• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.376-380
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• 2015

Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) for highway projects is known as an effective analytical technique that uses economic principles to evaluate long-term alternative investment options, especially for comparing the values of alternative pavement design structures and construction strategies. In the Unites States, the 2012 Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21^st Century Act (MAP-21) amended the United States Code to mandate that the United States Government Accountability Office (GOA) conducts a study of the best practices for calculating life-cycle costs and benefits for the federally funded highway projects in 2013. The RealCost 2.5CA program was developed and adapted as an official LCCA tool to comply with regulatory requirements for California state highway projects in 2013. Utilization of this California-customized LCCA software helps Caltrans to achieve substantial economic benefits (agency cost and road user cost savings) for highway projects. Proper implementation of LCCA for roadway construction and rehabilitation would deliver noticeable savings of agency's roadway maintenance cost especially in developing counties where financial difficulties exist.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.295-305
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• 2010

Purpose: This study was conducted to evaluate the economic efficiency of a community-based nursing care center to help policy makers determine whether or not to invest in similar facilities. Methods: The subjects were 101 elderly people over 65 years who participated in a health management program from February 1 to July 31, 2007. Direct cost was estimated with center operations cost, medical cost for out-patients and pharmacy cost. Indirect cost was measured by transportation cost. Direct benefit was calculated by saved medical cost for out-patients, saved pharmacy cost, saved transportation cost, and reducing hospital charges. Indirect benefit was estimated with prevention of severe complications. Economic efficiency was evaluated by cost-benefit ratio and net benefit. Results: Operating a community-based nursing care center was found to be cost-effective. Specifically, the cost of operating the center evaluated here was estimated at 135 million won while the benefit was estimated at 187 million won. Benefit-cost ratio was 1.38. Conclusion: The Community-based nursing care center that was described here could be a useful health care delivery system for reducing medical expenditures.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.220-224
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• 2012

The analysis on the bus bar effect is conducted to develop a cost effective 24kV/2,000A switchgear. The temperature enclosures and bus bars could rise due to several heat sources such as eddy current losses and copper losses. Therefore, a study on the characteristics of the electric field intensity and electromagnetic loss according to the bus bar size in a bus bar compartment is essential to design a electrically reliable high voltage switchgear. It is investigated that the electromagnetic influence to the temperature rising and the dielectric stability according to various bus bar sizes by using finite element method(FEM). The electric field intensity and electromagnetic loss according to various bus bar sizes are calculated to design a reliable and a high voltage switchgear. As results, it is found that the electromagnetic loss and the dielectric stability of bus bar could be determined by a bus bar size. It means that a cost effective 24kV/2,000A high voltage switchgear could be developed by selecting the proper size of a bus bar. Also, it is recognized that the electromagnetic characteristics according to various bus bar sizes in order to design an electrically stable high voltage switchgear when the enclosure size is determined as a fixed value. Futhermore, studies on the various nominal voltage class and bus bar sizes will be conducted to develop a cost effective high voltage switchgear.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.67 no.2
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• pp.331-336
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• 2018

In this paper, the life cycle cost of the auxiliary power unit in the conventional 8200 series electric locomotive is evaluated and an effective life cycle cost reduction method is sought. For this, a life cycle cost evaluation model was proposed using IEC 60300-3-3 standard. As a result of analysis, material cost which accounted for a large percentage of preventive maintenance cost, accounted for 64% of total cost, and breakdown maintenance cost was as high as 27%. Except for the cost of preventive maintenance, the breakdown maintenance cost ratio was the highest. In order to reduce the LCC of the auxiliary power unit(APU) of the 8200 series in the future, it is necessary to reduce the material cost in case of development and to secure the high reliability according to the parts manufacturing so as to minimize the maintenance cost.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.19
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• pp.8229-8237
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• 2014

Background: Organized cervical screening has decreased the incidence of cervical cancer. However, screening strategies vary in different countries. Objectives: We performed a systematic review to evaluate the economic aspects of different screening methods. Materials and Methods: We searched databases and then data were abstracted from each study. We evaluated articles based on different types of screening tests as well as screening age and intervals, and using incremental cost effectiveness ratio via calculating quality adjusted life years (QALY), or life years gained (LYG) per cost. We compared the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of each study using GDP per capita. Furthermore, we compared national guidelines with recommendations of cost-effectiveness studies in different countries. Results: A total of 21 articles met our criteria, of which 19 studies showed that HPV DNA testing, 13 suggested an age of 30 years or more, and 10 papers concluded that at least a 5-year or longer interval were the most cost-effective strategies. In some countries, the national guidelines did not match the recommendations of the cost-effectiveness studies. Conclusions: HPV testing, starting at age 30 years or older and repeated at 5-year or longer intervals, is the most cost-effective strategy in any setting. Closer collaboration with health economists is required during guideline development.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.1233-1240
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• 2014

For the last three decades after the advent of the Toffoli gate in 1980, while many reversible circuit syntheses have been presented reversible embedding methods onto suitable reversible functions, only a few proposed direct irreversible-to-reversible mapping methods without reversible embedding. In this paper we present two effective policies to reduce the gate cost and complexity for the existing direct reversible mapping methods without reversible embedding. In order to develop new cost reduction policies we consider the cost influence of Toffoli module according to NOT gate arrangement in classical circuits. From this we deduced an inverse proportional property between inverting input numbers of classical AND/OR gates and reversible Toffoli module cost based on a fact - the inverting inputs of classical AND(OR) gates increase(decrease) the Toffoli module cost. We confirm the applications of the inverting input rearrangement and maximum fan-out policies preceding direct reversible mapping will be effective method to improve the reversible Toffoli module cost and complexity with the parallel using of the fan-out and supercell ones.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.357-367
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• 2019

Background: This study evaluated the cost-effectiveness of 21 different national dyslipidemia screening strategies according to total cholesterol (TC) cutoff and screening interval among 40 years or more for the primary prevention of coronary heart disease over a lifetime in Korea, from a societal perspective. Methods: A decision tree was used to estimate disease detection with the 21 different screening strategies, while a Markov model was used to model disease progression until death, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and costs from a Korea societal perspective. Results: The results showed that the strategy with TC 200 mg/dL and 4-year interval cost \4,625,446 for 16.65105 QALYs per person and strategy with TC 200 mg/dL and 3-year interval cost \4,691,771 for 16.65164 QALYs compared with \3,061,371 for 16.59877 QALYs for strategy with no screening. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of strategy with TC 200 mg/dL and 4-year interval versus strategy with no screening was \29,916,271/QALY. At a Korea willingness-to-pay threshold of \30,500,000/QALY, strategy with TC 200 mg/dL and 4-year interval is cost-effective compared with strategy with no screening. Sensitivity analyses showed that results were robust to reasonable variations in model parameters. Conclusion: In this study, revised national dyslipidemia screening strategy with TC 200 mg/dL and 4-year interval could be a cost-effective option. A better understanding of the Korean dyslipidemia population may be necessary to aid in future efforts to improve dyslipidemia diagnosis and management.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.3753-3757
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• 2016

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate whether electrochemotherapy is a clinically and cost-effective treatment option against skin tumors. Materials and Methods: We performed an analysis of the current literature based on database searches in PubMed/MEDLINE and we included articles till July 2012. Terms used for the search were 'electrochemotherapy', 'skin cancer', 'recurrence', and 'cutaneous and subcutaneous tumors'. Only papers published in English were included. In addition, we performed an analysis of the cost effectiveness of the method. Results: The combination of physics and chemistry is the foundation for electrochemotherapy and its efficacy, independent of the tumor histology. Clinical data showed that ECT is well tolerated and can be used in difficult cases without other available treatment options. The analysis also showed that the treatment is feasible and cost-effective. Conclusions: Electrochemotherapy is a clinically efficient safe and cost-effective treatment and clinicians should not hesitate to use it as alternative therapeutic modality or as palliative treatment.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.170-175
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• 2012

In this paper, a procedure using a genetic algorithm (GA) and a heuristic local search (HLS) is proposed for solving facility rearrangement problem (FRP). FRP is a decision problem for stopping/running of facilities and integration of stopped facilities to running facilities to maximize the production capacity of running facilities under the cost constraint. FRP is formulated as an integer programming model for maximizing the total production capacity under the constraint of the total facility operating cost. In the cases of 90 percent of cost constraint and more than 20 facilities, the previous solving method was not effective. To find effective alternatives, this solving procedure using a GA and a HLS is developed. Stopping/running of facilities are searched by GA. The shifting the production operation of stopped facilities into running facilities is searched by HLS, and this local search is executed for one individual in this GA procedure. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure using a GA and HLS is demonstrated by numerical experiment.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.838-846
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• 2012

This paper proposes a cost-effective hybrid-type power budget extender (PBEx) that can provide a high power budget of over 45 dB in an asymmetric 10-Gb/s Ethernet passive optical network (10/1G-EPON). The hybrid-type 10/1G-EPON PBEx comprises a central office terminal (COT) and remote terminal (RT) module supporting four channels and uses a coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) technology between the COT and RT for a reduction of fiber cost and efficient access network design. The proposed 10/1G-EPON PBEx can provide over a 40-km reach and 128-way split per CWDM wavelength with no modification of a legacy 10/1G-EPON system and can satisfy the error-free service in $10^{10}$ packet transmission.