• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.53 no.4
• /
• pp.266-274
• /
• 2020

Objectives: Describe out-of-pocket payment (OOP) and the proportion of Peruvian households with catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) and evaluate changes in socioeconomic inequalities in CHE between 2008 and 2017. Methods: We used data from the 2008 and 2017 National Household Surveys on Living and Poverty Conditions (ENAHO in Spanish), which are based on probabilistic stratified, multistage and independent sampling of areas. OOP was converted into constant dollars of 2017. A household with CHE was assumed when the proportion between OOP and payment capacity was ≥0.40. OOP was described by median and interquartile range while CHE was described by weighted proportions and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). To estimate the socioeconomic inequality in CHE we computed the Erreygers concentration index. Results: The median OOP reduced from 205.8 US dollars to 158.7 US dollars between 2008 and 2017. The proportion of CHE decreased from 4.9% (95% CI, 4.5 to 5.2) in 2008 to 3.7% (95% CI, 3.4 to 4.0) in 2017. Comparison of socioeconomic inequality of CHE showed no differences between 2008 and 2017, except for rural households in which CHE was less concentrated in richer households (p<0.05) and in households located on the rest of the coast, showing an increase in the concentration of CHE in richer households (p<0.05). Conclusions: Although OOP and CHE reduced between 2008 and 2017, there is still socioeconomic inequality in the burden of CHE across different subpopulations. To reverse this situation, access to health resources and health services should be promoted and guaranteed to all populations.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.34 no.3
• /
• pp.262-268
• /
• 2001

Objectives : To integrate the results of studies which assess an association between blood lead and blood pressure. Methods : We surveyed the existing literature using a MEDLINE search with blood lead and blood pressure as key words, including reports published from January 1980 to December 2000. The criteria for quality evaluation were as follows: 1) the study subjects must have been workers exposed to lead, and 2) both blood pressure and blood lead must have been measured and presented with sufficient details so as to estimate or calculate the size of the association as a continuous variable. Among the 129 articles retrieved, 13 studies were selected for quantitative meta-analysis. Before the integration of each regression coefficient for the association between blood pressure and blood lead, a homogeneity test was conducted. Results : As the homogeneity of studies was rejected in a fixed effect model, we used the results in a random effect model. Our quantitative meta-analysis yielded weighted regression coefficients of blood lead associated with systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure results of 0.0047 (95% confidence interval [CI]: -0.0061, 0.0155) and 0.0004 (95% CI: -0.0031, 0.0039), respectively. Conclusions : The published evidence suggested that there may be a weak positive association between blood lead and blood pressure, but the association is not significant.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.167-175
• /
• 2000

Compressed bitstreams generated by an MPEG-2 video encoder (or digital TV picture transmission are quite sensitive to channel errors. Due to the coding structure of the MPEG-2 video compression algorithm, a single bit error can affect not only the current Picture frame but also succeeding frames. Error concealment algorithms attempt to repair damaged portions of the picture by exploiting spatial and temporal redundancies in the correctly received and reconstructed video frames. In this paper, we analyze the effect of channel errors in MPEG-2 video bitstreams and estimate lost motion vectors by exploiting temporal redundancies in the video frames. Motion vectors can be estimated from the vertically adjacent extended region of lost macroblocks. Finally, we conceal the damaged macroblocks by compensating the displacement with the estimated motion vectors. Simulation results demonstrate that both the weighted sum algorithm and the extension matching algorithm achieve good performance in terms of PSNR values as well as subjective image quality.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.38 no.2
• /
• pp.56.1-56.1
• /
• 2013

Supernovae type Ia (SNe Ia) cosmology is providing the only direct evidence for the presence of dark energy. This result is based on the assumption that the look-back time evolution of SNe Ia luminosity, after light-curve shape correction, would be negligible. However, the most recent compilation of SNe Ia data shows systematic difference in the Hubble residual (HR) between the E and Sd/Irr galaxies, indicating that the light-curve fitters used by the SNe Ia community cannot quite correct for a large portion of the population age effect. In order to investigate this possibility more directly, we have obtained low-resolution spectra for 30 nearby early-type host galaxies. This data set is used to estimate the luminosity-weighted mean ages and metallicities of host galaxies by employing the population synthesis models. We found an interesting trend between the host galaxy age and HR, in the sense that younger galaxies have positive residuals (i.e., light-curve corrected SNe Ia luminosity is fainter). This result is rather independent of the choice of the population synthesis models employed. Taken at face value, this age (evolution) effect can mimic a large fraction of the HR used in the discovery of the dark energy. This result is significant at 1.4 - 3 sigma levels, depending on the light curve fitters adopted, and further observations and analyses are certainly required to confirm the trend reported here.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.349-356
• /
• 2009

In this study, we suggest the estimation method of the relative risk for the unemployment statistics of a small area such as si, gun, gu in Korea. The considered method are the usual pooled estimator, weighted estimator with the inverse of log-variance as weights, and the Jackknife estimator. And we compare with the efficiency of the three estimators by estimating the bias and mean square errors using real data from the 2002 Economically Active Population Survey of Gyeonggi-do. We compute the unemployed rate of male and female in small areas, and then estimate the common relative risk for the unemployed rate between male and female. Also, the stability and reliability of the three estimators for the common relative risk was evaluated using the RB(relative bias) and the RRMSE(relative root mean square error) of these estimators. Finally, the Jackknife estimator turned out to be much more efficient than the other estimators.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.46 no.6
• /
• pp.479-486
• /
• 2018

In order to ensure reliable navigation performance of a lunar exploration rover, navigation algorithms using additional sensors such as inertial measurement units and cameras are essential on lunar surface in the absence of a global navigation satellite system. Unprecedentedly, Visual Odometry (VO) using a stereo camera has been successfully implemented at the US Mars rovers. In this paper, we estimate the 6-DOF pose of the lunar exploration rover from gray images of a lunar-like terrains. The proposed algorithm estimates relative pose of consecutive images by sparse image alignment based semi-direct VO. In order to overcome vulnerability to non-linearity of direct VO, we add adaptive motion prior weights calculated from a linear function of the previous pose to the optimization cost function. The proposed algorithm is verified in lunar-like terrain dataset recorded by Toronto University reflecting the characteristics of the actual lunar environment.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 1994.02a
• /
• pp.681-691
• /
• 1994

The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) has proposed a threshold limit value (TLV) for benzene of 0.1 ppm. Individuals representing the American Petroleum Institute (API)and the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) have argued that 1) the risk assessment by Rinsky .et al. which ACGIH partially relied upon for its proposed TLV overestimates the risk; however, at the exposures levels of interest - (e.g., 0.1 to 1.0 ppm) for establishing a benzene TLV, the Rinsky et al. assessment provides lower estimates of leukemia risk than most others; 2) ACGIH should not use the Dow study for direct observational evidence of leukemia risk associated with low-level benzene exposure because of confounding exposure; however, it is unlikely that confounding exposures played a role in the excess of leukemia demonstrated in the study, and the Dow cohort was exposed to an average benzene concentration of about 5.5 ppm benzene for 7.11 years (31:1.5 ppm-years), while some of the individuals in the study who died from leukemia were exposed to an average of only 1.0 ppm without the opportunity for highpeak exposures; 3) the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) established an 8-hour time-weighted average (TWA) of 1.0 ppm in 1987, and there is no new evidence that would justify reducing the TWA below that level; however, the OSHA TWA of 1.0 ppm was based on economic feasibility and the level of excess risk remaining at 1.0 ppm, i.e., 10 excess leukemia deaths per 1000 workers over an occupational lifetime (45 years) according to OSHA's preferred estimate leaves behind I risk considered significant by OSHA. In addition, chromosomal studies among workers and in animals exposed to benzene indicate that low-level exposure, i.e., 1.0 ppm, is associated with elevated Cytogenetic damage. On the basis of adverse health effects data alone, in this author's opinion, it would be poor science and poor public health policy to establish a benzene TLV greater than 0.1 ppm.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.281-290
• /
• 2007

Linear estimator, a weighted sum of the sample observation, is commonly adopted to estimate the finite population parameters such as population totals in survey sampling. The weight for a sampled unit is often constructed by multiplying the base weight, which is the inverse of the first-order inclusion probability, by an adjustment term that takes into account of the auxiliary information obtained throughout the population. The linear estimator using the weight adjustment is often more efficient than the one using only the bare weight, but its valiance estimation is more complicated. We discuss variance estimation for a general class of weight-adjusted estimator. By identifying that the weight-adjusted estimator can be viewed as a function of estimated nuisance parameters, where the nuisance parameters were used to incorporate the auxiliary information, we derive a linearization of the weight-adjusted estimator using a Taylor expansion. The method proposed here is quite general and can be applied to wide class of the weight-adjusted estimators. Some examples and results from a simulation study are presented.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.261-270
• /
• 2006

Positional data of moving objects can be regularly sampled in order to minimize the cost of data collection in LBS. Since position data which are regularly sampled cannot include the changes of position occurred between sampling periods, sampled position data differ from the data predicted by a time parameterized linear function. Uncertain position data caused by these differences make the accuracy of the range queries for present positions diminish in the TPR tree. In this paper, we propose the uncertainty region to handle the range queries for uncertain position data. The uncertainty region is defined by the position data predicted by the time parameterized linear function and the estimated uncertainty error. We also present the weighted recent uncertainty error policy and the kalman filter policy to estimate the uncertainty error. For performance test, the query processor based by the uncertainty region is implemented in the TPR tree. The experiments show that the Proposed query processing methods are more accurate than the existing method by 15%.

• Advances in Energy Research
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.107-128
• /
• 2017

Energy is a major component of almost all economic, production, and service activities, and rapid population growth, urbanization and industrialization have led to ever growing demand for energy. Limited energy resources and increasingly evident environmental effects of fossil fuel consumption has led to a growing awareness about the importance of further use of renewable energy sources in the countries energy portfolio. Renewable hydrogen production is a convenient method for storage of unstable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy for use in other place or time. In this study, suitability of 25 cities located in Iran's western region for renewable hydrogen production are evaluated by multi-criteria decision making techniques including TOPSIS, VIKOR, ELECTRE, SAW, Fuzzy TOPSIS, and also hybrid ranking techniques. The choice of suitable location for the centralized renewable hydrogen production is associated with various technical, economic, social, geographic, and political criteria. This paper describes the criteria affecting the hydrogen production potential in the study region. Determined criteria are weighted with Shannon entropy method, and Angstrom model and wind power model are used to estimate respectively the solar and wind energy production potential in each city and each month. Assuming the use of proton exchange membrane electrolyzer for hydrogen production, the renewable hydrogen production potential of each city is then estimated based on the obtained wind and solar energy generation potentials. The rankings obtained with MCDMs show that Kermanshah is the best option for renewable hydrogen production, and evaluation of renewable hydrogen production capacities show that Gilangharb has the highest capacity among the studied cities.