• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.12
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• pp.793-799
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• 2016

In a hybrid fuel cell system, low-temperature reforming technology, which uses waste heat as a heat source, is applied to improve system efficiency. A low temperature reformer is required to optimize geometry in low thermal conditions so that the reformer can achieve the proper methane conversion rate. This study analyzed internal temperature distributions and the reaction patterns of a reformer by considering the change of the shape factor on the limited heat supply condition. Unlike the case of a high temperature reformer, analysis showed that the reaction of a low temperature reformer takes place primarily in the high temperature region of the reactor exit. In addition, it was confirmed that the efficiency can be improved by reducing the GHSV (gas hourly space velocity) or increasing the heat transfer area in the radial direction. Through reacting characteristic analysis, according to change of the aspect ratio, it was confirmed that a low temperature reformer can improve the efficiency by increasing the heat transfer in the radial direction, rather than in the longitudinal direction.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.131-137
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• 1994

Drug delivery system by the use of red blood cells was established to sustain the release of drugs in the circulatory system by the intravenous injection. The entrapment method by the preswelling technique was re-examined and evaluated for searching the new entrapping conditions without hemolysis. The addition of 4 volume of $0.6{\times}\;hank's$ balanced salt solution (HBSS) into 1 volume of 50% red blood cells suspension did not induce the hemolysis and change the hematocrit level in this experimental condition (within 15 min). Most of daunorubicin could be entrapped into red blood cells within 15 min. While the intracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) level followed by the entrapment was reduced to 86% of normal ATP level, the membrane fluidity and the shape factor of red blood cells were not altered. The release rate of daunorubicin from red blood cells was affected by the hemolysis under this condition. To maintain the intracellular ATP in red blood cells, the new reaction buffer was made With the addition of ATP and sodium pyruvate during the entrapment procedure because the hemolysis during the release test would reflect the loss of intracellular ATP that might result in the decrease of the viability in vivo. The addition of ATP raised the intracellular ATP level, which protect the hemolysis during the release test.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.385-391
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• 2005

A frictional coefficients of in-vivo skin characteristic is the most important factor of the cutaneous mechanical properties ant the method of evaluating skin care in the fields of cosmetics products. In-vivo skin characteristic varies in many different ways depends on what is applied to the skin, loading condition, shape, surface roughness, and material of the probe. In this research, we designed a system which can be measured frictional coefficients of a human skin on real time. It consists of multi-components load-cell, actuator, linear motor and arm fixator. This measurement system was automatically controlled by computer. We measured frictional coefficients between probe an4 skin using this system ant inquired adjectives for subjective evaluation while rubbing cosmetic product on skin. Lastly, we analyzed correlation between two factors by calculating Pearson Correlation Coefficient. As a result, we could know that frictional coefficients varied from 0.17-1.2 according to cosmetic products, normal forte, materials and surface conditions of probe. We also confirmed sensual feelings of cosmetic products have close correlation with frictional coefficients.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.456-463
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• 2002

Distraction osteogenesis is a well-established clinical treatment for limb length discrepancy and skeletal deformities. Appropriate mechanical tension-stress is believed not to break the callus but rather to stimulate osteogenesis. In contrast to fracture healing, the mode of bone formation in distraction osteogenesis is primarily intramembranous ossification. Although the biomechanical, histological, and ultrastructural changes associated with distraction osteogenesis have been widely described, the basic biology of the process is still not well known. Moreover, the molecular mechanisms in distraction osteogenesis remain largely unclear. Recent studies have implicated the growth factor cascade is likely to play an important role in distraction. And current reserch suggested that mechanical tension-stress modulates cell shape and phenotype, and stimulates the expression of the mRNA for bone matrix proteins. This article presents the hypotheses and current research that have furthered knowledge of the molecular biology that govern distraction osteogenesis. The gene regulation of growth factors and extracellular matrix proteins during distraction osteogenesis are discussed in this article. It is believed that understanding the biomolecular mechanisms that mediate distraction osteogenesis may guide the development of targeted strategies designed to improve distraction osteogenesis and accelerate bone healing.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.282-287
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• 2019

The photovoltaic properties of $TiO_2$ used for the electron transport layer in perovskite solar cells(PSCs) are compared according to the particle size. The PSCs are fabricated and prepared by employing 20 nm and 30 nm $TiO_2$ as well as a 1:1 mixture of these particles. To analyze the microstructure and pores of each $TiO_2$ layer, a field emission scanning electron microscope and the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller(BET) method are used. The absorbance and photovoltaic characteristic of the PSC device are examined over time using ultraviolet-visible-near-infrared spectroscopy and a solar simulator. The microstructural analysis shows that the $TiO_2$ shape and layer thicknesses are all similar, and the BET analysis results demonstrate that the size of $TiO_2$ and in surface pore size is very small. The results of the photovoltaic characterization show that the mean absorbance is similar, in a range of about 400-800 nm. However, the device employing 30 nm $TiO_2$ demonstrates the highest energy conversion efficiency(ECE) of 15.07 %. Furthermore, it is determined that all the ECEs decrease over time for the devices employing the respective types of $TiO_2$. Such differences in ECE based on particle size are due to differences in fill factor, which changes because of changes in interfacial resistance during electron movement owing to differences in the $TiO_2$ particle size, which is explained by a one-dimensional model of the electron path through various $TiO_2$ particles.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.3708-3728
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• 2021

Indian herbal plants are used in agriculture and in the food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. Laboratory-based tests are routinely used to identify and classify similar herb species by analyzing their internal cell structures. In this paper, we have applied computer vision techniques to do the same. The original leaf image was preprocessed using the Chan-Vese active contour segmentation algorithm to efface the background from the image by setting the contraction bias as (v) -1 and smoothing factor (µ) as 0.5, and bringing the initial contour close to the image boundary. Thereafter the segmented grayscale image was fed to a leaky capacitance fired neuron model (LCFN), which differentiates between similar herbs by combining different groups of pixels in the leaf image. The LFCN's decay constant (f), decay constant (g) and threshold (h) parameters were empirically assigned as 0.7, 0.6 and h=18 to generate the 1D feature vector. The LCFN time sequence identified the internal leaf structure at different iterations. Our proposed framework was tested against newly collected herbal species of natural images, geometrically variant images in terms of size, orientation and position. The 1D sequence and shape features of aloe, betel, Indian borage, bittergourd, grape, insulin herb, guava, mango, nilavembu, nithiyakalyani, sweet basil and pomegranate were fed into the 5-fold Bayesian regularization neural network (BRNN), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), and ensemble classifier to obtain the highest classification accuracy of 91.19%.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2004

Background : When a non small cell lung caner patient at the $_cT_{1-2}N_0M_0$ stage is diagnosed with intrapulmonary nodule(s), the treatment plan and prognosis of the patient largely depend on whether the nodule is benign or malignant. In most cases, however, it is hard to conduct a biopsy on such a nodule, due to its small size. Furthermore, the predictive factors that may imply benignancy or malignancy of the nodules remain unknown. As such, the purpose of our study was to validate the incidence of malignant nodules in such cases, and find if there are any predictive factors. Methods : Chest computed tomography(CT) scans and the medical records of 444 patients, who had undergone non small cell lung cancer surgery, between July, 2001 and September, 2003, at Seoul National University Hospital, were retrospectively reviewed. Among $_cT_{1-2}N_0M_0$ non small cell lung cancer patients, with intrapulmonary nodule(s), only those cases where a CT scan or a biopsy of the nodules had been conducted, and had been followed up at intervals of more than 6 months were included. However, patients who had received chemotherapy or radiation therapy, pre- or post-operatively, or with calcified nodules, were excluded. Results : Our study group consisted of 39 patients, divided into two groups. The first group, 33 patients, had benign nodules, and the second group, 6 patients, had malignant nodules. The two groups were compared with regard to gender, age, cell type, pathologic stage, shape, size, location and number of nodules and presence of calcification around the nodules. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Conclusion : The intrapulmonary nodules in non small cell lung cancer patients at the $_cT_{1-2}N_0M_0$ stage were mostly benign. Therefore, surgical treatment for such patients can be considered. Moreover, without predictive factors, pathological confirmation of the diagnosed nodules should be sought in all patients.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.101-115
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• 2009

The prompt recovery of housing market in Korea became the national task, for which tools that can analyze the influence that changing situation of housing market and new policy may have on the housing market needs to be developed. Thus, this research intends to develop Multi-Agent Housing Market Model and simulation system in Jinju City as a study area. Analyzing the local housing market of Jinju City, then multi-agent model of housing market that consolidates 3 sub-models, house choice model, hedonic model of house price and location choice model is developed. Moreover in order to develop simulation system the model is programmed in the virtual space of which the size is $150{\times}100$ cell including physical shape of city such as road, urban facilities, land use, etc. With the system, simulations are performed to confirm the impact of urban development on the pattern of residential location. As a result, it is found that the residential location can not be easily induced when only road, commercial and convenient facilities are supplied. However, it is also found that since supplying green results in very many residences, arrangement of infrastructure and environmental factor should be considered at the same time for urban development. As conclusion, it is confirmed that the model and simulation system developed in this research smoothly works to be utilized for the analysis of diverse policy experiment and housing market.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.250-265
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• 2008

Distraction osteogenesis is a well-established clinical treatment for limb length discrepancy and skeletal deformities. Appropriate mechanical tension-stress is believed not to break the callus but rather to stimulate osteogenesis. In contrast to fracture healing, the mode of bone formation in distraction osteogenesis is primarily intramembranous ossification. Although the biomechanical, histological, and ultrastructural changes associated with distraction osteogenesis have been widely described, the basic biology of the process is still not well known. Moreover, the molecular mechanisms in distraction osteogenesis remain largely unclear. Recent studies have implicated the growth factor cascade is likely to play an important role in distraction. And current reserch suggested that mechanical tension-stress modulates cell shape and phenotype, and stimulates the expression of the mRNA for bone matrix proteins. The purpose of this study is to examine the pattern of expression of growth factors($TGF-{\beta}1$, IGF-I, bFGF) and extracellular matrix proteins(osteoclacin, osteonectin) related to osteogenesis by osteodistraction of the mandible in rabbits. 24 rabbits is used for this experiment. Experimental group are gradual distraction(0.7mm, twice/day), acute distraction(1.4mm, twice/day) and control group is only osteotomized. After 5 days latency, osteotomic site is distracted for each 7 days and 3.5 days. Consolidation period is 28 days. The animal is sacrificed at the 3th, 7th, 14th, 28th. The distracted bone is examined by immunohistochemical analysis and RT-PCR analysis. The results obtained from this study were as follow : No significant difference was found on clinical examination according to distraction rate, but gradual distraction was shown to improve regenerate bone formation on radiographic and histologic examination. Growth factors and extracelluar matrix proteins expression increased in distraction group than control group. From these results, it could be stated that graudal distraction is shown to improve and accelerate bone formation and mechanical stress like distraction has considerable effects on osteogenesis related factors. And rabbit is the most appropriate animal model for further reseach on the molecular mechanisms that mediate osteodistraction. It is believed that understanding the biomolecular mechanisms that mediate distraction osteogenesis may guide the development of targeted strategies designed to improve distraction osteogenesis and accelerate bone healing.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.175-180
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• 2009

Lead (Pb) is a ubiquitously occurring environmental heavy metal which is widely used in industry and human life. Possibly due to a global industrial expansion, recent studies have revealed the prevalent human exposure to Pb and increased risk of Pb toxicity. Once ingested by human, 95% of absorbed Pb is accumulated into erythrocytes and erythrocytes are known to be a prime target for Pb toxicity. Most of the studies were however, focused on $Pb^{2+}$ whereas the effects of $Pb^{4+}$, another major form of Pb on erythrocytes are poorly understood yet. In this study, we investigated and compared the effects of $Pb^{4+}$, $Pb^{2+}$ and other heavy metals on procoagulant activation of erythrocytes, an important factor for the participation of erythrocytes in thrombotic events in an effort to address the cardiovascular toxicity of $Pb^{4+}$. Freshly isolated erythrocytes from human were incubated with $Pb^{4+}$, $Pb^{2+}$, $Cd^{2+}$ and $Ag^+$ and the exposure of phosphatidylserine (PS), key marker for procoagulant activation was measured using flow cytometry. As a result, while $Cd^{2+}$ and $Ag^+$ did not affect PS exposure, $Pb^{4+}$ and $Pb^{2+}$ induced significantly PS exposure in a dose-dependent manner. Of a particular note, $Pb^{4+}$ induced PS exposure with a similar potency with $Pb^{2+}$. PS bearing microvesicle (MV), another important contributor to procoagulant activation was also generated by $Pb^{4+}$. These PS exposure and MV generation by $Pb^{4+}$ were well in line with the shape change of erythrocyte from normal discocytes to MV shedding echinocytes following $Pb^{4+}$ treatment. Meanwhile, nonspecific hemolysis was not observed suggesting the specificity of $Pb^{4+}$-induced PS exposure and MV generation. These results indicated that $Pb^{4+}$ could induce procoagulant activation of erythrocytes through PS exposure and MV generation, suggesting that $Pb^{4+}$ exposure might ultimately lead to increased thrombotic events.