• Computers and Concrete
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.659-670
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• 2024

The mechanical behaviour of layered concrete samples containing an internal crack was numerically studied by modelling the geo-mechanical specimens in the particle flow code in two dimensions (PFC2D). The numerical modelling software was calibrated with the experimental results of the Brazilian tensile strengths gained from the laboratory disc-type specimens. Then, the samples with the bedding layers and internal notch were numerically simulated with PFC2D under uniaxial compressive loading. In each specimen, the layers' thickness was 10 mm but the layer's inclination angle was changed to 0°, 30°, 60°, 90°, 120° and 150°. Of course, the layers'interfaces are considered to have very low strengths. The internal notch was kept at 3 cm in length however, its inclination angle was changed to 0°, 40°, 60° and 90°. Therefore, a total, of 24 numerical models were made to study the failure mechanism of the layered concrete samples. Considering these results, it has been concluded that the inclination angles of both internal crack and bedding layers affect the failure mechanism and uniaxial compressive strength of the concrete.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.517-525
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• 2009

The water quality of Lake Shihwa had been rapidly deteriorating since 1994 due to wastewater input from the watersheds, limited water circulation and the lack of a wastewater treatment policy. In 2000, the government decided to open the tidal embankment and make a comprehensive management plan to improve the water quality, especially inflowing stream water around Shihwa and Banwol industrial complex. However, the water quality and microbial community have not as yet been fully evaluated. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influent water quality around the industrial area based on chemical and biological analysis, and collected surface water sample from the Siheung Stream, up-stream to down-stream through the industrial complex, Samples were collected in July 2009. The results show that the downstream site near the industrial complex had higher concentrations of heavy metals (Cu, Mn, Fe, Mg, and Zn) and organic matter than upstream sites. A combination of DGGE (Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis) gels, lists of K-WQI (Korean Water Quality Index), cluster analysis, MDS (Multi-Dimensional Scaling) and PCA (Principal Component Analysis) has demonstrated clear clustering between Siheung stream 3 and 4 and with a high similarity and detected metal reducing bacteria (Shewanella spp.) and biodegrading bacteria (Acinetobacter spp.). These results suggest that use of both chemical and microbiological marker would be useful to fully evaluate the water quality.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.273-281
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• 2007

Ceramide is involved in cell death as a lipid mediator of stress responses. In this study, we developed an improved method of ceramide quantification based on added synthetic ceramide and thin layer chromatography (TLC) separation, and applied to biological samples. Lipids were extracted from samples spiked with N-oleoyl-D-erythro-sphingosine ($C_{17}$ ceramide) as an internal standard. Ceramide was resolved by TLC, complexed with fatty-acidfree bovine serum albumin (BSA), and deacylated by ceramidase (CDase). The released sphingosine was derivatized with o-phthalaldehyde (OPA) and measured by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The limit of detection for ceramide was about 1-2 pmol and the lower limit of quantification was 5 pmol. Ceramide recovery was approximately 86-93%. Ceramide concentrations were determined in biological samples including cultured cells, mouse tissues, and mouse and human plasma. TLC separation of ceramide provides HPLC chromatogram with a clean background without any interfering peaks and the enhanced solubility of ceramide by BSAceramide complex leads to the increased deacylation of ceramide. The use of an internal standard for the determination of ceramide concentration in these samples provides an accurate and reproducible analytical method, and this method can be applicable to diverse biological samples.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.6
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• pp.677-691
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• 2018

Reliability assessment of complex structures using simulation methods is time-consuming. Thus, surrogate models are usually employed to reduce computational cost. AK-MCS is a surrogate-based Active learning method combining Kriging and Monte-Carlo Simulation for structural reliability analysis. This paper proposes three modifications of the AK-MCS method to reduce the number of calls to the performance function. The first modification is related to the definition of an initial Design of Experiments (DoE). In the original AK-MCS method, an initial DoE is created by a random selection of samples among the Monte Carlo population. Therefore, samples in the failure region have fewer chances to be selected, because a small number of samples are usually located in the failure region compared to the safe region. The proposed method in this paper is based on a uniform selection of samples in the predefined domain, so more samples may be selected from the failure region. Another important parameter in the AK-MCS method is the size of the initial DoE. The algorithm may not predict the exact limit state surface with an insufficient number of initial samples. Thus, the second modification of the AK-MCS method is proposed to overcome this problem. The third modification is relevant to the type of regression trend in the AK-MCS method. The original AK-MCS method uses an ordinary Kriging model, so the regression part of Kriging model is an unknown constant value. In this paper, the effect of regression trend in the AK-MCS method is investigated for a benchmark problem, and it is shown that the appropriate choice of regression type could reduce the number of calls to the performance function. A stepwise approach is also presented to select a suitable trend of the Kriging model. The numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed modifications.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.606-611
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• 2009

AC loss is one of the important factors for commercialization of a high temperature superconducting (HTS) cable from an economic point of view. But AC loss characteristics of the HTS-cable are not elucidated completely because of its complex structure. As an earlier stage of analyzing the AC loss in the 22.9 kV/50 MVA, 100m HTS-cable system of Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) which is now in collaboration with us, a two-dimensional (2D) numerical model, which takes into account the nonlinear conductivity properties of a high temperature superconductor, has been developed. In order to examine our 2D model, we have prepared several single-layer cable samples whose AC losses are sufficiently reliable due to their simple structure. The AC losses of the samples were experimentally investigated and then compared with our 2D model. The results show that the numerically calculated AC losses are not in good agreement with the measured ones for the cylindrical cable and deca-cable samples with low critical current density. However, the numerically calculated and measured AC losses are relatively in good agreement for the deca-cable and hex-cable samples with high critical current density, although the difference between these two loss data in the deca-cable sample tends to increase in the low current region.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.351-358
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• 2005

The research in this paper was carried out to examine the BTEX(Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene, Xylene) concentrations in Seongseo Industrial Complex. These compounds are the major constituents, more than $60\%$ in composition of total VOCs, mainly charging in ambient air. BTEX samples were collected from the 38 sites, 10 for the source points and 18 for the boundary sites, and were analyzed by canister-GC/MS. The mean concentrations of BTEX were 33 ppbv for benzene, 214 ppbv for toluene, 89 ppbv for ethyl benzene, 77 ppbv for xylene. Among the BTEX, toluene had the highest concentration in the source points and boundary sites. In the source points, BTEX concentration of incineration facility for hazardous wastewater appeared highly in the range of 220­350 ppbv. BTEX concentrations in source boundary sites appeared in the order of toluene>ethylbenzene>xylene>benzene. As a result of the correlation analysis, the concentration of the source points was related to those of the boundary sites. Correlation of ethylbenzene and xylene was presented to 0.7991(P<0.0 1),\;0.6329(P<0.05) as the correlation coefficient, respectively.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.355-366
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• 2012

This paper analyses the sensory responses of Chinese female consumers towards different designs of perfume bottles with particular attention to the existence of logos on them. We used total 40 samples of the perfume bottles, 20 with logos on them and 20 without, and the results show that young Chinese female consumers prefer simple designs over complex designs that contain different types of free curves with vivid colors. In addition, the existence of logos on bottles was found not to change the responses significantly, meaning that the logos on bottles do not affect sensibility of Chinese female towards perfume bottles. A logo's impacts on the bottle depended in part on the bottle's color and shape. Overall, a perfume bottle with simple shapes and light colors became regarded as more resplendent when the logo was added, but a bottle with more complex shapes and vivid colors tended to become regarded as plainer after adding the logo. This shows that a logo serves as a conciliatory element in the impression of the whole bottle in the 'resplendent-plain' category.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.113-117
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• 2008

Chronic exposure to ethanol induces cumulative damage to the liver starting from fatty infiltration to cirrhosis depending on the dose and duration of exposure. The whole process leading to the development of alcoholic liver disease is very complex and the mechanisms involved are not fully understood. Among many experimental animal models, Lieber-DeCarli liquid diet provides moderate to severe pathophysiological outcome depending on the compositional changes. In the present study, we investigated the temporal changes in the early phase hepatic disease in rats fed with standard Lieber-DeCarli diet. Male Wistar rats were fed with Lieber-Decarli ethanol diet for 6 weeks and the liver samples were obtained after 2, 4 and 6 weeks. Mild fatty infiltration was observed in 2 weeks of feeding and it became evident in 4 and 6 week samples. The level of hepatic triglyceride showed a good agreement with the data obtained in the pathological analysis. Feeding mice with ethanol diet resulted in the maturation and translocation of SREBP-1 to nucleus in the liver. Western blot analysis of the pooled liver sample of control and ethanol fed animals showed a clear-cut time-dependent increase in the expression of nSREBP-1. These data provide important information for selecting proper time point in experimental intervention study in the field of drug development for alcoholic liver disease.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.236-241
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to find out the source(s) and distribution of boron in Nak-dong River. In the year of 2002, the boron has been adopted as a toxic constituent for Korean drinking water standard. In this study, the analytical samples were collected at 11 stations in March, June, September and December 2002. These samples were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma-mass (ICP-MS) method. The recovery, relative standard deviation and method detection limit of the ICP-MS method for boron was $89{\sim}111.3%$, $2.21{\sim}3.81%$ and $5{\mu}g/L$, respectively. The distribution of boron was ranged $65{\sim}155{\mu}g/L$ in March, $26{\sim}125{\mu}g/L$ in June, $22{\sim}140{\mu}g/L$ in September and $50{\sim}162{\mu}g/L$ in December. The higher levels of boron were found at Kum-ho river nearby the industrial complex, which seemed to be greatly affected by domestic sewages and wastewater from the upper streams. Thus, the concentration of boron and that of other components showed strong statistical correlation in this area. In the Nak-dong River, industrial wastewater and domestic sewages is thought to be the sources of boron.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.1067-1071
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• 2020

To understand the formation of initial gut microbiota, three initial fecal samples were collected from two groups of two breast milk-fed (BM1) and seven formula milk-fed (FM1) infants, and the compositional changes in gut microbiota were determined using metagenomics. Compositional change analysis during week one showed that Bifidobacterium increased from the first to the third fecal samples in the BM1 group (1.3% to 35.1%), while Klebsiella and Serratia were detected in the third fecal sample of the FM1 group (4.4% and 34.2%, respectively), suggesting the beneficial effect of breast milk intake. To further understand the compositional changes during progression from infancy to childhood (i.e., from three weeks to five years of age), additional fecal samples were collected from four groups of two breast milk-fed infants (BM2), one formula milk-fed toddler (FM2), three weaning food-fed toddlers (WF), and three solid food-fed children (SF). Subsequent compositional change analysis and principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) revealed that the composition of the gut microbiota changed from an infant-like composition to an adult-like one in conjunction with dietary changes. Interestingly, overall gut microbiota composition analyses during the period of progression from infancy to childhood suggested increasing complexity of gut microbiota as well as emergence of a new species of bacteria capable of digesting complex carbohydrates in WF and SF groups, substantiating that diet type is a key factor in determining the composition of gut microbiota. Consequently, this study may be useful as a guide to understanding the development of initial gut microbiota based on diet.