• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.841-845
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• 2003

In order for engineered tissues to find clinical utility, the engineered tissues must function appropriately. However, smooth muscle (SM) tissues engineered in vitro with a conventional tissue engineering technique may not exhibit contractile functions, because smooth muscle cells (SMCs) cultured in vitro typically revert from a contractile, differentiated phenotype to a synthetic, nondifferentiated phenotype and lose their ability to contract. SMCs in vivo typically reside in mechanically dynamic environments. We hypothesized that cyclic mechanical stretch induces the features of SMCs in in vitro engineered tissues to be similar to those of SMCs in native tissues. To test the hypothesis, aortic SMCs were seeded onto elastic, three-dimensional scaffolds and cultured in vitro under a cyclic mechanical stretching condition for 4 weeks. A significant cell alignment in a direction parallel to the cyclic stretching direction was found in the SM tissues exposed to cyclic stretching. The cellular alignment and alignment direction were consistent with those of native vascular SM tissues, in which SMCs in vivo align in the radial direction (parallel to stretching direction). In control tissues (SM tissues engineered without stretching), cells randomly aligned. The expression of SM ${\alpha}-actin$ and SM myosin heavy chain, phenotypic markers of SMCs in a contractile state, was upregulated in the stretched tissues by 2.5- and 2.0-fold, respectively, compared to SMCs in the control tissues. The cellular features of alignment and contractile phenotype of SMCs in the SM tissues engineered under a mechanically dynamic environment could allow the engineered SM tissues to exhibit contractile functions.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.65-85
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• 2023

The use of TBM (Tunnel boring machine) has increased worldwide due to its performance together with the benefit of being safely and environmentally friendly compared to conventional tunneling. In particular, EPB (Earth Pressure Balanced) TBM is widely used because it can be applied to various grounds compared to Open TBM. Also EPB TBM has a simple mechanical structure and advantages in cost, requires less ground area than Slurry TBM. EPB TBM has advantages in soft ground, and more importantly, can extend its applicability by use of appropriate soil conditioning, which improves mechanical and hydrological properties of excavated soil and increases the excavation performance of EPB TBM. Various studies suggested the proper mixing ratio and injection ratio, but almost they are limited to laboratory test under atmospheric pressure such as slump test. Actual field conditions may differ depending on the ground and mechanical condition. In this study, first the amount of used soil conditioning used in the field with various grounds from hard rock to soft ground was estimated through laboratory tests and compared with the estimate in design stage. And also it was compared with the amount used during actual excavation. In addition, experience of soil conditioning for the problems of cutter head clogging and groundwater inrush that occurred during excavation is discussed. Finally, lesson learned for the use of soil conditioning in difficult ground condition such as mixed ground are reviewed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.77-97
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• 2019

The large amount of data that emerges from the initial connection environment of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a major factor that distinguishes the Fourth Industrial Revolution from the existing production environment. This environment has two-sided features that allow it to produce data while using it. And the data produced so produces another value. Due to the massive scale of data, future information systems need to process more data in terms of quantities than existing information systems. In addition, in terms of quality, only a large amount of data, Ability is required. In a small-scale information system, it is possible for a person to accurately understand the system and obtain the necessary information, but in a variety of complex systems where it is difficult to understand the system accurately, it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire the desired information. In other words, more accurate processing of large amounts of data has become a basic condition for future information systems. This problem related to the efficient performance of the information system can be solved by building a semantic web which enables various information processing by expressing the collected data as an ontology that can be understood by not only people but also computers. For example, as in most other organizations, IT has been introduced in the military, and most of the work has been done through information systems. Currently, most of the work is done through information systems. As existing systems contain increasingly large amounts of data, efforts are needed to make the system easier to use through its data utilization. An ontology-based system has a large data semantic network through connection with other systems, and has a wide range of databases that can be utilized, and has the advantage of searching more precisely and quickly through relationships between predefined concepts. In this paper, we propose a defense ontology as a method for effective data management and decision support. In order to judge the applicability and effectiveness of the actual system, we reconstructed the existing air force munitions situation management system as an ontology based system. It is a system constructed to strengthen management and control of logistics situation of commanders and practitioners by providing real - time information on maintenance and distribution situation as it becomes difficult to use complicated logistics information system with large amount of data. Although it is a method to take pre-specified necessary information from the existing logistics system and display it as a web page, it is also difficult to confirm this system except for a few specified items in advance, and it is also time-consuming to extend the additional function if necessary And it is a system composed of category type without search function. Therefore, it has a disadvantage that it can be easily utilized only when the system is well known as in the existing system. The ontology-based logistics situation management system is designed to provide the intuitive visualization of the complex information of the existing logistics information system through the ontology. In order to construct the logistics situation management system through the ontology, And the useful functions such as performance - based logistics support contract management and component dictionary are further identified and included in the ontology. In order to confirm whether the constructed ontology can be used for decision support, it is necessary to implement a meaningful analysis function such as calculation of the utilization rate of the aircraft, inquiry about performance-based military contract. Especially, in contrast to building ontology database in ontology study in the past, in this study, time series data which change value according to time such as the state of aircraft by date are constructed by ontology, and through the constructed ontology, It is confirmed that it is possible to calculate the utilization rate based on various criteria as well as the computable utilization rate. In addition, the data related to performance-based logistics contracts introduced as a new maintenance method of aircraft and other munitions can be inquired into various contents, and it is easy to calculate performance indexes used in performance-based logistics contract through reasoning and functions. Of course, we propose a new performance index that complements the limitations of the currently applied performance indicators, and calculate it through the ontology, confirming the possibility of using the constructed ontology. Finally, it is possible to calculate the failure rate or reliability of each component, including MTBF data of the selected fault-tolerant item based on the actual part consumption performance. The reliability of the mission and the reliability of the system are calculated. In order to confirm the usability of the constructed ontology-based logistics situation management system, the proposed system through the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which is a representative model for measuring the acceptability of the technology, is more useful and convenient than the existing system.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.3-36
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• 2016

Recently, the Supreme Court of Korea delivered a milestone judgment about air related multimodal transport. At there, the mattered cargo, some expensive jewellery, was transported from Qingdao, China to downtown office of consignee at Seoul via Incheon airport in Korea. As an air waybill was issued in this case, there was an air transport agreement between consignor and air courier operator. After arriving at Incheon airport, the shipment was transport by land arranged by the air courier operator, who was a defendant in this case. Upon arriving at the final destination, it was found that the jewellery was lost partly and based on circumstantial evidence, the damage presumed to be occurred during the land transport. As a subrogee, the insurance company who paid for consignee filed an action against the air courier operator for damage compensation. Defendant contended that Montreal convention should be applicable in this case mainly for limited liability. The lower court of this case confirmed that applying the limited liability clause under Montreal Convention is improper under the reason that the damage in this case was or presumed to be occurred during surface transport. It was focused on the Montreal Convention article 18 which says that the period of the carriage by air does not extend to any carriage by land, by sea or by inland waterway performed outside an airport. However, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court's decision. The delivered opinion is that the terms of condition on the air waybill including limited liability clause should be prevailed in this case. It seems that the final judgment was considered the fact that the only contract made in this case was about air transport. This article is for analysis the above decisions from the perspective that it is distinguishable between a pure multimodal transport and an expanded air transport. The main idea of this article is that under the expanded air transport, any carriage by land, sea or inland waterway only for the performance of a contract for carriage by air, for the purpose of loading, delivery or transhipment is still within the scop of air transport.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.73-94
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• 2010

The attending system is a medical system that allows doctors in clinics to use the extra equipment in hospitals-beds, laboratory, operating room, etc-for their patient's care under a contract between the doctors and hospitals. Therefore, the system is very beneficial in terms of the efficiency of the usage of medical resources. However, it is necessary to develop a strong support system to strengthen its weaknesses and supplement its merits. If doctors use hospital beds under the attending system of hospitals, they would be able to check a patient's condition often and provide them with nursing care services. However, the current attending system lacks delivery and assistance support. Thus, for the successful performance of the attending system, a networking system should be developed to facilitate communication between the doctors and nurses. In particular, the nursing records in the attending system could help doctors monitor the patient's condition and provision of nursing care services. A nursing record is the formal documentation associated with nursing care. It is merely a data repository that helps nurses to track their activities; nursing records thus represent a resource of primary information that can be reused. In order to maximize their usefulness, nursing records have been introduced as part of computerized patient records. However, nursing records are internal data that are not disclosed by hospitals. Moreover, the lack of standardization of the record list makes it difficult to share nursing records. Under the attending system, nurses would want to minimize the amount of effort they have to put in for the maintenance of additional records. Hence, they would try to maintain the current level of nursing records in the form of record lists and record attributes, while doctors would require more detailed and real-time information about their patients in order to monitor their condition. Therefore, this study developed a system for assisting in the maintenance and sharing of the nursing records under the attending system. In contrast to previous research on the functionality of computer-based nursing records, we have emphasized the practical usefulness of nursing records from the viewpoint of the actual implementation of the attending system. We suggested that nurses could design a nursing record dictionary for their convenience, and that doctors and nurses could confirm the definitions that they looked up in the dictionary through negotiations with intelligent agents. Such an agent-based system could facilitate networking among medical institutes. Multi-agent systems are a widely accepted paradigm for the distribution and sharing of computation workloads in the scientific community. Agent-based systems have been developed with differences in functional cooperation, coordination, and negotiation. To increase such communication, a framework for a multi-agent based system is proposed in this study. The agent-based approach is useful for developing a system that promotes trade-offs between transactions involving multiple attributes. A brief summary of our contributions follows. First, we propose an efficient and accurate utility representation and acquisition mechanism based on a preference scale while minimizing user interactions with the agent. Trade-offs between various transaction attributes can also be easily computed. Second, by providing a multi-attribute negotiation framework based on the attribute utility evaluation mechanism, we allow both the doctors in charge and nurses to negotiate over various transaction attributes in the nursing record lists that are defined by the latter. Third, we have designed the architecture of the nursing record management server and a system of agents that provides support to the doctors and nurses with regard to the framework and mechanisms proposed above. A formal protocol has also been developed to create and control the communication required for negotiations. We verified the realization of the system by developing a web-based prototype. The system was implemented using ASP and IIS5.1.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.385-395
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• 2012

Objectives : Meridian sinew theory was introduced in Miraculous Pivot, Huangdi's Internal Classic, to explain in relation with locations of meridian sinews, causes, mechanisms, and treatment of diseases. The meridian sinews are understood to include muscles, tendons and ligaments, or muscles in the superficial body made up with muscles, ligaments, tendons, fascia etc. This theory shows the similarity or organic relationship between the meridian sinews and muscles. From the Hippocrates(460-385 BC) ages, traction therapy was used as a treatment method on muscular diseases such as low back pain, scoliosis, etc in western medicine. The effects of traction therapy, however, were unclear so that this study was purposed to illustrate the effectiveness of continuous traction therapy and to develop meridian sinews treatment. Methods : We made 2 hypotheses to explain the cause of scoliosis occurrence, muscles contraction and relaxation. As the hypothesis, we made the spinal model having 3 joints with wood and rubber bands. Each of the three joints in the spinal model represents the case of normal(NT; control), contraction(AT 1)and relaxation(AT 2) condition, and distance between the vertebrae joints was measured. Results : Under normal circumstance models, the normal type 1(NT 1; muscle relax state) and normal type 2(NT 2; muscle contract state) all joints were being towed equally. But in an unusual contracted situation, regardless of the relationship of joint area, contracted part of joint was not released. And in a relaxed situation, regardless of joint areas, released parts of joint were further released. These observation results mean that the effects of traction might be different from the purpose of traction therapy of Hippocrates. Conclusions : To explain the effect of traction therapy for scoliosis, the spinal cord model and scoliosis model were made. After vertebral bodies were pulled with different tensile forces, we compared the observed length of the each joints pulled. The results suggested that there were no effects of traction in objected parts with traction method from Hippocrates' design, continuous traction method. Moreover, it may worsen the symptom in worst case. Of course, our results are just the result of experimental models and clinical results may be different. More careful studies, therefore, are required.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.246-259
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• 1995

This study aimed to investigate the mechanism of action of baclofen on the detrusor muscle isolated from rat. Rats (Sprague-Dawley) were sacrificed by decapitation and exsanguination. Horizontal muscle strips of $2mm{\times}15mm$ were prepared for isometric myography in isolated muscle chamber bubbled with 95% / 5%-$O_2$ / $CO_2$ at $37^{\circ}C$, and the pH was maintained at 7.4. Detrusor strips contracted responding to the electrical field stimulation (EFS) by 2 Hz, 20 msec, monophasic square wave of 60 VDC. The initial peak of EFS-Induced contraction was tended to be suppresed by ${\alpha},{\beta}$-methylene-adenosine 5'-triphosphate (mATP), a partial agonist of purinergic receptor, and baclofen, a $GABA_B$ receptor agonist (statistically nonsignificant). The late sustained contraction by EFS was suppressed significantly (p < 0.05) by additions of atropione, a cholinergic muscarinic receptor antagonist and baclofen. The adenosine 5'-triphosphate-induced contraction was completely abolished by mA TP but not by baclofen. In the presence of atropine, the subsequent addition of acetylcholine could not contract the muscle strips: but the addition of acetylcholine in the presence of baclofen evoked a contraction to a remarkable extent. These results suggest that in the condition of present study, the cholinergic innervation may play a more important role than the purinergic one, and baclofen suppresses the contractility of rat detrusor by the stimulation of the $GABA_B$ receptors to inhibit the release of neurotransmitter from the cholinergic nerve ending.

• Journal of the Korean Dietetic Association
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.74-84
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• 1999

The purpose of this study was to investigate a plan of middle/high school foodservice systems which could properly provide nutrition for juveniles' health. Questionnaires were developed and distributed to: 245 middle schools with 271 parents, 328 students, 180 teachers, and 345 administrators; 163 high-schools with 223 parents, 466 students, 179 teachers, and 163 administrators in Seoul and Kyunggi province. The results of this study were as followed. For the desirable feeding type as in-school meal plan, 62.2% responded to the current elementary school feeing type:10.3% responded to a lunch-box prepared at home; and 38.0% responded to free dining out type. For a feeding operation type, school administrators, teachers and parents favored the current school feeding systems in elementary schools with proportion of 68.2%, 47.7%, and 87.6% as respectively. Also, 20.3% of school administrators, 22.6% of teachers, and 6.9% of parents preferred contract management. A total of 27.6% of teachers, 9.2% of school administrators, and 3.7% of parents responded to a lunch-box prepared at home. There was a significant difference between the responses for establishing the main body of financial burden to solve the problem of financial burden which could be the most obstacle to bring middle/high school feeding system into operation. For the management of school feeding systems when brought into operation, 88.7% out of 470 responded schools and 89.9% out of 227 responded teachers reported that an expert should manage school feeding systems. For futuristic direction, an effective joint cooking type between schools which may be the way to solve the difficulties in securing the appropriate space and to decrease the financial burden, the problem of transportation for delivering feeding products, low quality of feeding, and sanitation can occur. Therefore, the distance between schools which operate a joint cooking system will affect as a major factor. Furthermore, concrete examination of plans for introduction of various types of school feeding and institutional devices for management system and supervision of operation should become a condition precedent.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.107-113
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to analyze factors that influence prerequisite program (PRP) performance of hospital foodservice operation. Data was collected through surveys given to 65 dietitians working in general hospital with ${\geq}100beds$. Importance score of sanitary management for the self-operated establishments was significantly higher than that of contract-managed in the areas of working environment management (p<0.01), waste management (p<0.05), clean disinfection management (p<0.05). Performance score of hospitals with ${\leq}300beds$ was significantly lower than that of hospitals with ${\geq}300beds$ in personal hygiene management (p<0.05). Moreover, importance score of dietitians spending ${\geq}3hours$ on inspection time was significantly higher than that of dieticians spending ${\leq}3hr$ in waste management area. According to the results of Pearson correlation analysis, PRP performance score was positively related with dietitian's career (p<0.05), number of submitted beds (p<0.05), cooking process inspection time (p<0.05), dietitian's job satisfaction (p<0.01), and holding rate of utensil and equipment (p<0.05). In addition, the results of multiple regression analysis showed that dietitian's job satisfaction (p<0.001) and holding rate of utensil and equipment (p<0.05) had a significant positive effect on prerequisite program performance. In conclusion, improvement of working condition to increase dietitian's job satisfaction and securing of utensils and equipments are high priorities for improvement of PRP performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.519-522
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• 2007

China infrastructure construction market has huge potential for increased use of PPP/BOT mode and one of the most attractive markets of doing business. However, there are still a multitude of challenges for overseas EPC contractor to enter into the China PPP/BOT market both internally and externally. Especially, the construction legal system and relevant policies are considered at present the biggest barriers in accessing China construction market. Therefore, the main purpose of the paper is to identify the impact of the construction laws, regulations and BOT-related policies on the viability of foreign contractor-led BOT project in China. To the satisfaction of the purpose, this paper will first analyze China construction laws based on the key issues that must be tackled by foreign EPC contractor before they enter into China. This summary gives the possible contract scheme for a BOT project of interest in which foreign contractors could define the scope of works and measure the viability of the project. Finally, a case study of wastewater treatment plant BOT project in China subsequently illustrates some of the lessons learned from the foreign contractor's perspectives for successfully participating in future environmental market in China.