• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.73 no.2
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• pp.100-106
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• 2012

Background: There are a plethora of literatures showing that high-intensity intensive care unit (ICU) physician staffing is associated with reduced ICU mortality. However, it is not widely used in ICUs because of limited budgets and resources. We created a critical care team (CCT) to improve outcomes in an open general ICU and evaluated its effectiveness based on patients' outcomes. Methods: We conducted this prospective, observational study in an open, general ICU setting, during a period ranging from March of 2009 to February of 2010. The CCT consisted of five teaching staffs. It provided rapid medical services within three hours after calls or consultation. Results: We analyzed the data of 830 patients (157 patients of the CCT group and 673 patients of the non-CCT one). Patients of the CCT group presented more serious conditions than those of the non-CCT group (acute physiologic and chronic health evaluation II [APACHE II] 20.2 vs. 15.8, p<0.001; sequential organ failure assessment [SOFA] 5.5 vs. 4.6, p=0.003). The CCT group also had significantly more patients on mechanical ventilation than those in the non-CCT group (45.9% vs. 23.9%, p<0.001). Success rate of weaning was significantly higher in the CCT group than that of the non-CCT group (61.1% vs. 44.7%, p=0.021). On a multivariate logistic regression analysis, the increased ICU mortality was associated with the older age, non-CCT, higher APACHE II score, higher SOFA score and mechanical ventilation (p<0.05). Conclusion: Although the CCT did not provide full-time services in an open general ICU setting, it might be associated with a reduced ICU mortality. This is particularly the case with patients on mechanical ventilation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.29-37
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• 2016

This paper proposes a shape optimization of the metal boss for a composite motor case using finite element analysis. For the structural safety and the weight reduction of the composite motor case, under the internal pressure, the fiber stress in the dome area and the tightening bolt stress are constrained and the boss weight is set to objective function, respectively. The response surface models are constructed for the performance characteristics by using response surface method. The significance of the design variables about the performance characteristics is evaluated through the ANOVA(analysis of variance) and the goodness of fit test for the constructed model is performed through the regression analysis. The SQP(sequential quadratic programming) algorithm is used for the optimization and the proposed method is verified by performing structural analysis for the optimum shape.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.51-62
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• 2010

The high concentration of N in the wastewater from livestock farming generally renders the efficiency of the wastewater treatment. Therefore, removal of N in livestock wastewater is crucial for successful treatment. The current study was conducted to investigate the optimum conditions for partial nitrification under anaerobic condition following nitritation in TPAD-BNR(two-phase anaerobic digestion-biological nitrogen removal) operating system. Sequential operating test to stimulate partial nitrification in reactor showed that partial nitrification occurred at a ratio of 1.24 in $NO_2{^-}$-N:$NH_4{^+}$-N. With this result, a wide range of factors affecting stable nitritation were examined through regression analysis. In the livestock wastewater treatment procedure, the hydraulic retention time (HRT) and pH range for optimum nitrite accumulation in the reactor were 1-1.5 days and 7-8, respectively. It was appeared that accumulation of $NO_2{^-}$-N in the reactor is due to inhibition of the $NO_2{^-}$-N oxidizer by free ammonia (FA) while the effect of free nitrous acid was minimal. Nitrification was not influenced by DO concentration at a range of 2.0-3.0 mg/L and the difference in the growth rate between $NH_4{^+}$-N oxidizer and $NO_2{^-}$-N oxidizer was dependent on the temperature in the reactor.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Clinical Toxicology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.93-99
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• 2021

Purpose: Nutritional status and support in critically ill patients are important factors in determining patient recovery and prognosis. The aim of this study was to analyze the early nutritional status and the methods of nutritional support in critically ill patients with acute poisoning and to evaluate the effect of nutritional status on prognosis. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted in tertiary care teaching hospital from January 2018 to December 2020. in an emergency department of university hospital, 220 patients who were stayed more than 2 days of poisoning in intensive care unit were enrolled. Results: 155 (70.5%) of patients with acute poisoning had low-risk in nutritional risk screening (NRS). Patients with malignancy had higher NRS (low risk 5.2%, moderate risk 18.5%, high risk 13.2%, p=0.024). Patients of 91.4% supplied nutrition via oral route or enteral route. Parenteral route for starting method of nutritional support were higher in patients with acute poisoning of herbicide or pesticide (medicine 3.2%, herbicide 13.8%, pesticide 22.2%, p=0.000). In multivariate logistic regression analysis, herbicide or pesticide intoxication, higher risk in NRS and sequential organ failure assessment over 4.5 were affecting factor on poor recovery at discharge. Conclusion: NRS in patients intoxicated with herbicide or pesticide were higher than that in patients intoxicated with medicine intoxication. Enteral nutrition in patients intoxicated with herbicide or pesticide was less common. Initial NRS was correlated with recovery at discharge in patient with intoxication. It is expected to be helpful in finding patients with high-risk nutritional status in acute poisoning patients and establishing a treatment plan that can actively implement nutritional support.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.59 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

This study investigated the impact of solution-focused thinking on marital satisfaction via mediating roles of father involvement in childcare and marital conflict. A questionnaire survey was conducted among mothers with infants, living in Busan, Daegu and Yangsan, South Korea. Data from 264 mothers were analyzed using several multiple regression analyses and bootstrapping method with SPSS 25.0 and PROCESS macro (model 6) to test the serial double mediation model. The results of this study are as follows. First, mothers' solution-focused thinking had a significant direct and indirect positive influence on marital satisfaction through both father involvement in childcare and marital conflict. Second, the sequential mediating effects of father involvement in childcare and marital conflict were statistically significant in the relationship between solution-focused thinking and marital satisfaction. The model accounted for 60% of the variance in mothers' marital satisfaction. The results highlight the importance of solution-focused thinking that can enhance the marital satisfaction of mothers with infants and act as a resource for increasing father involvement in childcare and decreasing marital conflict. Based on the results, it is necessary to include solution-focused thinking, father involvement in childcare, and marital conflict as key elements in the intervention to improve marital satisfaction of mothers with infants.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.755-767
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• 2020

A significant development has been made on a new fatigue damage model applicable to Gaussian wide band stress response spectra using numerical approximation methods such as data processing, time simulation, and regression analysis. So far, most of the alternative approximate models provide slightly underestimated or overestimated damage results compared with the rain-flow counting distribution. A more reliable approximate model that can minimize the damage differences between exact and approximate solutions is required for the practical design of ships and offshore structures. The present paper provides a detailed description of the development process of a new fatigue damage model. Based on the principle of the Gaussian wide band model, this study aims to develop the best approximate fatigue damage model. To obtain highly accurate damage distributions, this study deals with some prominent research findings, i.e., the moment of rain-flow range distribution MRR(n), the special bandwidth parameter μk, the empirical closed form model consisting of four probability density functions, and the correction factor QC. Sequential prerequisite data processes, such as creation of various stress spectra, extraction of stress time history, and the rain-flow counting stress process, are conducted so that these research findings provide much better results. Through comparison studies, the proposed model shows more reliable and accurate damage distributions, very close to those of the rain-flow counting solution. Several significant achievements and findings obtained from this study are suggested. Further work is needed to apply the new developed model to crack growth prediction under a random stress process in view of the engineering critical assessment of offshore structures. The present developed formulation and procedure also need to be extended to non-Gaussian wide band processes.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.494-499
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• 2022

It is reported that genome-wide RNA-seq profiles has potential as biomarkers of aging. A number of researches achieved promising prediction performance based on gene expression profiles. We develop an age prediction method based on the transcriptome of human dermal fibroblasts by selecting a proper age interval. The proposed method executes multiple rules in a sequential manner and a rule utilizes a classifier and a regression model to determine whether a given test sample belongs to the target age interval of the rule. If a given test sample satisfies the selection condition of a rule, age is predicted from the associated target age interval. Our method predicts age to a mean absolute error of 5.7 years. Our method outperforms prior best performance of mean absolute error of 7.7 years achieved by an ensemble based prediction method. We observe that it is possible to predict age based on genome-wide RNA-seq profiles but prediction performance is not stable but varying with age.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.400-410
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• 2023

Background: As the government has recently been discussing the expansion of the disaster health expenses support project, we would like to confirm the characteristics of beneficiaries of the support project, particularly those of high-cost beneficiaries. Methods: Using the database of catastrophic health expenditure support project from 2019-2020, this study aims to confirm the characteristics of high-cost beneficiaries focusing on the overlap of the relieved out-of-pocket systems, known as the out-of-pocket ceiling system and the system for rare incurable diseases. Logistic regression analysis is used to examine this issue. Results: In order to analyze the factors influencing high-cost beneficiaries, five models were created and analyzed, including the status of duplicated beneficiaries for relieved out-of-pocket systems, sociodemographic and economic factors, and individual health status as sequential independent variables. All five models were statistically significant, of which economic factors had the greatest impact on the model's predictions. The main results indicated that those who benefited from multiple systems in duplicate were more likely to be high-cost beneficiaries, and there is a higher probability of incurring high health expenses among the underage. In addition, within the beneficiaries of catastrophic health expenditure support project, it was observed that higher health insurance premium percentiles are associated with a higher proportion of high-cost beneficiaries. Conclusion: This study examined the characteristics of high-cost beneficiaries by encompassing reimbursement and non-reimbursement. According to this study, it is expected to be used as basic data for setting priorities and improving the current criteria of catastrophic health expenditure support project, aiming to sequentially expand the program.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.103-118
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• 2024

The horseshoe prior is notably one of the most popular priors in sparse regression models, where only a small fraction of coefficients are nonzero. The parameter space of the horseshoe prior is much smaller than that of the spike and slab prior, so it enables us to efficiently explore the parameter space even in high-dimensions. However, on the other hand, the horseshoe prior has a high computational cost for each iteration in the Gibbs sampler. To overcome this issue, various MCMC algorithms for the horseshoe prior have been proposed to reduce the computational burden. Especially, Johndrow et al. (2020) recently proposes an approximate algorithm that can significantly improve the mixing and speed of the MCMC algorithm. In this paper, we compare (1) the traditional MCMC algorithm, (2) the approximate MCMC algorithm proposed by Johndrow et al. (2020) and (3) its variant in terms of computing times, estimation and variable selection performance. For the variable selection, we adopt the sequential clustering-based method suggested by Li and Pati (2017). Practical performances of the MCMC methods are demonstrated via numerical studies.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.259-265
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• 1993

Between January 1985 and July 1992, 52 patients with locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma were studied retrospectively for the effectiveness of sequential chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The male to female ratio was 3.3:1 with a median age of 41 years. Forty patients had squamous cell carcinoma and the remaining 12 had undifferentiated carcinoma. Seven patients had stage III disease and the remainder had stage IV disease at time of presentation. All patients were treated two courses of chemotherapy followed by radiation therapy. Chemotherapy consisted of either CVB (cisplatin, vincristine and bleomycin) or CF (cisplatin and 5-FU). Total radiation dose to the primary site ranged from 6000 cGy to 7500 cGy. Neck nodes were given booster treatment to maximum of 7000 cGy, depending on the extent of disease. Local control, overall survival and disease-free survival rates were analyzed. The complete response (CR) rate to chemotherapy was $15\%$ and the partial response (PR) rate was $46\%,$ for overall major response rate of $61\%.$ The CR rate was $87\%$ after radiation therapy. Median follow-up time was 51 months. The overall survival and disease-free survival rates at 36 months were $54\%\;and\;49\%,$ respectively. Median time to relapse was 15 months. The patterns of initial relapse in CR patients was as follows: locoregional failure only, 12 patients; distant metastasis only,11: both,2. Cox's multivariate regression model revealed that nodal status was the single most important independant prognostic factor influencing disease-free survival (p=0.001). Comparision of these results with other published reports with radiation therapy alone showed that a high rate of initial response to chemotherapy did not translate into local control or survival. At present time radiation therapy alone remains the standard treatment for locoregional cancer of the nasopharyngeal cancer. More controlled clinical trials must be completed before acceptance of chemotherapy as a part of treatment of advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma.