This study aimed to assess the feasibility of operational definitions of cancer patients in conducting cancer-related studies using the claims data from the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS). Materials and MethodCancer incidence data were obtained from The Korean Central Cancer Registry (KCCR), NHIS primary diagnosis, and from the rare and intractable disease (RID) registration program. ResultsThe operational definition with higher sensitivity for cancer patient verification was different by cancer type. Using primary diagnosis, the lowest sensitivity was found in colorectal cancer (91.5%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 91.7 to 92.0) and the highest sensitivity was found in breast cancer (97.9%; 95% CI, 97.8 to 98.0). With RID, sensitivity was the lowest in liver cancer (91.9%; 95% CI, 91.7 to 92.0) and highest in breast cancer (98.1%; 95% CI, 98.0 to 98.2). In terms of the difference in the date of diagnosis in the cancer registration data, > 80% of the patients showed a < 31-day difference from the RID definition. ConclusionBased on the health claims data, the operational definition of cancer incidence is more accurate when using the RID registration program claims compared to using the primary diagnosis despite the relatively less concordance by cancer type requires additional definitions such as treatment.

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Attribute-based encryption (ABE) is an encryption scheme in which the user is able to decrypt a ciphertext with associated attributes. However, the scheme does not offer the capability of decryption to others when the user is offline. For this reason, the attribute-based proxy re-encryption (ABPRE) scheme was proposed, which combines traditional proxy re-encryption with ABE, so a user is able to empower designated users to decrypt the re-encrypted ciphertext with the associated attributes of designated users. However, previous ABPRE schemes demands a number of pairing operations that imply huge computational overhead. To reduce the number of pairing operations, we reduce the pairing operations with exponent operations. This paper provides a novel approach to an ABPRE scheme with constant pairing operation latency.

BackgroundClustering-based methods on gene-expression analysis have been shown to be useful in biomedical applications such as cancer subtype discovery. Among them, Matrix factorization (MF) is advantageous for clustering gene expression patterns from DNA microarray experiments, as it efficiently reduces the dimension of gene expression data. Although several MF methods have been proposed for clustering gene expression patterns, a systematic evaluation has not been reported yet.ResultsHere we evaluated the clustering performance of orthogonal and non-orthogonal MFs by a total of nine measurements for performance in four gene expression datasets and one well-known dataset for clustering. Specifically, we employed a non-orthogonal MF algorithm, BSNMF (Bi-directional Sparse Non-negative Matrix Factorization), that applies bi-directional sparseness constraints superimposed on non-negative constraints, comprising a few dominantly co-expressed genes and samples together. Non-orthogonal MFs tended to show better clustering-quality and prediction-accuracy indices than orthogonal MFs as well as a traditional method, K-means. Moreover, BSNMF showed improved performance in these measurements. Non-orthogonal MFs including BSNMF showed also good performance in the functional enrichment test using Gene Ontology terms and biological pathways.ConclusionsIn conclusion, the clustering performance of orthogonal and non-orthogonal MFs was appropriately evaluated for clustering microarray data by comprehensive measurements. This study showed that non-orthogonal MFs have better performance than orthogonal MFs and K-means for clustering microarray data.

Background:We examined the consumption patterns and the knowledge and awareness of energy drinks to draw up a guideline for energy drink consumption and to give accurate information to college student. Methods: Data from 324 subjects (186 males and 138 females) were collected using self-administered questionnaires. The study participants were recruited from the Gyeonggi-do, Seongnam area between March and June 2013. Results:The results showed that there was a significant gender-based difference in awareness of energy drinks-56.5% (78/139) of the males and 78.9% (71/90) of the females had negative awareness (P<.001). As for recognizability of taurine by awareness of energy drinks, there were intergroup differences: the mean was 3.89 for the group with positive awareness and 3.31 for the negative awareness group (P=.001). The odds ratio for awareness of energy drinks was 2.75 (95% CI:1.05-7.18) and those with positive awareness consumed more than those with negative awareness (P=.039). Conclusions: This investigation on the factors that affect energy drinks consumption behaviors is of significance in that it helps make known the high caffeine content of energy drinks, and accurate knowledge of the side effects and appropriate consumption. Korean J Health Promot 2015;15(1):31-38