• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.705-711
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• 2007

We should treat carefully the one related to human rights among a large number of decision-making in our daily lives. As it is necessary to obtain physical evidences in the process of criminal investigation for solving a certain crime based on the principle of evidence, it leads to an increase in demand for forensic science and forensic geology. Forensic geology could be regarded as a fusion discipline of geology and forensic investigation and it is principally concerned to the study on the connection of a suspect and a crime scene with soil evidence which could be experimented using geological data and methods. So these results could be used as valuable information in a court. After its academic foundation has been builded since the last 1970s, its research objects have been expanded from soil evidence like rocks, minerals, soils, sediments to sociocultural, political, military and medical objects like ancient relics, mines, corpses. Its role is expanded from the simple finding of a particular location to the examination of archaeological theories and historical facts, the testimony of the cause of environmental pollution and the chronic demonstration of geological distribution of plants and anthropological origination. And these bring this discipline promptly to accept developed geological methodologies and to satisfy various forensic geological needs. Specialized forensic investigation institutes work actively for the R&D activities of forensic geology. In Korea, national institute of scientific investigation works a small part of forensic geological activities in total activities of forensic investigation. In conclusion, we concern to the importance of systematic discussion of building in proper position of forensic geology through its R&D methods, application cases of its performance and etc. based on geological characteristics in our country by a specialized geoscience institute.

• BMB Reports
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• v.49 no.7
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• pp.359-369
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• 2016

DNA methylation is emerging as an attractive marker providing investigative leads to solve crimes in forensic genetics. The identification of body fluids that utilizes tissue-specific DNA methylation can contribute to solving crimes by predicting activity related to the evidence material. The age estimation based on DNA methylation is expected to reduce the number of potential suspects, when the DNA profile from the evidence does not match with any known person, including those stored in the forensic database. Moreover, the variation in DNA implicates environmental exposure, such as cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, thereby suggesting the possibility to be used as a marker for predicting the lifestyle of potential suspect. In this review, we describe recent advances in our understanding of DNA methylation variations and the utility of DNA methylation as a forensic marker for advanced investigative leads from evidence materials.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.20 no.4 s.51
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• pp.297-302
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to provide the standard method for the analysis of organophosphorous pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, diazinon, malathion and parathion in blood. We performed method validation for these pesticides in blood according to EURACHEM (A focus For Analytical Chemistry in Europe) guide. For the analysis of the pesticides, we used solid-phase extraction ,column (Waters Oasis $HLB^{(R)}$. After the extraction, the supernatants were evaporated to dryness under the nitrogen stream. They were analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) after reconstituting with ethanol. Terbufos was used as an internal standard. To validate this method, we performed verification procedures with the following parameters: selectivity, linearity of calibration, accuracy, precision, limit of detection and quantification. Validation data according to Eurachem guide were adequate for our purpose for the analysis of chlorpyrifos, diazinon, malathion and parathion in blood.

• Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.201-208
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• 2007

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are anthropogenic contaminants found globally in water, ice, soil, air and sediment. Modern analytical techniques allow us to determine these chemicals in environmental matrices at parts per trillion levels or lower. Environmental forensic on PCBs opens up new avenues of investigation such as transport and fate of water masses in oceans, sedimentation, onset of primary production, migration of marine mammals, their population distribution and pharmacokinetics of drugs inside organisms. By virtue of persistence, bioaccumulation, bioconcentration and structure-activity relationship PCBs emerge as unconventional chemical tracers of new sort.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.42-48
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• 2013

Forensic engineering is the application of engineering principles covering the investigation of constructed facilities and systems that fail to perform as intended, causing personal injury or damage to property, environmental, economy etc. In the year 2012, two collapsed accidents of the large scaffolding system in national thermal power station occurred one after another, causing many casualties. In this study, we had performed to investigate the collapsed accident of scaffolding system occurred in the a thermal power station of two accidents. First, the investigation about the collapsed accidents site had performed to understand collapsed state and structures of the scaffolding system. Second, reviewing the materials concerning about the applied weight on the scaffolding system had performed. The applied weight is sum of the weights of the 15 workers, additional materials for coating work and dispersed and loaded shot ball on the foothold etc. the applied weight that calculated exceed more three times than the safe working load. Third, we had confirmed the install state of the materials of the scaffolding system by reviewing the quantity of the materials on the manual and the real system. Last, structural analysis had performed to evaluate structural integrity of the scaffolding system using Ansys. Through a series of this processes, the definite accidents causes of the collapsed scaffolding system revealed. Through these studies, the collapse accident that may occur in the scaffolding system in thermal power station can be minimized by performing specialized and systematic investigation on the accidents in terms of Forensic engineering.

• Journal of Science Criminal Investigation
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.210-217
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• 2017

In the forensic microbiology laboratories, microorganism analyses from food are requested. There have been several cases of Bacillus cereus isolated from the samples requested to the National Forensic Service. B. cereus is an important pathogenic bacterium which can cause food-borne outbreaks. Therefore, we isolated B. cereus from anchovy aekjeot recently requested for microbial examination and identified using MSId based on the 16S rDNA sequence and real-time PCR method. We also conducted PCR for detection of diarrheal toxin genes and an emetic toxin gene and found the presence of nheABC, bceT and entFM diarrheal toxin genes in the B. cereus isolate. There are several clinically important food-poisoning bacteria that should be noted during inspection. In particular, B. cereus can cause food poisoning even when cooked foods are ingested, because B. cereus forms endo-spore which confers strong environmental resistance and heat resistance to the bacteria, and the bacterial emetic toxin also has heat resistance. Here we highlight the importance to distinguish clinically important bacteria such as B. cereus from food specimens, and we expect this study will provide procedures for identification of B. cereus and detection of the bacterial toxin genes for future cases in the forensic microbiology laboratories.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.263-271
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• 2010

Objectives : The records of 447 pesticide poisoning deaths from the National Forensic Service (NFS) headquarters located in Seoul of Korea from 2005 to 2009 were retrospectively reviewed. Methods : The data of each case were analyzed by using the SPSS program. Results : The mean age was $57.8{\pm}14.8$ years and the range was 16-92 years. The numbers of deaths of males and females were 301 and 134, respectively. The largest number of cases occurred in people aged 50-59 years (n=92, 20.6%) followed by the age groups 40-49 years (n=91, 20.4%), 60-69 years (n=88, 19.7%), and 70-79 years (n=75, 16.8%). The total number of deaths among other age groups (10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 80-89, and 90-99 years) was 73, representing only 16.3%. Of all pesticide poisoning deaths, 96.2% were due to suicide, and 28.4% of the total number who died received medical treatment. The mostfrequent site of ingestion was the person's own residence (n=279, 62.4%). The most common classes of pesticide were bipyridylium herbicide (paraquat, 31.1%), organophosphate insecticide (21.7%), and carbamate insecticide (15.4%). The major pesticides having a high proportion of fatalities were paraquat (31.1%), methomyl (11.4%), glyphosate (9.1%), dichlorvos (5.6%), phosphamidon (4.6%), and methidathion (4.0%). Conclusions : This study showed that poisoning deaths due to pesticides are one of the major public health problems in Korea. Enforcement of regulations and safety education to prevent pesticide poisoning should be carried out by the government.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.195-199
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• 2012

The records of 255 cyanide poisoning deaths obtained from National Forensic Service (NFS) headquarters, located in Seoul of Korea, from 2005 to 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. The mean age was $41.88{\pm}13.09$ and range was 6~80 years (unknown in seven cases). The number of deaths of males and females were 200 and 53, respectively (unknown in two cases). The largest number of cases occurred in people aged 40-49 years (81 cases, 31.8%), followed by the age groups 30~39 years (51 cases, 20%), 50~59 years (44 cases, 17.2%) and 20~29 years (43 cases, 16.9%). The total number of deaths among other age groups (below 10, 10~19, 60~69, 70~79, over 80 years and unknown) were 36, representing only 14.1%. Of all cyanide poisoning deaths, 97.3% were due to suicide, and 14.5% of the total number who died received medical treatment. The most frequent site for ingestion was the person's own residence (120 cases, 47.1%) and the route of administration was mainly oral (252, 98.8%). From the total of 255 cyanide poisoning cases, white powders were submitted for analysis in 92 cases. Potassium cyanide and sodium cyanide occupied 51 and 41 cases, respectively. This study showed that poisoning deaths due to cyanide are one of the continuously reported public health problems in Korea. Enforcement of regulations and safety education to prevent cyanide poisoning should be carried out by the government.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.181-186
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• 2003

There are many uncertainties in structural failures or structures, so probabilistic failure cause assessment should be performed in order to consider the uncertainties. However, in many cases of forensic engineering, the failure cause assessments are performed by deterministic approach though number of uncertainties are existed in the failures or structures. Thus, deterministic approach may have possibility for leading to unreasonable and unrealistic failure cause assessment due to ignorance of the uncertainties. Therefore, probabilistic approach is needed to complement the shortcoming of deterministic approach and to perform the more reasonable and realistic failure cause assessment. In this study, reliability-based failure cause assessment (reliability based forensic engineering) is performed, which can incorporate uncertainties in failures and structures. For more practical application, the modified ETA technique is proposed, which automatically generates the defected structural model, performs structural analysis and reliability analysis, and calculates the failure probabilities of the failure events and the occurrence probabilities of the failure scenarios. Also, for more precise reliability analysis, uncertainties are estimated more reasonably by using bayesian approach based on the experimental laboratory testing data in forensic report.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.269-277
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• 2024

Scientific forensic techniques are used to verify environmental impact of groundwater pollution, surface water pollution, air pollution, noise, and vibration according to residents' complaints in connection with construction and civil engineering works. In this study, we investigated the contamination of groundwater and the lowering of the groundwater level in an area surrounding a tunnel excavation site for the Andong-Yeongdeok national road, using a forensic hydrogeological technique. We reviewed the groundwater level and water quality of well GW1 in the area surrounding the tunnel excavation site as well as tunnel construction information and then we analyzed the correlations among the obtained data. Before tunnel excavation, the water level of well GW1 was lower than the tunnel elevation. Considering the relationship between the precipitation, tunnel discharge, tunnel depth, and groundwater level of well GW1, the groundwater flowed from the tunnel to well GW1. Moreover, the tunnel discharge and groundwater levels were not related to each other. The pH of well GW1 was 8.4 before tunnel excavation. During excavation, the pH declined to 8.1-8.2 at the beginning, and increased to 8.8 at the end of the excavation. The fluorine concentration in well GW1 was 2.49 mg/L, 1.91-3.22 mg/L, and 1.7-2.67 mg/L, respectively, before, during, and after the excavation. The sulfate ion concentration was very high, over 2,000 mg/L, before and during the excavation; after the excavation, it was between 200 and 323 mg/L. Turbidity was 1.47, 10.5, and 4.51 NTU before, during, and after tunnel excavation, respectively. Therefore, the excavation of this tunnel is not related to the groundwater quality of well GW1.