• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.160-171
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• 2013

$LiNi_{1/3}Co_{1/3}Mn_{1/3}O_2$ powder for cathode materials in lithium rechargeable batteries was treated by atmospheric plasma containing hydrogen to investigate the relationship between charge/discharge performance and physical/chemical changes of materials. Hydrogen plasma at atmosphere pressure was irradiated on the surface of active materials, and the change for their crystal structure, surface morphology, and chemical composition were observed by XRD, SEM-EDS and titration method, respectively. The crystal structure and surface morphology of $H_2$ plasma-treated powders were not changed but their chemical compositions were slightly varied. For charge/discharge test, $H_2$ plasma affected initial capacity and rate capability of active materials but continuous cycling was not subject to plasma treatment. Therefore, it was observed that $H_2$ plasma treatment affected the surface of materials and caused the change of chemical composition.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.333-338
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• 2015

Background: Oral health professionals are responsible in Iran for providing a brief tobacco cessation program to smoker patients. The aim of this study was to assess Iranian dental student and dentist practice, knowledge and attitudes toward smoking cessation programs. Materials and Methods: A valid and reliable self-administered questionnaire was designed and distributed to 150 dentists working in Isfahan-Iran and 60 dental students. Some questions were developed based on the expected 5A tobacco cessation protocol. Statements on attitudes focused on professional responsibility towards smoking cessation and its effectiveness. Chi-square, ANOVA, and t test were used for statistical analysis. Results: The cessation program in dental settings covers a small group of patients (18%). Some 69.1% (n=96) of dentists reported asking their patients about tobacco use, 64% (n=83) advising their patients to quit, 33.8% (n=47) assessing their patients willingness to quit and 20% (n=28) reported helping their patients in changing their behavior. A far lower percentage reported active involvement in arranging assistance for smokers to quit (4.3%, n=5). Some 22% of students and 26% of dentists disagreed that the tobacco cessation programs should be as part of dentists' professional responsibility and 70% of them were willing to follow the protocol of tobacco cessation for patients. Conclusions: Iranian dentist performance regarding tobacco cessation is weak. Dentists and students indicated their lack of knowledge as the major reason for non-adherence to the protocol. Therefore, planning to encourage dentist to follow the protocol needs continuous educational programs.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.37-50
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• 2020

This study aims to investigate meaningful relationship between technology appraisal indices and SMEs' financial performances for their continuous growth. The empirical data for this study were based on the technology appraisal results of Korea Technology Finance Corporation(KOTEC) and the financial data of the following 2 years 0f 3,688 SMEs. The meaningful differences between SMEs with superb financial performances and the others, by using t-test analysis, statistically were verified in 25 indices(75.8%) out of total 33 indices. All of five independent variables, namely CEO's capability, technology manpower, R&D intensiveness, market competitiveness and investment feasibility, were verified to have a positive effect on business feasibility respectively and business feasibility also has a positive influence on financial performance, such as sales growth, labor productivity and financial stability.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.279-285
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• 2018

The pervaporation separation of isopropanol/water mixture was carried out on a series of chemically cross-linked poly(vinyl alcohol)(PVA) composite membranes. The membranes were prepared by casting three kinds of PVA solutions with varying concentrations of PVA and GA onto polyacrylonitrile (PAN) support followed by thermal cross linking. As the PVA concentration increased, the flux decreased but separation factor was increased. It was confirmed that the composite membrane coated with PVA-3 (98~99% hydrolyzed) at a concentration of 7 wt% PVA and 20 wt% glutaraldehyde (GA) exhibited a flux of $209g/m^2h$ and a separation factor of more than 100. The submerged module test was carried out with controlled feed tank temperature and IPA concentration of the feed solution. The continuous concentration of IPA solution was increased from 90% to 99% after 60 h.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.54-61
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• 2009

This paper proposes a skin segmentation method based on region histograms of the color quantization map. First, we make a quantization map of the image using the JSEG algorithm and detect the skin pixel. For the skin region detection, the similar neighboring regions are set by its similarity of the size and location between the previous frame and the present frame from the each region of the color quantization map. Then we compare the similarity of histogram between the color distributions of each quantized region and the skin color model using the histogram distance. We select the skin region by the threshold value calculated automatically. The skin model is updated by the skin color information from the selected result. The proposed algorithm was compared with previous algorithms on the ECHO database and the continuous images captured under time varying illumination for adaptation test. Our approach shows better performance than previous approaches on skin color segmentation and adaptation to varying illumination.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.21-31
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• 2013

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of patient and doctor role-play on participatory clinical clerkship by surveying student's satisfaction and assessing the improvement of skill and consultation ability after conducting a role-play in a Korean dermatology department. Methods: In 2013, 79 seniors participated in the clinical clerkship of the dermatology department at the college of Korean medicine. Two students were randomly selected and paired up. After a brief instruction, one student played the role of doctor and the other took the role of patient. After finishing the $1^{st}$ role-play, they swapped roles and conducted a $2^{nd}$ role-play, using another clinical case. When the two role-plays were completed, the students filled in a questionnaire about their satisfaction with the role-play as clinical clerkship. Also, we compared the scores of the $1^{st}$ role-play with those of the $2^{nd}$ role-play measured by a medical resident to assess improvements of students' skill and interview ability. Results: It appears that students' satisfaction with the role-play was quite high, considering that the overall mean score of the questionnaire was 4.30. According to the result of a t-test on 15 assessment questions, the $2^{nd}$ role-play had a higher mean score than the $1^{st}$ role-play in 12 questions, though this difference was not statistically significant. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that role-play is helpful to improve students' satisfaction and clinical performance ability in clinical clerkship. Further research and continuous development are necessary for better clinical clerkship.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.30 no.4 s.111
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• pp.210-219
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• 2005

This study was conducted to solve the problem of crawled spinach harvesting that had been mainly done by manpower on the outdoor fields during the winter season. Moreover, there are not enough workers available for farming at most of rural areas in Korea because farming is getting hard and the number of old-aged workers is increasing. In order to find appropriate methods of digging, picking and collecting of spinach, the tests were examined outdoors. A prototype was designed based on the results of the tests and then fabricated for digging, picking-up and then collecting in continuous operation for harvesting spinach planted in the outdoor fields. In the field test with the prototype, the vibration intensity transmitted to the driver by vibrating blade was low while the vibrating blade reduced digging power by $46\%$ compared to that of the fixed blade. The spinach loss was found to be as low as $0.7\%$ in the condition of digging depth of 40 mm, cam rotational velocity of 748 rpm, and blade amplitude of 16.5 m. The working performance of the prototype spinach harvester was found to be 3.8 hour/10a resulting in $96\%$ of labor saving and $85\%$ of operating cost compared to the conventional manual harvesting.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.42-47
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• 2010

The pulse diagnosis is an important method in Oriental Medicine. Recently, there have been continuous attempts to replace the finger palpation by Oriental medical doctors (OMDs) by more objective tools based on machines, e.g., pulse analyzers. To improve the performance of the pulse analyzers, both the machine-appropriate interpretations for the pulse images appeared in the literature and the improvement in the repeatability and reproducibility of the measurement sensors are to be developed. As an attempt towards the transformation of the pulse images in terms of machine-appropriate language, in this work, we suggest an upgraded algorithm for the solid/deficient pulses, which are the two representative pulse images informing us how strong the pulse pressure is. It has been argued that one could determine the solid/deficient pulses by the maximum pulse pressure from pulse analyzers. However, by a clinical test, we found that the maximum pulse pressure alone is not sufficient to determine the solid/deficient pulses. In addition to the maximum pulse pressure, the mean pulse pressure averaged over for five different hold-down pressures(3-D MAC) is needed to improve the agreement with the OMD's decision for the solid/deficient pulse. We found that, among the data diagnosed with having either the solid pulse or deficient pulse by OMDs, the novel algorithm showed 86.0% diagnosis rate and 81.6% concordance rate.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.73-81
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• 2017

The improved movable weir supplements the advantages and disadvantages of the rubber weir and the conduction gate. It consists of a stainless steel gate, air bags, and a steel clamping plate. The stainless steel gate is the main body of the weir, and the inflatable rubber sheet serves to support the steel gate. The steel clamping plate is typically in direct continuous contact with water, but this leads to corrosion issues that can reduce the life of the entire movable weir. In this study, a panel-type glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) clamping plate was designed and fabricated. The test results showed that the flexural load of the panel-type GFRP composite clamping plate was over twice that of the wings type GFRP clamping plate. The lowest moisture absorption value was obtained upon exposure to tap water, and exposure to other solutions showed similar values. Additionally, flexural load testing after exposure to an accelerated environment found the lowest residual loads of 80.51 % and 78.50 % at 50 and 100 days, respectively, for exposure to a $CaCl_2$ solution, while exposure to other environments showed residual failure loads of over 80 % at both 50 and 100 days.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.59-66
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• 2017

Preeminent water treatment plans are essential to preserve the water quality of aquatic biotopes. Previous studies have not been sufficient to provide cost-effective maintenance method since they focused only on the purification of deteriorated water that requires a continuous supply of clean water. This study proposes an economical method of water quality maintenance using water treatment media block constructed vertically using porous ceramics, zeolite, and river pebble. The water treatment media block does not require a separate purification area because it functions as a purifier within the ecological pond which can maximize the biotope area. To evaluate the performance of the water treatment media block, we longitudinally tracked the change of water quality indicators (pH, TDS, COND, DO, T-P, T-N, COD) suggested by Water Environment Standards, Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea. We compared the water quality of one control (A: general ecological pond composition method of the laminated structure) and two experimental groups (B: a combination of aquatic plants and a water treatment media block, C: a water treatment media block only). As a result, we confirmed that the water treatment media block is an efficient and economical method to maintaining the water quality of the ecological pond for a long time. The water treatment media block will be a great help in providing a better aquatic biotope space for aquatic insects and fishes living in clear water.