• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.21 no.5
• /
• pp.539-551
• /
• 2005

Finite elements based on isoparametric formulation are known to suffer spurious stiffness properties and corresponding stress oscillations, even when care is taken to ensure that completeness and continuity requirements are enforced. This occurs frequently when the physics of the problem requires multiple strain components to be defined. This kind of error, commonly known as locking, can be circumvented by using reduced integration techniques to evaluate the element stiffness matrices instead of the full integration that is mathematically prescribed. However, the reduced integration technique itself can have a further drawback - rank deficiency, which physically implies that spurious energy modes (e.g., hourglass modes) are introduced because of reduced integration. Such instability in an existing stiffness matrix is generally detected by means of an eigenvalue test. In this paper we show that a knowledge of the dimension of the solution space spanned by the column vectors of the strain-displacement matrix can be used to identify the instabilities arising in an element due to reduced/selective integration techniques a priori, without having to complete the element stiffness matrix formulation and then test for zero eigenvalues.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.103-116
• /
• 2003

The purpose of this study was to examine the economic status of retired elderly households. This study especially looked for the differences in the economic status among retired elderly households and the level of subjective financial strain. The data were drawn from the data of 2000 Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) conducted by the Korea Labor Institute. The major findings are as follows: 1) The levels of income in the retired households were found to be lower than those of the employed elderly households, and the transfer income took the biggest portion out of 5 income types reflecting high economic dependency. 2) The levels of expenditure were found to be similar to the minimum living cost, and the food cost at home was 41.9% of the expenditure. 3) About 40% and 27.3% of households reported that they felt financial strain due to food expenditures at home and health care respectively. 4) Ninety percent of all assets were found to be real estate, reflecting the lack of asset liquidity. Further, retired elderly households were classified as 'not at all strained financially', 'moderate', 'seriously strained', and 'extremely strained' groups according to their subjective assessment. The last two groups showed the lower level of income and expenditures than the first two groups. In particular, 26.5% of retired elderly households belonged to 'extremely strained' group and showed very serious economic problems.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.16 no.6
• /
• pp.627-634
• /
• 2018

Soil stabilization is an essential engineering process to enhance the geotechnical properties of soils that are not suitable for construction purposes. This study focuses on using coconut coir, a natural fibre to enhance the soil properties. Lime, an activator is added to the reinforced soil to augment its shear strength and durability. An experimental investigation was conducted to demonstrate the effect of coconut coir fibers and lime on the consistency limits, compaction characteristics, unconfined compressive strength, stress-strain behaviour, subgrade strength and durability of the treated soil. The results of the study illustrate that lime stabilization and coir reinforcement improves the unconfined compressive strength, post peak failure strength, controls crack propagation and boosts the tensile strength of the soil. Coir reinforcement provides addition contact surface, improving the soil-fibre interaction and increasing the interlocking between fibre and soil and thereby improve strength. Optimum performance of soil is observed at 1.25% coir fibre inclusion. Coir being a natural product is prone to degradation and to increase the durability of the coir reinforced soil, lime is used. Lime stabilization favourably amends the geotechnical properties of the coir fibre reinforced soil.

• Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
• /
• v.41 no.4
• /
• pp.375-382
• /
• 2015

Ginsenosides (ginseng saponin) as the one of important pharmaceutical compounds of ginseng and is responsible for the pharmacological and biological activities. These ginsenoside produces diverse small molecules ginsenoside which have more pharmacological activities including anti-wrinkle, anti-cancer and anti-oxidant effects. In the present study, we isolated bacteria using esculin agar, to produce ${\beta}$-glucosidase, and we focused on the bio-transformation of ginsenoside. Phylogenetic tree analysis was performed by comparing the 16S rRNA sequences; we identified the strain as Stenotrophomonas rhizopilae strain GFC09. In order to determine the optimal conditions for enzyme activity, the crude enzyme was incubated with 1 mM ginsenoside $Rb_1$. Bioconversion of ginsenoside $Rb_1$ were analyzed using TLC and HPLC. The crude enzyme hydrolyzed the ginsenoside $Rb_1$ along the following pathway: LB: $Rb_1{\rightarrow}Rd{\rightarrow}F_2$ into compound K, TSB: $Rb_1{\rightarrow}Rd{\rightarrow}F_2$. The structure of the hydrolyzed metabolites were identified by NMR. The activity screening tests showed that the conversion product induced the production of type I procollagen in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggested that hydrolyzed ginseng product containing the ginsenoside $F_2$ and compound K could be useful as an active ingredient for wrinkle-care cosmetics.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.61 no.1
• /
• pp.13-19
• /
• 2006

Background: Acinetobacter baumannii has emerged as an important nosocomial pathogen worldwide. The incidence of these infections has recently begun to increase. The mortality rate associated with these infections is high (bacteremia; 52%, pneumonia: 23%~73%) and multidrug resistance has been reported. For the effective control of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii(MDR-AB), the impact of these organisms in clinical practice should be determined. This study compared the clinical characteristics, mortality and morbidity of Acinetobacter nosocomial pneumonia between MDR strain and non-MDR strain. Methods: From Jan. 1, 2002 to Nov. 1. 2004, 47 adult patients with Acinetobacter nosocomial pneumonia in Chuncheon Sacred Heart Hospital were recruited and analyzed retrospectively. MDR-AB was defined as showing in vitro resistance to all commercially available antibiotics against A. baumannii. Results: There were 47 patients with Acinetobacter nosocomial pneumonia. MDR-AB and non MDR-AB was the cause of the pneumonia in 17 and 30 patients, respectively. Mean age of the former was $69{\pm}11$ years old and the latter was $70{\pm}13$ years old. The mean APCHE II score, ICU days and mortality were not different between the two groups ($16.1{\pm}5.4$ vs. $14.9{\pm}4.8$, P=0.43, $25.1{\pm}13.6$ vs. $39.1{\pm}31.0$, P=0.2, 58.8% vs. 40%, P=0.21). Conclusion: There are no significant differences in mortality and morbidity between MDR and non-MDR Acinetobacter baumannii. The mortality of the two groups is surprisingly high, therefore proper infection control practices are essential.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Health Science
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.290-298
• /
• 2015

Purpose. This study aimed to explore family caregivers' experiences with ventilator-dependent patients at home. Methods. The number of patients using mechanical ventilators at home is expected to increase and family caregivers must be able to care for them. However, few studies focus on the experiences of family caregivers. We conducted in-depth interviews with 11 family caregivers who cared for a ventilator-dependent patient at home in South Korea. Data were analyzed using phenomenological method of enquiry. Results. Statements generated from the interviews on the meaning of the family caregiver's experiences were organized into 27 themes, 5 theme clusters, and 2 categories. The theme clusters included endurance under the burden situation, role strain as a caregiver, separation from others, trying to find coping methods, and oriental ethnical customs. Family caregivers of patients using domestic mechanical ventilators need systematic education and emotional support to cope with the challenges of managing ventilator equipment and learning new ways of communicating with patients on the ventilators. Conclusion. These findings may contribute to family caregivers' knowledge and competence, thereby allowing them to better support their ventilator-dependent family members.

• Korean Parent-Child Health Journal
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.36-44
• /
• 2011

Purpose: This study was conducted to explore foreign immigrant mothers' experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing. Methods: Ten married female migrants were selected by a purposive and snowball sampling method. Data were collected during the period from September to November, 2009 by individual in-depth interviews and all interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Results: Ten categories were induced: In pregnancy and childbirth domain, social support-request help to their own parents, social support-depending on husband and mother's in law, Enduring emesis-gravidarum in strange environment were extracted. In Chid-rearing domain, child-rearing overburden, lack of self-confidence on maternal role, child-rearing difficulties due to language barrier, lack of information and education on child-rearing, lack of accessibility to public health care services, expectation of child's assimilation in Korea, financial strain in child-rearing. Conclusion: This study provides basic knowledge regarding married female migrants' experiences related to pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing. The findings of the study will help health professionals designing effective interventions for married female migrants with difficulties related to child care, parenting, rearing.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.401-408
• /
• 2015

Conventional model updating methods for the structures have used global structural responses which are modal parameters obtained through vibration measurements. Although models updated by modal parameters estimate global structural responses accurately, they have difficulties to predict local responses for safety assesment of structural members. The safety of structural members in the structures has been evaluated through the stress estimation based on strain measurements. Thus, this study additionally uses measured strain responses of structural members to perform model updating besides modal parameters. In the proposed method, the objective functions are set to the differences of the global and local responses obtained from updated model and measurement and those functions are minimized by NSGA-II, one of the multi-objective optimization techniques. The strain responses predicted from updated model are used for safety assessment of the steel frame structures. The proposed method are verified by numerical and experimental studies through the impact hammer tests for a steel frame specimen.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
• /
• v.11 no.6
• /
• pp.3-12
• /
• 1999

The larger, loftier and more highly strengthened the recent structures become, the greater attention is paid to the problem of thermal crack occurrence associate with hydration heat. As one of methods to solve the problem, a care has been taken to the improvement of construction such as the application of pre-cooling or pipe-cooling, adjustment of concrete block size, concrete placement timing, joint arrangement and so on. But it is expected that a proper selection of cement shall additionally contribute to the control of thermal cracks. In this study, thus, we selected 4 types of cements such as Type V for anti-sulphate, blast furnace cements (slag content of 45% and 65% respectively)and ternary blended low heat cement, and carried out mock-up tests. In every assigned time, temperatures and thermal stresses were measured and calculated from raw data. As a result of measurement, it was found that the magnitude of hydration heat is in order of blast furnace slag cement. Type V and ternary blended low heat cement. Results of thermal stresses were same as the order of temperature. In addition, thermal stresses calculated from the data of strain gauges showed almost similar to those measured from effective stress gauges only when strain values were adjusted properly in accordance with initial time of stress appearance. Theoretical results agreed well with the measured values comparatively, but showed slight differences. It is inferred that these differences shall be reduced if more tests capable of evaluating thermal characteristics of concrete are carried out.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.75 no.2
• /
• pp.75-78
• /
• 2013

Methcillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has emerged as an important cause of community-acquired infections, which has been recently designated as community-associated (CA) MRSA. Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL)-negative multilocus sequence type 72 (ST72)-staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) type IV has been reported as the predominat CA-MRSA strain in Korea and is commonly associated with skin and soft tissue infections in addition to healthcare-associated pneumonia. However, community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) for this strain has not yet been reported. We hereby report two cases of CAP caused by PVL-negative ST72-SCCmec type IV strain in patients who had no risk factors for MRSA acquisition. While CA-MRSA infections are not yet prevalent in Korea, our cases suggest that CA-MRSA should be considered in cases of severe CAP, especially for cases associated with necrotizing pneumonia.