• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.119-128
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• 2007

A bioterrorism attack is the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria, or other agents used to cause illness or death in people, animals, or plant. These agents are found in nature, but it is possible that they could be changed to increase their ability to cause disease, make them resistant to current medicines, or to increase their ability to be spread into the environment. Terrorists may use biological agents because these agents can be extremely difficult to detect and do not cause illness for several days. Some bioterrorism agents, like smallpox virus, can spread from person to person, like anthrax, can not. From these agents, we discussed the characteristics of biological agents and national safety regulation on the weapons of mass destruction including bioterrorism.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.217-223
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• 2014

Nerve agents are major chemical warfare agents with the "G series" and "V series" being the most widely known because of their lethal effect. Although not conspicuously used in major wars, the potential detrimental impact on modern society had been revealed from the sarin terror attack on Tokyo subway, which affected thousands of people. In this mini-review, major nerve agents of the "G series" and "V series" have been described along with various types of their detection methods. The physical properties and hydrolysis mechanisms of the major nerve agents are discussed since these are important factors to be considered in choosing detection methods, and specifying the procedures for sample preparations in order to enhance detection precision. Various types of extraction methods, including liquid-phase, solid-phase, gas-phase and solid-phase microextraction (SPME), are described. Recent development in the use of gas sensors for detecting nerve agents is also summarized.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.1705-1708
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• 2012

The inception of targeted agents has revolutionized the cancer therapy paradigm, both for physicians and patients. A large number of molecular targeted agents for cancer therapy are currently available for clinical use today. Many more are in making, but there are issues that remain to be resolved for the scientific as well as social community before the recommendation of their widespread use in may clinical scenarios can be done, one such issue being cost and cost effectiveness, others being resistance and lack of sustained efficacy. With the current knowledge about available targeted agents, the growing knowledge of intricate molecular pathways and unfolding of wider spectrum of molecular targets that can really matter in the disease control, calls for only the just use of the agents available now, drug companies need to make a serious attempt to reduce the cost of the agents. Research should focus on agents that show sustained responses in preclinical data. More needs to be done in laboratories and by the pharmaceutical industries, before we can truly claim to have entered a new era of targeted therapy in cancer care.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Applied Microbiology Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.117-121
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• 2005

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.41-47
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• 1984

The author carried out bovine mastitis test by California Mastitis test(CMT) for the milk from dairy cows in the surburbs of Taejeon. In order to select prefer commercial therapeutic antibacterial agents for mastitis treatment, Staphylococcus aureus were isolated from the CMT positive milk and the strains were tested for the tolerance test to the agents. The results obtained were summarized as follows : 1. The tolerance test appeared graduate tolerance in cases with continuously repeat of therapeutic agents. 2. The antibacterial agents revealed strong tolerance were D-and E-ointments. 3. The antibacterial agents revealed suspect tolerance were A-and F-ointments and ampicillin, penicillin, kanamycin and streptomycin. 4. The antibacterial agents revealed non or rare tolerance were B-and G-ointments and chloramphenicol, erythromycin and oxytetracycline. 5, It is concluded that the use of 3-day-interval in turn with antibacterial agents selected by tolerance test may be beneficial.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.93-104
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• 2000

Passive agents participate in team activities passively, that is, only upon requst, whereas active agents involve themselves voluntarily. Teams composed of active agents are generally believed to perform better than those with passive agents. In this paper, by using a computational simulation model we examine the effect of agent activeness on the efficiency of decision-making teams that access different amout of information. "Team-Soar" is a computational fraemwork that consists of a group of interconnected individual Al agents (i.e., Soar). A simulation experiment using Tearm-Soar was performed. Results of the simulation provide valuable insights on the roles of agent activeness. For example, the impact of having more active agents becomes more sigfniciant as the amout of information to process increases and when the team decision efficiency is important. Some of the results are counter-intultive and therefore provides an opportunity to understand the roles of the agnet activeness more deeply. For instance, the simulation results reveal that having more active agents did not always enhance team efficiency. Conclusively, the simulation experiment demonstrates how computational models contribute to the research of agents social characteristics.teristics.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.17-35
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• 2019

Call centers do not simply play a role of responding to customers' calls, but they have developed into a core unit for maintaining competitiveness through services, marketing, or sales. Since the service quality of call centers heavily affects customer satisfaction, organizations have focused on enhancing it by reducing waiting time and increasing service level. One of the techniques, which improve the service quality of call centers, is to employ multi-skilled agents that can handle more than one type of calls. This study deals with three issues relevant to multi-skilled agents. First, we analyze how the way of allocating a specific group of agents to a set of skills affects the performance of call centers. Secondly, we investigate the relationship between the number of multi-skilled agents and the performance of call centers. Finally, we examine the impact of agent selection rules on the performance of call centers. Two selection rules are compared : the first rule is to assign a call to any available agent at random while the other rule is to assign a call preferably to single-skilled agents over multi-skilled agents when applicable. Based on simulation experiments, we suggest three implications. First, as the length of cycles in the agent-skill configuration network becomes longer, call centers achieve higher service level and shorter waiting time. Secondly, simulation results show that as the portion of multi-skilled agents increases, the performance of call centers improves. However, most of the improvement is attained when the portion of multi-skilled agents is relatively low. Finally, the agent selection rules do not significantly affect the call centers' performance, but the rule of preferring single-skilled agents tends to distribute the workload among agents more equally.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.30 no.5_6
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• pp.579-586
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• 2003

Agents are well fitted to e-commerce applicable area because they pursuit an autonomy and interact with dynamic environment. In this paper we propose an e-commerce agents using reinforcement learning. We modify a reinforcement teaming algorithm for agents to have an intelligent feature and to make a transaction as practical business body in behalf of a person. To show the validity of this approach, we classify agents into buying agents and soiling agents, give characters of level according to the degree of learning and communication. Finally we implement an e-commerce framework and show the result. In this paper we show a design of e-commerce agents which is based on the proposed learning algorithm and present that the agents have enough possibility of doing a transaction in practical e-commerce.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.301-309
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• 2009

The use of bioactive materials derived from microorganisms and plants has played a role in pest management in environmentally-friendly agriculture (EFA) system. In Korea, a number of agricultural agents for the control of insect pests have been registered officially as biopesticides and marketed widely. However, most of the biopesticides has a limitation in the resource availability of bioactive materials, which has been one of main problems related to the commercialization of agricultural agents. Plant materials and microbial metabolites are the best sources as starting components to commercialize natural-occurring agricultural agents for pest management. The lack of modernized system for the standardization and quality control of the starting materials, however, has also received as a main problem related to the commercialization of agricultural agents. Considered that EFA business has kept growing bigger and bigger with global economic status, the commercialization of agricultural agents is necessary to meet the required number of agricultural agents officially available in EFA. This study describes the status and future prospects of pest control agents in EFA. A number of main issues hindered in the commercialization of agricultural agents are discussed in order to present a promising approach to successful commercialization.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.310-319
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• 2001

To compare skin irritation and cytotoxicity of anti-wrinkle agents, we examined skin irritation of six anti-wrinkle agents (ascorbic acid, glycolic acid, all trans-retinoic acid, ginseng extract, retinol, EB) in New Zealand white rabbit. Cytotoxicity of these agents was determined by MTT [tetrazolium salt 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide] at multi-time points in cultured HaCaT cell, a human immortalized keratinocyte cell. We then analyzed correlation between skin irritation and cytotoxicity by spearman's rank correlation analysis. All trans-retinoic acid showed the highest primary irritation index (0.92) in skin irritation test. Being all the six agents not irritant, retinal showed the most cytotoxic agents. The correlation between skin irritation and cytotoxicity ($IC_{50}$/ at different time point was 0.814, 0.757, 0.814 and 0.7 at 3, 24, 48 and 72 h, respectively. We also fecund that IC$_{20}$ and IC$_{80}$ of these agents showed similar correlation with skin irritation. These results therefore demonstrated that there is close correlation between skin irritation and cytotoxicity $IC_{50}$/ value by MTT in HaCaT cell at early time points by anti-wrinkle agents or IC$_{20}$ value. $IC_{50}$/ at earily time point or IC$_{20}$ values may be reliable alternative determinant of skin irritation.n.