• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.313-320
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• 2020

Objectives: The aim of this study is to evaluate the association between vibration exposure and skeletal muscle mass index through a single university health check-up. Methods: We used data from 134,067 male subjects who received a general health check-up or vibration exposure health check-up out of the 1,515,322 people who underwent medical check-up at a local university hospital from 2002 to 2018. Pearson correlation analysis was conducted for comparing the association between skeletal muscle mass index and demographic and hematological variables in both groups. Mixed linear model analysis after controlling demographic and hematological variables was used to analyze the differences in skeletal muscle mass index between groups at every visit over 10 years. Results: In the Pearson correlation test, the variables that showed different results when comparing the two groups were C-reactive protein (p=0.001) and glycated hemoglobin (p=0.002) in the vibration exposure group and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (p<0.001) and vitamin D (p<0.001) in the general group. After the adjustment of demographic and hematologic variables, the skeletal muscle mass index at every visit was markedly decreased in the vibration exposure group (p<0.001). Conclusions: In the vibration exposure group, the skeletal muscle mass index showed a tendency to decrease markedly over time compared to the general health check-up group, which showed that C-reactive protein and glycated hemoglobin would have an influence on skeletal muscle index in male workers exposed to vibration.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.533-544
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• 2017

In this study, the fauna of freshwater fish were investigated from March until October of 2016 in 24 independent streams in the Jeonnam and Jeonbuk provinces, which were flowing into the Yellow Sea. The health of the aquatic ecosystem in those streams was assessed through the biological and abiological character index (BAc index). During the surveyed period, a total of 4,127 individuals were collected; they belonged to 59 species of 44 genera in 18 families. The most dominant species identified was Zacco platypus, and 12 species were endemic species of Korea, including Rhodeus uyekii. The BAc index indicated a statistically significant correlation (p<0.01 or 0.05). The stage distribution of the aquatic ecosystem health assessment showed the highest rating of 41.7% at the "Fair" stage. The "Good" and "Poor" stages accounted for 20.8% while the "Excellent" stage took up 16.7%. It has been confirmed that the aquatic ecosystem health of independent streams is influenced more by the abiological character index as a consequence of geographical characteristics and artificial/natural limiting factors, than by the biological character index.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.221-230
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• 2022

Objectives: The aim of this study is to evaluate the association between shiftwork and skeletal muscle mass index in a single university health check-up. Methods: We used data from 98,227 workers who answered in a special interview on health check-up at a local university hospital from 2014 to 2020. Pearson correlation analysis was conducted for comparing the association between skeletal muscle mass index and demographic and hematological variables in shiftwork and non-shiftwork groups. Mixed linear model analysis after controlling demographic and hematological variables was used to analyze the difference of skeletal muscle mass index between groups at every visit for seven years. Results: In linear regression analysis, the variables most significantly correlated with skeletal muscle index in both groups were shiftwork(p=0.049), BMI(p<0.001), hypertension(p=0.024), platelet(p<0.001), total protein (p<0.001), AST(p=0.028), ALT(p=0.003), ALP(p<0.001), total cholesterol(p=0.002), triglyceride(p=0.019), BUN (p=0.001), creatinine(p<0.001), and uric acid(p=0.002). After the adjustment for demographic and hematologic variables, the skeletal muscle mass index at every visit was decreased both in the shiftwork group and non-shiftwork group. The slope of the shiftwork group was -0.240 and non-shiftwork group -0.149, showing a significant difference (p<0.001). Conclusions: In the shiftwork group, the skeletal muscle mass index showed a tendency to decrease markedly over time compared to the non-shiftwork group. It is presumed that shift workers' skeletal muscle health was adversely affected by changes in the biological clock due to changes in wake-up and sleep patterns, and changes in food intake.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.389-404
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the vegetation recovery status of Mudeungsan National Park Jungmeorijae, Jeungsimsa district restoration site, and the Shimwon Valley ecological landscape restoration site in Jirisan National Park. Compared to the control plots, the Jungmeorijae restoration site was analyzed to have height growth of about 73.5%, the average species diversity index of about 75.2%. and the average similarity index was recovered to 7.75%. In the case of the restoration site in Jeungsimsa district, the height growth compared to the control plots was about 69.2%, the average species diversity index was about 55.0%. and the average similarity index was recovered to 25.65%. In the case of the Shimwon Valley ecological landscape restoration area, the height growth compared to the control plots was about 32.6%, the average species diversity index about 176.7%. and the average similarity index was recovered to 0.85%. The restoration site of the Jeungsimsa district was planted with relatively large trees during restoration work, and it took a relatively long time(20 years). Also, the site had less limiting factors due to the low elevation, allowing the degree of vegetation recovery to be higher than that of other sites.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.199-208
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• 2011

Environment standards can be used as a foundation of environment administration (specific expression of political goals or quantitative evaluation standards of political effects). When environment adminstration improves severe air or water pollution rapidly, the environment standard can work effectively to show the goals specifically and clearly. The environment index which is designed to evaluate environment systems, should be established to express the environment system generally. To realize sustainable development, the sustainable indexes usually consisting of these three areas in that harmony of environment, economy and society are required. In this research, sustainable environmental indicators to understand the characteristics and to compare likes theme of environmental conditions in international and national level indicators, regional environmental management plan to promote the management by objectives are to provide the basic data. It is desirable for the environmental policies to work harmoniously with direct control, use of economic means and voluntary methods. Regarding the evaluation of environmental index, the action results of civilian's or individual's activities are needed to be reflected into the evaluation.

• 한국생태학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1999.05a
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• pp.66.2-66.2
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• 1999

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Environmental Biology Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.52-52
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• 2002

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Environmental Biology Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.75-75
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• 2002

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.610-618
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• 2008

It is not easy to compare the treatment processes and find an optimum operating condition by the experiments due to influent conditions, treatment processes, various operational conditions and complex factors in real wastewater treatment system and also need a lot of time and costs. In this paper, the activated sludge models are applied to four principal biological wastewater treatment processes, $A_2O$(anaerobic/anoxic/oxic process), Bardenpho(4 steps), VIP(Virginia Initiative Plant) and UCT(University of Cape Town), and are used to compare their environmental and economic assessment for four key processes. In order to evaluate each processes, a new assessment index which can compare the efficiency of treatment performances in various processes is proposed, which considers both environmental and economic cost. It shows that the proposed index can be used to select the optimum processes among the candidate treatment processes as well as to find the optimum condition in each process. And it can find the change of economic and environmental index under the changes of influent flowrate and aerobic reaction size and predict the optimum index under various operation conditions.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.71-91
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• 2011

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the environmental performance of 29 Chinese provinces by adopting the advanced measurements, integrated pollution intensity index, IPI, which can be computed using Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) techniques. This index has the advantage of accounting for multiple resources used, good outputs produced and pollutants emitted simultaneously. The result obtained using the methodology shows the obvious evidence that provinces located around eastern area of China take relatively low levels and these phenomenons have been clearly observed throughout the sample period 1998~2007. The estimated index can be interpreted that the environmental burden in China has been steadily decreased as economic growth. This paper also tries to figure out the relationship among IPI, income levels, economic structures, the level of environmental regulations and FDI inflow. The estimated relationship between IPI and income per capita predicts improving environmental performance with increasing income levels. This explains the improvement in IPI which is simultaneously observed with income increases. According to the 'pollution haven hypothesis', many researches have been concerned the possibility that a large amount of foreign capital has been invested in China to avoid the strict environmental standards in advanced countries. However, the estimated coefficients in all model specifications take negative sign with IPI and highly statistical significant. This is a indication that there are positive impacts of foreign investments on IPI by adopting clean and high technologies from advanced countries.