• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.658-672
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• 2022

The unique teaching and learning difficulties of speed-related units in elementary school science are mainly due to the student's lack of mathematical thinking ability and procedural knowledge on speed measurement, and curriculums and textbooks must be constructed with these in mind. To identify the implications of composing a new science curriculum and relevant textbooks, this study reviewed the structure and contents of the speed-related units of three curriculums from the 2007 revised curriculum to the 2015 revised curriculum and the resulting textbooks and examined their relevance in light of the literature. Results showed that the current content carries the risk of making students calculate only the speed of an object through a mechanical algorithm by memorization rather than grasp the multifaceted relation between traveled distance, duration time, and speed. Findings also highlighted the need to reorganize the curriculum and textbooks to offer students the opportunity to learn the meaning of speed step-by-step by visualizing materials such as double number lines and dealing with simple numbers that are easy to calculate and understand intuitively. In addition, this paper discussed the urgency of improving inquiry performance such as process skills by observing and measuring an actual object's movement, displaying it as a graph, and interpreting it rather than conducting data interpretation through investigation. Lastly, although the current curriculum and textbooks emphasize the connection with daily life in their application aspects, they also deal with dynamics-related content somewhat differently from kinematics, which is the main learning content of the unit. Hence, it is necessary to reorganize the contents focusing on cases related to speed so that students can grasp the concept of speed and use it in their everyday lives. With regard to the new curriculum and textbooks, this study proposes that students be provided the opportunity to systematically and deeply study core topics rather than exclude content that is difficult to learn and challenging to teach so that students realize the value of science and enjoy learning it.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.238-244
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• 2003

Purpose: The Planning of High-Dose-Rate (HDR) brachytherapy treatments are becoming individualized and more dependent on the treatment planning system. Therefore, computer software has been developed to perform independent point dose calculations with the integration of an isodose distribution curve display into the patient anatomy images. Meterials and Methods: As primary input data, the program takes patients'planning data including the source dwell positions, dwell times and the doses at reference points, computed by an HDR treatment planning system (TPS). Dosimetric calculations were peformed in a $10\times12\times10\;Cm^3$ grid space using the Interstitial Collaborative Working Group (ICWG) formalism and an anisotropy table for the HDR Iridium-192 source. The computed doses at the reference points were automatically compared with the relevant results of the TPS. The MR and simulation film images were then imported and the isodose distributions on the axial, sagittal and coronal planes intersecting the point selected by a user were superimposed on the imported images and then displayed. The accuracy of the software was tested in three benchmark plans peformed by Gamma-Med 12i TPS (MDS Nordion, Germany). Nine patients'plans generated by Plato (Nucletron Corporation, The Netherlands) were verified by the developed software. Results: The absolute doses computed by the developed software agreed with the commercial TPS results within an accuracy of $2.8\%$ in the benchmark plans. The isodose distribution plots showed excellent agreements with the exception of the tip legion of the source's longitudinal axis where a slight deviation was observed. In clinical plans, the secondary dose calculations had, on average, about a $3.4\%$ deviation from the TPS plans. Conclusion: The accurate validation of complicate treatment plans is possible with the developed software and the qualify of the HDR treatment plan can be improved with the isodose display integrated into the patient anatomy information.