• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.67-83
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• 1983

The new microsporidia S80 isolated from, Bombyx mori L. in Korea showed ovoid in the morphology of the spores and the size were measured $2.9{\pm}0.28{\mu}$ in length and $1.7{\pm}0.29{\mu}$ width. No other microsporidian spore like this has not been so far isolated from Silkworm. The length of the polar filament extruded in hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$) at $30^{\circ}C$ was $26{\mu}$ of a round cytoplasm on the top. The spores were partly stained with Giemsa, Safranin-O and Gram as the same staining properties as Nosema bombycis, Microsporidia K 79 and other microsporidian spores. The fine structures were observed under scanning eleceron microscope through ultrathin sectioning. The spore wall was composed of three layers ; the thin exospore of an electron dense rippled layer, the thick electron lucent endospore which was thinning considerably at the polar filament insertion point, and the inner limiting membrane. Polar cap present at the sporeapex, with a long polar filament of 12-13 coils, subtending angle of $60^{\circ}$ to spore axis, which is tubular made up of a multilayered and are a benes core, light ring structure enclosing the dance core, the dark ring structure enclosing the inner light ring structure and the other than and light ring structure bounded from cytoplasm. Lamellate polaroplast occupied the anterior part of the spore, and the two neclei with dense nucleoplasm bounded by a double nuclear envelope were cited in the slight downer middle portion of spore. From the characteristics of the shape, size and fine structures, it is certain to reason the Microsporidia S80 belong to the phylum Microspora, class Microspora, order Microsporida, order Microsporida. The shape of two nuclei cited seems to be genus Nosema, but in the classification for the suborder it should be defined wheather pansporoblasts be formed or not and for the genis especial attempts have been made to define the characters which distinguish the disporous genera in the life cycle. Survey through the infection of the bad cocoons during 1980 to 1982 in South Korea the areas contaminated with new microsporidia were revealed 5 provinces of Kyung-Gi, Kang-Won, Chung-Nam and Chun-Nam. Pathological effects inoculated per os at second instar larvae of silkworm, the LD 50 was $7.1{\times}10^7/ml$ as lower pathogenecity than that of Nosema bombycis Naegeli of $1.2{\times}10_7/ml$. While on the other hand the inoculation of the microsporidia at fourth instar larvae lowerd the whole cocoon weight and cocoon shell weight and significant at 1% level. The microsporidia S80 defined it can not be transmitted transovarially from the result of predictive and collective examination of 21 egg batches from the infected female moth.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.209-220
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to find out the characteristics of depressive episode about major depression and bipolar disorder in child and adolescent. The subjects of this study were 34 major depression patients and 17 bipolar disorder patients hospitalized at child and adolescent psychiatry in OO university children's hospital from 1st March 1993 to 31st October 1999. The method of this study is to review socio-demographic characteristics, diagnostic classification, chief problems and symptoms at admission, frequency of symptoms, maternal pregnancy problem history, childhood developmental history, coexisting psychiatric disorders, family psychopathology and family history and therapeutic response through their chart. 1) The ratio of male was higher than that of female in major depressive disorder while they are similar in manic episode, bipolar disorder. 2) Average onset age of bipolar disorder was 14 years 1 month and it was 12 years 8 months in the case of major depression As a result, average onset age of major depression is lower than that of bipolar disorder. 3) The patients complained of vegetative symptoms than somatic symptoms in both bipolar disorder and depressive disorder. Also, the cases of major depression developed more suicide idea symptom while the case of bipolar disorder developed more aggressive symptoms. In the respect of psychotic symptoms, delusion was more frequently shown in major depression, but halucination was more often shown in bipolar disorder. 4) Anxiety disorder coexisted most frequently in two groups. And there coexisted symptoms such as somartoform disorder, mental retardation and personality disorder in both cases. 5) The influence of family loading was remarkable in both cases. Above all, the development of major depression had to do with child abuse history and inappropriate care of family. It is apparent that there are distinctive differences between major depression and bipolar disorder in child and adolescent through the study, just as in adult cases. Therefore the differences of clinical characteristics between two disorders is founded in coexisting disorders and clinical symptoms including onset age, somatic symptoms and vegetative symptoms.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2013

This study investigated Chinese Laws on the kind of urban green spaces and the legal requirements for the green spaces of urban habitat and analyzed the specificities of them intending to provide basic data to suggest bringing in or not the relevant Chinese Laws to Korea. This study can be summarized as follows: First, the concept of Chinese urban green spaces(g.s.) classified by 5 kinds(park g.s., production g.s., protection g.s., attachment g.s., the others g.s.) placed the park and green spaces in the same category unlike the Korean urban green spaces that only distinguishes between park and green spaces. The Chinese Urban Park is classified by 4 kinds(composite park, community park, special park, linear park) at the 'Standard for urban green spaces classification' which is below in rank of the legal system. Second, in case of calculation for green spaces ratio of urban green spaces in China, the green rooftop landscaping area should not be included as a green spaces area except the rooftop of a basement or semi basement building to which residents have easy access. The green spaces requirements and compulsory secure ratio by 3 habitat kinds(habitat, small habit, minimum habitat) of when to act as a residential plan is regulated. Third, the green spaces system is obligated to establish at habitat green spaces plan and is specified to conserve and improve existing trees and green spaces. The green spaces ratio on reconstruction for old habitat is relaxed to be lower than for new habitat and a gradient of green spaces is peculiarly clarified. The details and requirements for establishment and the minimum area intending for each classes of the central green spaces(habitat park, children park, minimum habitat's green spaces) are regulated. Especially at a garden style of minimum habitat's green spaces, intervals between the south and north houses and a compulsory security for green spaces area classifying into two groups(closing type green spaces and open type green spaces) by a middle-rise or high-rise building are clarified. System of calculation for green spaces area is presented at a special regulation. Fourth, a general index(area/person) of public green spaces within habitat to achieve by 3 habitat kinds is determined, in this case, the index on reconstruction for a deterioration zone can be relaxed to be lower to the extent of a specified quantity. A location and scale, minimum width and minimum area per place of public green spaces are regulated. A space plot principle including adjacent to a road, greening area ratio against total area, security of open space and the shadow line boundary of sunshine are also regulated to intend for public green spaces. Fifth, the minimum horizontal distance between the underground cables and the surrounding greening trees are regulated as the considerable items for green spaces when setting up the underground cables. The principle to establish green spaces within public service facilities is regulated according to the kind of service contents. It shall be examined in order to import or not the special regulations that only exist in Chinese Laws but not in Korean Laws. The result of this study will contribute to gain the domestic landscape architect's' sympathy of the research related to Chinese urban green spaces laws requiring immediate attention and will be a good chance to advance into the internationalization of Korean Landscape Architectural Laws.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.143-163
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• 2016

The demographics of Internet users are the most basic and important sources for target marketing or personalized advertisements on the digital marketing channels which include email, mobile, and social media. However, it gradually has become difficult to collect the demographics of Internet users because their activities are anonymous in many cases. Although the marketing department is able to get the demographics using online or offline surveys, these approaches are very expensive, long processes, and likely to include false statements. Clickstream data is the recording an Internet user leaves behind while visiting websites. As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage, the activity is logged in semi-structured website log files. Such data allows us to see what pages users visited, how long they stayed there, how often they visited, when they usually visited, which site they prefer, what keywords they used to find the site, whether they purchased any, and so forth. For such a reason, some researchers tried to guess the demographics of Internet users by using their clickstream data. They derived various independent variables likely to be correlated to the demographics. The variables include search keyword, frequency and intensity for time, day and month, variety of websites visited, text information for web pages visited, etc. The demographic attributes to predict are also diverse according to the paper, and cover gender, age, job, location, income, education, marital status, presence of children. A variety of data mining methods, such as LSA, SVM, decision tree, neural network, logistic regression, and k-nearest neighbors, were used for prediction model building. However, this research has not yet identified which data mining method is appropriate to predict each demographic variable. Moreover, it is required to review independent variables studied so far and combine them as needed, and evaluate them for building the best prediction model. The objective of this study is to choose clickstream attributes mostly likely to be correlated to the demographics from the results of previous research, and then to identify which data mining method is fitting to predict each demographic attribute. Among the demographic attributes, this paper focus on predicting gender, age, marital status, residence, and job. And from the results of previous research, 64 clickstream attributes are applied to predict the demographic attributes. The overall process of predictive model building is compose of 4 steps. In the first step, we create user profiles which include 64 clickstream attributes and 5 demographic attributes. The second step performs the dimension reduction of clickstream variables to solve the curse of dimensionality and overfitting problem. We utilize three approaches which are based on decision tree, PCA, and cluster analysis. We build alternative predictive models for each demographic variable in the third step. SVM, neural network, and logistic regression are used for modeling. The last step evaluates the alternative models in view of model accuracy and selects the best model. For the experiments, we used clickstream data which represents 5 demographics and 16,962,705 online activities for 5,000 Internet users. IBM SPSS Modeler 17.0 was used for our prediction process, and the 5-fold cross validation was conducted to enhance the reliability of our experiments. As the experimental results, we can verify that there are a specific data mining method well-suited for each demographic variable. For example, age prediction is best performed when using the decision tree based dimension reduction and neural network whereas the prediction of gender and marital status is the most accurate by applying SVM without dimension reduction. We conclude that the online behaviors of the Internet users, captured from the clickstream data analysis, could be well used to predict their demographics, thereby being utilized to the digital marketing.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

Analysis of future business or investment opportunities, such as business feasibility analysis and company or technology valuation, necessitate objective estimation on the relevant market and expected sales. While there are various ways to classify the estimation methods of these new sales or market size, they can be broadly divided into top-down and bottom-up approaches by benchmark references. Both methods, however, require a lot of resources and time. Therefore, we propose a data-based intelligent demand forecasting system to support evaluation of new business. This study focuses on analogical forecasting, one of the traditional quantitative forecasting methods, to develop sales forecasting intelligence systems for new businesses. Instead of simply estimating sales for a few years, we hereby propose a method of estimating the sales of new businesses by using the initial sales and the sales growth rate of similar companies. To demonstrate the appropriateness of this method, it is examined whether the sales performance of recently established companies in the same industry category in Korea can be utilized as a reference variable for the analogical forecasting. In this study, we examined whether the phenomenon of "mean reversion" was observed in the sales of start-up companies in order to identify errors in estimating sales of new businesses based on industry sales growth rate and whether the differences in business environment resulting from the different timing of business launch affects growth rate. We also conducted analyses of variance (ANOVA) and latent growth model (LGM) to identify differences in sales growth rates by industry category. Based on the results, we proposed industry-specific range and linear forecasting models. This study analyzed the sales of only 150,000 start-up companies in Korea in the last 10 years, and identified that the average growth rate of start-ups in Korea is higher than the industry average in the first few years, but it shortly shows the phenomenon of mean-reversion. In addition, although the start-up founding juncture affects the sales growth rate, it is not high significantly and the sales growth rate can be different according to the industry classification. Utilizing both this phenomenon and the performance of start-up companies in relevant industries, we have proposed two models of new business sales based on the sales growth rate. The method proposed in this study makes it possible to objectively and quickly estimate the sales of new business by industry, and it is expected to provide reference information to judge whether sales estimated by other methods (top-down/bottom-up approach) pass the bounds from ordinary cases in relevant industry. In particular, the results of this study can be practically used as useful reference information for business feasibility analysis or technical valuation for entering new business. When using the existing top-down method, it can be used to set the range of market size or market share. As well, when using the bottom-up method, the estimation period may be set in accordance of the mean reverting period information for the growth rate. The two models proposed in this study will enable rapid and objective sales estimation of new businesses, and are expected to improve the efficiency of business feasibility analysis and technology valuation process by developing intelligent information system. In academic perspectives, it is a very important discovery that the phenomenon of 'mean reversion' is found among start-up companies out of general small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as stable companies such as listed companies. In particular, there exists the significance of this study in that over the large-scale data the mean reverting phenomenon of the start-up firms' sales growth rate is different from that of the listed companies, and that there is a difference in each industry. If a linear model, which is useful for estimating the sales of a specific company, is highly likely to be utilized in practical aspects, it can be explained that the range model, which can be used for the estimation method of the sales of the unspecified firms, is highly likely to be used in political aspects. It implies that when analyzing the business activities and performance of a specific industry group or enterprise group there is political usability in that the range model enables to provide references and compare them by data based start-up sales forecasting system.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.118-126
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• 2001

Purpose : In this study, it was investigated whether dose response relation existed or not in local radiotherapy for primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Materials and Methods : From January 1992 to March 2000, 158 patients were included in present study. Exclusion criteria included the presence of extrahepatic metastasis, liver cirrhosis of Child's class C, tumors occupying more than two thirds of the entire liver, and performance status on the ECOG scale of more than 3. Radiotherapy was given to the field including tumor with generous margin using 6, 10-MV X-ray. Mean tumor dose was $48.2{\pm}7.9\;Gy$ in daily 1.8 Gy fractions. Tumor response was based on diagnostic radiologic examinations such as CT scan, MR imaging, hepatic artery angiography at $4\~8$ weeks following completion of treatment. Statistical analysis was done to investigate the existence of dose response relationship of local radiotherapy when it was applied to the treatment of primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Results : An objective response was observed in 106 of 158 patients, giving a response rate of $67.1\%$. Statistical analysis revealed that total dose was the most significant factor in relation to tumor response when local radiotherapy was applied to the treatment of primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Only $29.2\%$ showed objective response in patients treated with dose less than 40 Gy, while $68.6\%\;and\;77.1\%$ showed major response in patients with $40\~50\;Gy$ and more than 50 Gy, respectively. Child-Pugh classification was significant factor in the development of ascites, overt radiation induced liver disease and gastroenteritis. Radiation dose was an important factor for development of radiation induced gastroduodenal ulcer. Conclusion : Present study showed the existence of dose response relationship in local radiotherapy for primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Only radiotherapy dose was a significant factor to predict the objective response. Further study is required to predict the maximal tolerance dose in consideration of liver function and non-irradiated liver volume.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.39-59
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• 2007

The international involvement of a firm has been described as a gradual development process "a process in which the enterprise gradually increases its international involvement in many studies. This process evolves in the interplay between the development of knowledge about foreign markets and operations on one hand and increasing commitment of resources to foreign markets on the other." On the basis of Uppsala internationalization model, many studies strengthen strong theoretical and empirical support. According to the predictions of the classic stages theory, the internationalization process of firms have been recognized and characterized gradual evolution to foreign markets, so called stage theory: indirect & direct export, strategic alliance and foreign direct investment. However, termed "international new ventures" (McDougall, Shane, and Oviatt 1994), "born globals" (Knight 1997; Knight and Cavusgil 1996; Madsen and Servais 1997), "instant internationals" (Preece, Miles, and Baetz 1999), or "global startups" (Oviatt and McDougall 1994) have been used and come into spotlight in internationalization study of technology intensity venture companies. Recent researches focused on venture company have suggested the phenomenons of 'born global' firms as a contradiction to the stages theory. Especially the article by Oviatt and McDougall threw the spotlight on international entrepreneurs, on international new ventures, and on their importance in the globalising world economy. Since venture companies have, by definition. lack of economies of scale, lack of resources (financial and knowledge), and aversion to risk taking, they have a difficulty in expanding their market to abroad and pursue internalization gradually and step by step. However many venture companies have pursued 'Born Global Strategy', which is different from process strategy, because corporate's environment has been rapidly changing to globalization. The existing studies investigate that (1) why the ventures enter into overseas market in those early stage, even in infancy, (2) what make the different international strategy among ventures and the born global strategy is better to the infant ventures. However, as for venture's performance(growth and profitability), the existing results do not correspond each other. They also, don't include marketing strategy (differentiation, low price, market breadth and market pioneer) that is important factors in studying of BGV's performance. In this paper I aim to delineate the appearance of international new ventures and the phenomenons of venture companies' internationalization strategy. In order to verify research problems, I develop a resource-based model and marketing strategies for analyzing the effects of the born global venture firms. In this paper, I suggested 3 research problems. First, do the korean venture companies take some advantages in the aspects of corporate's performances (growth, profitability and overall market performances) when they pursue internationalization from inception? Second, do the korean BGV have firm specific assets (foreign experiences, foreign orientation, organizational absorptive capacity)? Third, What are the marketing strategies of korean BGV and is it different from others? Under these problems, I test then (1) whether the BGV that a firm started its internationalization activity almost from inception, has more intangible resources(foreign experience of corporate members, foreign orientation, technological competences and absorptive capacity) than any other venture firms(Non_BGV) and (2) also whether the BGV's marketing strategies-differentiation, low price, market diversification and preemption strategy are different from Non_BGV. Above all, the main purpose of this research is that results achieved by BGV are indeed better than those obtained by Non_BGV firms with respect to firm's growth rate and efficiency. To do this research, I surveyed venture companies located in Seoul and Deajeon in Korea during November to December, 2005. I gather the data from 200 venture companies and then selected 84 samples, which have been founded during 1999${\sim}$2000. To compare BGV's characteristics with those of Non_BGV, I also had to classify BGV by export intensity over 50% among five or six aged venture firms. Many other researches tried to classify BGV and Non_BGV, but there were various criterion as many as researchers studied on this topic. Some of them use time gap, which is time difference of establishment and it's first internationalization experience and others use export intensity, ration of export sales amount divided by total sales amount. Although using a mixed criterion of prior research in my case, I do think this kinds of criterion is subjective and arbitrary rather than objective, so I do mention my research has some critical limitation in the classification of BGV and Non_BGV. The first purpose of research is the test of difference of performance between BGV and Non_BGV. As a result of t-test, the research show that there are statistically efficient difference not only in the growth rate (sales growth rate compared to competitors and 3 years averaged sales growth rate) but also in general market performance of BGV. But in case of profitability performance, the hypothesis that is BGV is more profit (return on investment(ROI) compared to competitors and 3 years averaged ROI) than Non-BGV was not supported. From these results, this paper concludes that BGV grows rapidly and gets a high market performance (in aspect of market share and customer loyalty) but there is no profitability difference between BGV and Non_BGV. The second result is that BGV have more absorptive capacity especially, knowledge competence, and entrepreneur's international experience than Non_BGV. And this paper also found BGV search for product differentiation, exemption strategy and market diversification strategy while Non_BGV search for low price strategy. These results have never been dealt with other existing studies. This research has some limitations. First limitation is concerned about the definition of BGV, as I mentioned above. Conceptually speaking, BGV is defined as company pursue internationalization from inception, but in empirical study, it's very difficult to classify between BGV and Non_BGV. I tried to classify on the basis of time difference and export intensity, this criterions are so subjective and arbitrary that the results are not robust if the criterion were changed. Second limitation is concerned about sample used in this research. I surveyed venture companies just located in Seoul and Daejeon and also use only 84 samples which more or less provoke sample bias problem and generalization of results. I think the more following studies that focus on ventures located in other region, the better to verify the results of this paper.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.18
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• pp.124-155
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• 1975

To obtain the fundamental informations on the varietal improvement of peanut and to study the ecological variations of the important agronomic traits and to the relationship between the traits studied, an investigation was made on varietal classification of 489 introduced on the basis of their morphological and ecological differences at Crop Experiment Station, Suweon in 1968, and the other study conducted at some location as above in 1969 was to investigate the ecological variations of the materials in accordance with changes of seeding date using classified varietal group under 5 different seeding times from April 16 to July 7 with twenty days interval. The results obtained were summarized as follows: 1. Peanut varieties tested were classified into Spanish, Virginia Erect, Virginia Runner, Southeast Runner. Valencia and Semirunner, on the basis of plant type, flowering time, number of grains per pod and grain size. 2. Characteristics of varietal group classified are as followings. (1) Spanish; erect, small grained and early maturing type. (2) Virginia Erect; erect, large grained and late flowering type. (3) Virginia Runner; runner, large grained and late maturing type. (4) Southeast Runner; runner, small grained and early maturing type. (5) Valencia; erect, small grained and early flowering type with 3-4 grains per pod. (6) Semi runner; semirunner, large grained and late flowering type. 3. Flowering period in respective varietal group was consistently shorted by delayed seeding date and the degree of shortening was more serious in late flowering varietal group. 4. Number of branches per plant was generally decreased in late seeding date in respective group. However, Spanish and Virginia Runner exhibited lower number of branches in the first seeding rather than the second seeding and the lowest number of branches was found in Spanish while the highest were Virginia Erect in all seeding date. 5. Shelling ratio was high in Spanish and Southeast Runner in any seeding date and decreased remarkedly by seeding after May. 6. Number of pod per plant in all varietal groups was remarkedly decreased by delayed seeding date and the degree of decreasing was more serious in large grain varietal group. 7. The higher pod weight per plant was found in second seeding date rather than first seeding and pod weight per plant was decreased obviously in all late seeding after the second. Therefore, among the cultivars tested, Southeast Runner noted the highest pod weight per plant while Virginia Runner showed the lowest. 8. Grain number per plant expressed the similar tendency as the pod weight per plant but was low in large grain group and high in small grain group in all seeding date employed. 9. 100 grain weight was heaviest in second seeding and was decreased remarkedly after the second and even the first seeding date. 10. Yield per 10a noted considerable variations in accordance with seeding date in all groups classified. However, the yield was increased in second seeding date (May 7) and decreased in the others. 11. Length of main stem and branches were exceptionally decreased in the first seeding date compare to the second in Spanish while other varieties were tend to be same between the indicated seeding date, but. these two traits were strikingly decreased in all seeding after the second. This tendency, however, strongly suggested the importance of environmental effects on peanut growth in terms of their changes due to the different seeding date. 12. Highly significant positive correlations were showed between yield and yield componets such as pod weight per plant, 100 grain weight and the number of grains per plant in all varietal groups except, Virginia Runner. However, the other characters were almost not correlated with yield and differences in correlation coefficients among the seeding dates were found. 13. Path coefficients estimated for yield components to yield was higher in number of grains per plant pod weight per plant and 100 grain weight in terms of direct effect and the other components were negligible in all varietal groups. 14. Heritabilities estimated were generally high in pod number per plant, shelling ratio, 100 grain weights and number of grains per pod and the other traits were relatively low.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.36 no.9
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• pp.651-658
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• 2003

Since the first implanted in September 1997, the use of On-X prosthetic heart valve has been increasing around in the world. This study was designed to assess the feasibility, safety, and the postoperative hemodynamics with this new valve in clinical setting. Material and Method: The current study was carried out on 52 patients undergoing aortic valve replacement with this prosthesis between April 1999 to August 2002 at Chonnam National University Hospital to evaluate the surgical results. 52％ of the patients were male and the average age at implant was 50$\pm$13 years. The study followed the guidelines of the AATS/STS. Preoperatively, 32(61.5％) patients were in NYHA functional class III or IV and 2 patients had previous aortic valve surgery. Concomitant cardiac surgery was performed in 71.1％. The implanted valve sizes were 19 mm in 13 patients, 21 mm in 26, 23 mm in 10 and 25 mm in 3, respectively. Mean follow-up was 16.6$\pm$10.5 months (1∼39 months). Echocardiographic assessment was performed pre- and immediate postoperatively, as well as 3, 6, 12 months after surgery, evaluating pressure loss and regression of left ventricular hypertrophy. Result: Mean cardiopulmonary bypass time was 191$\pm$94.7 minutes with an aortic cross-clamp time of 142$\pm$51.7 minutes. There was no early and late mortality, Freedom from adverse events at 1 year in the study were as follows: thromboembolism, 95.6$\pm$6％; bleeding events, 90.2$\pm$4％; paravalvular leakage 92.3$\pm$4％; and overall valve-related morbidity at 1 year was 76.6$\pm$3％. There were no cases of valve thrombosis, prosthetic valve endocarditis and structural or non-structural failure. Left ventricular function at 12 months after surgery (EF=62.7$\pm$9.8％) revealed a statistically significant improvement compared to preoperative investigation (EF=55.8$\pm$15.9％, p=0.006). Left ventricular mass index was 247.3$\pm$122.3 g/$m^2$ on preoperative echocardiographic study, but regressed to 155.5$\pm$58.2 g/$m^2$ at postoperative 1 year (p=0.002). Over the follow-up period a further decrease of peak transvalvular gradients was observed in all patients: 62.5$\pm$38.0 mmHg on preoperative assessment, 18.2$\pm$6.8 mmHg at immediate postoperative period (p < 0.0001), 7.6$\pm$5.09 mmHg (p<0.0001) at 6 month, 18.0$\pm$10.8 mmHg (p<0.0001) at 1 year. Conclusion: The On-X prosthetic heart valve performs satisfactorily in the first 1 year period. Clinical outcome by examining NYHA functional classification revealed especially good results. Effective regression of left ventricular hypertrophy and statistically significant decrease of transvalvular gradient were observed over the first year, but longer-term follow-up of this patient group is needed to establish the expected rates for late valve-related events as well as the long-term clinical efficacy of this valve.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.78-86
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• 2001

Purpose: Rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis (RPGN) is characterized by the rapid increase in serum creatitnin and crescents formation involving more than $50\%$ of glomeruli. 10 patients who had been treated for RPGN were studied retrospectively for thier underlying diseases and clinical features Method: Cilinical review was performed on 10 children who were diagnosed with RPGN by clinical features and renal biopsy and followed up at department of pediatrics during tile last 10 years, from May 1990 to May 2000. Result: There were 6 males and 4 females between the ages of 2.1 and 14.3 years (mean $10.9{\pm}3.8$). 3 had Henoch-$Sch{\ddot{o}}nlein$ purpura nephritis; 2, idiopathic rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis; 2, lupus nephritis; 1, hemolytic uremic syndrome; 1, membranous glomerulonephritis and 1, microscopic polyangiitis. The most common chief complaints were gross hematuria and oliguria. Initial clinical features included proteinuria, edema, hypertension, nausea and arthralgia. Mean serum BUN was $74.2{\pm}39.1\;mg/dL$ mean serum creatinin, $3.2{\pm}1.8\;mg/dL$ and mean creatinin clearance, $26.5{\pm}13.2\;mL/min/1.73m^2$. Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody was positive only in microscopic polyangiitis. ANA and Anti-DNA antibody were positive in two lupus nephritis patients. Serum complements were decreased in 4 patients. All patients except Hemolytic uremic syndrome received steroid pulse therapy and immunosupressive agents. 3 patients were performed acute peritoneal dialysis and 2 patients were given plasmapheresis. At the last follow up, 1 patient was dead, 4 patients had elevated serum creatinin, 2 of these 4 patients were on chronic ambulatory peritoneal dialysis and 6 patients had normal renal function. Conclusion: Rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis is a medical emergency that requires very rapid diagnosis, classification, and therapy. Appropriate therapy selected on the basis of underlying disease mechanism can substantially improve renal survival. (J. Korean Soc Pediatr Nephrol 2001 ; 5 : 78-86)