A Study on the Determinants of Childbirth in Primary Local Government Districts in South Korean ‘Do’ Metro Provinces

Korea is experiencing a very serious low fertility rate. As of 2017, Korea has a fertility rate of 1.05, which is the lowest among the G20 countries. The low fertility rate can lead to pension burden problems and economic recession problems. In particular, the Primary Local Government Districts ((PLGDs) in Do Metro provinces in Korea may have a problem of a decrease in the agricultural population, and the reduction of organizational and administrative functions due to the reduction of fiscal income. To solve the low fertility rate, we need to identify factors that affect childbirth, and to engage in policy related to these factors. Through literature review, I have identified several variables related to childbirth. In my analysis, I examine the effect of the following factors in particular on the childbirth rate in Primary Local government Districts: child birth celebration grant, international marriage, obstetrics and gynecology clinics. I set the childbirth celebration grant for the first child and second child, the employment rate for women, the employment rate for men, the number of international marriages, the number of marriages (excluding international marriages), the number of obstetrics and gynecology clinics and the number of daycare facilities as independent variables, and the number of childbirth s as dependent variable. I performed multiple regression analysis, using all 152 PLGDs in DOMPs as the analysis unit, with independent variables for 2016, and dependent variables for 2017 data due to the time lag in pregnancy. The results of multiple regression analysis show that the birth celebration grant for first child, the number of international marriages, the employment rate of women, the number of obstetrics and gynecology clinics and the number of marriage s statistically significantly affect the childbirth. These results suggest that primary local governments need policy intervention in the childbirth celebration grant policy, international marriages, obstetrics and gynecology clinics, and employment rate of women to increase childbirth

Many-to-One Communication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes a novel communication protocol, called Many-to-One Sensors-to-Sink (MOSS), tailored to wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It exploits the unique sensors-to-sink traffic pattern to realize low-overhead medium access and low- latency sensors-to-sink routing paths. In conventional schedule-based MAC protocols such as S-MAC, sensor nodes in the proximity of the event generate reports simultaneously, causing unreliable and unpredictable performance during a brief but critical period of time when an event of interest occurs. MOSS is based on time division multiple access (TDMA) that avoids energy waste due to collisions, idle listening and overhearing and avoids unreliable behavior mentioned above. A small test-bed consisting of 12 TelosB motes as well as extensive simulation study based on ns-2 have shown that MOSS reduces the sensor-to-sink latency by as much as 50.5% while consuming only 12.8 ∼ 19.2% of energy compared to conventional TDMA algorithm

Context-Based Trit-Plane Coding for Progressive Image Compression

Trit-plane coding enables deep progressive image compression, but it cannot use autoregressive context models. In this paper, we propose the context-based trit-plane coding (CTC) algorithm to achieve progressive compression more compactly. First, we develop the context-based rate reduction module to estimate trit probabilities of latent elements accurately and thus encode the trit-planes compactly. Second, we develop the context-based distortion reduction module to refine partial latent tensors from the trit-planes and improve the reconstructed image quality. Third, we propose a retraining scheme for the decoder to attain better rate-distortion tradeoffs. Extensive experiments show that CTC outperforms the baseline trit-plane codec significantly in BD-rate on the Kodak lossless dataset, while increasing the time complexity only marginally. Our codes are available at https://github.com/seungminjeon-github/CTC.Comment: Accepted to CVPR 202

Chloride-Binding Capacity of Portland Cement Paste Blended with Synthesized CA 2

A chloride-binding capacity is the major factor to mitigate the ingress of chloride into concrete. This paper presents the chloride-binding capacity of Portland cement paste containing synthesized CA2 (CaO·2Al2O3). The CA2 was synthesized in the high-temperature furnace and characterized by X-ray diffraction for inspecting the purity. The synthesized CA2 was substituted for Portland cement by 0%, 5%, and 10% by weight, and the NaCl solution was used as an internal chloride, which is assumed as a total chloride. The chloride-binding capacity of cement paste was calculated from a water-soluble chloride extraction method by the application of the Langmuir isotherm equation. And the hydration products were analyzed using X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analysis. We demonstrate that the CA2 increases an AFm phase in the Portland cement system, and the incorporation of CA2 consequently enhances the chloride-binding capacity of cement paste samples

cyber attack taxonomy for digital environment in nuclear power plants

With the development of digital instrumentation and control (I&C) devices, cyber security at nuclear power plants (NPPs) has become a hot issue. The Stuxnet, which destroyed Iran's uranium enrichment facility in 2010, suggests that NPPs could even lead to an accident involving the release of radioactive materials cyber-attacks.However, cyber security research on industrial control systems (ICSs) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems is relatively inadequate compared to information technology (IT) and further it is difficult to study cyber-attack taxonomy for NPPs considering the characteristics of ICSs. The advanced research of cyber-attack taxonomy does not reflect the architectural and inherent characteristics of NPPs and lacks a systematic countermeasure strategy.Therefore, it is necessary to more systematically check the consistency of operators and regulators related to cyber security, as in regulatory guide 5.71 (RG.5.71) and regulatory standard 015 (RS.015). For this reason, this paper attempts to suggest a template for cyber-attack taxonomy based on the characteristics of NPPs and exemplifies a specific cyber-attack case in the template. In addition, this paper proposes a systematic countermeasure strategy by matching the countermeasure with critical digital assets (CDAs). The cyber-attack cases investigated using the proposed cyber-attack taxonomy can be used as data for evaluation and validation of cyber security conformance for digital devices to be applied, and as effective prevention and mitigation for cyber-attacks of NPPs. Keywords: Cyber-attack taxonomy, Cyber security, Nuclear power plant, ICS, SCAD

The efficacy of aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index for assessing hepatic fibrosis in childhood nonalcoholic steatohepatitis for medical practice

PurposeChildhood obesity is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and it has become one of the most common causes of childhood chronic liver diseases which significant as a cause of liver related mortality and morbidity in children in the United States. The development of simpler and easier clinical indices for medical practice is needed to identify advanced hepatic fibrosis in childhood NAFLD instead of invasive method like liver biopsy. FibroScan and aspartate aminotransferase (AST)-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) have been proposed as a simple and noninvasive predictor to evaluate hepatic fibrosis in several liver diseases. APRI could be a good alternative to detect pathologic change in childhood NAFLD. The purpose of this study is to validate the efficacy of APRI for assessing hepatic fibrosis in childhood NAFLD based on FibroScan.MethodsThis study included 23 children with NAFLD who underwent FibroScan. Clinical, laboratory and radiological evaluation including APRI was performed. To confirm the result of this study, 6 patients received liver biopsy.ResultsFactors associated with hepatic fibrosis (stiffness measurement >5.9 kPa Fibroscan) were triglyceride, AST, alanine aminotransferase, platelet count, APRI and collagen IV. In multivariate analysis, APRI were correlated with hepatic fibrosis (>5.9 kPa). In receiver operating characteristics curve, APRI of meaningful fibrosis (cutoff value, 0.4669; area under the receiver operating characteristics, 0.875) presented sensitivity of 94%, specificity of 66%, positive predictive value of 94%, and negative predictive value of 64%.ConclusionAPRI might be a noninvasive, simple, and readily available method for medical practice to predict hepatic fibrosis of childhood NAFLD