• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.141-148
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• 2006

Objectives : We wanted to evaluate the medical underutilization for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) among Korean elderly men and we wanted to determine their associated factors. Methods : This study was conducted on 239 men with LUTS and 116 men with BPH who were compatible with the diagnostic criteria from a total of 641 participants. These participants were over 50 years old and they were randomly chosen in a community-based study for estimating the prevalence of BPH. Using a self-reported questionnaire, we surveyed the sociodemographics, health status, quality of life, lower urinary tract symptoms, medical utilization and reasons for not seeking treatment. Results : Only 27.6% of the men with LUTS and 31.0% of the men with BPH reported having visited a doctor for urinary symptoms. The reasons for not visiting a doctor were, in order of responses from the group with LUTS: 'considered the symptoms as a part of the normal ageing process', 'not enough time to visit a doctor', 'financial difficulty' and 'the symptoms were not severe or bothersome'. Regarding BPH, the responses were the same as those of the group with LUTS however, 'financial difficulty' placed second. Among the men with experience of visiting a doctor for urinary symptoms, 33.3% of those with LUTS and 28.1% of those with BPH were not treated. The most common reason in both groups was 'the symptoms were not severe to be treated'. On a multiple logistic regression analysis, the larger size household (odds ratio (OR) 3.03, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.40-6.54) and an unsatisfactory quality of life related with urinary symptoms (OR 2.98, 95% CI=1.23-7.21) were associated with medical utilization in the group of LUTS. For BPH, the current employment status was related with the medical utilization (OR 2.80, 95% CI=1.10-7.11), in addition to the larger size household (OR 3.24, 95% CI=1.14-9.21). Conclusions : Many men with urinary symptoms do not visit a doctor. This medical underutilization for people with LUTS and BPH may be associated with economic status in Korea.

• Korean System Dynamics Review
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.5-23
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• 2009

Transportation systems around the world are difficult to maintain sustainability that, in a broad sense, is the capacity to endure. By connecting Entropy theory and systems thinking, we find the current problems and seek alternative plans. Distortions of the current transportation system to improve individual's ease and increasing traffic congestion, impose us the heavy energy consumption and will make increase whole entropy. UNEP reports are presented following three reasons that undermine the sustainabillity. The first one is that the prevalent traffic system highlight benefits of accessibility than benefits of mobility, the second, deteriorate excessive energy consumption, and the last reason is that personal vehicles has inhibited the use of public transportation. Alternative ideas to enhance the sustainable transportation system are these; (1) changeover from 'Ease of movement' to 'space efficiency', (2) evolving the smart traffic system instead of the construction or expansion of the road and (3) creating more comfortable the use of mass transportation. In addition, there are another ways that encouraging modal shift that increase traffic of goods, transport over railway lines and waterways, decongesting transport corridors and elevating technology to improve public transportation. The most importantly, we converse our cognitive process to be willing to enjoy uncomfortable and annoying life.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.265-293
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• 2005

This research examines the relationship between the characteristics of Government S&T Research Institutes (GRI) and their institutional performance evaluation system. First, based on Kaplan & Norton (1992) Balanced Scorecard Model, six perspectives suitable to Korean GRI are derived. Second, personnel who works on evaluation job classified current performance measures into the six perspectives. Analyzing comparative weights of individual perspectives, the characteristics of performance evaluation systems among institutes are derived and compared with their missions. The results are as follows: First, GRI evaluation systems put most weight on the customer perspective and least weight on the financial perspective. This result complies with Korean GRI's missions and strategies as well as findings of foreign cases. Second, Basic-technology GRI group relatively more priotizes long-term customer perspective, while Applied-technology GRI Group relatively more priotizes short-term customer perspective. Public-technology GRI Group is located in the middle in terms of priority of customer perspectives. Third, for three yews (2000-2002), performance measure weights of Basic-technology Group are changed much less than those of the other two groups. Further research are needed for reasons of drastic changes for Applied-technology and Public-technology groups and some abnormally high and low measure weights.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.237-245
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• 2008

Purpose: The objectives of this study were to conduct assessments of health education status and needs in health education programs in child daycare centers. Methods: An 11-subject instrument was developed to assess health education for children. The Cronbach's alpha of the importance and implementation were found to be .904 and .862. A survey was conducted by mail using a sample of 337 teachers who were working in 71 child daycare centers in a district in Seoul. Results: 26.5% of the respondents reported that they teach health education regularly, and 19.3% of them reported never teach health education. Deficits of material, knowledge, and skill were the principal reasons for difficulties in health education. All of the respondents identified a need for health education, and also that health professionals are the most appropriate people to teach health education. The priorities of needed health education were, in order: sex education, information on community health, and mental health. Conclusion: Health education programs for preschoolers should be developed by health professionals. In health education programs, environmental health should be included, as well as health and illness education.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Rural Architecture
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.29-36
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• 2009

The recently research shows that the many tourists of Suanbo hot spring waters haven't satisfied the service. These reasons due to that they did not properly consider the satisfaction of tourists' services and index. However, satisfaction level of hot spring waters tourists is interacted complicatedly with various factors, the interactions are not easily identified. A structural equations model is adopted to capture the complex relationships among variables. In the model estimation, we used 140 survey data of Suanbo hot spring waters tourists. The SEM with several factors mentioned above as exogenous variables shows that they have complex and strong relationships. As results of a SEM, it was shown that variables influencing in pleasance are surrounding scenery, clean condition inside hot springs and congestion for use in satisfaction level most. Secondly, in case of kindness, attitudes of employees influence in satisfaction level most, followed by attitudes of residents and kindness of employees. Thirdly, in case of information, it was shown guidance on internal roads influencing in satisfaction level most, followed by guidance on owner drivers, guidance on surrounding tourist attractions and guidance on public transportation. Finally, a variable influencing in accessibility most is satisfaction level of public transportation.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.219-229
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to introduce the web database for healthy city Wonju that contains healthy city indicators and materials. It has provided diverse information to public officers who are working on healthy city projects and citizens for monitoring and evaluating the projects, effectively. The web database was made on 2006 and was updated on 2009. The new Web database system was designed for supporting that the staffs of healthy city can manage all data update by themselves. The new Web database encompasses more recent information about health city projects. After identifying users' needs and reasons for modifying the fields of data, we added new indicators to the Web database. Some redundant indicators were deleted based on users' requests. The Web database quality evaluations were performed by using 13 quality evaluations constructs. Through all 13 constructs, less than 20% of study subjects felt that it did not satisfy their needs or expectations. Well developed and verified contents of the Web database for healthy city are very essential and important. The database makes healthy city projects alive by managing and sharing healthy city related data and indicators effectively.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.759-763
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• 2015

The breeding of domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) for human consumption has a long tradition in China. Infections that can affect the production of meat or even be transmitted from animals to humans are important to monitor, especially for public health reasons as well as for their impact on animal health. Thus, a total of 1,132 domestic rabbit sera from 4 regions in China were collected for serological screening for Encephalitozoon cuniculi and for Toxoplasma gondii by ELISA and modified agglutination test (MAT), respectively. Antibodies to E. cuniculi were detected in 248/1,132 (21.9%) sera tested while antibodies against T. gondii revealed a seroprevalence of 51/1,132 (4.5%). We believe that the present results are of epidemiological implications and public health importance due to the acknowledged susceptibility of humans to E. cuniculi and T. gondii infections. Therefore, routine screening tests of domestic rabbits are proposed considering the zoonotic potential of these parasites.

• Architectural research
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.95-99
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• 2017

Recently, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore carbon emission implication of building operations due to the significant rate of energy usage in buildings. In the building sector, our normal expectation implies that large building floor area induces more greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. In this research, the correlation between building total floor areas and GHG emission was explored by simple linear regression and analyzing the yielded residuals for confirming this seemingly obvious conjecture. By looking at the generated regression lines drawn based on the data sets representing public facilities in Ontario, Canada, we were able to confirm that carbon emission rate shows a proportional increase or decrease depending on the total floor area of buildings as has been implied as a conjecture. Some buildings were found to emit significantly large and small amount of GHG, and we addressed potential reasons why those buildings show the deviation from the confirmed proportional interrelation between a building's total floor area and the amount of GHG emission.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.268-291
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• 2014

Social media is becoming more and more important in social movements. This study, adopting the web mining approach, attempts to investigate how social media, Facebook in particular, functioned in the "May 25 Protest" and the "May 27 Protest", two movements which broke out in Macao on 25 and 27 May 2014, respectively, against the Retirement Package Bill. In the two protests, Macao residents deployed Facebook to share information and motivated people's participation. Twelve events (181,106 people invited) and 36 groups/pages (41,266 members) related on Facebook were examined. Results showed that the information flow on Facebook fluctuated in accordance with the event development in reality. Multiple patterns of manifestation, such as video of adopted news or songs, designed profile (protest icon), original ironic pictures, self-organized clubs by undergraduates and white T-shirts as a symbol, among others, appeared online and interacted with offline actions. It was also found that social media assisted the information diffusion and provided persuasive reasons for netizens to join the movement. Social media helped to expand movement influence in providing a platform for diversified performances for actions taken in a protest, which could express and develop core and consistent movement repertoire.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.139-149
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• 2011

This study focuses on design tendencies in office buildings of public institutions after tightening up Korea's building energy performance criteria. Important office design criteria and recommendations pay attention to the issues such as building orientation, greening buildings, building form, space and envelop by intensifying building energy performance related laws, government guidelines and evaluation systems. The design tendencies explored in this research are as follows. Office buildings mainly face south and have various types of indoor and roof green spaces not for ecological reasons but for the rest. Building depth becomes thinner and atria are inserted into office buildings to improve daylighting and natural ventilation. Building cores are located on north or west and east sides acting as buffer spaces to reduce heat loss and to block solar radiation. Office building envelop design includes various creative ideas to control or utilize solar energy as like three dimensional or double structured skin and window size variation to cope with the intensity of solar radiation. Further, solar energy generation systems are integrated with building component such as roofs, sun screens and windows. This study demonstrates that government's reinforcement of the building energy performance criteria drives the change in design methods and approach.