Impact of Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Use on Treatment Outcomes in Patients with Pulmonary Fluoroquinolone-Resistant Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis: A Nationwide Retrospective Cohort Study with Propensity Score Matching

( Hongjo Choi ),( Dawoon Jeong ),( Young Ae Kang ),( Doosoo Jeon ),( Hee-yeon Kang ),( Hee Jin Kim ),( Hee-sun Kim ),( Jeongha Mok ) 대한결핵 및 호흡기학회 2023 Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases Vol.86 No.3

Background: Effective treatment of fluoroquinolone-resistant multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (FQr-MDR-TB) is difficult because of the limited number of available core anti-TB drugs and high rates of resistance to anti-TB drugs other than FQs. However, few studies have examined anti-TB drugs that are effective in treating patients with FQr-MDR-TB in a real-world setting. Methods: The impact of anti-TB drug use on treatment outcomes in patients with pulmonary FQr-MDR-TB was retrospectively evaluated using a nationwide integrated TB database (Korean Tuberculosis and Post-Tuberculosis). Data from 2011 to 2017 were included. Results: The study population consisted of 1,082 patients with FQr-MDR-TB. The overall treatment outcomes were as follows: treatment success (69.7%), death (13.7%), lost to follow-up or not evaluated (12.8%), and treatment failure (3.9%). On a propensity- score-matched multivariate logistic regression analysis, the use of bedaquiline (BDQ), linezolid (LZD), levofloxacin (LFX), cycloserine (CS), ethambutol (EMB), pyrazinamide, kanamycin (KM), prothionamide (PTO), and para-aminosalicylic acid against susceptible strains increased the treatment success rate (vs. unfavorable outcomes). The use of LFX, CS, EMB, and PTO against susceptible strains decreased the mortality (vs. treatment success). Conclusion: A therapeutic regimen guided by drug-susceptibility testing can improve the treatment of patients with pulmonary FQr-MDR-TB. In addition to core anti-TB drugs, such as BDQ and LZD, treatment of susceptible strains with later-generation FQs and KM may be beneficial for FQr-MDR-TB patients with limited treatment options.

결핵의 사회적 결정요인과 환자중심돌봄

( Hongjo Choi ) 대한결핵 및 호흡기학회 2020 대한결핵 및 호흡기학회 추계학술대회 초록집 Vol.128 No.0

F-17 : Free Paper Presentation ; Socioeconomic Status and Treatment Adherence of Tuberculosis in South Korea: A Prospective Study in 2005∼2012

( Hongjo Choi ),( Myung Sun Lee ),( Young Ran Kim ),( Clifton E Barry Rd ),( Hae Joo Chung ) 대한결핵 및 호흡기학회 2013 대한결핵 및 호흡기학회 추계학술대회 초록집 Vol.116 No.-

Introduction: SES is a well-reported factor associated with tuberculosis morbidity. However, there were no studies to examine the association of SES with treatment adherence of tuberculosis in South Korea. The study aims to investigate an association between SES and treatment adherence. Method: To identify association between SES and treatment adherence, hierarchical logistic regression was performed (Model 1: adjusted for demographic factors; Model 2: Model 1 + individual behavioral factors; Model 3: Model 2 + clinical factors) and treatment regimen-stratified analysis was also conducted. Result: In hierarchical logistic model, poor housing status (adjusted OR: 2.80, 95% CI: 1.27-6.16) and service worker with low education (adjusted OR: 3.33, 95% CI: 1.06-10.43) and laborer group (adjusted OR: 4.39, 95% CI: 1.45-13.28) are significantly associated with the low treatment adherence in Model 3. However, low education is only significantly related to the low treatment adherence in Model 1 (adjusted OR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.05-2.77). Discussion: The result on this study clearly showed associations of low SES with low treatment adherence in real practice. The study could explain what kind of barriers interferes for TB patients to complete their treatment successfully. This result may be a source to design policy intervention to support TB patients and develop National TB management plan.Introduction: SES is a well-reported factor associated with tuberculosis morbidity. However, there were no studies to examine the association of SES with treatment adherence of tuberculosis in South Korea. The study aims to investigate an association between SES and treatment adherence. Method: To identify association between SES and treatment adherence, hierarchical logistic regression was performed (Model 1: adjusted for demographic factors; Model 2: Model 1 + individual behavioral factors; Model 3: Model 2 + clinical factors) and treatment regimen-stratified analysis was also conducted. Result: In hierarchical logistic model, poor housing status (adjusted OR: 2.80, 95% CI: 1.27-6.16) and service worker with low education (adjusted OR: 3.33, 95% CI: 1.06-10.43) and laborer group (adjusted OR: 4.39, 95% CI: 1.45-13.28) are significantly associated with the low treatment adherence in Model 3. However, low education is only significantly related to the low treatment adherence in Model 1 (adjusted OR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.05-2.77). Discussion: The result on this study clearly showed associations of low SES with low treatment adherence in real practice. The study could explain what kind of barriers interferes for TB patients to complete their treatment successfully. This result may be a source to design policy intervention to support TB patients and develop National TB management plan.

Vision-based nonintrusive context documentation for earthmoving productivity simulation

Kim, Hongjo,Ham, Youngjib,Kim, Wontae,Park, Somin,Kim, Hyoungkwan Elsevier 2019 AUTOMATION IN CONSTRUCTION - Vol.102 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>Although video surveillance systems have shown potential for analyzing jobsite contexts, the necessity of a complex multi-camera surveillance system or workers' privacy issues remain as substantive hurdles to adopt such systems in practice. To address such issues, this study presents a non-intrusive earthmoving productivity analysis method using imaging and simulation. The site access log of dump trucks is used to infer earthmoving contexts, which is produced by analyzing videos recorded at the entrance and the exit of a construction site. An algorithm for license plate detection and recognition in an uncontrolled environment is developed to automatically produce the site access log, by leveraging video deinterlacing, a deep convolutional network, and rule-based post-processing. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method for producing the site access log. Based on the site access log, simulation-based productivity analysis is conducted to produce a daily productivity report, which can provide the basis for earthmoving resource planning. It is expected that the resulting daily productivity report promotes data-driven decision-making for earthmoving resource allocation, thereby improving potential for saving cost and time for earthworks with an updated resource allocation plan.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> A nonintrusive earthmoving productivity analysis method is presented. </LI> <LI> Without complex video surveillance, the daily productivity report is produced. </LI> <LI> Integration of simulation and imaging increases the simulation result reliability. </LI> <LI> The report promotes data-driven decision-making for earthmoving resource planning. </LI> </UL> </P>

Mainstreaming of Health Equity in Infectious Disease Control Policy During the COVID-19 Pandemic Era

Choi, Hongjo,Kim, Seong-Yi,Kim, Jung-Woo,Park, Yukyung,Kim, Myoung-Hee The Korean Society for Preventive Medicine 2021 Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health Vol.54 No.1

The Korean government's strategy to combat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has focused on non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as social distancing and wearing masks, along with testing, tracing, and treatment; overall, its performance has been relatively good compared to that of many other countries heavily affected by COVID-19. However, little attention has been paid to health equity in measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aimed to examine the unequal impacts of COVID-19 across socioeconomic groups and to suggest potential solutions to tackle these inequalities. The pathways linking social determinants and health could be entry points to tackle the unequal consequences of this public health emergency. It is crucial for infectious disease policy to consider social determinants of health including poor housing, precarious working conditions, disrupted healthcare services, and suspension of social services. Moreover, the high levels of uncertainty and complexity inherent in this public health emergency, as well as the health and socioeconomic inequalities caused by the pandemic, underscore the need for good governance other than top-down measures by the government. We emphasize that a people-centered perspective is a key approach during the pandemic era. Mutual trust between the state and civil society, strong accountability of the government, and civic participation are essential components of cooperative disaster governance.

Vision-Based Object-Centric Safety Assessment Using Fuzzy Inference: Monitoring Struck-By Accidents with Moving Objects

Kim, Hongjo,Kim, Kinam,Kim, Hyoungkwan American Society of Civil Engineers 2016 Journal of computing in civil engineering Vol.30 No.4

<P>Due to the dynamic environment of construction sites, workers are continuously confronted with the potential for safety accidents. Although various safety guidelines have been developed, workers cannot always be aware of everything that occurs around them when they focus on their work on noisy and congested job sites. Therefore, it is difficult for workers to conform to guidelines to protect themselves when confronting dangerous situations. To address this safety issue, this paper presents an on-site safety-assessment system for monitoring struck-by accidents with moving entities based on computer vision and fuzzy inference. Computer vision is used to monitor a construction site and extract spatial information for each entity (workers and equipment). Next, fuzzy inference is used to assess the proper safety levels of each entity using spatial information. A safety level represents the potential hazard or the integrating danger that a person encounters at a particular moment. Struck-by accidents are selected as a target safety hazard for validation. The proposed system is expected to provide valuable information regarding worker safety represented as a numerical value. Using the record of safety levels, site managers can improve current working practices. For example, site managers can sound an alarm for workers when the safety level is too low.</P>

3D reconstruction of a concrete mixer truck for training object detectors

Kim, Hongjo,Kim, Hyoungkwan Elsevier 2018 AUTOMATION IN CONSTRUCTION - Vol.88 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>Vision-based monitoring methods have been actively studied in the construction industry because they can be used to automatically generate information related to progress, productivity, and safety. Object detection is essentially used in such monitoring methods to infer jobsite context. However, as many classes of construction entities exist in a job site, large amounts of image data are required to train a detection algorithm to detect each class object in images. Although image data augmentation methods using 3D models were proposed, publicly available 3D models are limited to some construction object classes. Therefore, this study proposes a three-dimensional reconstruction method to generate the image data required for training object detectors. To use the generated synthetic images as training data, a histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) descriptor of a target object is obtained from these images. The descriptor is refined by a support vector machine to increase sensitivity to the target object in test images. The performance of the HOG-based object detector is evaluated using real images from ImageNet. The result shows that the proposed method can generate training data more effectively than existing manual data collection practices.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> The method to generate 2D synthetic images from a real 3D object is presented. </LI> <LI> A 3D model of a target object is reconstructed using multi-view stereo algorithms. </LI> <LI> The method facilitates the preparation of image data to train object detectors. </LI> </UL> </P> <P><B>Graphical abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>

세무상 이월결손금이 이익조정과 이익조정방법 선택에 미치는 영향

박홍조 ( Hongjo Park ),송인만 ( Inman Song ) 한국회계학회 2008 회계학연구 Vol.33 No.4

본 연구는 세무상 이월결손금이 경영자의 이익조정에 미치는 영향을 검증하고, 세무상결손금의 이월공제기간 만료 이전에 절세효과를 누리기 위한 이익조정을 실시하는지 검증하는 것을 목적으로 하고 있다. 또한 세무상 이월결손금의 존재가 이익조정방법의 선택 및 세무조정에 미치는 영향도 함께 검증하였다. 1999년부터 2005년 사이 세무상 이월결손금 기초 잔액이 있는 352개 기업-연도를 대상으로 실증분석을 수행한 결과, 세무상 이월결손금이 큰 기업일수록 보고이익 상향조정을 더 많이 하는 것으로 나타났다. 특히 이월공제기간의 만료가 임박할수록 보고이익 상향조정을 더 많이 하는 것으로 나타나, 세무상 이월결손금이 경영자의 보고이익 상향조정 동기가 될 수 있음을 보여주고 있다. 또한 본 연구는 분식회계로 인해 감리지적 되었거나 분식회계를 자발적으로 정정 공시한 135개 기업-연도를 대상으로 분석을 수행하였다. 그 결과, 세무상 이월결손금이 없는 기업들은 보고이익을 상향조정할 때 조세비용을 줄이기 위해 과세소득이 함께 증가하지 않는 방법을 더 많이 이용하고 있으며, 세무상 이월결손금이 없음에도 불구하고 과세소득이 함께 증가하는 방법을 통해 보고이익을 상향조정한 기업들은 다른 기업들에 비해 더 많은 손금산입 세무조정이 나타난다는 결과를 얻었다. 본 연구는 세무상 이월결손금이 경영자의 재량적 이익조정행위의 직접적인 동기가 될 수 있음을 보여주는 실증적인 증거를 제시했다는 점에서 의의가 있다. 그리고 세무상 이월결손금이 보고이익을 상향조정한 기업의 세무조정에 미치는 영향을 검증했다는 점에서도 의미가 있다. 본 연구는 세무상 결손금의 이월공제기간 만료 이전에 절세효과를 누리고자 하는 기업의 이익조정 가능성을 줄이기 위해 법인세법상 결손금 소급공제 범위를 확대할 필요가 있다는 정책적 시사점을 제시하고 있다. 다만, 소급공제를 확대할 경우, 더 많은 소급공제를 받기 위한 big bath의 가능성을 방지하기 위한 방안은 추가적으로 필요할 것이다. 또한 세무상 이월결손금이 많거나 결손금 이월공제기간의 만료가 임박한 경우에는 보고이익 상향조정 가능성을 고려하여 보다 엄격한 외부감사 및 감리절차를 수행해야 할 것이다. Firms have incentive to adjust their reported incomes upward, but they have to consider increased tax costs associated with such an upward adjustment. However, firms with net operating loss carryforward (hereafter, NOLCF) will be more flexible in decisions to increase their reported income. It is because a firm`s tax costs may not increase proportionally to the upward income adjustment. We examine empirically the effect of NOLCF on a firm`s earnings management decisions as well as firms` income increasing strategies. We also investigate the tax consequences of earnings management and the effect of NOLCF on tax returns. We hypothesize that the more a firm has NOLCF available at the beginning of a year, the more will the firm manage their reported income upward. This relationship may be because that NOLCF would absorb the impact of upward earnings management on tax costs, and therefore a firm`s decisions for upward earnings management could be more flexible. Since NOLCF will be expired after a predetermined legal term(5 years in Korea), a firm which want to take advantage of the tax-saving benefits of NOLCF may have incentive to create sufficient taxable income before expiration of the legal term. That is, NOLCF would provide an incentive for upward earnings management within the allowed period. Therefore, we hypothesize additionally that the shorter the remaining expiration period of NOLCF, the greater is the firm`s incentive for upward reported income management in a specific year. A firm engaged in fraudulent earnings management have to worry about the possibility of being detected. Book-tax conforming earnings management to increase a firm`s reported income may have relatively low detection risk, but still has to bear higher tax costs. That is, book-tax confirming earning-increasing strategies have a positive side of low detection risk as well as a negative side of corresponding increase in tax costs. However, if a firm has NOLCF available at the beginning of the year, it could absorb the negative impact of upward earnings management on tax costs. Therefore, we hypothesize that a firm with NOLCF would choose booktax conforming earnings management strategies to avoid its risk of being detected. We have performed empirical tests using 352 firm-year sample firms with NOLCF from year 1999 to 2005. Our results show that firms with more NOLCF made more upward reported income managements and that firms with NOLCF expiring in a shorter period tend to increase their reported income intentionally. In summary, NOLCF can reduce firms` tax costs associated with upward income adjustment and therefore provide greater incentive to manage their reported income upward. This would not be desirable for a healthy financial reporting convention. We have also performed additional empirical tests using 135 sample firms that had been accused of overstating their reported earnings fraudulently. This is to investigate NOLCF`s effect on the choice of a firm`s earnings management strategies and tax returns. The empirical results show that firms with NOLCF choose booktax conforming earnings management strategies to avoid detection risk. Also, the results show that firms that do not have NOLCF but overstate its earnings through the book-tax conforming method tend to reduce its associated tax costs increase in a tax return through other available means such as aggressive loss inclusion. The results of our study imply that motivation to take advantage of the tax benefits of NOLCF before the NOLCF expiration date can impair the transparency and reliability of financial reporting. Therefore, policy makers should consider extending the NOLCF expiration period and/or widening a net operating loss carryback system. However, in the loss carryback system, a certain means is needed to prevent a firm`s big-bath practice to be exercised possibly for immediate tax benefits. Also, external auditors should perform their works more thoroughly for a firm with significant NOLCF and the firm with NOLCF expiring shortly. This study contributes to earnings management researches in that it provides empirical evidence that NOLCF can be direct incentive for upward reported earnings management. However, this study can not be generalized fully since it performs some of its tests using only those firms which are revealed to manipulate their reported earnings fraudulently. Further studies investigating the effect of NOLCF on a firm`s value will be interesting since NOLCF will provide tax benefits as well as opportunistic earnings management.

비휘발성 메모리 환경에서의 그래프 응용 분석

안홍조(Hongjo Ahn),하민종(Minjong Ha),김상훈(Sang-Hoon Kim) 한국정보과학회 2021 한국정보과학회 학술발표논문집 Vol.2021 No.6

Analyzing context and productivity of tunnel earthmoving processes using imaging and simulation

Kim, Hongjo,Bang, Seongdeok,Jeong, Hoyoung,Ham, Youngjib,Kim, Hyoungkwan Elsevier 2018 AUTOMATION IN CONSTRUCTION - Vol.92 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>This study presents an integrated method of construction-process simulation and vision-based context reasoning for productivity analysis of an earthmoving process in a tunnel. Convolutional networks are used to detect construction equipment in the tunnel CCTV video and the context of the earthmoving process is inferred by the context reasoning process. The construction equipment detection model exhibited enhanced performance, with a mean average precision of 99.09%, and the error rate of the estimated context information was only 1.6% of the actual earthmoving context measured by a human. The estimated context information was used as an input for the WebCYCLONE simulation to generate a productivity and cost analysis report. Sensitivity analysis regarding construction equipment provided a new equipment allocation plan that could reduce the cost of the current earthmoving process by 12.25%.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> An integrated method of simulation and vision-based monitoring was proposed. </LI> <LI> The mAP of 99.09% and the context error of 1.6% of the method were reported. </LI> <LI> The method generates the earthmoving productivity report from CCTV videos. </LI> <LI> Based on real data, a cost-effective resource allocation plan was obtained. </LI> <LI> The new resource allocation plan could reduce the earthmoving cost by 12.25%. </LI> </UL> </P> <P><B>Graphical abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>