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Despite the great socioeconomic burden of stroke, there have been few reports of stroke statistics in Korea. In this scenario, the Epidemiologic Research Council of the Korean Stroke Society launched the “Stroke Statistics in Korea” project, aimed at writing a contemporary, comprehensive, and representative report on stroke epidemiology in Korea. This report contains general statistics of stroke, prevalence of behavioral and vascular risk factors, stroke characteristics, pre-hospital system of care, hospital management, quality of stroke care, and outcomes. In this report, we analyzed the most up-to-date and nationally representative databases, rather than performing a systematic review of existing evidence. In summary, one in 40 adults are patients with stroke and 232 subjects per 100,000 experience a stroke event every year. Among the 100 patients with stroke in 2014, 76 had ischemic stroke, 15 had intracerebral hemorrhage, and nine had subarachnoid hemorrhage. Stroke mortality is gradually declining, but it remains as high as 30 deaths per 100,000 individuals, with regional disparities. As for stroke risk factors, the prevalence of smoking is decreasing in men but not in women, and the prevalence of alcohol drinking is increasing in women but not in men. Population-attributable risk factors vary with age. Smoking plays a role in young-aged individuals, hypertension and diabetes in middle-aged individuals, and atrial fibrillation in the elderly. About four out of 10 hospitalized patients with stroke are visiting an emergency room within 3 hours of symptom onset, and only half use an ambulance. Regarding acute management, the proportion of patients with ischemic stroke receiving intravenous thrombolysis and endovascular treatment was 10.7% and 3.6%, respectively. Decompressive surgery was performed in 1.4% of patients with ischemic stroke and in 28.1% of those with intracerebral hemorrhage. The cumulative incidence of bleeding and fracture at 1 year after stroke was 8.9% and 4.7%, respectively. The direct costs of stroke were about ₩1.68 trillion (KRW), of which ₩1.11 trillion were for ischemic stroke and ₩540 billion for hemorrhagic stroke. The great burden of stroke in Korea can be reduced through more concentrated efforts to control major attributable risk factors for age and sex, reorganize emergency medical service systems to give patients with stroke more opportunities for reperfusion therapy, disseminate stroke unit care, and reduce regional disparities. We hope that this report can contribute to achieving these tasks.

Abstract Background Bone marrow-derived cell therapy has been used to treat acute myocardial infarction. However, the therapeutic efficacy of this approach remains controversial. Here, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate short-term and long-term effectiveness of bone marrow-derived therapy. Methods We searched eight databases (Ovid-Medline, Ovid-EMBASE, Cochrane Library, KoreaMed, KMBASE, KISS, RISS, and KisTi) up to December 2014. Demographic characteristics, clinical outcomes, and adverse events were analyzed. We identified 5534 potentially relevant studies; 405 were subjected to a full-text review. Forty-three studies with 2635 patients were included in this review. Results No safety issues related to cell injection were reported during follow-up. At 6 months, cell-injected patients showed modest improvements in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) compared with the control group. However, there were no differences between groups at other time points. In the cardiac MRI analysis, there were no significant differences in infarct size reduction between groups. Interestingly, mortality tended to be reduced at the 3-year follow-up, and at the 5-year follow-up, cell injection significantly decreased all-cause mortality. Conclusions This meta-analysis demonstrated discrepancies between short-term LV functional improvement and long-term all-cause mortality. Future clinical trials should include long-term follow-up outcomes to validate the therapeutic efficacy of cell therapy.

Objectives Limited information is available concerning the epidemiology of stroke and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in the Republic of Korea. This study aimed to develop a national surveillance system to monitor the incidence of stroke and AMI using national claims data. Methods We developed and validated identification algorithms for stroke and AMI using claims data. This validation involved a 2-stage stratified sampling method with a review of medical records for sampled cases. The weighted positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated based on the sampling structure and the corresponding sampling rates. Incident cases and the incidence rates of stroke and AMI in the Republic of Korea were estimated by applying the algorithms and weighted PPV and NPV to the 2018 National Health Insurance Service claims data. Results In total, 2,200 cases (1,086 stroke cases and 1,114 AMI cases) were sampled from the 2018 claims database. The sensitivity and specificity of the algorithms were 94.3% and 88.6% for stroke and 97.9% and 90.1% for AMI, respectively. The estimated number of cases, including recurrent events, was 150,837 for stroke and 40,529 for AMI in 2018. The age- and sex-standardized incidence rate for stroke and AMI was 180.2 and 46.1 cases per 100,000 person-years, respectively, in 2018. Conclusion This study demonstrates the feasibility of developing a national surveillance system based on claims data and identification algorithms for stroke and AMI to monitor their incidence rates.

Abstract In this study, major chemical components of PM2.5 including nitrate, sulfate, organic carbon (OC), and elemental carbon (EC) were measured in Chuncheon, South Korea in May–June, 2021. Average PM2.5 concentration was 16.4±9.7 µg m−3, and OC was the largest contributor of PM2.5 mass concentration. High concentration episodes (HCEs), defined when PM2.5 concentration exceeded 30 µg m−3, were caused by Asian dust, secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) formation, and primary OC emission. NH4+ was determined to be a limiting factor for SIA formation based on neutralization ratio. There was statistically significant correlation between n-alkanes and PM2.5, and odd alkanes including C27, C29, and C31, which are generally emitted from biogenic sources, were abundant species, suggesting the importance of natural sources over fossil fuel combustion. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) concentrations were significantly lower than those measured at the same sampling site in 2014–2015. Based on the diagnostic ratios of PAHs, vehicular emission, rather than solid fuel emission, were significant for PAHs. Detailed characterization of chemical composition of PM2.5 reported in this study can be of great help in establishing an appropriate abatement policy to reduce PM2.5 concentrations.

With a never-ending stream of reviews propagating online, consumers encounter countless good and bad reviews. Depending on which reviews consumers read, they get a different impression of the product. In this paper, we focused on the relationship between the text and numerical information of reviews to gain a better understanding of the decision-making process of consumers affected by the reviews. We evaluated the decisions that consumers made when encountering the review structure of star ratings paired with comments, with respect to three research questions: (1) how consumers compare two products with reviews, (2) how they individually perceive a product based on the corresponding reviews, and (3) how they interpret star ratings and comments. Through the user study, we confirmed that consumers consider reviews differently according to product presentation conditions. When consumers were comparing products, they were more influenced by star ratings, whereas when they were evaluating individual products, they were more influenced by comments. Additionally, consumers planning to buy a product examined star ratings by more stringent criteria than those who had already purchased the product.

The Smart Culture Lens developed in this study is an application developed by utilizing the visual element classification system of ceramic and AI technology. The user can analyze the visual elements of the ceramic photo taken with a smartphone and search for similar ceramics related to each visual element. For this development, as a first step, visual elements such as color, form, material, and pattern were defined as criteria for classifying ceramic appearance, and the visual element classification system of ceramics was organized. In the second step, 19,610 images of 7,346 ceramics were collected through museum visit photography and web, and a database was built by annotating these images with a visual element classification system. In the third step, representative object detection models, Faster R-CNN and Mask R-CNN were trained based on a ceramic classification system. Through those trained object detection models, visual elements and masks of the input image were recognized, and representative colors of the area were extracted using the k-means algorithm through the recognized masks. The performance of the trained object detection models (Average precision of Form / Material / Pattern 1st-level category = 0.87 / 0.89 / 0.72) shows that the amount of collected data and the established classification system are useful. Finally, by applying the above development results, a mobile application called ’Smart Culture Lens’ was developed, and the usefulness of this application was confirmed through a user experience test. This study combines AI technology into cultural heritage so that people can intuitively explore artifacts from a new perspective, which differs from traditional artifact exploring methods. All the detailed processes of this development will be a guide to how to apply AI technology to the cultural heritage.

By providing a high degree of freedom to explore information, QA (question and answer) agents in museums are expected to help visitors gain knowledge on a range of exhibits. Since information exploration with a QA agent often involves a series of interactions, proper guidance is required to support users as they find out what they want to know and broaden their knowledge. In this paper, we validate topic recommendation strategies of system-initiative QA agents that suggest multiple topics in different ways to influence users’ information exploration, and to help users proceed to deeper levels in topics on the same subject, to offer them topics on various subjects, or to provide them with selections at random. To examine how different recommendations influence users’ experience, we have conducted a user study with 50 participants which has shown that providing recommendations on various subjects expands their interest on subjects, supports longer conversations, and increases willingness to use QA agents in the future.

Sign language services are provided so that people with hearing loss are not alienated from socially and politically important information through TV broadcasting. In this paper, we conducted a user survey and evaluation of the current sign language services for deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) people, and solutions were proposed for the problems found in the course of the analyses. To this end, a total of five stages of research were conducted. First, the communication problems experienced by DHH individuals and previous studies on their language and information acquisition were investigated. Second, the most typical types of information delivery channels via TV were defined as news, discussions, and weather reports, and by investigating the actual sign language service cases for each type, three visual information delivery elements were identified: sign language interpreters, reference videos, and subtitles. Third, a preference survey, an interview survey, and an eye tracker experiment on the DHH participants were conducted with varying arrangement options of information delivery elements. Fourth, based on the results of the investigations and experiments, the options to be considered when arranging information delivery elements were compiled. The results showed that the sign language interpreter, which is the first element of information delivery, should be presented in a size clearly visible because the visibility of their facial expressions is important. In addition, it is recommended to present the interpreter without a background since DHH participants did not prefer the presence of a background. As for subtitles, which is the third element of information delivery, it was confirmed that the provision of sign language interpretation and subtitles together helped DHH participants to understand the contents more quickly and accurately. Moreover, if there are multiple speakers, individual subtitles for each speaker should be provided so that the viewers can understand who is talking. Reference videos, which are mainly placed on the screen background, the second information delivery element, were considered less important to DHH participants compared to sign language interpreters and subtitles, and it was found that DHH participants preferred reference videos to be visually separated from sign language interpreters. Fifth, based on the overall results of the study, a screen layout design was proposed for each type of information delivery element for DHH people. Contrary to the general conception that there would be no problem in viewing information-delivering TV broadcasts by DHH people simply by placing a sign language interpreter on the screen, the results of this study confirmed that a more delicate screen layout design is necessary for DHH people. It is expected that this study will serve as a helpful guide in providing better sign language services for TV broadcasts that can be conveniently viewed by both DHH and non-disabled people.

The increased availability of chatbots has drawn attention and interest to the study of what answers they provide and how they provide them. Chatbots have become a common sight in museums but are limited to answering only simple and basic questions. Based on the observed potential of chatbots for history education in museums, we investigate how chatbots impact history education and improve the overall experience according to their appearance and language style. For this, we built three models, designed by factors on embodiment and reflection, and 60 sets of answer–questions, designed for the National Museum of Korea. We conducted a study with a total of 34 participants and carried out a variety of analyses covering individual learning styles, museum experience scales, gaze data, in-depth interviews and observations from researchers. We present various results and lessons regarding the effect of embodiment and reflection on the museum experience. Our findings show how people with different learning styles connect with chatbot models and how visitors’ behavior in the museum changes depending on the chatbot model. Specifically, the chatbot model equipped with embodiment and reflection shows its superiority in enhancing the museum experience, in general.