• Korean Journal of Microbiology
• /
• v.39 no.2
• /
• pp.89-94
• /
• 2003

Respiratory viruses were isolated from patients with acute respiratory infections in Busan during 2000-2001 and characterized for their antigenic properties. In 2000, 39 out of 43 isolated viruses were identified as influenza viruses and the others were adenoviruses. Among the isolated influenza viruses,23 were type A influenza viruses and 16 were type B influenza viruses. As a result of antigenic characterization, the influenza viruses were determined to A/Sydney/05/97(H3N2)-like, A/Beijing/262/95(H1N1)-like, and B/Harbin07/94-like viruses and serotypes of the isolated adenoviruses were type 1, 2, and 5. In 2001, 56 viruses were isolated and all of the viruses were identified as influenza viruses. They were A/panama/253/99(H3N2)-like and A/Newcaledonia/2007/99(H1Nl)-like viruses when determined by their antigenic properties. The sex distribution of the patients is as follows, 14 males (32.56%),23 females (67.44％) in 2000, and 23 males (41.07%), 33 females (58.93%) in 2001. Occurrence rate was found to be higher in female patients in both years. Age distribution of patients, in 2000, 48.84％ of infection occurred in 0 to 1 year old while in 2002, 33.93% occurred among 11-20 year olds. In 2000, occurrence rate was found to be high in January and again in April and various types of viruses were isolated. These results may be useful for vaccine development and establishment of reliable epidemic data.

• Strategy21
• /
• s.41
• /
• pp.174-207
• /
• 2017

Human history shows diverse strategies for survival and prosperity. This study introduces the concept of the expansion of wealth as a key to explain choice and behavior of political entities. American scholar, -Bruce Bueno de Mesquita-, offers theoretical grounds for this concept in that the cores of selectorate theory is settled. The political entity consists of two groups, -the winning coalition that has power to replace leader and non-winning coalition that has not. Leaders implement policies serving for the welfare of winning coalition in return for their loyalty. Both internal problems caused by demographic changes and external ones of climate changes, epidemic disease, or invasion compel leader and winning coalition to adopt policies of expansion that they believe may lead to the acquisition of wealth needed to counter those problems. The process starts by occupying one spot where other entities reside and then connecting it to its own. The line between spots functions as a foothold to form a new line to other spots. By repeating this process, a space is created in which new laws and orders are instated. In the early stage of expansion, war is hardly avoidable. Once finished successfully, the political circumstance tilts to encourage economic activities in order to generate national revenues to strengthen political power of winning coalition. However, as scale of economic activities grows, so does political power of civic classes in production and trade. To gain financial support required to run the political entity, delegation of power or bestowing autonomy to non-winning coalition is inevitable. Thus, expansion is not the ultimate solution, only to prolong the political survival if succeed. Maritime power came to attractive option when overland expansion had become obstructed. It offered much greater advantages in terms of political risks and financial burdens in exploring new regions of precious commodities than overland expansion. Each political entity around world have been, for the first time in human history, connected by maritime means since 15th century. It is worthy of noting that land conditions propelled people out to sea. Political and economic situations created opportunities to exploit geographical position in pursuit of wealth. In the 21st century, we witness the operation of international winning coalition that presides over the rules of expansion. Competing for market is synonymous to the expansion in this era, the cause and aim of it has not been changed though. Energy and dollars are key factors of expansion since the end of the 2nd world war. No matter what the forms and conditions change, naval power is still the most relevant means for expansion as it retains unique characters of maneuver, flexibility, continuity, display and projection of power. The strategy for using naval power should be in line with two different approaches for expansion: Approaches to the international winning coalition by making contribution to world order, and approaches to the non-international winning coalition by enhancing military diplomatic activities. The former will serve our share of winning coalition while the latter will open chances to acquire further prosperity.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.57-66
• /
• 2017

SIR model (Kermack and McKendrik, 1927) is one of the most popular method to explain the spread of disease, In order to construct SIR model, we need to estimate transition rate parameter and recovery rate parameter. If we don't have any information of the two rate parameters, we should estimate using observed whole trajectory of pandemic of disease. Thus, with restricted observed data, we can't estimate rate parameters. In this research, we introduced Reed-Frost model (Andersson and Britton, 2000) to calculate the probability of infection in the early stage of pandemic with the restriction of data. When we have an initial number of susceptible and infected, and a final number of infected, we can apply Reed - Frost model and we can get the probability of infection. We applied the Reed - Frost model to the Vibrio cholerae pandemic data from Republic of the Cameroon and calculated the probability of infection at the early stage. We also construct SIR model using the result of Reed - Frost model.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.9 no.6
• /
• pp.77-88
• /
• 2018

"Standard Precautions" (SP) is important for nursing students as it will lead to the protection of health professionals from infectious diseases and prevention of the wide spread of epidemic illnesses. Therefore, this study investigated factors influencing nursing students' attitudes toward SP. Data were collected from 291 nursing students from May to June, in 2016. According to the results, perceived benefit (4.26) was the highest among sub factors of the health belief model, test score of SP was 78.8%, and attitude score (4 point scale) was 3.63. Perceived sensitivity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, self-efficacy, knowledge about SP showed significant correlations with the attitudes towards SP. Among sub-factors of the health beliefs, perceived sensitivity (${\beta}=.152$, p<.05) and perceived barrier (${\beta}=-.125$, p<.05) were found to influence nursing students' attitudes toward SP (F= 5.680, p<.001). Hence, it can be concluded that a convergence education program promoting health belief is needed for improving attitudes toward SP among nursing students.

• Korean journal of applied entomology
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.91-94
• /
• 1970

Tobacco wild fire caused by Pseudomonas tabaci(Wolf et Foster) Stevens is one of the most important diseases on tobacco plant in Korea. The objectives of the study were to investigate: 1) the relationships between environmental conditions and the disease development, 2) the effect of chemical spray and soil sterilization on the disease development, and 3) the proper date for chemical sprays during the growing season. The appearance of wild fire on tobacco plant was somewhat proportional to temperature and moisture in atmosphere. The first occurrence of the disease was in late part of June when the temperature was $18\;to\;20^{\circ}C$. with $65\;to\;70^{\circ}C$ of relative humidity. The disease was, then, gradually increased during early part of July with the temperature of $22\;to\;26^{\circ}C$. and $85\;to\;86^{\circ}C$ of. relative humidity. The rapid development of the disease occurred after heavy rain or storm during July. Two to three times of Phytomycin sprays(1:300-350) during the epidemic season reduced $28.3\%$ of disease damage when compared with control plot. Soil sterilization with chloropicrin. 10 liter/10a, Prior to transplanting of seedlings reduced not only wild fro damage but also the other tobacco diseases on field. The study showed that the damage caused by tobacco wild fro could be reduced with the use of early varieties and/or 2 or 3 times of Phytomycin sprays during early part of June, and soil sterilization with chloropicrin prior to transplanting.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
• /
• v.34 no.5
• /
• pp.381-392
• /
• 2018

Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. michiganesis (Cmm) is a quarantine-worthy pest in $M{\acute{e}}xico$. The implementation and validation of new technologies is necessary to reduce the time for bacterial detection in laboratory conditions and Raman spectroscopy is an ambitious technology that has all of the features needed to characterize and identify bacteria. Under controlled conditions a contagion process was induced with Cmm, the disease epidemiology was monitored. Micro-Raman spectroscopy ($532nm\;{\lambda}$ laser) technique was evaluated its performance at assisting on Cmm detection through its characteristic Raman spectrum fingerprint. Our experiment was conducted with tomato plants in a completely randomized block experimental design (13 plants ${\times}$ 4 rows). The Cmm infection was confirmed by 16S rDNA and plants showed symptoms from 48 to 72 h after inoculation, the evolution of the incidence and severity on plant population varied over time and it kept an aggregated spatial pattern. The contagion process reached 79% just 24 days after the epidemic was induced. Micro-Raman spectroscopy proved its speed, efficiency and usefulness as a non-destructive method for the preliminary detection of Cmm. Carotenoid specific bands with wavelengths at 1146 and $1510cm^{-1}$ were the distinguishable markers. Chemometric analyses showed the best performance by the implementation of PCA-LDA supervised classification algorithms applied over Raman spectrum data with 100% of performance in metrics of classifiers (sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, negative and positive predictive value) that allowed us to differentiate Cmm from other endophytic bacteria (Bacillus and Pantoea). The unsupervised KMeans algorithm showed good performance (100, 96, 98, 91 y 100%, respectively).

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.1111-1114
• /
• 2016

Opisthorchiasis is a major problem in Thailand particularly in northeast region which also has a high incidence of cholangiocarcinomas. Since health modification is needed, this quasi-experimental study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a health education program based on self-efficacy and social support in Tha Tum district, Surin province, Thailand. A total of 70 participants were purposive selected with a history of opisthorchiasis. Participants were divided into experimental and control groups, each with 35 subjects. The experimental group received a health education program composed of: (1) knowledge improvement, lectured with multimedia, demonstration, brochure, and handbook; (2) group discussion about their health beliefs, sharing their ideas and experience; and (3) social support from village health volunteers (VHV), heads of villages (HV), friends, and members of families, and public health officer (PHO). Follow-up was by PHO/VHV/HV, with provision of certificates and flasg for household that did not eat raw fish. Data were collected by predesigned questionnaires after implementation of the program for 3 months. Comparative data was analyzed by paired simple t-test and independent t-test. The results revealed that the experimental group had mean score of knowledge higher more than before the experiment (mean difference=3.1, t=3.915, 95%CI-3.3, -1.8 p-value=0.001), and the control group (mean difference=2.5, t=4.196, 95%CI=1.4, 3.6, p-value=0.001) with statistical significance. The mean scores of practice were higher than before the experiment (mean difference=4.6, t=4.331, 95%CI-5.3, -3.1, p-value=0.001), and control group (mean difference=4.4, t=6.142, 95%CI=4.2, 7.9, p-value=0.001). The mean scores of perceived susceptibility and perceived severity of opisthorchiasis, al well as perceived benefits and perceived barriers to prevention of opisthorchiasis, were also higher than before the experiment and in the control group (p-value <0.001). In conclusion, this was a successful health education program for liver fluke avoidance. Therefore, it may useful for further behavior modification in the other epidemic areas.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.18
• /
• pp.7897-7907
• /
• 2014

Background: There is paucity of studies defining the prevalence of non-communicable disease (NCD) risk factors in Saudi Arabia despite the surging epidemic of obesity, change in dietary habits and sedentary lifestyle. Objectives: This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the prevalence of NCDs risk factors among employees at King Faisal University in Al Hassa, Saudi Arabia and to determine the possible correlates for clustering of NCDs risk factors among them. Materials and Methods: All employees were invited to participate; the World Health Organization STEPwise approach was used for data collection which consisted of a personal interview to collect socio-demographic characteristics, NCD history, tobacco use, vegetables and fruit consumption, and physical activity (PA), followed by anthropometric measurements namely weight, height and waist circumference and blood pressure measurements, subjects were finally subjected to biochemical tests with determination of fasting plasma glucose, serum triglycerides, cholesterol and high density lipoproteins. Results: Of the surveyed employees (n=691), daily current smokers accounted for 22.7%. 94.9%, 95.1% and 86% consumed < 5 servings per day of vegetables, fruits and both fruits and vegetables respectively, 73% were physically inactive, 64% were overweight or obese, 22.1% had hypertension, and 21.5% were diabetics. Elevated cholesterol levels were found in 36.6%, low high density lipoproteins in 36.8%, and elevated triglycerides in 36.1%. Only 3% had no NCD risk factors, and 57.6% had ${\geq}3$ factors. Multivariate logistic regression showed that gender (being male, adjusted odds ratio 'aOR'=1.51), aged ${\geq}50$ years (aOR=3.06), < college education (aOR=1.75), current smokers (aOR=2.37), being obese (aOR=6.96) and having a low PA level (aOR=4.59) were the significant positive predictors for clustering of NCD risk factors. Conclusions: Over fifty percent of the studied university's employees had multiple (${\geq}3$) NCD risk factors. Screening and health promotion initiatives should be launched at least targeting the modifiable factors to avert the excessive risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and several types of cancers.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.14 no.11
• /
• pp.6227-6231
• /
• 2013

In the past, hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection was endemic in the general Korean population. The association of HBV infection with the occurrence of liver cancer has been well demonstrated in several epidemiologic studies. While the mortality rates of liver cancer in Korea have decreased steadily over the last decade, the presence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in mothers remains high at 3-4%, and 25.5% of these HBsAg positive mothers are positive for hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg). HBV infection caused almost a quarter of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cases and one-third of deaths from HCC. These aspects of HBV infection prompted the Korean government to create a vaccination program against HBV in the early 1980s. In 1995, the Communicable Disease Prevention Act (CDPA) was reformed, and the government increased the number of HBV vaccines in the National Immunization Program (NIP), driving the vaccination rate up to 95%. In 2000, the National Health Insurance Act (NHIA) was enacted, which provided increased resources for the prevention of perinatal HBV infection. Then in 2002, the Korean government, in conjunction with the Korean Medical Association (KMA), launched an HBV perinatal transmission prevention program. The prevalence of HBsAg in children had been high (4-5%) in the early 1980s, but had dropped to below 1% in 1995, and finally reached 0.2% in 2006 after the NIP had been implemented. After the success of the NIP, Korea finally obtained its first certification of achievement from the Western Pacific Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WPRO-WHO) for reaching its goal for HBV control. An age-period-cohort analysis showed a significant reduction in the liver cancer mortality rate in children and adolescents after the NIP had been implemented. In addition to its vaccination efforts, Korea launched the National Cancer Screening Program (NCSP) for 5 leading sites of cancer, including the liver, in 1999. As a consequence of this program, the 5-year liver cancer survival rate increased from 13.2% (1996-2000) to 23.3% (2003-2008). The development of both the primary and secondary prevention for liver cancer including HBV immunization and cancer screening has been of critical importance.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.31-39
• /
• 2014

Seasonal influenza epidemics cause 3 to 5 millions severe illness and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths worldwide each year. To prepare better controls on severe influenza epidemics, many studies have been proposed to achieve near real-time surveillance of the spread of influenza. Korea CDC publishes clinical data of influenza epidemics on a weekly basis typically with a 1-2-week reporting lag. To provide faster detection of epidemics, recently approaches using unofficial data such as news reports, social media, and search queries are suggested. Collection of such data is cheap in cost and is realized in near real-time. This research aims to develop regression models for early detecting the outbreak of the seasonal influenza epidemics in Korea with keyword query information provided from the Naver (Korean representative portal site) trend services for PC and mobile device. We selected 20 key words likely to have strong correlations with influenza-like illness (ILI) based on literature review and proposed a logistic regression model and a multiple regression model to predict the outbreak of ILI. With respect of model fitness, the multiple regression model shows better results than logistic regression model. Also we find that a mobile-based regression model is better than PC-based regression model in estimating ILI percentages.