Earticle

This study aimed to identify the factors affecting nurses' customer orientation. A survey was conducted on 440 nurses working for general hospitals in South Korea from November 22 through December 15, 2012, and this study analyzed the data from the questionnaire with SPSS Windows 18.0. Data were analyzed using t-test, analysis of variance, Pearson's correlation, and multiple regression. All factors had a significant correlation with customer orientation. Multiple multiple regression analysis revealed that self-leadership and deep acting was the factor positively influencing nurses’ customer orientation. These factors explained 54.0% of customer orientation. It has important implications in that it suggests a customer orientation prediction model that hospital managers can use as baseline data for nursing human resource management.

The increasing identity theft cases are alarming which puts biometric as the alternative solution to combat identity crime. Recently, biosignals are proposed as biometric modalities. Thus, in this study, the development of an Acceleration Plethysmogram (APG) based Cardioid graph biometric identification is presented. A total of 10 Photoplethysmogram (PPG) data from MIMIC II Waveform Database (MIMIC2WDB) with sampling frequency of 125 Hz were obtained. The datasets are later converted to APG signal by the second order differentiation and preprocessed with Butterworth filter. Then, Cardioid based graph of APG signal was generated. Its centroid and Euclidean distance are calculated. Finally, classification is done by applying these extracted features to Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Naïve Bayes neural networks classifiers. Our experimentation results show that subject recognition is possible by obtaining classification accuracy of 95% for APG based Cardioid graph for both classifiers while only 85% and 70% for PPG signal in MLP and Naïve Bayes classifiers. These outcomes indicate that APG based Cardioid graph biometric identification is a feasible solution to overcome identity fraud.

The purpose of this study was to develop nurse-led home visit intervention program in order to maintain and promote holistic healthcare of multi-cultural couples in farm and fishery areas. The period of research was from March 2014 to July 2014. The method was literature reviews and interviews. Firstly, through literature reviews and secondly, interviews with multi-cultural couples, the health problems and educational demands of subjects were found. Based on the findings, Nurse-led Home Visit Intervention Program was developed. The content of the program was composed of health examination and education, counseling and support, relaxation therapy, and prayer from a holistic healthcare perspective providing through home visitations and phone counseling once a week for one hour at a time under the topics of ‘healthy couples’, ‘wise and frugal couples’, ‘assimilating couples’, and ‘ happy couples’ as six sessions. And the program operation method was applying the JUMP (Joy Ultra Mom Program) operation skill, which facilitates interaction and reciprocal communication among participants, such as couples, learning from each other, opening their heart, and understanding each other. It is necessary to apply and test the effects on the holistic health of multi-cultural couples at related institutes such as multi-cultural centers and health centers, and it is also necessary to continuously develop customized health programs according to their cultural differences.

DNA sequences comprise of sequentially linked nucleotides, A, C, G and T. As a result of the genome projects, a significant amount of DNA sequences of various species are deposited in various databases. Human DNA contains about 3 billion base pairs. The number of genes within the DNA is 20,000 to 25,000. For storing DNA data of a single person, we require approximately 10 CD – ROMs. This amounts to huge data storage costs, subsequently making the use of these data such as analysis and retrieval quite challenging. DNA sequence analysis is useful in diverse areas such as forensics, medical research, pharmacy, agriculture etc. It is very necessary to address the storage issue of these exponentially growing data. In this paper we have implemented 4 different algorithms for DNA data compression: LZW (Lampel-ziv-Welch) algorithm, run length encoding algorithm, Arithmetic coding and Substitution method. The compression results on these algorithms are presented and compared on DNA sequence data of 10 different species.

This study examines the effect of a national legislation linking hospital payment to nurse staffing levels, which was established for Korean hospitals in late 1990s. There are many researches showing that financial incentives have been widely adopted to improve hospital performance. However, little is known about whether the approach is effective in increasing nurse staffing in a hospital. A decade of experience in Korean nursing payment system provides a testable case to examine the effectiveness of the approach. We used time series data on hospital-level nurse staffing and a nationwide survey of hospital nurses to compare before and after the legislation. Results show an increasing trend of RN employment after implementing the reform. The growth of nurse staffing appeared to differ depending on hospital type. Nurse employment is less likely improved in mid and small size general hospitals compared to large size tertiary hospitals. Nurse outcomes including job dissatisfaction, burnout, and intention to leave were not significantly improved among our study sample hospitals.

Automated segmentation and delineation of morphological properties of retinal vascular network had now become the most important research area in the treatment of ophthalmologic disorders. With the advancement of computational efficiency, image processing methodologies are widely used in ophthalmology. This paper gives the review of various segmentation techniques implemented by various authors in conjunction with performance metrics like sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and area under the curve. Results of various algorithms has been compared and analyzed. For the extraction of retinal vasculature, 2D retinal image from various databases has been considered.

The purpose of this study was to examine acculturation on stress, quality of life, self-esteem in married immigrant women in Korea. The participants included 553 married immigrant women who met the eligibility criteria and agreed to participate in the study. Participants were evaluated for subjective assessment of married immigrant-related constructs using a self-report questionnaire, for stress, self-esteem, and quality of life (QOL). Data were collected from August to December, 2014.The analysis was done using descriptive statistics, the variables, ANOVA, T-test for SPSS for Windows, version 22.0. Women who have a low educational level, poor health and are dissatisfied with their marriage showed low self- esteem, and quality of life. Quality of life had significant negative correlations with acculturation on stress and positive correlations with self- esteem. Developing nursing interventions to enhance self-esteem and to reduce acculturation on stress toward improvement of QOL among married immigrant women is recommended. And to improve the quality of life of married immigrant women, development of nursing strategies according to reducing acculturation on stress is needed.

This study has applied 'the exercise prescription customized for the elderly' program for each type of physical exercise in consideration of the needs of the elderly residents living in community and then analyzed the effect. The subject was the low-income women aged 60 and older who live in areas and 20 persons were selected respectively from each group of yoga, dance and sports massage. We implemented exercise prescription for 60 minutes twice a week over 36 weeks against 3 groups in 3 social service stronghold institutions and analyzed the effect by monitoring the results from the exercise. The result shows that muscle, flexibility and agility was improved after exercise in each group of yoga, dance and sports massage and there was some difference between groups. Among various sports programs, the effect of exercise was the most significant in yoga group. So it was found that exercise prescription program to which physical properties of female elderly in local community can improve their health, makes the independent daily life possible and provided positive effect to the life quality of the elderly.

Typhoid is a major public health problem in tropical and subtropical countries including India. Salmonella typhi, the causative agent of typhoid fever, is a gram-negative, motile, rod shaped, facultative anaerobe. It is solely a human pathogen and there is no animal reservoir. Antibiotic therapy is the mainstay for the treatment of typhoid fever and the complications associated with it. Nowadays, emerging multidrug resistance among Salmonella typhi strains has become a major public health problem. Present research work was carried out for the identification and molecular characterization of Trimethoprim resistant Salmonella enterica serovar typhi strains from individuals suffering with typhoid fever by means of various techniques i.e.; biochemicals, phenotypical and drug resistant gene specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A total of 14 blood specimen of infected patients were collected from Solan district of Himachal Pradesh with varying age groups and were processed via broth enrichment methods for primary isolation and identification of typhoid bacilli. Microbiological and biochemical investigations revealed the presence of S. typhi in all 14 specimens. The antibiotic susceptibility assay was carried out for 11 antimicrobial to study the MDR pattern of the identified bacilli. It was observed that 14/14 S. typhi strains were 100% resistance to Trimethoprim, Co-trimoxazole, Sulfanilamide, Penicillin, Ampicillin, Oxacillin, Tetracycline and Erythromycin, and 70-100% susceptible to Levofloxacin, Amikacin and Amoxicillin. The PCR analysis of these MDR strains showed the presence of dhfr a7 (365 bp) gene in only 10/14 isolates. This study confirmed that Trimethoprim resistance in these strains were due to the presence of dhfr a7 gene and also that PCR based diagnosis could be very useful for the rapid detection of drug resistant S. typhi strains. Present study emphasize that Trimethoprim drug is no longer useful for the treatment of typhoid fever as its MIC optimization was very high (750μg/ml). This study may further help the researchers in selecting the appropriate therapeutic approaches targeting Trimethoprim resistant Salmonella typhi strains.

The Aloe saponaria plant has been known and used for centuries for its health, beauty, medicinal and skin care properties. On the other hand, Aloe saponaria also contain anti nutrition compounds namely saponin which leads negative effect. Other kind of Aloe known is Aloe vera. The aim of the study was to investigate the saponin content from each part of Aloe plant to maximize it benefits and advantages. In order to know the higher saponin content, this study was comparing between Aloe saponaria and Aloe vera. The saponin content were analyzed from five part of Aloe leaf such as tip of the leaf, middle of the leaf, bottom of the leaf, leaf skin and leaf flesh. To do this, following are done. Total saponin content was identified by extraction. The procedure was performed by modifying the four thermal processing methods by Xu and Chang, 2009. The saponin analysis shows that the skin (S) of the Aloe leaf contains highest concentration of saponin compare to the other part, on both of Aloe species leaf. Those are 1.519±0.048 mg/g for Aloe saponaria and 1.212±0.035 mg/g for Aloe vera respectively. The highest water content obtained in mesophyll tissue (IS). Up to 98% the mesophyll tissue contains with water.

Modern society has seen an increase of opportunities to enter facilities due to the rise of diseases in aging population and the decrease of family members. This research is a quasi-experiment study conducted to verify the effects on facility elders’ blood cortisol and serotonin level by applying aroma oil hand massage and regular oil hand massage to them, in order to help improve their stress and depression. Aroma hand massage and regular oil hand massage were applied on the elders’ both hands for 10 minutes per session, 5 times week, for a total of 2 weeks. The study carried out the massage after receiving an approval from the Bioethics Committee of K University for the ethical considerations of study participants based on Helsinki Declaration. The subjects were informed that they could always be withdrawn at any time they want and that the confidentiality of study details would be guaranteed. Data was analyzed using paired t-test and independent t-test, and the research results demonstrated that both aroma hand massage group and regular oil hand massage group did not have a significant decrease in the cortisol level before and after the experiment. In contrast, the serotonin level decreased significantly (p= .016) in the aroma oil hand massage group and thus depression increased significantly, but the serotonin level decreased (p= .066) in the regular oil hand massage group, causing the elders’ depression to increase. It is considered that a comparative study of aroma hand massage and regular oil hand massage on depression must be performed in the future.

The research aimed to identify the lacted acid bacteria from intestinal of milkfish (Chanos chanos) potential acvity pathogen anbacteria used PCR 18s Rrna Methode. The lactic acid bacteria were isolated using selective media MRS agar for lactic acid bacteria. Identification isolates PCR 18S rRNA and sequencing method that are DNA isolation, DNA amplification use PCR, DNA visualizasion from amplification with electroforesis, Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) and Tree view program. In view of PCR analysis and tree view program, LAB is Lactobacillus acidophilus strain ATTC 4796.

Korean teachers were facing the crisis of mental health, as seen in indexes of low satisfaction for their job, high leave of absence due to mental disease and high rate of suicide. The purpose of this article was to discuss the implications for the increasing emphasis on mental health problems of Korean teacher including the diverse conditions and leave of absence due to mental disease. Literature review about researches and current policies were conducted to propose agenda for teachers’ mental health. Policies for teachers’ mental health should be established for their health, support teaching activities and furthermore protection of students’ education right.

Gender differences among nursing professionals were investigated in the area of job stress and stress coping strategies. Seventy six male nurses and 93 female nurses from 3 general hospitals were participated in this study. Korean job stress measurement developed by Chang (2005) and stress coping measurement modified by Yim (1994) were used. Using SPSS 22.0 program, gender differences in the level of job stress and coping strategies were compared by frequency, percentage, and independent t-test. Furthermore, the level of job stress and coping strategies according to the duration of work experience between male and female nurses were compared. The overall levels of job stress were significantly higher among male nurses than female nurses. In specific, the stress level from interpersonal conflict was higher among male nurses. According to duration of work, male nurses working more than 5 years showed higher level of job stress than female nurses in the area of autonomy, interpersonal conflict, and lack of reward. For coping strategies, more male nurses working more than 5 years used challenging, emotion focused, and avoidant coping strategies. In conclusion, male nurses have more difficulties in interpersonal conflicts than female nurses. The longer male nurses worked, the higher and broader their job stress level became. Therefore, specific continuing education program only for male nurses should be developed and implemented.

The fast and unrelenting spread of wireless telecommunication devices has changed the landscape of the telecommunication world, as we know it, principally in current years. There had been a great concern for possible health from exposure to the RF fields produced by these wireless technologies. Aim of this paper is to examine the impact of mobile phone radiations generated by 2G and 3G GSM mobile phone technology on the human brain. activity and compares it with idle condition via experimental works. The experiment has been conducted in a laboratory using different human volunteers. The period of operation is 10 minutes as the talking time on the phone. Electroencephalogram is used to monitor and capture the brain signals of various subjects during the experimental analysis for an interval of 10 minutes with two different communication technologies (GSM2G, GSM3G,IDLE condition). The signals obtained under three different conditioned are analyzed with digital signal processing techniques such as Autocorrelation, Cross Correlation and Power Spectral Density analyses. The result shows that use of GSM 2G mobile phone has the larger effect on brain activity followed by GSM 3G phone which is followed by idle condition.

This study aims to explore the effects of social support on stress and depression in patients with breast cancer. This study is a descriptive correlational research to provide basic data for a nursing intervention program with a social support system in order to reduce stress and depression in breast cancer patients. Subjects of this study are 75 women patients who have been diagnosed breast cancer and have undergone breast cancer surgery without a past history of other diseases and cancers. Frequency, 100-percentile, mean, standard deviation, Pearson Correlation, t-test, ANOVA, Simple Linear Regression are estimated with SPSS. There is no statistical correlation among breast cancer patients’ stress and the support received from family members, medical staff, and fellow cancer patients. While there is no significant statistical correlation between breast cancer patients’ depression and the support received from medical workers and fellow cancer patients, there is a negative correlation between the patient’s depression and family support (r=-.436, p=.000). The more family support that a breast cancer patient receives, the less likely they are to become depressed. This result suggests that family support should be considered as a key parameter in developing a nursing intervention program. Therefore, in order to reduce depression of breast cancer patients, nurses need to offer comprehensive and integrated nursing interventions encouraging family support.

Siliceous MCM-41 was synthesized by hydrothermal method using sodiummetasilicate as a source. Cerium ion incorporated Si-MCM-41 was synthesized by hydrothermal method using Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide as template. 2, 3 and 4 weight percentage of Ceria was loaded over MCM-41 by wet impregnation method. The synthesized catalysts were characterized using FT-IR, DRS-UV-Vis, XRD and SEM techniques. The catalytic activity of the cerium ion incorporated and ceria impregnated MCM-41 was evaluated in the synthesis of caprolactam from cyclohexanone oxime in the liquid phase condition. At high temperature all the catalyst showed high conversion. In that 4 wt.% Ce impregnated Si-MCM-41 produced high conversion (76.2%) and percentage yield (66.4%). The impregnated catalyst may contain more number of cerium present in the pores, so the lewis acid sites will be more and the conversion of cyclohexanone oxime into caprolactam will be high.

In this study, the occurrence rate of postpartum depression of breastfeeding mothers and relation between postpartum depression and breastfeeding adaptation are to be investigated. Mothers with 5-7 month old infants who participated the Healthy Breastfed Baby Contest in Daegu Gyeongbuk, Korea and mothers who visited 1 women’s obstetrics hospital as outpatients were selected as research subjects in which a total of 110 subjects who agreed to participate the research were included. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation coefficients with SPSS v. 23.0 program. As result of the research, the occurrence risk of postpartum depression among breastfeeding mothers measured by EPDS (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) was shown to be 41.8% (cutting point 9/10) and significant negative correlation was shown between postpartum depression and breast feeding adaptation (r=-.38, p<.001). Also, postpartum depression was significantly higher when there were more children (F=3.33, p=.039) and exclusive breastfeeding showed to have significantly high breast feeding adaptation (t=3.45, p=.001). Therefore, breast feeding adaptation between the mother and child increases and continuous breast feeding can take place if the postpartum depression of breastfeeding mothers after birth is early discovered and managed.

This study explored protective factors against prenatal depression in pregnant women. One-hundred thirty-four (134) pregnant women were recruited from an obstetric clinic and public health center in Korea. Dyadic adjustment, sense of mastery, and prenatal depression were assessed using structured questionnaires. Prenatal depression was assessed with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EDPS). Binomial logistic analysis was used to identify predictors of prenatal depression. Of the participants, 40.3% screened as positive on the EPDS with a cut-off point of 9/10. Protective factors against prenatal depression were a history of childbirth, dyadic adjustment, and sense of mastery. We must consider these findings when developing interventions for pregnant women focusing on prevention and management of prenatal depression.

Detecting correct type of brain tumor is a crucial task for diagnosis and curing the tumor. Identifying the correct type of brain tumor can provide a fast and effective way to plan the diagnosis of tumor. The proposed system provides a fast and efficient way to identify the correct type of tumor and classify it to the respective class label. Our proposed system is comprised of multiple stages. In the first stage MRI image is taken as input and is normalized. The second stage includes extraction of feature vectors from the image which results in reducing redundancy of data and will serve as the input to the classifier. The classifier takes each tuple of feature extracted vector to produce classified output. Performance analysis shows that our proposed methodology has performed very efficiently and accurately. In our work we demonstrate the application of Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) based classifier known as Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) to successfully classify the input tuples in comparison to other two selected classifiers namely: Artificial Neural Network with Backpropagation Learning Model and K-Nearest Neighbors.

The purpose of this study is to determine the levels of delirium-related knowledge, recognition, and practice, and to identify their correlation in nurses working at general hospitals. This study is a descriptive correlation study attempting to provide raw data for the development of a tool to assess groups at high risk for delirium, as well as preventive intervention programs. The sample size of this study is 206 nurses working at medical surgical units, the intensive care unit (ICU) and the emergency room (ER) with primary assessment of delirium-related knowledge, followed by the secondary assessment of delirium-related recognition and practice one day after. Before commencement, the study was able to obtain the approval of the Institutional Review Board. The data analysis is conducted using the PASW statistic 18 program, by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Pearson correlation, t-test and ANOVA. The delirium-related knowledge was 69.8 out of 100 points. The cause-related knowledge was shown as the highest point, followed by patient care-related knowledge and symptom-related knowledge in that order. The mean value of delirium-related recognition was 82.26±8.74 out of 100 points, whereas the practice had shown the mean 74.43±12.17 out. There was no statistically significant correlation between delirium-related knowledge and practice, but it was reported that there was a statistically significant correlation between recognition and practice. Since making nurses become more aware of the group at the highest risk for delirium is the most important factor in connection to preventive intervention, it is necessary to develop a tool to assess the group at high risk of delirium for nurses to be more easily aware.

The purpose of the present study was to compare riding postures while training in a simulator and on snow for snowboarding, which takes place on snow, to verify the training effects of simulators. Four professional snowboarding players were selected as study subjects. The purpose of this study was to verify the effects of snowboarding simulators. Two analysis methods were applied: motion analysis using motion-capture cameras and analysis of muscle activity using an electromyogram (EMG) analysis system. . From analysis of the data, the following conclusions were drawn.First, snowboarding posture training in simulators helps improve riding angulation (tilting using ankle flexion). Second, practicing snowboard riding on horizontal simulators before riding on slopes, taking into account the difficulty of training motions and participants’ level of proficiency in them, is desirable. Third, during practice of snowboard riding motions using simulators, instructors should continuously evaluate and correct participants’ posture to prevent excessive hip-joint flexion during FS turns.Fourth, most muscles showed higher activity levels during snowboard riding on slopes than in simulators. Physical resistance induced by increasing the slope of simulators seems capable of increasing training effects.

According to recent research result that light not only offers psychological and emotional stability to an occupant, but affects human’s health, efforts to improve the indoor lighting environment are increasingly made. Looking into existing studies, lighting’s hardware performance has been evaluated using high-priced measuring equipment in order to identify the characteristics of suitable light according to space type and resident’s activity, or user satisfaction has been assessed through a survey method. However, efficiency is low from the cost and reliability aspects, since these methods are dependent upon high-priced measuring equipment, the size of patent group and survey questions. This paper implements a smartphone-based light quality evaluation system through which light characteristics can be measured or quality can be evaluated anywhere, anytime using a mobile device that a user always possesses, and such a system that supports readjusting to the user-preferred lighting environment depending on situation. The proposed system’s processing process is as follows: The smartphone located around a user measures the currently-serviced light characteristics from the embedded RGBW color sensor. The RGBW sensing data are converted into tristimulus values XYZ, and then color coordinate xy, color temperature CCT and illuminance Y are calculated. Lastly, this study proves the proposed system’s performance by evaluating whether the lighting environment suitable for the current situation is serviced, based on KS Illuminance Standard, and Naoyuki Oi’ graph.

In our country millions of peoples are affected by diabetes. In future, this range will get increased as said by the World Health Organization (WHO). Diabetes is a chronic disease and has the high risk of heart attack, stroke and in later stages cause blindness, kidney failure. This is mainly associated with insulin production and its action. Hence to recover the diabetic patients from these risks, insulin must be given periodically to the persons. Nowadays insulin is given to the diabetic patients by injector, inhaler or by syringes. This is not a precise method to sustain our blood glucose level. So to manage the problems related with this complex disease, automatic insulin pump provides the better blood glucose level maintained by injecting the insulin at regular intervals. This insulin pump supply distinctly limited dosage of insulin to diabetic persons who require multiple injections daily to maintain their glucose level in blood. This system automatically provides insulin at predefined times regularly, so that they keep control of blood glucose level.

In domestic rivers, eutrophication has led to frequent algae outbreaks. In this regard, this study investigated the algae removal characteristics according to coagulant dosage, light irradiation and coagulation nuclei dose to remove algae for drinking water treatment plant. The test results according to the natural coagulant dosage showed that as the coagulant dosage increased, chlorophyll-a and turbidity decreased, and chlorophyll-a removal efficiency ranged from 79.1% to 86.9%, and turbidity removal efficiency ranged from 74.6% to 88.2%, respectively. According to the results of test on the algae removal efficiency by light irradiation, chlorophyll-a removal efficiency increased from 17.9% to 34.4% as light intensity increased from 2000 lux to 10000 lux, and with an increase of light irradiation, the floating speed of algae turned out to be faster. The test results according to coagulation nuclei dose found that turbidity removal efficiency was 82.8%, and chlorophyll-a removal efficiency was 92.0% at the kaolin dose of 20 mg/L, which suggests that even a small dose of coagulation nuclei can further improve chlorophyll-a and turbidity removal efficiency.

Non rigid image registration assumes a paramount part over medical imaging framework. In the complicated conditions, it is quiet a testing errand. Sometimes the dataset is perverted by spatially varying intensity contortion. To resolve this, issue many techniques based on LLR have been designed. In this paper, the core idea behind the proposed technique is to reduce the reconstruction time by considering the LLR in transform domain. The proposed technique uses DWT to split the dataset image into sub bands. Low frequency sub band image is reconstructed by reference image, followed by combining all subband images to generate an enhanced image by using inverse DWT. The quantitative (peak signal-to-noise ratio, root mean square error, mean square error and normalized cross correlation) and visual results show the superiority of the proposed technique over the conventional LLR technique and the execution time is reduced by 19%.

Two region graph cut image partitioning after mapping entire image of brain in brain MRI. It is seen that piecewise constant model of the graph cut formulation becomes applicable when the image data is transformed by a main function. The proposed function contains data term to evaluate the deviation of the transformed data within two segmentation region, from the piecewise constant model, and a smoothness boundary preserving regularization term. Using a common function, energy minimization typically consists of iterating image partitioning by graph cut iterations and evaluations of region parameters via fixed point computation. The method results in good segmentations and runs faster the graph cut methods. The segmentation of MRI image is challenging due to the high diversity in appearance of tissue among the patient. An automatic interactive brain MRI image segmentation system with the ability to adjust operator control is achieved through this method.