• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.218-225
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• 2004

OBJECTIVES: This study was performed to find out static two-point discrimination (TPD) in fingertips. METHODS: This was a cross-section, measure study of static two-point discrimination involving healthy young adults. Measure was completed by 48 college students in Andong Science College from June 1 to 12, 2004. The minimal distance at which two-points could be discriminated was measured from thumb to little finger. RESULTS: For dermatomal regions of the fingertip, mean values ranged from 3.3mm to 4.9mm (thumb 3.6mm, index finger 3.3mm, middle finger 3.8mm, ring finger 4.2mm, and little finger 4.7mm in the left hand; thumb 3.7mm, index 3.5mm, middle 4.0mm, ring 4.3mm, and little 4.9mm in the right hand). A significant difference in discrimination ability was found between men and women, 3.5mm for women showed a greater sensitivity than 4.1mm for men in the left middle fingertip(p=0.0109), also 3.9mm for women showed a greater accuracy than 4.5mm for men in the left ring fingertip(p=0.0388). In the right index fingertip, women (3.1mm) have a narrow distance than men (3.6mm)(p=0.0329). The minimal distance of TPD was found a significant difference between 20 and 30 years in age. 4mm for 30 years showed a greater distance than 3.5mm for 20 years in the left thumb fingertip(p=0.0354), also, 3.8mm for 30 years showed a greater distance than 3.2mm for 20 years in the left index fingertip(p=0.0174), and 4.3mm for 30 years showed a greater distance than 3.7mm for 20 years in the left middle fingertip(p=0.0444). In the right index fingertip, 20 years (3.2mm) had also a narrow distance than 30 years (4.1mm)(p=0.0020), 20 years (3.9mm) showed a narrow distance than 30 years (4.6mm) in the right middle fingertip(p=0.0124), and 20 years (4.1mm) showed a greater sensitivity than 30 years (5.0mm) in the right ring fingertip(p=0.0070). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that distance of TPD in the both index fingertips for 20 years women was significantly narrowed.

• The Journal of Korean Society of Virology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 1997

To develop the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the detection of type D simian retrovirus (SRV) infection, an oligonucleotide primer pair was designed to hybridize to the sequences within env gene of SRV subtype 1 (SRV-1). The 3' proximal env sequences annealing to the primers had been rather conserved among three different subtypes of SRV, SRV-1, SRV-2, and SRV-3 (Mason-Pfizer Monkey Virus: MPMV). The PCR using the primer pair targeting an env region successfully detected and amplified all three subtypes of SRV with excellent specificity after single round of reaction. The tests with peripheral blood mononuclear cells infected either with simian immunodeficiency virus or simian T-Iymphotropic virus type 1, major immunosuppressive viral agents together with SRV in simian, verified the specificity of the PCR by excluding any cross reactivity. Semiquantitative titration PCR, amplifying serially diluted plasmid DNA of each subtype, was performed to evaluate sensitivity limits of the reaction. Based on molecular weight of each cloned SRV genome, the PCR should be able to detect one SRV-infected cell per more than $5-7{\times}10^4$ uninfected cells after simple ethidium bromide staining of resulting products. The PCR must be very efficient screening system with its quickness, certainty, and sensitivity for SRV-infected animals used in human AIDS research model. Second round amplification of the reaction products from the first PCR, or Southern hybridization by radiolabeled probes shall render to compete its efficacy to ELISA which has been the most sensitive technique to screen SRV infection but with frequent ambiguity problem.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.43-52
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• 2013

We surveyed perceptions of faculty, students, and enterprisers in engineering about gender issue in engineering. A total of 59 faculty members, 335 students (226 male, 109 female) of Korea National University of Transportation, and 28 employers of Chungbuk location were selected. The 25 survey questions for faculty, 30 for students, and 5 for employers were made. The analysis methods used included ${\chi}^2$ for cross analysis method. The results showed that faculty in general perceived differences between genders. They also perceived that women engineering students has a lack of leadership and low possibility of success in career in engineering. Also, they perceived disadvantages in application processes of women students. However, they expressed they did not reflect those factors in teaching and career advices. Women engineering majors showed low confidence in getting a job and success in career. They also thought they had no opportunities to gender-sensitive education in engineering courses. They were also very negative toward aptitude in engineering. These results were very similar to those of faculty. On the other hand, men students showed very low awareness of their women peers' perceptions. The perception of enterprisers was also different from faculty and students. These results indicate that there should be changes in perceptions of faculty and students in engineering for employments. For better education for women engineering majors, further research is needed.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.21-29
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• 1996

A piezoresistive silicon acceleration sensor with 8 beams, utilized by an unique silicon micromachining technique using porous silicon etching method which was fabricated on the selectively diffused (111)-oriented $n/n^{+}/n$ silicon subtrates. The width, length, and thickness of the beam was $100\;{\mu}m$, $500\;{\mu}m$, and $7\;{\mu}m$, respectively, and the diameter of the mass paddle (the region suspended by the eight beams) was 1.4 mm. The seismic mass on the mass paddle was formed about 2 mg so as to measure accelerations of the range of 50g for automotive applications. For the formation of the mass, the solder mass was loaded on the mass paddle by dispensing Pb/Sn/Ag solder paste. After the solder paste is deposited, Heat treatment was carried out on the 3-zone reflow equipment. The decay time of the output signal to impulse excitation of the fabricated sensor was observed for approximately 30 ms. The sensitivity measured through summing circuit was 2.9 mV/g and the nonlinearity of the sensor was less than 2% of the full scale output. The output deviation of each bridge was ${\pm}4%$. The cross-axis sensitivity was within 4% and the resonant frequency was found to be 2.15 KHz from the FEM simulation results.

• Annals of Laboratory Medicine
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.578-584
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• 2018

Background: Accurate, rapid, and cost-effective screening tests for hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection may be useful in laboratories that cannot afford automated chemiluminescent immunoassays (CLIAs). We evaluated the diagnostic performance of a novel rapid automated fluorescent lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA). Methods: A fluorescent LFIA using a small bench-top fluorescence reader, Automated Fluorescent Immunoassay System (AFIAS; Boditech Med Inc., Chuncheon, Korea), was developed for qualitative detection of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), antibody to HBsAg (anti-HBs), and antibody to HCV (anti-HCV) within 20 minutes. We compared the diagnostic performance of AFIAS with that of automated CLIAs-Elecsys (Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Penzberg, Germany) and ARCHITECT (Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, IL, USA)-using 20 seroconversion panels and 3,500 clinical serum samples. Results: Evaluation with the seroconversion panels demonstrated that AFIAS had adequate sensitivity for HBsAg and anti-HCV detection. From the clinical samples, AFIAS sensitivity and specificity were 99.8% and 99.3% for the HBsAg test, 100.0% and 100.0% for the anti-HBs test, and 98.8% and 99.1% for the anti-HCV test, respectively. Its agreement rates with the Elecsys HBsAg, anti-HBs, and anti-HCV detection assays were 99.4%, 100.0%, and 99.0%, respectively. AFIAS detected all samples with HBsAg genotypes A-F and H and anti-HCV genotypes 1, 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 4, and 6. Cross-reactivity with other infections was not observed. Conclusions: The AFIAS HBsAg, anti-HBs, and anti-HCV tests demonstrated diagnostic performance equivalent to current automated CLIAs. AFIAS could be used for a large-scale HBV or HCV screening in low-resource laboratories or low-to middle-income areas.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.6_3
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• pp.1951-1963
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• 2021

Remote sensing data using earth observation satellites in agricultural environment monitoring has many advantages over other methods in terms of time, space, and efficiency. Since the sensor mounted on the satellite measures the energy that sunlight is reflected back to the ground, noise is generated in the process of being scattered, absorbed, and reflected by the Earth's atmosphere. Therefore, in order to accurately measure the energy reflected on the ground (radiance), atmospheric correction, which must remove noise caused by the effect of the atmosphere, should be preceded. In this study, atmospheric correction sensitivity analysis, inter-satellite cross-analysis, and comparative analysis with ground observation data were performed to evaluate the application of KOMPSAT-3 satellite's atmospheric correction for agricultural application. As a result, in all cases, the surface reflectance after atmospheric correction showed a higher mutual agreement than the TOA reflectance before atmospheric correction, and it is possible to produce the time series vegetation index of the same standard. However, additional research is needed for quantitative analysis of the sensitivity of atmospheric input parameters and the tilt angle.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.121-133
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• 2023

The demand for cement and limestone crushed materials has increased many folds due to the tremendous increase in construction activities in Pakistan during the past few decades. The number of cement production industries has increased correspondingly, and so the rock-blasting operations at the limestone quarry sites. However, the safety procedures warranted at these sites for the blast-induced ground vibrations (BIGV) have not been adequately developed and/or implemented. Proper prediction and monitoring of BIGV are necessary to ensure the safety of structures in the vicinity of these quarry sites. In this paper, an attempt has been made to predict BIGV using artificial neural network (ANN) at three selected limestone quarries of Pakistan. The ANN has been developed in Python using Keras with sequential model and dense layers. The hyper parameters and neurons in each of the activation layers has been optimized using randomized and grid search method. The input parameters for the model include distance, a maximum charge per delay (MCPD), depth of hole, burden, spacing, and number of blast holes, whereas, peak particle velocity (PPV) is taken as the only output parameter. A total of 110 blast vibrations datasets were recorded from three different limestone quarries. The dataset has been divided into 85% for neural network training, and 15% for testing of the network. A five-layer ANN is trained with Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function, Adam optimization algorithm with a learning rate of 0.001, and batch size of 32 with the topology of 6-32-32-256-1. The blast datasets were utilized to compare the performance of ANN, multivariate regression analysis (MVRA), and empirical predictors. The performance was evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R²), mean absolute error (MAE), mean squared error (MSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and root mean squared error (RMSE)for predicted and measured PPV. To determine the relative influence of each parameter on the PPV, sensitivity analyses were performed for all input parameters. The analyses reveal that ANN performs superior than MVRA and other empirical predictors, andthat83% PPV is affected by distance and MCPD while hole depth, number of blast holes, burden and spacing contribute for the remaining 17%. This research provides valuable insights into improving safety measures and ensuring the structural integrity of buildings near limestone quarry sites.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.63 no.3
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• pp.104-109
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• 2020

Background: It is challenging to diagnose asthma in preschool children. The asthma predictive index (API) has been used to predict asthma and decide whether to initiate treatment in preschool children. Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the association between questionnaire-based current asthma with API, pulmonary function, airway hyperreactivity (AHR), fractional expiratory nitric oxide (FeNO), and atopic sensitization in preschool children. Methods: We performed a population-based cross-sectional study in 916 preschool children aged 4-6 years. We defined current asthma as the presence of both physician-diagnosed asthma and at least one wheezing episode within the previous 12 months using a modified International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood questionnaire. Clinical and laboratory parameters were compared between groups according to the presence of current asthma. Results: The prevalence of current asthma was 3.9% in the study population. Children with current asthma showed a higher rate of positive bronchodilator response and loose and stringent API scores than children without current asthma. The stringent API was associated with current asthma with 72.2% sensitivity and 82.0% specificity. The diagnostic accuracy of the stringent API for current asthma was 0.771. However, no intergroup differences in spirometry results, methacholine provocation test results, FeNO level, or atopic sensitization rate were observed. Conclusion: The questionnaire-based diagnosis of current asthma is associated with API, but not with spirometry, AHR, FeNO, or atopic sensitization in preschool children.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.94-98
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• 2003

To produce antibodies against Pseudomonas tolaasii and P. agarici, lyophilized P. tolaasii and P. agarici ($5{\times}10^7$ cfu/ml) and Freund, s adjuvant were immunized into rabbits 4 times. The specificity and sensitivity of the antibodies were evaluated by immunodiffusion test and indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (id ELISA). The ${\alpha}$-P. tolaasii antibody was very specific only against P. tolaasii, while ${\alpha}$-P. agarici antibody was not specific and showed a high cross reactivity toward P. tolaasii with detection limit concentration of $2{\times}10^3$ cfu/ml. However, the cross reactivities of ${\alpha}$-P. agarici antibody toward the related species including P. reactans were very low. Our results showed that ${\alpha}$-P. tolaasii and ${\alpha}$-P. agarici antibodies against P. tolaasii and P. agarici, respectively, might be useful for rapid and simple detection of the causal agents of bacterial brown and yellow blotches in cultivated oyster mushrooms.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2008

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between serum ferritin and the metabolic syndrome (MS). Methods : We conducted a cross-sectional study of 1,444 adults over age 40 and under age 70 that lived in a rural area and participated in a survey conducted as part of the Korean Rural Genomic Cohort Study (KRGCS). The MS was defined as the presence of at least three of the followings : elevated blood pressure, low high density lipoprotein cholesterol, elevated serum triglycerides, elevated plasma glucose, or abdominal obesity. After adjustment for age, alcohol intake, menopausal status, body mass index (BMI), high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and alanine aminotransferase (ALT), odds ratios (ORs) for the prevalence of the MS by sex were calculated for quartiles of serum ferritin using logistic regression analysis. Results : The MS was more common in those persons , with the highest levels of serum ferritin, compared to persons with the lowest levels, in men (37.1% vs. 22.4%, p=0.006) and women (58.8% vs. 34.8, p<0.001). In both sexes, the greater the number of MS components presents, the greater the serum ferritin levels. After adjustment for age, alcohol intake, and menopausal status, the OR for metabolic syndrome, comparing the fourth quartile of ferritin with the first quartile, was 2.21 (95% confidence interval; CI=1.26-3.87; p-trend=0.024) in men and 2.10 (95% CI=1.40-3.17; p-trend=0.001) in women. However, after further adjustment for BMI, hs-CRP, and ALT, the ORs were statistically attenuated in both sexes. Conclusions : Moderately elevated serum ferritin levels were not independently associated with the prevalence of the MS after adjusting for other risk factors. Further studies are needed to obtain evidence concerning the association between serum ferritin levels and the MS.