pusan accompanied hemorrhage, swelling of body surface and fins, inflammation of stomach and intestine containing mucous fluids mixed with the pathogens. Color carp and crucian carp which were innoculated with the isolated 5 strins of Aeromomas hydrorphil died within 3 or 4 days accompanying with the characteristics of Aeromonas disease. Edward disease was characterized by abscesses of body surface, pus formation with concentration on phagocytes. The size of absecsses increased with progression elf disease. There were also various abscesses at internal organ and white nodules appeared in kidney. Histologically, various progressive granuloma were examined without inflammation of intestine. Columnaris disease of eels showed no hemorrhage except slight white body color. In autopsy, most of internal organs appeared normal and there were no septic odors. The only character was corrosion of gills. In order to treat these bacterial diseases, infected fishes must bathe in 20ppm chloramphenicol or kanamycin solution for 1 hour. Besides, medication program in oral ingestion of 75mg/kg chloramphenicol per day continuing for 5 to 7 days. After injecting the formalin treated Aermonas hydrophila antigen into carp, relatively high agglutination titer showed between 3 weeks and 6 weeks. Though this titer decreased from that time, it was continued for 18 weeks. In the case of injecting the formalin treated Edwardsiella tarda antigen into tilapia, the titer also increased. But tilapia which were immersed in the suspension fluid of the formalin treated Edwardsiella tarda showed no increase of the titer.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.471-478
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• 1997

Introduction: The use of rabbits as a cardiopulmonary bypass(CPB) animal model is extremely dif%cult mainly due to technical problems. On the other hand, deep hypothermic circulatory arrest(CA) is used to facilitate surgical repair in a variety of cardiac diseases. Although steroids are generally known to be effective in the treatment of cerebral edema, the protective effects of steroids on the brain during CA are not conclusively established. Objectives of this study are twofold: the establishment of CPB technique in rabbits and the evaluation of preventive effect of steroid on the development of brain edema during CA. Material '||'&'||' Methods: Fifteen New Zealan white rabbits(average body weight 3.5kg) were divided into three experimental groups; control CA group(n=5), CA with Trendelenberg position group(n=5), and CA with Trendelenberg position + steroid(methylprednisolone 30 mglkg) administration group(n=5). After anesthetic induction and tracheostomy, a median sternotomy was performed. An aortic cannula(3.3mm) and a venous ncannula(14 Fr) were inserted, respectively in the ascending aorta and the right atrium. The CPB circuit consisted of a roller pump and a bubble oxygenator. Priming volume of the circuit was approximately 450m1 with 120" 150ml of blood. CPB was initiated at a flow rate of 80~85ml/kg/min, Ten min after the start of CPB, CA was established with duration of 40min at $20^{\circ}C$ of rectal temperature. After CA, CPB was restarted with 20min period of rewarming. Ten min after weaning, the animal was sacrif;cod. One-to-2g portions of the following tissues were rapidly d:ssected and water contents were examined and compared among gr ups: brain, cervical spinal cord, kidney, duodenum, lung, heart, liver, spleen, pancreas. stomach. Statistical significances were analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric test. Results: CPB with CA was successfully performed in all cases. Flow rate of 60-100 mlfkgfmin was able to be maintained throughout CPB. During CPB, no significant metabolic acidosis was detected and aortic pressure ranged between 35-55 mmHg. After weaning from CPB, all hearts resumed normal beating spontaneously. There were no statistically significant differences in the water contents of tissues including brain among the three experimental groups. Conclusion: These results indicate (1) CPB can be reliably administered in rabbits if proper technique is used, (2) the effect of steroid on the protection of brain edema related to Trendelenburg position during CA is not established within the scope of this experiment.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.131-181
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• 1983

After the investigation on, and the analysis of, the educational system for medical technicians and the present educational situation for medical technologies in this country, the following conclusions were drawn. 1. As of March 1983 the current academic system for education in medical technologies included the regular 4-year college courses and those of the 2-year professional junior college courses. But except in the cases on clinical pathology and physical therapy, there were no college-level departments. Particularly, no educational institutions, at whatever level, had a department for working therapies. 2. The total number of credits needed for graduation from a department of medical technologies was 150 points at a regular 4-year college and 85 to 96 points at a 2-year professional college. The obligatory minimum number of credits for a student at a professional college was set at 80 points and above. 3. As for the number of the educational institutions for medical technologies in this country, there were one regular college and 14 professional colleges, a total of 15 institutions. As many as 14 colleges had departments of clinical pathology, 12 had departments of Radiotechnology, 11 had departments of physical therapy, 12 had departments of dental technology, and eight had departments of dental hygiene. 4. The total capacity of the professional colleges in admitting new enrollment each year were 1,920 for clinical pathology, 1,552 for radiology, 1,012 for physical therapy, 1,334 for dental technologies, 828 for dental hygiene, an aggregate of 6,646 for all of the professional college departments. 5. The total number of graduates from the 12 professional colleges by department during the period of 1965-83 were 7,595 for clindical pathology, 4,768 for radiology, 2,821 for physical therapy, 3,000 for dental technologies, and 1,787 for dental hygiene, totalling 19,971 for all departments in the professional colleges. 6. In the state examination for licensed medical technicians, 12,446 have passed from among the total of 26,609 participants, representing a 45% passing ratio. By departments the ratios showed 44% for clinical pathology, 39.7% for radiology, 51.2% for physical therapy, 42.5% for dental technology, 72.5% for dental hygiene and 73.1% for working therapy. 7. As for the degree of satisfaction shown by the people in this field, 52.2 percent of the teaching staffs who responed to the questionaires said they were satisfied with their present profession, while the great majority of medical technicians(66%) replied that they were indifferent to the problem. 8. The degree of satisfaction shown by the students on their enrollment in this particular academic field was generally in the framework of indifference(43.7%), but mere students(36.5%) were satisfied with their choice than those were not satisfied(14.4%) 9. As for the student's opinions on the lectures and practicing hours, a good many students replied that, among such courses as general science and humanities courses the basic medical course, the major course and practicing hours, the hours provided for the general courses(47.1%) and practicing(47.6%) were insufficient. 10. When asked about the contents of their major courses, comparatively few students (23.6%) replied that the courses were too difficult, while a convincing majority(58.5%) said they were neither difficult nor easy. As for the appropriateness of the number of the present teaching staffs, a great majority(71.0%) of the students replied that the level of the teaching personnel in each particular field was insufficient. 11. Among the students who responded to the poll, good part of them(49.5%) wanted mandatory clinical practicing hours, and the the majority of them(64.6%) held the view that the experimental and practicing facilities of their schools were insufficient. 12. On the necessity of the attached hospitals, 71.1% of the teaching staffs and 58.0% of the medical technicians had the opinion that this kind of facility was indispensable. 13. As for the qualifications for applicants to the state examination in the licensing system for medical technicians, 52.2% of the teacher's and 36% of the medical technicians replied that the present system granting the qualifications according to the apprenticeship period should be abolished. 14. On the necessity of improving the present system for education in medical technologies, an overwhelming majority(94.4% of the :caching staffs, 92.0% of the medical technicians and 91.9% of students) of these polled replied that the present system should be changed for the better. 15. On the method of changes for the present educational system, a great majority(89.4% of the teaching staffs, 80.4% of the medical technicians and 90.1% of the students) said that the system must be changed so that it fits into the reality of the present day. 16. As for the present 2-year program for the professional colleges, 61.6% of the teachers, 72.0% of the medical technicians and 38.8% of the students expressed the hope that the academic period would be extended to four regular years, hemming a full-fledged collegelevels program. 17. On the life-long eductional system for medical technicians, there was a considerable number of people who expressed the hope that an open university system(38.9% of the teaching staffs, 36.0% of the medical technicians) and a graduate school system would be set up. 18. As for the future prospects for medical technicians as professionals, the optimists ana pessimists were almost equally divided, and 41.1% of the teaching staffs 36.0% of. the technicians and 50.5% of the students expressed an intermediate position on this issue.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 2013

Nowadays, the medical system towards patients changes into the medical services. As the human rights are improved and the capitalism is enlarged, the rights and needs of patients are gradually increasing. Also, based on this change, several systems in hospitals are revised according to the convenience and needs of patients. Thus, the cases of mobile portable among examinations are getting augmented. Because the number of mobile portable examinations in patient's room, intensive care unit, operating room and recovery room increases, neighboring patients are unnecessarily exposed to radiation so that the examination is legally regulated. Hospitals have to specify that "In case that the examination is taken out of the operating room, emergency room or intensive care units, the portable medical X-ray protective blocks should be set" in accordance with the standards of radiation protective facility in diagnostic radiological system. Some keep this regulation well, but mostly they do not keep. In this study, we shielded around the Collimator where the radiation is detected and then checked the change of dose regarding that of angles in portable tube and collimator before and after shielding. Moreover, we tried to figure out the effects of shielding on dose according to the distance change between patients' beds. As a result, the neighboring areas around the collimator are affected by the shielding. After shielding, the radiation is blocked 20% more than doing nothing. When doing the portable examination, the exposure doses are increased $0^{\circ}C$, $90^{\circ}C$ and $45^{\circ}C$ in order. At the time when the angle is set, the change of doses around the collimator decline after shielding. In addition, the exposure doses related to the distance of beds are less at 1m than 0.5m. In consideration of the shielding effects, putting the beds as far as possible is the best way to block the radiation, which is close to 100%. Next thing is shielding the collimator and its effect is about 20%, and it is more or less 10% by controlling the angles. When taking the portable examination, it is better to keep the patients and guardians far enough away to reduce the exposure doses. However, in case that the bed is fixed and the patient cannot move, it is suggested to shield around the collimator. Furthermore, $90^{\circ}C$ of collimator and tube is recommended. If it is not possible, the examination should be taken at $0^{\circ}C$ and $45^{\circ}C$ is better to be disallowed. The radiation-related workers should be aware of above results, and apply them to themselves in practice. Also, it is recommended to carry out researches and try hard to figure out the ways of reducing the exposure doses and shielding the radiation effectively.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.48 no.8
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• pp.832-838
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• 2005

Purpose : Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection is relatively common in childhood. Its extrapulmonary manifestations have been reported so much, but hepatitis associated with it has been reported rarely in Korea. Methods : A clinical study was performed on 556 patients of M. pneumoniae pneumonia diagnosed serologically at Gil hospital from January 2001 to December 2004. We reviewed 65 cases among these patients, who had elevated level of serum AST and ALT greater than 50 IU/L respectively without evidence of hepatitis A, B, C, Cytomegalovirus and Ebstein-Barr virus infections. Results : Hepatitis occurred in 11.7% of Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia, especially in fall and winter times. Male to female ratio was 1.2 : 1 and the mean age was 4 years and 3 months. Besides hepatitis, cough(95.4%), sputum(52.3%) and dyspnea(12.3%) were common as pulmonary manifestations. And among gastrointestinal manifestations, nausea/vomiting(26.2%) was the most common symptom, followed by poor oral intake(12.3%), diarrhea(12.3%) and abdominal pain(6.2%). In addition to hepatomegaly(4.6%) and splenomegaly(4.6%), coarse breathing sound was the most common physical manifestation, followed by rale(63.1%), pharyngeal injection(26.2%), and rash(10.8%). Anemia was noted in 20.0%, neutrophilia in 10.8%, eosinphilia in 38.5% and thrombocytosis in 6.2%, respectively. Mean level of ESR and CRP was 32.02 mm/hr and 6.69 mg/dL, respectively. Mean level of AST and ALT was 293.80 IU/L and 181.48 IU/L, respectively. Hyperbilirubinemia was noted in 7.7% and hypoalbuminemia was noted in 58.5%. Lobar or lobular pneumonia(78.5%) was the most common finding in chest X-ray and left lower lobe(39.2%) was most commonly affected. Pleural effusion was noted in 26.2%. Mean duration of hospitalization was 9.91 days. Serum AST/ALT level was normalized within 9.94 days and pulmonary consolidation resolved within 14.29 days. Conclusion : The prognosis of M. pneumoniae hepatitis is good. However, liver function should be considerately checked in M. pneumoniae infection because its incidence is not so low.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.420-425
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• 2008

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to evaluate acute childhood seizures, one of the most important causes of emergency room visits, to provide appropriate medical services. Methods : We reviewed the medical records of 433 (4.6%) pediatric patients with acute seizures that visited the emergency room at Masan Samsung hospital from 2004 to 2006. Results : The male to female ratio was 1.4:1 and the mean age was $40.9{\pm}34.9$ months range. The order of geographical distribution was Masan, Changwon, Haman, and others. Fever was present in 40.6% of patients; December (14.8%) was the most frequent month for visits and generalized tonic clonic seizures (62.7%) were the most common type of seizure. The average frequency and duration of the seizure was $1.5{\pm}1.0$ and $6.7{\pm}13.2$ minutes respectively. Febrile seizures were present in 69.7% of patients and afebrile seizures in 30.3%. The causes of the febrile seizures were acute pharyngotonsillitis (44.6%), acute bronchitis, gastroenteritis, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, and unknown origin, in order of frequency. The most common cause of an afebrile seizure was epilepsy (71.5%) followed by a benign convulsion with mild gastroenteritis (BCwMG), sequela of a perinatal brain injury or brain malformation, and acute CNS infection. Evaluation of the causes of an acute seizure according to age showed that febrile seizures, epilepsy, and the sequela of perinatal brain injuries were more common between 2 and 6 years of age and epilepsy, febrile seizures and acute CNS infection, in order of frequency, were common between 6 and 15 years of age. Many patients, 49.4%, were discharged without admission. Conclusion : The common characteristics of pediatric patients presenting to the emergency room were male gender, an age between 2-6 years, presenting during the month of December, with generalized tonic clonic seizures due to acute pharyngitis. The most common presentation for the group less than 6 years of age was a febrile seizure and in the group more than 6 years of age, it was epilepsy. In many cases, the seizures stopped by the time the family presented to the emergency room.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.1-27
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• 2011

Introduction: Sales of private labels(PU have been growing m recent years. Globally, PLs have already achieved 20% share, although between 25 and 50% share in most of the European markets(AC. Nielson, 2005). These products are aimed to have comparable quality and prices as national brand(NB) products and have been continuously eroding manufacturer's national brand market share. Stores have also started introducing premium PLs that are of higher-quality and more reasonably priced compared to NBs. Worldwide, many retailers already have a multiple-tier private label architecture. Consumers as a consequence are now able to have a more diverse brand choice in store than ever before. Since premium PLs are priced higher than regular PLs and even, in some cases, above NBs, stores can expect to generate higher profits. Brand extensions and private label have been extensively studied in the marketing field. However, less attention has been paid to the private label extension. Therefore, this research focuses on private label extension using the Multi-Attribute Attitude Model(Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). Especially there are few studies that consider the hierarchical effect of the PL's two parent brands: store brand and the original PL. We assume that the attitude toward each of the two parent brands affects the attitude towards the extended PL. The influence from each parent brand toward extended PL will vary according to the perceived fit between each parent brand and the extended PL. This research focuses on how these two parent brands act as reference points to one another in the consumers' choice consideration. Specifically we seek to understand how store image and attitude towards original PL affect consumer perceptions of extended premium PL. How consumers perceive extended premium PLs could provide strategic suggestions for retailer managers with specific suggestions on whether it is more effective: to position extended premium PL similarly or dissimilarly to original PL especially on the quality dimension and congruency with store image. There is an extensive body of research on branding and brand extensions (e.g. Aaker and Keller, 1990) and more recently on PLs(e.g. Kumar and Steenkamp, 2007). However there are no studies to date that look at the upgrading and influence of original PLs and attitude towards store on the premium PL extension. This research wishes to make a contribution to this gap using the perceived fit difference between parent brands and extended premium PL as the context. In order to meet the above objectives, we investigate which factors heighten consumers' positive attitude toward premium PL extension. Research Model and Hypotheses: When considering the attitude towards the premium PL extension, we expect four factors to have an influence: attitude towards store; attitude towards original PL; perceived congruity between the store image and the premium PL; perceived similarity between the original PL and the premium PL. We expect that all these factors have an influence on consumer attitude towards premium PL extension. Figure 1 gives the research model and hypotheses. Method: Data were collected by an intercept survey conducted on consumers at discount stores. 403 survey responses were attained (total 59.8% female, across all age ranges). Respondents were asked to respond to a series of Questions measured on 7 point likert-type scales. The survey consisted of Questions that measured: the trust towards store and the original PL; the satisfaction towards store and the original PL; the attitudes towards store, the original PL, and the extended premium PL; the perceived similarity of the original PL and the extended premium PL; the perceived congruity between the store image and the extended premium PL. Product images with specific explanations of the features of premium PL, regular PL and NB we reused as the stimuli for the Question response. We developed scales to measure the research constructs. Cronbach's alphaw as measured each construct with the reliability for all constructs exceeding the .70 standard(Nunnally, 1978). Results: To test the hypotheses, path analysis was conducted using LISREL 8.30. The path analysis for verification of the model produced satisfactory results. The validity index shows acceptable results(${\chi}^2=427.00$(P=0.00), GFI= .90, AGFI= .87, NFI= .91, RMSEA= .062, RMR= .047). With the increasing retailer use of premium PLBs, the intention of this research was to examine how consumers use original PL and store image as reference points as to the attitude towards premium PL extension. Results(see table 1 & 2) show that the attitude of each parent brand (attitudes toward store and original pL) influences the attitude towards extended PL and their perceived fit moderates these influences. Attitude toward the extended PL was influenced by the relative level of perceived fit. Discussion of results and future direction: These results suggest that the future strategy for the PL extension needs to consider that positive parent brand attitude is more strongly associated with the attitude toward PL extensions. Specifically, to improve attitude towards PL extension, building and maintaining positive attitude towards original PL is necessary. Positioning premium PL congruently to store image is also important for positive attitude. In order to improve this research, the following alternatives should also be considered. To improve the research model's predictive power, more diverse products should be included in study. Other attributes of product should also be included such as design, brand name since we only considered trust and satisfaction as factors to build consumer attitudes.