• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.12-20
• /
• 2005

Purpose: Helicobacter pylori infection is known to be associated with acute or chronic abdominal pain and upper gastrointestinal bleeding in children. This study was performed to analyze the gastroduodenoscopic findings and the efficacy of triple therapy with omeprazole, amoxicillin and clarithromycin between one and two weeks of duration in children with H. pylori infection. Methods: We have assessed retrospectively 60 patients presented with acute or chronic abdominal pain or upper gastrointestinal bleeding. H. pylori infection was confirmed by endoscopic biopsy and rapid urease test. Out of 60 patients, 30 patients were treated with a combination of omeprazole, amoxicillin, and clarithromycin for one week, and the other 30 patients were treated for two weeks with the same medication. Efficacy of treatment was assessed 4 weeks after the termination of treatment by using the $^{13}C$ urea breath test. Results: The 60 patients with the complaint of diffuse abdominal pain, epigastric pain, vomiting or hematemesis were included in this study. One-week treatment group (group I) consisted of 30 patients (14 male, 16 female) with mean age of $11.6{\pm}2.67years$. Two-week treatment group (group II) consisted of 30 patients (11 male, 19 female) with mean age of $10.7{\pm}4.17years$. In group I, H pylori were eradicated in 26 out of 30 patients (86.7%). In group II, H. pylori were eradicated in 26 out of 30 children (86.7%). Both groups did $^{13}C$ urea breath test after 4 weeks after termination of the triple therapy. The eradication rates were same in both groups as 86.7%, 26 out of 30 patients in each group. The results of endoscopy were nodular gastritis 26 (43.3%), erosive gastritis 10 (16.7%), hemorrhagic gastritis 7 (11.7%), gastric ulcer 2 (3.3%) and normal finding 15 (25.0%). Conclusion: In this study, the nodular gastritis was most common endoscopic findings with H. pylori positive patients. The eradication rate of H. pylori with omeprazole, amoxicillin and clarithromycin was 86.7% and it would be highly effective as primary treatment with no significant differences in the eradication rate between one-week and two-week treatment groups. However, we should need more long-term follow-up data.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.1-25
• /
• 2020

In this paper, we suggest an application system architecture which provides accurate, fast and efficient automatic gasometer reading function. The system captures gasometer image using mobile device camera, transmits the image to a cloud server on top of private LTE network, and analyzes the image to extract character information of device ID and gas usage amount by selective optical character recognition based on deep learning technology. In general, there are many types of character in an image and optical character recognition technology extracts all character information in an image. But some applications need to ignore non-of-interest types of character and only have to focus on some specific types of characters. For an example of the application, automatic gasometer reading system only need to extract device ID and gas usage amount character information from gasometer images to send bill to users. Non-of-interest character strings, such as device type, manufacturer, manufacturing date, specification and etc., are not valuable information to the application. Thus, the application have to analyze point of interest region and specific types of characters to extract valuable information only. We adopted CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) based object detection and CRNN (Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network) technology for selective optical character recognition which only analyze point of interest region for selective character information extraction. We build up 3 neural networks for the application system. The first is a convolutional neural network which detects point of interest region of gas usage amount and device ID information character strings, the second is another convolutional neural network which transforms spatial information of point of interest region to spatial sequential feature vectors, and the third is bi-directional long short term memory network which converts spatial sequential information to character strings using time-series analysis mapping from feature vectors to character strings. In this research, point of interest character strings are device ID and gas usage amount. Device ID consists of 12 arabic character strings and gas usage amount consists of 4 ~ 5 arabic character strings. All system components are implemented in Amazon Web Service Cloud with Intel Zeon E5-2686 v4 CPU and NVidia TESLA V100 GPU. The system architecture adopts master-lave processing structure for efficient and fast parallel processing coping with about 700,000 requests per day. Mobile device captures gasometer image and transmits to master process in AWS cloud. Master process runs on Intel Zeon CPU and pushes reading request from mobile device to an input queue with FIFO (First In First Out) structure. Slave process consists of 3 types of deep neural networks which conduct character recognition process and runs on NVidia GPU module. Slave process is always polling the input queue to get recognition request. If there are some requests from master process in the input queue, slave process converts the image in the input queue to device ID character string, gas usage amount character string and position information of the strings, returns the information to output queue, and switch to idle mode to poll the input queue. Master process gets final information form the output queue and delivers the information to the mobile device. We used total 27,120 gasometer images for training, validation and testing of 3 types of deep neural network. 22,985 images were used for training and validation, 4,135 images were used for testing. We randomly splitted 22,985 images with 8:2 ratio for training and validation respectively for each training epoch. 4,135 test image were categorized into 5 types (Normal, noise, reflex, scale and slant). Normal data is clean image data, noise means image with noise signal, relfex means image with light reflection in gasometer region, scale means images with small object size due to long-distance capturing and slant means images which is not horizontally flat. Final character string recognition accuracies for device ID and gas usage amount of normal data are 0.960 and 0.864 respectively.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.65-96
• /
• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.44 no.1
• /
• pp.154-161
• /
• 1997

Background : Although the long term adverse effects of cigarette smoking on health are well known, the acute possible detrimental effects of smoking on pulmonary or cardiovascular function, especially when these systems are stressed by the metabolic demands of exercise, have not been well studied The purpose of this study is to determine the acute action of cigarette smoking on cardiopulmonary function under stress. Method : Twenty -one healthy smoking subjects were studied. Before exrecise testing, history taking, physical examination and baseline studies, including CBC, chest PA, PFT and EKG, were done. The subjects performed an incremental bicycle exercise test to exhaustion on two occasions, one without smoking and the other after smoking 5 cigarettes/h for 2 hours. All indices of P.F.T. and bicycle ergometry were compared between before and after smoking. Results : 1. $VO_2$max and $O_2$ pulse showed significant decrease in smoking day. 2. Although there were no significant differences, anaerobic threshold showed a tendency of decrease and HRmax showed that of increase in smoking day. 3. P.F.T. and respiratory indices showed no significant change io smoking day. Conclusion : Cigarette smoking has immediate adverse effect, especially on the cardiovascular system rather than the respiratory system. These results would be due to the effect of elevated HbCO and/or impaired blood flow in response to the exercise stimulus.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
• /
• v.42 no.1
• /
• pp.1-12
• /
• 2017

Objectives: In this study, we analyzed vision statements of the 6th community health plan of local government in Korea. Methods: We examined vision statements letters, missions and strategy plans, and long-term missions of 6th community health plans of 229 local government in Korea. We also analyzed the numbers of vision letters, sentence examination, word frequency, each vision statement with frequency analysis, chi-square test, and one-way ANOVA. Results: Among 229 local government, 172(75.1%) of local government had the number of letters (Korean) less than 17 of vision statements, and there were a significant differences according to type of community health centers (p<0.05). Figuration (37.1%) were the most used in an expression of vision statement sentence, and special characters (43.2%) were the most used language except Korean. The most commonly used words of vision statement in order of frequency were 'health', 'happiness', 'with', 'citizen', 'city', '100 years old' etc. Chungcheong provinces and Daejeon metropolitan city had a highest score in directionality on phrase evaluation, and there were a significant differences according to regional classes of local government (p<0.01). Gyeongsang provinces, Ulsan, Daegu, and Busan metropolitan cities had a highest score in future orientation and sharing possibilities on phrase evaluation, and there were a significant differences according to regional classes of local government (p<0.01). Conclusions: Vision is one of the most important component of community health plan. We need more detailed 'vision statement guideline' and the community health care centers of local government should effort to make more clear and complete their vision.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Inherited Metabolic disease
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.93-101
• /
• 2016

Purpose: McArdle disease, glycogen storage disease type V (GSD V), is one of the most common adolescent-onset glycogen storage diseases. It is caused by recessive mutations in PYGM encoding myophosphorylase, which is critical to glycogen metabolism. Since only a few korean patients have been reported, we will observe the clinical and genetic features of three korean patients with McArdle disease. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of three patients with genetically confirmed McArdle disease, including the results of forearm ischemic exercise test, electromyogram, nerve conduction velocity, muscle biopsy, and PYGM analysis in peripheral leukocytes. Results: All three cases were males and their age of symptom onset was 12, 5, 14 years old, respectively. A high basal level of serum creatine kinase was noted in all three patients. They experienced the recurrent episodes of rhabdomyolysis, but second wind phenomenon was not definite. In muscle biopsy, subsarcolemmal space vacuoles including periodic acid schiff stained materials were found in two patients, while no evidence of glycogen storage disease was found in the other. A total of five different mutations, $p.Arg50^*$, p.Trp798Arg, $p.Arg50^*$, p.Glu779del, $p.Asp511Thrfs^*28$ and p.Phe710del, were found in three patients. Avoidance of isometric exercise, aerobic exercise and glucose intake before each exercise were recommended for all patients. Conclusion: The three Korean patients with McArdle disease showed the typical manifestations of the condition. The most mutations were private. Therefore, identification of more cases with long-term follow-up will be required to understand the clinical and genetic features of this disease among Korean population.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
• /
• v.37 no.1
• /
• pp.73-86
• /
• 2004

In order to estimate the post-ingestion bioavailability of heavy metals and to assess the risk of adverse health effects on human exposure to toxic heavy metals, environmental geochemical surveys were undertaken around the Dogok Au-Ag-Cu and the Hwacheon Au-Ag-Pb-Zn mine sites. Human risk assessment of toxic heavy metals was performed with the results of the SBET(simple bioavailability extraction test) analysis for soil and chemical analytical data for crop plant and water. Arsenic and other heavy metals were highly elevated in tailings from the Dogok(218 As mg/kg, 90.2 Cd mg/kg, 3,053 Cu mg/kg, 9,473 Pb mg/kg, 14,500 Zn mg/kg) and the Hwacheon(72 As mg/kg, 12.4 Cd mg/kg. 578 Pb mg/kg, 1,304 Zn mg/kg) mines. These significant concentrations can impact on soils and waters around the tailing dumps. The quantities of As, Cd and Zn extracted from paddy soils in the Hwacheon mine using the SBET analysis were 55.4%, 20.8% and 26.4% bioavailability, respectively, and for farmland soils in the Dogok mine, 40.8%, 37.6% and 33.0% bioavailability, respectively. From the results of human risk assessment, HI(Hazard Index) value exceeded 1.0 for As in the Hwacheon mine and for Cd in the Dogok mine. Thus, toxic risks for As and Cd exist via exposure(ingestion) of contaminated soil, water and rice grain in these mine sites. The cancer risk for As by the consumption of rice and groundwater in the Hwacheon mine area was 8E-4 and 1E-4, respectively. This risk level exceeds the acceptable risk(1 in 100,000) for regulatory purpose. Therefore, regular ingestion of locally grown rice and ground-water by the local population can pose a potential health threat due to long-term arsenic exposure.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
• /
• v.81 no.2
• /
• pp.156-163
• /
• 1992

Pinus koraiensis (Pk), P. rigida (Pr) and P. rigida ${\times}$ P. taeda (Pr. t) seedlings in a bare-rooted nursery were artificially inoculated with Pisolithus tinctorius (Pt) and Thelephora terrestris (Tt) to test long term effects of ectomycorrhizal inoculation on host growth. Mycelial inocula of Pt and Tt were mass-cultured in vermiculite-peatmoss mixture and introduced into fumigated nursery soil before seed sowing. Bare-rooted, inoculated seedlings at one to four years of age were outplanted to the field with $P_2O_5$ content of 25 ppm in soil. At the time of outplanting, Pk seedlings(4 years old), Pr seedlings(2 years old), and Pr.t seedlings(1 year old) all infected by Pt were significantly taller by 28%. 26%, and 77%, respectively, than controlled seedlings infected by natural population of mycorrhizal fungi in the non-fumigated plot. Ten years after inoculation or six to nine years after outplanting, Pk seedlings inoculated with Pt were significantly taller by 9% Pr.t seedlings significantly taller by 18%, and Pr slightly Caller by 2%(not significant) than controlled seedlings, suggesting that the stimulatory effect of Pt on host growth gradually declined or became minimal after outplanting. Tt failed to stimulate host growth either in the nursery or in the field, and the survival rate of outplanted seedlings was not different among fungal treatments. Considerable loss of the infected root system during lifting the seedlings for outplanting would be the primary cause of the reduced effect of Pt in the field. Pt infected more than 90% of the fine roots in the fumigated nursery during the first growing season, but Pt assumed to fail to compete successfully with natural population of ectomycorrhizal fungi in the field. It is necessary to select other mycorrhizal fungi which adapt well in both nursery and field.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.166-175
• /
• 2004

Purpose: Present study has been undertaken to determine the distribution of various renal diseases causing asymptomatic hematuria in children and to evaluate the benefit of doing renal biopsy in these children. Methods: Study population consisted of 146 children with asymptomatic primary hematuria who had been admitted to the pediatric departmen of Kyungpook National University Hospital for the past 4 years from 1999 to 2002. In 122 out of 146 cases, renal biopsy was performed percutaneously and in 24 out of 146 cases, diagnosed as idiopathic hypercalciuria, oral calcium loading test was performed. Results: The age$(mean{\pm}SD)$ at onset or discovery of hematuria of the 146 children in-cluded in this study was $8.0\pm3.2$ years and the proportion of boys and girls was 54.8% and 45.2%, respectively. In 76 out of 146 cases(52%), asymptomatic hematuria was first diagnosed by school urinalysis screening. The proportion of histopathologic findings based on 122 biopsies was as follows : Thin Glomerular Basement Membrane(TGBM) 73 cases(50%): IgA nephropathy 20 cases(14%): Alport syndrome 6 cases(4%), Membranous Glomerulonephropathy(MGN) 4 cases(3%): Membranoproliferative Glomerulonephritis(MPGN) 2 cases(1%); IgA nephropathy with TGBM 3 cases(2%): 'normal' glomeruli 14 cases(10%) Twenty four cases (16%) were diagnosed as idiopathic hypercalciuria. During follow-up periods, 15% of 146 cases became hematuria-free and renal function did not deteriorate in any cases. Conclusion: Unless hematuric children manifest poor prognostic indicators for renal survival, we would recommend long term regular follow-up prior to a renal biopsy.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.150-159
• /
• 2001

Purpose : We need to reconsider booster vaccination schedule of Japanese encephalitis vaccination. To do that we evaluate the long-term immunogenicity and the incidence of adverse events with inactivated mouse brain derived Nakayama Japanese encephalitis vaccine. Methods : We tested neutalizing antibody for 311 elementary school students by plaque reduction neutralizing test(PRNT) at USAMC-AFRIMS(United States Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science/Department of Virology). We evaluated vaccine related adverse events by spontaneous reporting prospectively among 15,487 vaccinees who were vaccinated at public health center and 2,277 elementary school students who were immunized previously by a questionnaire and school health record. Results : According to the time interval from the last booster injection of 311 children, PRNT antibody titers gradually decreased as the interval increased; 239 mIU/mL, 188 mIU/mL, 134 mIU/mL, 49 mIU/mL each at 6, 18, 30, 42 months after the last booster injection. The seropositivity rates were 98%, 99%, 95.6%, 71.4% each at 6, 18, 30, 42 months after the last booster injection. There were 21(0.13%) cases with systemic reactions among 15,487 vaccinees who had visited the hospital by prospective passive reporting system at public health center. According to the questionnaires and school health records in elementary school students, local induration and pain were 17.4% and 14.8%, respectively. Systemic reactions including fever, vomiting, rash were reported in few cases. Conclusion : Biannual booster vaccination that has been recommended so far should not be necessary. Surveillance for adverse events with inactivated mouse brain derived Nakayama vaccine should be strengthened to better assess the number of cases and reactions associated with immunization.