• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.33-43
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• 1992

Items are assumed to fail by degradation. An appropriate stochastic model of such item is a cumulative process in which an item can fail only when the total amount of wear exceeds a prespecified failure level. This paper presents replacement policy in which an item is replaced at a certain level of wear before failure or at failure, whichever occurs first. Yet, when measuring the item wear level is very expensive, destructive or time-consuming, it may be economical to use substitutive characteristics that are correlated with the item wear level and relatively inexpensive to measure. The item's wear level could usually be estimated by monitoring such substitutive characteristics only except for a breakdown, which may be observed immediately at its occurrence. The purpose of this paper is to find an optimal periodic replacement policy based on such substitutive characteristics that balance the cost of replacement with the cost of failure and result in a minimum total long-run average cost per unit time. The optimal level of substitutive characteristics to replace the item is obtained. Numerical example illustrate how the model can be used to determine the optimal replacement policy.

• Perspectives in Nursing Science
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.77-83
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• 2009

The number of nurses per bed at acute-stage hospitals is quite low in Korea compared with other OECD countries. In order to prevent the degradation of the quality of inpatient nursing services due to insufficient nurse staffs, the national health insurance introduced the differentiated nursing care fee system. This did not work as a motive for inducing the employment of nursing staff due to insufficient cost compensation. Because of insufficient nursing staff, family members have to stay with the patient or patients have to hire a personal care attendant. This increases the burden and cost to families. For the activation of hospitals without guardians, there should be policies for raising additional nursing staff such as standardizing jobs among nursing staff, particularly between nurses and nursing assistants, setting adequate standards of staffing in nursing according to medical service, substantiating the cost of nursing under the differentiated nursing care fee system, improving the medical fee system of hospitals without guardians including health insurance payment, supplying nursing staff stably through improving their working conditions such as providing child rearing services and salary increase, clarifying the qualification of personal care attendants working at acute.stage hospitals, developing indexes for assessing the quality of nursing care services, and monitoring for the management of uniform quality.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.127-164
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• 2020

We perform an econometric assessment of the role that pharmaceutical innovation-the introduction and use of new drugs-has played in improving the health of Koreans, by investigating whether diseases for which more new drugs were launched had larger subsequent increases in longevity and smaller subsequent increases in hospitalization. Drugs launched during 1993-2012 are estimated to have increased mean age at death from all diseases by 1.71 years between 1995 and 2015 and 1.09 years between 2005 and 2015. We also estimate that new drugs increased the five-year relative survival rate from all cancers combined by 23.2 percentage points-78.5% of the total increase-between 1993-1995 and 2011-2015, and that new drugs launched during 2008-2010 reduced the number of hospital days in 2017 by 13.0 million. If the drugs launched during 2003-2012 had had no effect on other medical expenditure in 2015, the cost per life-year gained would not have exceeded 6332 USD. Therefore, even if we ignore the effect of new drugs on hospital utilization, the drugs launched during 2003-2012 were very cost-effective, overall. When reduced hospital utilization is accounted for, the evidence indicates that, in the long run, pharmaceutical innovation was cost-saving as well as life-year saving.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1396-1406
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• 2018

Lane detection is a key function in developing autonomous vehicle technology. In this paper, we propose a lane marker detection algorithm robust to environmental variation targeting low cost embedded computing devices. The proposed algorithm consists of two phases: initialization phase which is slow but has relatively higher accuracy; and the tracking phase which is fast and has the reliable performance in a limited condition. The initialization phase detects lane markers using a set of filters utilizing the various features of lane markers. The tracking phase uses Kalman filter to accelerate the lane marker detection processing. In a tracking phase, we measure the reliability of the detection results and switch it to initialization phase if the confidence level becomes below a threshold. By combining the initialization and tracking phases we achieved high accuracy and acceptable computing speed even under a low cost computing resources in which we cannot use the computing intensive algorithm such as deep learning approach. Experimental results show that the detection accuracy is about 95% on average and the processing speed is about 20 frames per second with Raspberry Pi 3 which is low cost device.

• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2016

India is largest producer of banana in the world producing 29.72 million tonnes from an area of 0.803 million ha with a productivity of 35.7 MT ha-1 and accounted for 15.48 and 27.01 per cent of the world's area and production respectively (www.nhb.gov.in). In India, Tamil Nadu leads other states both in terms of area and production followed by Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. In Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, Kurnool district had special reputation in the cultivation of banana in an area of 5765 hectares with an annual production of 2.01 lakh tonnes in the year 2012-13 and hence, it was purposively chosen for the study. On $23^{rd}$ November 2003, the Government of Andhra Pradesh has commenced a comprehensive project called 'Andhra Pradesh Micro Irrigation Project (APMIP)', first of its kind in the world so as to promote water use efficiency. APMIP is offering 100 per cent of subsidy in case of SC, ST and 90 per cent in case of other categories of farmers up to 5.0 acres of land. In case of acreage between 5-10 acres, 70 per cent subsidy and acreage above 10, 50 per cent of subsidy is given to the farmer beneficiaries. The sampling frame consists of Kurnool district, two mandals, four villages and 180 sample farmers comprising of 60 farmers each from Marginal (<1ha), Small (1-2ha) and Other (>2ha) categories. A well structured pre-tested schedule was employed to collect the requisite information pertaining to the performance of drip irrigation among the sample farmers and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model was employed to analyze the performance of drip irrigation in banana farms. The performance of drip irrigation was assessed based on the parameters like: Land Development Works (LDW), Fertigation costs (FC), Volume of water supplied (VWS), Annual maintenance costs of drip irrigation (AMC), Economic Status of the farmer (ES), Crop Productivity (CP) etc. The first four parameters are considered as inputs and last two as outputs for DEA modelling purposes. The findings revealed that, the number of farms operating at CRS are more in number in other farms (46.66%) followed by marginal (45%) and small farms (28.33%). Similarly, regarding the number of farmers operating at VRS, the other farms are again more in number with 61.66 per cent followed by marginal (53.33%) and small farms (35%). With reference to scale efficiency, marginal farms dominate the scenario with 57 per cent followed by others (55%) and small farms (50%). At pooled level, 26.11 per cent of the farms are being operated at CRS with an average technical efficiency score of 0.6138 i.e., 47 out of 180 farms. Nearly 40 per cent of the farmers at pooled level are being operated at VRS with an average technical efficiency score of 0.7241. As regards to scale efficiency, nearly 52 per cent of the farmers (94 out of 180 farmers) at pooled level, either performed at the optimum scale or were close to the optimum scale (farms having scale efficiency values equal to or more than 0.90). Majority of the farms (39.44%) are operating at IRS and only 29 per cent of the farmers are operating at DRS. This signifies that, more resources should be provided to these farms operating at IRS and the same should be decreased towards the farms operating at DRS. Nearly 32 per cent of the farms are operating at CRS indicating efficient utilization of resources. Log linear regression model was used to analyze the major determinants of input use efficiency in banana farms. The input variables considered under DEA model were again considered as influential factors for the CRS obtained for the three categories of farmers. Volume of water supplied ($X_1$) and fertigation cost ($X_2$) are the major determinants of banana farms across all the farmer categories and even at pooled level. In view of their positive influence on the CRS, it is essential to strengthen modern irrigation infrastructure like drip irrigation and offer more fertilizer subsidies to the farmer to enhance the crop production on cost-effective basis in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, India. This study further suggests that, the present era of Information Technology will help the irrigation management in the context of generating new techniques, extension, adoption and information. It will also guide the farmers in irrigation scheduling and quantifying the irrigation water requirements in accordance with the water availability in a particular season. So, it is high time for the Government of India to pay adequate attention towards the applications of 'Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its applications in irrigation water management' for facilitating the deployment of Decision Supports Systems (DSSs) at various levels of planning and management of water resources in the country.

• Asian Oncology Nursing
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.5-15
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• 2004

Purpose: This study was conducted to examine utilization of alternative therapies and understand decisional criteria related to use of alternative therapies among chemotherapy patients. Method: Data were collected from 165 cancer patients through the use of questionnaire and interviews at the chemotherapy treatment rooms of two general hospitals located in Seoul. Result: Sixty point six percent of subjects after cancer diagnosis have experience of using alternative therapies and 39.4% were still using alternative therapies. On the average the patients used alternative therapies for 9.4 months and they paid 483,000 Won per month for alternative therapies. Decisional criteria related to use of alternative therapy were curability, social group influence about alternative therapy, confidence in alternative therapy, present symptoms, and who decide on the use of alternative therapy. These variables in the alternative therapy group were statistically different from those of the hospital treatment only group. Conclusion: Utilization rate of alternative therapy among chemotherapy patients is high and cost burden is heavy. Thus, they need to be educated about utilization of alternative therapy by nurse and medical personnel.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.107-113
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• 2008

The last 10 years have seen considerable growth in the use of proprietary and special repair cements for concrete pavements in the state of Oklahoma. Many of these products lend themselves to "fast track" construction techniques that allow reopening to traffic within 12 hours or less. These products achieve high early strengths by accelerating the Portland cement hydration process for both Type I and Type III cements. In this paper, the important features of a durable repair which include strength, compatibility and bond or adhesion are first discussed. Then the development, testing and field implementation of the aforementioned materials are discussed including the learning curve required to implement a repair system, not just install a new material. Some of the materials discussed, while expensive on a cost per unit basis, hold great promise for economical use on fast track project.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.172-186
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• 2009

This study investigates the relationship between the difference of the importance of physical environment by use behavior and customer satisfaction based on the customers who have visited domestic fine dining restaurants and tries to develop a marketing strategy to promote sales in fine dining restaurant business suffering from the global economic hard times. A survey was conducted to examine the customers who were older than 20 years old and have visited a fine dining restaurant, 'Wood & Brick' and 'Benigni', located at Sejongro Junction in Seoul for 61 days from May 1 to June 30, 2009. SPSS 14.0 statistical package was used to process data. Frequency analysis, reliability test, ANOVA, and multiple regression were executed. The result shows that the difference of the importance of physical environment by use behavior depends on the number of visits per month and the cost per capita. On the relationship between physical environment and customer satisfaction, cleanness, space arrangement, charm, and accessibility have positive effects on customer satisfaction.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.64-78
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• 2009

Objectives: To research Korean oriental medical doctors' use of uninsured herbal extracts and how to bring about the insurance coverage of such herbal extracts. Methods: We surveyed Korean oriental doctors about the following issues from October 17th to November 15th, 2008: (1) Korean oriental medical doctors' knowledge about herbal extract insurance and the circumstances of oriental medicine in Korea, (2) their opinion on the coverage of currently uninsured herbal extracts and the dispensing of herbal extracts from pharmacies rather than from their clinics, (3) their use of herbal extracts, and (4) how to bring about insurance coverage of uninsured herbal extracts. Results: Over 70% of the respondents said that herbal medicine prescriptions have been reduced recently and that the existence of herbal medicine is in danger. In addition, 63.64% respondents agreed with expanding insurance coverage to include currently uninsured herbal extracts in spite of the fact that patients might have to obtain herbal extracts from pharmacies rather than from Korean oriental medical clinics. The average patient number per month of uninsured herbal extracts was 13.64 people, the average dosage was 5.64g, the average cost per day was 3,859 won, and the average prescription period was 2.65 days. Korean oriental medical doctors asked an average of 12,486 won for the medical examination-prescription fee and 3,292 won in fees for prescriptions obtained outside the hospital. If insurance coverage expands to include these herbal extracts, their usage is expected to increase 2.31 times. Conclusions: This study shows Korean oriental medical doctors' use of herbal extracts and their opinions about execution of herbal extracts' insurance. A periodic study such as this one will hopefully aid in establishing polices for uninsured herbal extracts' insurance.

• Journal of Korea Spatial Information System Society
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-12
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• 2008

Automatic semiconductor manufacture system generating transaction from 50,000 to 500,000 per a second needs storage management system processing very large data at once. A lot of storage management systems are researched for storing very large data. Existing storage management system is typical DBMS on a disk. It is difficult that the DBMS on a disk processes the 500,000 number of insert transaction per a second. So, the DBMS on main memory appeared to use memory. But it is difficultthat very large data stores into the DBMS on a memory because of limited amount of memory. In this paper we propose storage management system using insert transaction of a block unit that can process insert transaction over 50,000 and store data on low storage cost. A transaction of a block unit can decrease cost for a log and index per each tuple as transforming a transaction of a tuple unit to a block unit. Besides, the proposed system come cost to decompress all block of data because the information of each field be loss. To solve the problems, the proposed system generates the index of each compressed block to prevent reducing speed for searching. The proposed system can store very large data generated in semiconductor system and reduce storage cost.