• Title/Summary/Keyword: total utility

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An evaluation of local waters productivity by operating types (운영형태별 수도사업 생산성 평가)

  • Kim, Shang-Moon;Lee, Ik-Gyu
    • Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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    • v.25 no.3
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    • pp.325-334
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    • 2011
  • Market Environment around water work industry is rapidly changing. ISO, International Organization for Standardization, announced the international water work service standard for comparison and evaluation between nations and businesses. And developed countries in water work are introducing market principle for growth of nation's water industry and reinforcement of its competitiveness. Also, some local governments entrusted their water utilities for improvement of competitiveness of water work. However, as some failure cases from overseas came out with emphasis, there are many refuting perspective about entrusted operation achievements of domestic water market. Hence, this paper evaluated competitiveness of domestic local water utilities from the perspective of productivity. After evaluating productivity using Malmquist productivity index, the authors compared and analyzed whether there is a difference of productivity between two different operating types by using Mann-Whitney test. As a result of analysis, it has shown that local water utilities achieved higher productivity at entrusted operation type rather than direct operation type. The local water utilities which chose entrusted operation had increased the productivity 13.9% on total factor productivity(TFP) during experimenting period, while the local water utilities which chose direct operation had increased 0.2%. The background of achieving this high productivity in entrusted operation was analyzed as a result of the higher technological effectiveness of a special water company. The result of this study can be referred when local government needs to decide on what operating types they will use.

Evaluation of Gloss Variation with a Novel Method

  • Sung, Yong-Joo;D. Steven Keller
    • Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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    • v.34 no.2
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    • pp.73-83
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    • 2002
  • Gloss is very important optical property influencing the perceived quality of the paper surface as well as the surface after printing. Although the average gloss level of paper products or printed images is important to meet end use specifications, the occurrence of gloss mottle, or non-uniformity of gloss, is often of greater concern for meeting quality requirements, especially for the high gloss paper. Gloss variation originates from the irregularities of paper surface, especially surface roughness of paper. Roughness of paper can be divided into micro-roughness (under $1\mu m$ scale in variation) and macro-roughness (over $1\mu m$ scale in variation) depending on the scale of the irregularities. A clearer understanding of the gloss variation of paper can be achieved by separating the contributions of these two scales of roughness, and characterizing them independently. In order to do this, a novel gloss measuring method was introduced. This can detect local gloss with very high resolution. The effect of macro-roughness on gloss variation, which was identified by the measurable surface topography, was separated from the total gloss variation by using this method. The effect of micro-roughness was then estimated indirectly. The local gloss variations of various paper samples were then evaluated to demonstrate the utility of this approach.

Evaluation on Criterion Validity of Enterprise Health Promotion Index (기업건강증진지수의 준거타당도 평가)

  • Lee, Jinhwa;Ryoo, Jang-Jin;Yu, Young-Soo;Lee, Bokim
    • Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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    • v.26 no.1
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    • pp.1-9
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    • 2017
  • Purpose: This study was conducted to evaluate the validity of the 'Enterprise Health Promotion Index', a tool for assessing health promotion activities of worksite developed by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency. Methods: This is designed a methodological study that evaluates the validity of the Enterprise Health Promotion Index. For this study, a questionnaire survey was conducted for the workplace health professional and safety professional, and a total of 297 data were extracted as final data. We developed the informal health promotion needs and activity measurement tools. The correlation coefficient between the score of the enterprise health promotion index and the score of the informal health promotion tool was analyzed for the criterion validity evaluation. Results: The criterion validity of the Enterprise Health Promotion Index and activity index were supported by finding moderate (r=.597) and high (r=.783) correlation coefficient. However, the requirement index has low levels of criterion validity (r=.364). Conclusion: Based on these results, we suggest to improve the utility of the corporate health promotion index by developing user manual, active public relations, and providing briefing sessions.

Development of an Uncertainty Scale for Infertile Women (불임 여성의 불확실성 측정도구 개발)

  • Kim, Mi-Ok;Kim, Sue
    • Women's Health Nursing
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    • v.16 no.4
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    • pp.370-380
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    • 2010
  • Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop an uncertainty scale for infertile women. Methods: The process included construction of a conceptual framework, generation of 12items, verification of content validity, selection of secondary items, verification of construct validity and extraction of final items. In order to verify the reliability and validity of the preliminary instrument, data were collected from 50 infertile women in an In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinic. Data were analyzed by item analysis, Varimax factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha. Results: There were 10 items in the final instrument categorized into 2 factors labeled as "personal (6 items)" and "relational (4 items)" The total variance explained was 73.36%. The instrument was shown to have good reliability with a Cronbach's alpha of .899. Conclusion: Validity and reliability of the scale were confirmed in this study showing its utility to measure uncertainty for infertile women. The instrument can help understand sterility and accurately measure uncertainty for infertile women. The instrument can also be used to evaluate nursing interventions designed for mitigating uncertainty for infertile women.

Differential Expression of Cytokeratin 13 in Non-Neoplastic, Dysplastic and Neoplastic Oral Mucosa in a High Risk Pakistani Population

  • Farrukh, Sanniya;Syed, Serajuddaula;Pervez, Shahid
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.16 no.13
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    • pp.5489-5492
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    • 2015
  • Background: Gradual loss of cytokeratin 13 (CK13) may be linked with the severity of dysplastic changes and transformation to malignancy. In this study we assessed the differential expression of CK13 in normal, hyperplastic, dysplastic and cancerous oral mucosa. Materials and Methods: A total of 93 oral biopsies were collected during the 2011-2014 period. The biopsies were characterized as normal (19), hyperplastic (21), severely dysplastic/carcinoma in situ (16) and invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) (37) after morphological assessment. Formalin fixed paraffin embedded sections were stained with a monoclonal antibody against CK13 using the Envision technique. Immunohistochemically stained slides were then analyzed for CK13 expression. Results: CK13 was consistently and diffusely expressed in all normal and hyperplastic tissue biopsies from oral mucosa. Severely dysplastic/carcinoma in situ biopsies showed complete loss in 50% of cases, while in the remaining 50% expression was very focal and weak. OSCC cases showed complete or near complete loss of CK13 in all cases. Few cases showed weak expression in keratin pearls only. Conclusions: This study validates the utility of CK13 IHC as a useful immunohistochemical marker in routine diagnostic practice to make distinction between non-neoplastic from dysplastic and neoplastic (malignant) oral lesions.

Health Economics Evaluation of a Gastric Cancer Early Detection and Treatment Program in China

  • Li, Dan;Yuan, Yuan;Sun, Li-Ping;Fang, Xue;Zhou, Bao-Sen
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.15 no.13
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    • pp.5133-5136
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    • 2014
  • Objective: To use health economics methodology to assess the screening program on gastric cancer in Zhuanghe, China, so as to provide the basis for health decision on expanding the program of early detection and treatment. Materials and Methods: The expense of an early detection and treatment program for gastric cancer in patients found by screening, and also costs of traditional treatment in a hospital of Zhuanghe were assessed. Three major techniques of medical economics, namely cost-effective analysis (CEA), cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cost-utility analysis (CUA), were used to assess the screening program. Results: Results from CEA showed that investing every 25, 235 Yuan on screening program in Zhuanghe area, one gastric cancer patient could be saved. Data from CUA showed that it was cost 1, 370 Yuan per QALY saved. Results from CBA showed that: the total cost was 1,945,206 Yuan with a benefit as 8,669,709 Yuan and an CBR of 4.46. Conclusions: The early detection and treatment program of gastric cancer appears economic and society-beneficial. We suggest that it should be carry out in more high risk areas for gastric cancer.

Enhancement Method of CCTV Video Quality Based on SRGAN (SRGAN 기반의 CCTV 영상 화질 개선 기법)

  • Ha, Hyunsoo;Hwang, Byung-Yeon
    • Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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    • v.21 no.9
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    • pp.1027-1034
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    • 2018
  • CCTV has been known to possess high level of objectivity and utility. Hence, the government has recently focused on replacing low quality CCTV with higher quality ones or even by adding high resolution CCTV. However, converting all existing low-quality CCTV to high quality can be extremely costly. Furthermore, low quality videos prior to CCTV replacement are likely to be of poor quality and thus not utilized correctly. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a method to improve videos quality of images using SRGAN(Super Resolution Generative Advisory Networks). Through experiments, we have proven that it is possible to improve low quality CCTV videos clearly. For this experiment, a total of 4 types of CCTV videos were used and 10,000 images were sampled from each type. Those images could then be used for machine learning. The fact that the pre-process for machine learning has been done manually and the long time that required for machine learning seems to be complementary.

Synthesis of Primary Studies Related to Clothing Involvement by Meta-analysis (의복관여 효과에 대한 메타분석)

  • Lee, Jongnam;Yu, Haekyung
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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    • v.37 no.3
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    • pp.386-398
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    • 2013
  • This study analyzes the effect of clothing involvement using meta-analysis. Metal-analysis (the analysis of analyses) is widely used in various academic areas to integrate individual empirical studies and generalize the knowledge of a specific research field. Previous studies regarding clothing involvement published since 1990 were researched from the KISS database using clothing involvement and fashion involvement as a keyword; subsequently, 127 articles were identified. Studies that had insufficient statistics or included clothing involvement as a moderating (or intervening variable) were eliminated; subsequently, 36 articles provided a total of 75 data sets that were used for the final analysis. Dependent variables were grouped into 10 categories to compare the differences between high and low involvement groups. The effect size of clothing involvement was large in non-personal information source; however, it was small in utility, brand royalty and quality. In the 7 categories of relational studies that showed homogeneity, the relation size regarding conformity was smaller than the personal information source.

Evaluation of the clinical accuracy of six portable blood glucose meters in dogs

  • Shin, Min-Keun;Kim, Hakhyun;Yun, Taesik;Kang, Ji-Houn;Kang, Byeong-Teck
    • Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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    • v.60 no.3
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    • pp.123-131
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    • 2020
  • Portable blood glucose meters (PBGMs) are widely used because of their practicality. However, the accuracy of PBGMs has frequently been questioned. The objectives of this study were to evaluate factors that might interfere with measurements made using PBGMs, and to assess the clinical utility of 6 PBGMs. The glucose concentrations measured using the PBGMs were compared with those obtained using a reference method. The agreement between the measured values was assessed using Spearman correlation analysis, Passing-Bablok regression analysis, Bland-Altman plots, and consensus error grid analysis. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were performed to identify the parameters affecting glucose measurement. The results indicated that all of the PBGMs tested perform adequately for use in veterinary practice. In most cases, measurements made using PBGM corresponded well with the blood glucose values obtained using the reference method. Error grid analysis revealed that most of the PBGM values fell within zones A and B. However, some measurements of blood glucose concentrations < 80 mg/dL fell into zone C. PCV, and triglyceride and total protein concentration, significantly affected the output of some of the PBGMs. Therefore, clinicians should be aware of the characteristics of the PBGM that they use.

Effects of Ketamine on the Causalgiform Pain Produced by the Tight Ligation Of L5, L6 Spinal Nerves in the Rat (백서에서 제 5, 6번 요추신경의 결찰에 의하여 유발된 작열통성 통증에 대한 Ketamine의 치료효과)

  • Lee, Won-Hyung;Han, Neung-Hee;Kim, Tae-Heon
    • The Korean Journal of Pain
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.18-24
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    • 1995
  • We produced the causalgiform pain by the tight ligation of L5 and L6 spinal nerves in the adult rats. To evalute the effect of Ketamine -noncompetitive NMDA (N-methyl-D aspartate) antagoinst- on the causalgiform pain, we tested the changes of; withdrawal sensitivity to the innocuous mechanical stimulation of Von Frey hair 2.35 g(mechanical allodynia); withdrawal frequency to the cold stimulation of acetone (cold allodynia); and total withdrawal time (second) to the cold ($4^{\circ}C$) plate stimulation (cold hyperalgesia) after the administration of 1 mg, 3 mg, 10 mg/kg ketamine. The results were as follows: 1) Cold hyperalgesia was significantly reduced (p<0.05) by 1 mg, 3mg, 01 mg/kg ketamine. 2) Cold allodynia and mechanical allodynia was significantly reduced (p<0.05) by 10 mg/kg ketamine. Above results suggest a therapeutic utility of ketamine in treatment of causalgia - especially, cold hyperalgesia.

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