• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2016

India is largest producer of banana in the world producing 29.72 million tonnes from an area of 0.803 million ha with a productivity of 35.7 MT ha-1 and accounted for 15.48 and 27.01 per cent of the world's area and production respectively (www.nhb.gov.in). In India, Tamil Nadu leads other states both in terms of area and production followed by Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. In Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, Kurnool district had special reputation in the cultivation of banana in an area of 5765 hectares with an annual production of 2.01 lakh tonnes in the year 2012-13 and hence, it was purposively chosen for the study. On $23^{rd}$ November 2003, the Government of Andhra Pradesh has commenced a comprehensive project called 'Andhra Pradesh Micro Irrigation Project (APMIP)', first of its kind in the world so as to promote water use efficiency. APMIP is offering 100 per cent of subsidy in case of SC, ST and 90 per cent in case of other categories of farmers up to 5.0 acres of land. In case of acreage between 5-10 acres, 70 per cent subsidy and acreage above 10, 50 per cent of subsidy is given to the farmer beneficiaries. The sampling frame consists of Kurnool district, two mandals, four villages and 180 sample farmers comprising of 60 farmers each from Marginal (<1ha), Small (1-2ha) and Other (>2ha) categories. A well structured pre-tested schedule was employed to collect the requisite information pertaining to the performance of drip irrigation among the sample farmers and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model was employed to analyze the performance of drip irrigation in banana farms. The performance of drip irrigation was assessed based on the parameters like: Land Development Works (LDW), Fertigation costs (FC), Volume of water supplied (VWS), Annual maintenance costs of drip irrigation (AMC), Economic Status of the farmer (ES), Crop Productivity (CP) etc. The first four parameters are considered as inputs and last two as outputs for DEA modelling purposes. The findings revealed that, the number of farms operating at CRS are more in number in other farms (46.66%) followed by marginal (45%) and small farms (28.33%). Similarly, regarding the number of farmers operating at VRS, the other farms are again more in number with 61.66 per cent followed by marginal (53.33%) and small farms (35%). With reference to scale efficiency, marginal farms dominate the scenario with 57 per cent followed by others (55%) and small farms (50%). At pooled level, 26.11 per cent of the farms are being operated at CRS with an average technical efficiency score of 0.6138 i.e., 47 out of 180 farms. Nearly 40 per cent of the farmers at pooled level are being operated at VRS with an average technical efficiency score of 0.7241. As regards to scale efficiency, nearly 52 per cent of the farmers (94 out of 180 farmers) at pooled level, either performed at the optimum scale or were close to the optimum scale (farms having scale efficiency values equal to or more than 0.90). Majority of the farms (39.44%) are operating at IRS and only 29 per cent of the farmers are operating at DRS. This signifies that, more resources should be provided to these farms operating at IRS and the same should be decreased towards the farms operating at DRS. Nearly 32 per cent of the farms are operating at CRS indicating efficient utilization of resources. Log linear regression model was used to analyze the major determinants of input use efficiency in banana farms. The input variables considered under DEA model were again considered as influential factors for the CRS obtained for the three categories of farmers. Volume of water supplied ($X_1$) and fertigation cost ($X_2$) are the major determinants of banana farms across all the farmer categories and even at pooled level. In view of their positive influence on the CRS, it is essential to strengthen modern irrigation infrastructure like drip irrigation and offer more fertilizer subsidies to the farmer to enhance the crop production on cost-effective basis in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, India. This study further suggests that, the present era of Information Technology will help the irrigation management in the context of generating new techniques, extension, adoption and information. It will also guide the farmers in irrigation scheduling and quantifying the irrigation water requirements in accordance with the water availability in a particular season. So, it is high time for the Government of India to pay adequate attention towards the applications of 'Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its applications in irrigation water management' for facilitating the deployment of Decision Supports Systems (DSSs) at various levels of planning and management of water resources in the country.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.80 no.2
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• pp.169-178
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• 2017

Background: The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of our new video-assisted asthma education program on patients' knowledge regarding asthma and asthma control. Methods: Adult asthmatics who were diagnosed by primary care physicians and followed for at least 1 year were educated via smart devices and pamphlets. The education sessions were carried out three times at 2-week intervals. Each education period lasted at most 5 minutes. The effectiveness was then evaluated using questionnaires and an asthma control test (ACT). Results: The study enrolled 144 patients (mean age, $56.7{\pm}16.7years$). Half of the patients had not been taught how to use their inhalers. After participating in the education program, the participants' understanding of asthma improved significantly across all six items of a questionnaire assessing their general knowledge of asthma. The proportion of patients who made errors while manipulating their inhalers was reduced to less than 10%. The ACT score increased from $16.6{\pm}4.6$ to $20.0{\pm}3.9$ (p<0.001). The number of asthmatics whose ACT score was at least 20 increased from 45 (33.3%) to 93 (65.3%) (p<0.001). The magnitude of improvement in the ACT score did not differ between patients who received an education session at least three times within 1 year and those who had not. The majority of patients agreed to the need for an education program (95.8%) and showed a willingness to pay an additional cost for the education (81.9%). Conclusion: This study indicated that our newly developed education program would become an effective component of asthma management in primary care clinics.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.819-830
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• 2008

The object of this study was to investigate different levels of extruded rice product(Nutri-RS®) supplementation as an alternative to lactose on growth performance, diarrhea score, fecal E.coli and volatile fatty acid(VFA) in weaning pigs. Treatments were 1) Control(basal), L3(basal+3% extruded rice product), L6(basal+6% extruded rice product). The control diet in Phase I and Phase II contained 16 and 9% of lactose, respectively. For the feeding trial, a total of 81 crossbred pigs, averaging 7.56±1.18 kg body weight, were allotted to three treatments in three replicates with nine pigs per pen by RCBD. The experimental period was total 5 weeks. During the whole experimental period, there were no significant differences in growth performance, diarrhea score, fecal volatile fatty acid concentration among all treatments. Although there were no significant differences, pigs fed diet of L6 tended to show higher BW and ADG, ADFI, and fecal volatile fatty acid concentration compared to other treatments. Treatment L6 showed the lowest fecal E. coli count among all treatments(P<0.05). These results suggested that inclusion of extruded rice product has similar performance a with 6% of lactose in diet for weaning pigs and reduce approximately 9% production cost of weaning pig's diet. Therefore, extruded rice product could be utilized as an alternative feed ingredient to lactose in weaning pig’s diet.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.22-29
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• 2001

Objectives: Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) is a moderately prevalent disorder. Even though much progress has been made in the diagnosis of this disorder, the cost-effectiveness of nocturnal polysomnography is undertermined and physicians and patients are still hesitant to undergo this procedure. The authors wanted to see the validity of chin press/tongue curl maneuver in estimating the severity of OSA which is easy to measure and was originally proposed by Simmons etc. by looking at the correlations between this score and the conventional respiratory disturbance indices. Methods: Forty-three sleep-related breathing disorder patients (28 OSA patients and 15 upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS) patients) who underwent investigation for posssible OSA were studied. Two conventional indices of OSA (apnea/hypopnea index (AHI) and oxygen saturation dip rate (SaO2 dips)), four other sleep variables (lowest SaO2, % of time with SaO2<90% (%SaO2 <90), % of sleep stage 1, mean length of SaO2 dips) and the score of Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS) were compared with the chin press score (CPS) which was newly revised by the author and ranges from 0 to 6. Results: The age of subjects was $45.95{\pm}12.47$ (range 14-76) and their average BMI was $25.98{\pm}3.61$ (range 19.65-37.64). There were no significant differences in age, sex and BMI except repiratory disturbance indices and ESS (p<0.05) between OSA and UARS group. Grouped median CPS of the all subjects was 4.14 (range 1-6). There was a remarkable relationship between CPS and diagnosis category (Likelihood Ratio $X^2$ test; $X^2$=17.41, df=5, p=0.004) and measures of association (Somers' $d=0.65{\pm}0.12$, t=4.83, p=0.000) indicated that CPS increased when the diagnosis changed from UARS to OSA. Spearman's rank correlations between CPS and SaO2 dips (R=0.83), between CPS and AHI (R=0.77) were good (p<0.001). Other variables except mean length of SaO2 dips showed good correlations with CPS as well (p<0.05). Regression analysis indicated that when CPS is 3 there is a provability of 0.35 to have AHI of less than 5. Conclusion: Chin press scores that can be measured easily is well correlation with the conventional sleep apnea indices. They may therefore provide a useful guide in diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea synrome.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.54-66
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• 2004

In this article, we are to suggest the hazard-assessing method for the underground pipelines, and find out the pipeline-maintenance schemes of high efficiency in cost. Three kinds of methods are applied in order to refer to the approaching methods of listing the hazards for the underground pipelines: the first is RBI(Risk Based Inspection), which firstly assess the effect of the neighboring population, the dimension, thickness of pipe, and working time. It enables us to estimate quantitatively the risk exposure. The second is the scoring system which is based on the environmental factors of the buried pipelines. Last we quantify the frequency of the releases using the present THOMAS' theory. In this work, as a result of assessing the hazard of it using SPC scheme, the hazard score related to how the gas pipelines erodes indicate the numbers from 30 to 70, which means that the assessing criteria define well the relative hazards of actual pipelines. Therefore. even if one pipeline region is relatively low score, it can have the high frequency of leakage due to its longer length. The acceptable limit of the release frequency of pipeline shows 2.50E-2 to 1.00E-l/yr, from which we must take the appropriate actions to have the consequence to be less than the acceptable region. The prediction of total frequency using regression analysis shows the limit operating time of pipeline is the range of 11 to 13 years, which is well consistent with that of the actual pipeline. Concludingly, the hazard-listing scheme suggested in this research will be very effectively applied to maintaining the underground pipelines.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.292-304
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• 2021

Purpose: This study investigated the association between the mothers' use of home meal replacement (HMR) in their children's meals and the diet quality of their young children. Methods: Three hundred and thirty-seven mothers with five-year-old kindergartners in Sejong city participated in the survey from June to July 2020. The questionnaire consisted of the status of HMR use in children's meals and questions for assessing the nutrition quotient for preschoolers (NQ-P). The subjects were classified into three groups according to the frequency of HMR use in children's meals: using HMR more than three times a week (high-frequency group; [HG], n = 65), one-two times a week (moderate-frequency group; [MG], n = 145), and less than once a week (low-frequency group; [LG], n = 130). Results: The mothers' mean age was 38.3 years. The average monthly cost of purchasing HMRs was highest at 200,000-300,000 won in HG, 50,000-100,000 won in MG, and less than 50,000 won in LG (p < 0.001). The consumption frequency of processed meats, fast foods, processed beverages, and sweet & fatty snacks was significantly higher in the HG group than the other groups. The mean NQ-P score was 60.5 in HG, 63.0 in MG, and 64.5 in LG, showing a significant difference (p < 0.01). In the sub-score according to the three areas, there were no significant differences in balance and environment among the three groups. In the moderation area, however, the score was 44.1 in HG, 51.3 in MG, and 57.5 in LG Group, showing a significant difference (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The increase in HMR use was related to the decreased diet quality in the overall and moderation areas of children's diet. These results support the importance of nutrition education for mothers, which aims to reduce their children's access and exposure to processed foods, such as HMR.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.23-31
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• 2020

This study was carried out to generate various images of railroad surfaces with random defects as training data to be better at the detection of defects. Defects on the surface of railroads are caused by various factors such as friction between track binding devices and adjacent tracks and can cause accidents such as broken rails, so railroad maintenance for defects is necessary. Therefore, various researches on defect detection and inspection using image processing or machine learning on railway surface images have been conducted to automate railroad inspection and to reduce railroad maintenance costs. In general, the performance of the image processing analysis method and machine learning technology is affected by the quantity and quality of data. For this reason, some researches require specific devices or vehicles to acquire images of the track surface at regular intervals to obtain a database of various railway surface images. On the contrary, in this study, in order to reduce and improve the operating cost of image acquisition, we constructed the 'Defective Railroad Surface Regeneration Model' by applying the methods presented in the related studies of the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). Thus, we aimed to detect defects on railroad surface even without a dedicated database. This constructed model is designed to learn to generate the railroad surface combining the different railroad surface textures and the original surface, considering the ground truth of the railroad defects. The generated images of the railroad surface were used as training data in defect detection network, which is based on Fully Convolutional Network (FCN). To validate its performance, we clustered and divided the railroad data into three subsets, one subset as original railroad texture images and the remaining two subsets as another railroad surface texture images. In the first experiment, we used only original texture images for training sets in the defect detection model. And in the second experiment, we trained the generated images that were generated by combining the original images with a few railroad textures of the other images. Each defect detection model was evaluated in terms of 'intersection of union(IoU)' and F1-score measures with ground truths. As a result, the scores increased by about 10~15% when the generated images were used, compared to the case that only the original images were used. This proves that it is possible to detect defects by using the existing data and a few different texture images, even for the railroad surface images in which dedicated training database is not constructed.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.264-276
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• 2023

Purpose: Food environmental factors related to food insecurity affect household food intake in several socio-ecological aspects. This study explores the relationship between food environment factors and food insecurity in households with married immigrant women. Methods: From November 2018 to February 2020, a survey was conducted enrolling 249 married immigrant women residing in the metropolitan areas of South Korea. In the final analysis, 229 subjects were divided into 2 groups classified as food security (n = 154) and food insecurity (n = 75), as assessed by the score of food security. Three aspects of food environments were measured: built·natural, political·economic, and socio-cultural Results: Food environments were significantly different between food security and food insecurity groups, as follows: the number of foods market and their distance from the home and food status for the last week at home in the built·natural domain; monthly cost of food purchase and experience for food assistance in the political·economic domain; total score of social support, parenting, and cooking skills in the socio-cultural domain. A stepwise multivariate linear regression model showed a negative association between the food insecurity score with social support from family and food inventory status in the last week. After adjusting for confounders, a positive association was obtained between the experience of a food support program. The final regression model explains about 30% of the relationship obtained in the three food environment domains and food insecurity (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Not only economic factors, which are common determinants of household food insecurity, but socio-cultural factors such as social support also affect household food insecurity. Therefore, plans for implementing a food assistance program to improve food insecurity for households with immigrant women should consider financial support as well as other comprehensive aspects, including socio-cultural domain such as social support from family and community.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.111-124
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• 2012

Feeding trial was conducted with 80 Hanwoo steers (7.5 months of age, 204.4 kg body weight) for 680 days from growing period to late fattening period to examine the feeding value of whole crop barley silage TMR (BS-TMR) and whole crop rye silage TMR (RS-TMR) on body gain, feed cost, slaughter characteristics and quality characteristics of $longissimus$ $dorsi$ muscle. Dietary treatments were conventional separate feeding of concentrate and rice straw (control), feeding BS TMR up to middle fattening period and same diet as for control during late fattening period (BS-TMR I), feeding BS-TMR for whole experimental period (BS-TMR II), feeding RS TMR up to middle fattening period and same diet as for control during late fattening period (RS-TMR I) and RS TMR for whole experimental period (RS-TMR II). Sixteen castrated calves were assigned to each treatment (4 pens, 4 heads per pen). Pens in each treatment were randomly distributed. Feeding both BS silage TMR and RS silage TMR slightly increased body gain of Hanwoo steers at the stages of growing and early fattening, and increased (P<0.0001) at middle fattening compared to feeding control diet while control diet tended to increase body gain at late fattening stage compared to feeding BS-TMR I, BS-TMR II and RS-TMR I diets. Total body gain was slightly increased in Hanwoo steers fed both I and II for BS and RS TMR compared to that in control diet. Feed cost per kg gain per head was relatively low in the Hanwoo steers fed silage TMRs to that fed control diet. Carcass weight, back fat thickness and $longissimus$ $dorsi$ area of Hanwoo steers tended to increase but lowered (P<0.047) yield index by feeding silage TMRs. Feeding BS TMR slightly decreased marbling score but no difference was found in the number of head over grade 1 between diets. Control diet tended to improve yield grade compared to silage TMRs. Chemical composition, water holding capacity, drip loss, cooking loss and pH, color and fatty acid composition of $longissimus$ $dorsi$ were not affected by experimental diets and feeding duration of silage TMRs. Shear force, however, was increased (P<0.046) by silage TMRs without difference between them compared to control diet. Based on the results of the current study, BS TMR and RS TMR could improve body gain and reduce feed cost without deteriorating meat quality compared to separate feeding of concentrate and rice straw. Overall feeding value was similar between BS TMR and RS TMR.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.562-569
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• 2005

Background : The severity scoring system is useful for predicting the outcome of critically ill patients. However, the system is quite complicated and cost-ineffective. Simple serologic markers have been proposed to predict the outcome, which include troponin-I, lactate and C-reactive protein(CRP). The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic values of troponin-I, lactate and CRP in critically ill non-cardiac patients. Methods : From September 2003 to June 2004, 139 patients(Age: $63.3{\pm}14.7$, M:F = 88:51), who were admitted to the MICU with non-cardiac critical illness at Gyeongsang National University Hospital, were enrolled in this study. This study evaluated the severity of the illness and the multi-organ failure score (Acute Physiologic and Chronic Health EvaluationII, Simplified Acute Physiologic ScoreII and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment) and measured the troponin-I, lactate and CRP within 24 hours after admission in the MICU. Each value in the survivors and non-survivors was compared at the 10th and 30th day after ICU admission. The mortality rate was compared at 10th and 30th day in normal and abnormal group. In addition, the correlations between each value and the severity score were assessed. Results : There were significantly higher troponin-I and CRP levels, not lactate, in the non-survivors than in the survivors at 10th day($1.018{\pm}2.58ng/ml$, $98.48{\pm}69.24mg/L$ vs. $4.208{\pm}10.23ng/ml$, $137.69{\pm}70.18mg/L$) (p<0.05). There were significantly higher troponin-I, lactate and CRP levels in the non-survivors than in the survivors on the 30th day ($0.99{\pm}2.66ng/ml$, $8.02{\pm}9.54ng/dl$, $96.87{\pm}68.83mg/L$ vs. $3.36{\pm}8.74ng/ml$, $15.42{\pm}20.57ng/dl$, $131.28{\pm}71.23mg/L$) (p<0.05). The mortality rate was significantly higher in the abnormal group of troponin-I, lactate and CRP than in the normal group of troponin-I, lactate and CRP at 10th day(28.1%, 31.6%, 18.9% vs. 11.0%, 15.8 %, 0%) and 30th day(38.6%, 47.4%, 25.8% vs. 15.9%, 21.7%, 14.3%) (p<0.05). Troponin-I and lactate were significantly correlated with the SAPS II score($r^2=0.254$, 0.365, p<0.05). Conclusion : Measuring the troponin-I, lactate and CRP levels upon admission may be useful for predicting the outcome of critically ill non-cardiac patients.