• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.119-138
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• 1998

Recently measurements of atmospheric trace gases from satellite are vigorous. So the development of its data processing algorithm is important. In this study, retrievalof vertical ozone profile from the atmospheric transmittance measured by satellite solar occultation method and its sensitivity to temperature and pressure are investigated. The measured transmittance from satellite is assumed to be given by the limb path transmittance simulated using annual averaged Umkehr data for Seoul. The limb path transmittance between wavelengths $9.89{\mu}m$ and $10.2{\mu}m$ is simulated with respect to tangent heights using the ozone data of HALOE SIDS(Hallogen Occultation Experiment Simulated Instrument Data Set) as an initial profile. Other input data such as pressure and temperature are also from HALOE SIDS. Vertical ozone profile is correctly retrieved from the measured transmittance by onion-peeling method from 50km to 11km tangent heights with the vertical resolution of 3km. The bias error of $\pm0.001$ in measured transmittance, the forced error of $\pm3K$ in each layer temperature, and the forced $\pm3%$ error in each layer pressure are assumed for sensitivity tests. These errors are based on the ADEOS/ILAS error limitation. The error in ozone amount ranges from -6.5% to +6.9% due to transmittance error, from -9.5% to +10.5% due to temperature error, and from -5.1% to +5.4% due to pressure error, respectively. The present study suggests that accurate vertical ozone profile can be retrieved from satellite solar occultation method. Accuracy of vertical temperature profile is especially important in the retrieval of vertical ozone profile.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.2
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• pp.1011-1014
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• 2006

Coarse resolution (9 - 50 km pixels) Sea Surface Temperature satellite data are frequently considered adequate for open ocean research. However, coastal regions, including coral reef, estuarine and mesoscale upwelling regions require high-resolution (1-km pixel) SST data. The AVHRR SST data often suffer from navigation errors of several kilometres and still require manual navigation adjustments. The second serious problem is faulty and ineffective cloud-detection algorithms used operationally; many of these are based on radiance thresholds and moving window tests. With these methods, increasing sensitivity leads to masking of valid pixels. These errors lead to significant cold pixel biases and hamper image compositing, anomaly detection, and time-series analysis. Here, after manual navigation of over 40,000 AVHRR images, we implemented a new cloud filter that differs from other published methods. The filter first compares a pixel value with a climatological value built from the historical database, and then tests it against a time-based median value derived for that pixel from all satellite passes collected within ${\pm}3$ days. If the difference is larger than a predefined threshold, the pixel is flagged as cloud. We tested the method and compared to in situ SST from several shallow water buoys in the Florida Keys. Cloud statistics from all satellite sensors (AVHRR, MODIS) shows that a climatology filter with a $4^{\circ}C$ threshold and a median filter threshold of $2^{\circ}C$ are effective and accurate to filter clouds without masking good data. RMS difference between concurrent in situ and satellite SST data for the shallow waters (< 10 m bottom depth) is < $1^{\circ}C$, with only a small bias. The filter has been applied to the entire series of high-resolution SST data since1993 (including MODIS SST data since 2003), and a climatology is constructed to serve as the baseline to detect anomaly events.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.79-93
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• 2020

Objectives While sciatic neuropathy is one of the common symptoms which have the lifetime incidence of 13~40%, still there is no consensus about the standardized and the most effective conservative treatment. In addition, the importance of systematic review and meta-analysis of preclinical are growing as they could suggest possible effective treatment strategy for future studies. Therefore, we conducted systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate analgesic effect of acupuncture on sciatica in rat models. Methods Systematic search was conducted for all controlled comparative preclinical trials which assessed analgesic effect of acupuncture in sciatica rat models. Database of PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, CNKI and 6 Korean databases were used. The primary outcome was pain, which is evaluated by stimulus behavior tests in rat models. We assessed the methodological quality with Systematic Review Centre for Laboratory Animal Experimentation's risk of bias tool. RevMan 5.3 was used for meta-analysis and subgroup analysis was conducted according to treatment site, acupuncture point, treatment period and frequency used in electroacupuncture. Results 14 studies were finally included following our inclusion criteria. The data from meta-analysis indicated that the acupuncture significantly improved the result values of behavior tests for pain evaluation, compared to no-treatment control group in animal models (standardized mean difference=4.43, 95% confidence interval 3.16 to 5.69, Z=6.84, p<0.00001; χ²=68.02, p<0.00001; I²=82%). The results of subgroup analysis indicate that acupuncture treatment of unilateral site, distal acupoints, longer treatment period and applying 2/100 Hz frequency in electroacupuncture could be more effective. Conclusions Systematic review and meta-analysis of animal studies are getting important for the future clinical studies and the improvement of heatlh care. Therefore the results of the study would provide evidence and better design for the forthcoming studies.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.79-85
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• 2010

Objectives : Trauma patients have attentional bias which enforces traumatic memories and causes cognitive errors. Understanding of such selective attention may explain many aspects of the posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD) symptoms. Methods : We used the rapid serial visual presentation(RSVP) method to verify attentional blink in burn patients with PTSD. International affective picture system(IAPS) was used as stimuli and distracters. In the 'neutral test', patients have been presented series of pictures with human face picture as target stimuli. Each picture had 100ms interval. However the distance between target facial pictures was randomized and recognition of second facial picture accuracy was measured. In the 'stress test', the first target was stress picture which arouses patient emotions instead of the facial picture. Neutral and Stress tests were done with seven PTSD patients and 20 controls. In '85ms test' the interval was reduced to 85ms. The accuracy of recognition of second target facial picture was rated in all three tests. Eighty-five ms study was done with eighteen PTSD patients. Results : Attentional blinks were observed in 100-400ms of RSVP. PTSD patients showed increased recognition rate in the 'stress test' compared with the 'neutral test'. When presentation interval was decreased to 85 ms, PTSD patient showed decrease of attentional blink effect when target facial picture interval was 170ms. Conclusion : We found attentional blink effect could be affected by stress stimulus in burn patients. And attentional blink may be affected by stimulus interval and the character of stimulus. There may be some other specific mechanism related with selective attention in attentional blink especially with facial picture processing.

• Asian Journal of Turfgrass Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.223-235
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• 2006

Soil testing laboratories unfamiliar with turfgrasses will often overestimate the plant's need for phosphorus and underestimate the need for potassium. This is partly due to differences in rooting between grasses and many garden plants and crops. The grasses are generally more efficient in extracting phosphorus from the soil, reducing their need for phosphorus fertilizer. The fact that crop yield is often the primary objective in field crop production, and is usually of little interest in turfgrass management, may affect soil test interpretation for potassium. Potassium levels above those required for maximum tissue yield of grasses may improve stress tolerance and turfgrasses will usually benefit from higher applications of this element. There are also diffrrences in soil testing philosophies. Some laboratories use the sufficiency level of available nutrients(SLAN) approach, whereas others prefer the basic cation saturation ratio(BCSR) approach. Some will use a combination of the two methods. The use of the BCSR theory easily lends itself to abuse and questionable fertilizer applications and products are sometimes recommended citing imbalances in cation ratios. The usefulness of the BCSR ratio theory of soil testing varies with soil texture and interpretations on tests performed on sand-based media are particularly a problem. Other soil testing problems occur when sand-based media used on sports fields and golf greens contain free calcium carbonate. The ammonium acetate extractant at pH 7.0 dissolves excessive amounts of calcium that can bias cation exchange capacity measurements and measurements of cation ratios. Adjusting the pH of the extractant to 8.1 can improve the accuracy of the testing procedure for calcareous media.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2000

The performance of an electrometer directly affects on the accuracy and precision in radiation dosimetry. This study is to list of the quality control for maintaining performance and to perform evaluation tests of an electrometer. Performance tests selected include proper polarizing voltages, warm-up and equalization time, leakages, long-term stability, linearity, and effect of ambient conditions. An electrometer connected with a rigid stem ionization chamber was evaluated with a Strontium-90 check device. Bias voltage was measured directly on the input socket. Equalization time is the time required for reaching threshold of charged state after the power is on or the bias voltage is changed. Pre- and post-signal leakages are defined as the accumulation of signal with no exposure and after exposure, respectively. Over three months period, the electrometer's long-term stability was measured by comparison of the temperature-pressure corrected readings. Linearity was expressed as the deviation of readings from multiple short exposures from one continuous exposure. Effect of ambient conditions was expressed as the zero drift of the electrometer over 17-34$^{\circ}C$ temperature ranges. For two nominal values, 300 and 500 volts, measured voltages were lower by 2.5 and 5.8%, respectively. The warm-up time, 20 minutes, was longer than the lamp time by 9 minutes and the equalization time was less than 1 minute. Without exposure, the zero-drift was 0.002 scale-unit in 15 minutes and the leakage after 10 minutes exposure was minimal. The IQ-4 was stable over 99.4% for three-month periods. Deviation from the linearity was 0.9% for measurement scale, 0.000-9.991. Over 17-34$^{\circ}C$ temperature range, the zero-drift was minimal, less than 0.2%. For a clinically-used electrometer, a list for the basic peformance evaluations is proposed. By running this program, the measurement error using an electrometer can be reduced and in turn the improvement in accuracy and precision of radiation dosimetry can be achieved.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.435-462
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• 2012

The predominant concern of the study centers on: (1) the direct effects of the job satisfaction, social support and hope on the individual's quality of life; (2) the direct effect of hope alone on the individual's quality life; (3) the mediating effect of the hope between the job satisfaction/social support and life quality; (4) the moderating effect of the worker's legal status(legal labors Vs. illegal labors) on each causal relationship. Research is based on a survey conducted with 453 Mongolian immigrant workers(333 legal workers, 120 illegal workers) from 10 cities including Seoul. In order for respondents to address research questions, structural equation models are explored. A variety of tests are conducted(metric invariance test, critical ratio for difference test, multi-group analysis, bias-corrected boot-strapping, latent mean analysis including Cohen's effect test). The noticeable findings are as follow: First, both job satisfaction and social support have a positive influence respectively on the individual's hope and the individual's quality of life. Second, we found a partial mediating effect of hope between both job satisfaction/social support and the individual's life quality. Third, we failed to find a moderating effect of the workers' legal status on each causal relationship. Finally, there is no significant difference of the latent means of each latent variable -job satisfaction, social support, hope, and life quality - between the legal group and the illegal group, except the latent mean of workers' quality of life. A range of practical and political implications are discussed based on the study's findings.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.89-97
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• 2012

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to noise power estimation for speech enhancement in noisy environments. The method based on IMCRA (improved minima controlled recursive averaging) which is widely used in speech enhancement utilizes a rough VAD (voice activity detection) algorithm which excludes speech components during speech periods in order to improves the performance of the noise power estimation by reducing the speech distortion caused by the conventional algorithm based on the minimum power spectrum derived from the noisy speech. However, since the VAD algorithm is not sufficient to distinguish speech from noise at non-stationary noise and low SNRs (signal-to-noise ratios), the speech distortion resulted from the minimum tracking during speech periods still remained. In the proposed method, minimum power estimate obtained by IMCRA is modified by SMT (spectral minima tracking) to reduce the speech distortion derived from the bias of the estimated minimum power. In addition, in order to effectively estimate minimum power by considering the distribution characteristic of the speech and noise spectrum, the presented method combines the minimum estimates provided by IMCRA and SMT depending on the weighting factor based on the subband. Performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by subjective and objective quality tests under various environments and better results compared with the conventional method are obtained.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.4449-4454
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• 2014

Aim: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) have been considered as a risk factor for many cancers. We conducted this meta-analysis to clarify the association between H. pylori infection and the risk of pancreatic cancer. Methods: We searched the Medicine/Pubmed and Embase databases, studies about the association between H. pylori infection and pancreatic cancer published up to Jan.2014 were included. Finally, a total of 9 studies were used for this a meta-analysis. The odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI) of H. pylori infection on pancreatic cancer with respect to control groups were evaluated. Two authors independently assessed the methodological quality and extracted data. This meta-analysis was conducted using software, state (version 12.0) to investigate heterogeneity among individual studies and to summarize the studies. Using the fixed-effects or random-effects model, depending on the absence or presence of significant heterogeneity. Sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the influence of each individual study on the pooled ORs by omitting a single study each time. Publication bias was evaluated by funnel plot, using Egger's and Begg's tests. Results: There was no significant association between H. pylori infection and pancreatic cancer risk in the summary ORs,(OR=1.06, 95%CI: 0.74-1.37) through the random-effect method, but heterogeneity among studies was significant ($I^2$=58.9%), so we put the studies into two subgraphs (eastern and western). The results about western (OR=1.14 95%CI:0.89, 1.40) showed heterogeneity among the western countries of $I^2$=6.6%, with no significant association between Hp+ and pancreatic cancer, but the eastern countries (OR=0.62, 95%CI:0.49, 0.76), $I^2$=0, suggested that decreasing pancreas-cancer risk in subjects with Hp+ infection. Simultaneously, 7 studies examined CagA+ strains was (OR=0.84 95%CI:0.63, 1.04), $I^2$=36% with the random-effect method, subgraphs indicated that CagA+ could decrease the risk of pancreatic cancer in the eastern subjects (OR=0.66, 95%CI:0.52-0.80), but the association was not statistically significant in the western subjects (OR=0.95, 95%CI:0.73, 1.16). Conclusion: Hp+ and CagA+ infection are associated with a decreased risk of pancreatic cancer in eastern populations but have no significant associations in western countries.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.4583-4587
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• 2014

Objective: Beclin-1 has recently been observed as an essential marker of autophagy in several cancers. However, the prognostic role of Beclin-1 in colorectal neoplasia remains controversial. Our study aimed to evaluate the potential association between Beclin-1 expression and the outcome of colorectal cancer patients. Materials and Methods: All related studies were systematically searched in Pubmed, Embase, Springer and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases (CNKI), and then a meta-analysis was performed to determine the association of Beclin-1 expression with clinical outcomes. Finally, a total of 6 articles were included in our analysis. Results: Our data showed that high Beclin-1 expression in patients with CRC was associated with poor prognosis in terms of tumor distant metastasis (OR=2.090, 95%CI=1.061-4.119, p=0.033) and overall survival (RR=1.422, 95%CI=1.032-1.959, p=0.031). However, we did not found any correlation between Beclin-1 over-expression and tumor differentiation (OR=1.711, 95%CI=0.920-3.183, p=0.090). In addition, there was no evidence of publication bias as suggested by Egger's tests for tumor distant metastasis (p=1.000), differentiation (p=1.000) and OS (p=0.308). Conclusions: Our present meta-analysis indicated that elevated Beclin-1 expression iss associated with tumor metastasis and a poor prognosis in patients with CRC. Beclin-1 might serve as an efficient prognostic indicator in CRC, and could be a new molecular target in CRC therapy.