• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.312-338
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• 2023

The underground disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel demands a specialized design, distinct from conventional practices, to ensure long-term thermal, mechanical, and hydraulic integrity, preventing the release of radioactive isotopes from high-temperature spent nuclear fuel. SKB has established design criteria for such facilities and executed practical design implementations for Forsmark. Moreover, in response to subsurface uncertainty, SKB has proposed an empirical approach involving monitoring and adaptive design modifications, alongside stepwise development. SKB has further introduced a unique support system, categorizing ground types and behaviors and aligning them with corresponding support types to confirm safety through comparative analyses against existing systems. POSIVA has pursued a comparable approach, developing a support system for Onkalo while accounting for distinct geological characteristics compared to Forsmark. This demonstrates the potential for domestic implementation of spent nuclear fuel disposal facility designs and the establishment of a support system adapted to national attributes.

• Journal of Advanced Technology Convergence
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.13-19
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• 2023

Following the signing of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 2015), the world is expanding greenhouse gas reduction activities through comprehensive participation that includes not only developed countries but also developing countries. Major countries around the world are placing high expectations on the effectiveness of total carbon emissions regulation through the carbon emissions market. However, in order to obtain carbon credits, third-party verification is required based on quantitative carbon reduction data. Accordingly, in this paper, we developed an AIoT high-efficiency street light for carbon emissions and conducted a performance analysis study to measure the luminous efficiency of the lighting fixture. To obtain carbon emissions rights, we used high-efficiency LED PKG, developed our own high-voltage PFC, and developed high-efficiency lighting fixtures capable of communication. For communication, the 2.4GHz LoRa method was adopted between the lighting fixture and the gateway. Lens design was conducted through simulation of Korea Expressway Corporation's standard streetlight types A, B, and C. The performance of the streetlight was verified as being more efficient than other existing products through the measurement of luminous efficiency by an accredited rating agency, and it is expected that carbon emissions rights will be obtained by reducing electrical energy through this.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.77-84
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• 2023

In the agricultural sector, power sources are being developed that use alternative energy sources such as electric tractors and hydrogen tractors, away from internal combustion engine tractors. As parts such as engines and transmissions used in conventional internal combustion engine tractors are replaced with motors and batteries, the center of gravity changes, and thus the risk of rollover should be considered. The purpose of this study is to analyze the overturn angle of the main parts of the electric tractor through dynamic simulation to minimize the overturn accident and to derive the optimal arrangement of parts to improve stability. A total of nine dynamics simulations were conducted by designing three components of the PTO motor, drive motor and the battery pack, and three factors of the arrangement method. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that Type3 Level3, in which the drive motor and the PTO motor are located at the front and rear of the tractor, and two battery packs are located in the middle of the tractor, has a high rollover angle. As a result of this study, the stability increased as the center of gravity was placed backward and located below. Future research needs to be done to find the optimal location of parts considering their performance and placement efficiency.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.519-524
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• 2023

In hashing-based image retrieval, the hash code of a manipulated image is different from the original image, making it difficult to search for the same image. This paper proposes and evaluates a self-supervised deephashing model that generates perceptual hash codes from feature information such as texture, shape, and color of images. The comparison models are autoencoder-based variational inference models, but the encoder is designed with a fully connected layer, convolutional neural network, and transformer modules. The proposed model is a variational inference model that includes a SimAM module of extracting geometric patterns and positional relationships within images. The SimAM module can learn latent vectors highlighting objects or local regions through an energy function using the activation values of neurons and surrounding neurons. The proposed method is a representation learning model that can generate low-dimensional latent vectors from high-dimensional input images, and the latent vectors are binarized into distinguishable hash code. From the experimental results on public datasets such as CIFAR-10, ImageNet, and NUS-WIDE, the proposed model is superior to the comparative model and analyzed to have equivalent performance to the supervised learning-based deephashing model. The proposed model can be used in application systems that require low-dimensional representation of images, such as image search or copyright image determination.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.53-62
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• 2024

Recently, development of non-traditional energy such as oil sands has been actively conducted in the cold region such as Canada. Frozen soil has different thermal and mechanical characteristics from general soil due to its high organic contents. This study evaluated the impact of organic matter content on the thermal and mechanical behavior of frozen soil samples collected from Alberta, Canada, and Gangwon Province, South Korea. As the organic content increases, the maximum dry unit weight decreases and the optimum moisture content increases in compaction tests. In uniaxial compression tests under frozen conditions, the strength of the frozen specimens increased as the temperature decreased. The strength of Canada soil sample increased with higher organic matter content at low temperatures. However, the strength of frozen soil was not significantly affected by organic matter content due to the complex behavior and unfrozen water content. Thermal conductivity tests showed higher thermal conductivity in frozen conditions compared to unfrozen conditions, due to the higher thermal conductivity of ice compared to water. These findings provide essential data for geotechnical design and construction in large-scale projects such as oil sands development in cold regions. Further research is needed to explore the impact of organic matter content on different types of frozen soils.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.191-199
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• 2010

Physical modeling is a synthesis method of high quality sound which is similar to real sound for musical instruments. However, since physical modeling requires a lot of parameters to synthesize sound of a musical instrument, it prevents real-time processing for the musical instrument which supports a large number of sounds simultaneously. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) parallel processor that supports real-time processing of sound synthesis of guitar, a representative plucked string musical instrument. To control six strings of guitar, we used a SIMD parallel processor which consists of six processing elements (PEs). Each PE supports modeling of the corresponding string. The proposed SIMD processor can generate synthesized sounds of six strings simultaneously when a parallel synthesis algorithm receives excitation signals and parameters of each string as an input. Experimental results using a sampling rate 44.1 kHz and 16 bits quantization indicate that synthesis sounds using the proposed parallel processor were very similar to original sound. In addition, the proposed parallel processor outperforms commercial TI's TMS320C6416 in terms of execution time (8.9x better) and energy efficiency (39.8x better).

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.112-118
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• 2009

This paper proposes a rapid detection algorithm of a salient region for music video browsing system, which can be applied to mobile device and digital video recorder (DVR). The input music video is decomposed into the music and video tracks. For the music track, the music highlight including musical chorus is detected based on structure analysis using energy-based peak position detection. Using the emotional models generated by SVM-AdaBoost learning algorithm, the music signal of the music videos is classified into one of the predefined emotional classes of the music automatically. For the video track, the face scene including the singer or actor/actress is detected based on a boosted cascade of simple features. Finally, the salient region is generated based on the alignment of boundaries of the music highlight and the visual face scene. First, the users select their favorite music videos from various music videos in the mobile devices or DVR with the information of a music video's emotion and thereafter they can browse the salient region with a length of 30-seconds using the proposed algorithm quickly. A mean opinion score (MOS) test with a database of 200 music videos is conducted to compare the detected salient region with the predefined manual part. The MOS test results show that the detected salient region using the proposed method performed much better than the predefined manual part without audiovisual processing.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.105-115
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• 2024

This study aimed to analyze the impact of mental strength on the competitive performance of student Taekwondo sparring athletes. A total of 343 middle school, high school, and university students registered as Taekwondo sparring athletes with the Korea Taekwondo Association were conveniently sampled. The Mental Toughness Test developed by Loehr was utilized after expert consultations. Data analysis involved t-tests and one-way ANOVA to assess the levels of mental strength sub-factors based on general characteristics, followed by post hoc tests using the Schéffe method for intergroup comparisons. Correlation analysis and multiple regression were conducted to examine the relationship between sub-factors of mental strength and competitive ability. The results indicated significant differences in mental strength sub-factors-confidence, level of awakening regulation, visualization and mental imagery regulation, motivation level, positive energy, and attitude control-based on gender and age among Taekwondo sparring student athletes. In terms of perceived competitive ability, significant differences were found based on age and sports experience. Consequently, beyond psychological training, the study revealed that age and diverse experiences positively influence specific aspects of mental strength among Taekwondo sparring student athletes. Therefore, coaching and training for these athletes, particularly during middle and high school years, should incorporate psychological aspects alongside diverse competition experiences and training to help overcome performance evaluation anxieties during matches.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.1006-1016
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• 2023

Objective: Computed tomography (CT) is an established method for the diagnosis, staging, and treatment of multiple myeloma. Here, we investigated the potential of photon-counting detector computed tomography (PCD-CT) in terms of image quality, diagnostic confidence, and radiation dose compared with energy-integrating detector CT (EID-CT). Materials and Methods: In this prospective study, patients with known multiple myeloma underwent clinically indicated whole-body PCD-CT. The image quality of PCD-CT was assessed qualitatively by three independent radiologists for overall image quality, edge sharpness, image noise, lesion conspicuity, and diagnostic confidence using a 5-point Likert scale (5 = excellent), and quantitatively for signal homogeneity using the coefficient of variation (CV) of Hounsfield Units (HU) values and modulation transfer function (MTF) via the full width at half maximum (FWHM) in the frequency space. The results were compared with those of the current clinical standard EID-CT protocols as controls. Additionally, the radiation dose (CTDIvol) was determined. Results: We enrolled 35 patients with multiple myeloma (mean age 69.8 ± 9.1 years; 18 [51%] males). Qualitative image analysis revealed superior scores (median [interquartile range]) for PCD-CT regarding overall image quality (4.0 [4.0-5.0] vs. 4.0 [3.0-4.0]), edge sharpness (4.0 [4.0-5.0] vs. 4.0 [3.0-4.0]), image noise (4.0 [4.0-4.0] vs. 3.0 [3.0-4.0]), lesion conspicuity (4.0 [4.0-5.0] vs. 4.0 [3.0-4.0]), and diagnostic confidence (4.0 [4.0-5.0] vs. 4.0 [3.0-4.0]) compared with EID-CT (P ≤ 0.004). In quantitative image analyses, PCD-CT compared with EID-CT revealed a substantially lower FWHM (2.89 vs. 25.68 cy/pixel) and a significantly more homogeneous signal (mean CV ± standard deviation [SD], 0.99 ± 0.65 vs. 1.66 ± 0.5; P < 0.001) at a significantly lower radiation dose (mean CTDIvol ± SD, 3.33 ± 0.82 vs. 7.19 ± 3.57 mGy; P < 0.001). Conclusion: Whole-body PCD-CT provides significantly higher subjective and objective image quality at significantly reduced radiation doses than the current clinical standard EID-CT protocols, along with readily available multi-spectral data, facilitating the potential for further advanced post-processing.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.88-104
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• 2024

Purpose: High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is primarily synthesized in the liver upon stimulation of infectious disease cytokines, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6), and is used as a biological marker of systemic inflammation. Previous studies reported that hs-CRP is closely related to diet and abdominal obesity. Furthermore, a dietary score favoring the consumption of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains over meat and saturated fat reduced inflammation and decreased the prevalence of obesity and abdominal obesity. Nevertheless, no studies have examined whether hs-CRP mediates the relationship between dietary scores and abdominal obesity, and research on the Korean Healthy Eating Index (KHEI) is lacking. Therefore, the present study examined the association between the KHEI and abdominal obesity and the mediating effect of hs-CRP. Methods: In total, 17,770 adults aged ≥19 years were included in the study using the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2015-2018. KHEI was developed to assess the overall diet quality of Korean adults. Multivariable linear and logistic regression analyses assessed the relationship between KHEI, hs-CRP, and abdominal obesity. The mediation analysis with the bootstrapping method was performed using SAS MACRO. Results: Among women, the odds ratio (OR) of abdominal obesity prevalence was lower in the highest KHEI compared to the lowest KHEI after adjusting for age, body mass index, educational level, income level, occupational status, marital status, household type, region type, alcohol consumption, smoking status, physical activity, total energy intake, and hsCRP (OR 0.744, 95% confidence interval 0.598-0.926). The association between KHEI and abdominal obesity was partially mediated via hs-CRP, and the mediated proportion was 68.7% in men and 38.1% in women. Conclusion: A substantial relationship was observed between the KHEI and abdominal obesity among females. Moreover, according to the KHEI, abdominal obesity may be mediated partially by hs-CRP.