• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.419-430
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• 2023

In response to the periodic occurrence of cyanobacterial blooms in Korean freshwaters, various types of cyanobacteria removal technologies are being developed and implemented. Due to the differing principles behind these technologies, it is difficult to compare and evaluate their removal efficiencies. In this study, a standardized method for evaluating cyanobacteria removal efficiency was proposed by utilizing the results of removal operations using a mobile cyanobacteria removal device in the Seohwacheon area of Daechung Reservoir. During removal operations, the decrease in chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentration (ΔChl-a) in the working area was calculated based on the amount of collected sludge, the efficiency rate, and the concentration of chl-a. Additionally, the required working days (WD) to reduce the chl-a concentration to 1 mg/m³ in the target area was calculated based on the area of the target zone, the maximum daily working area, and the efficiency rate. A method for calculating the cyanobacteria removal capacity was proposed based on the reduction rate of chl-a concentration in the water before and after the operation, the treatment capacity of the removal technology, and the water volume of the target area. The cyanobacteria removal capacity of the mobile cyanobacteria removal device used in this study was 6.64%/day (targeting the Seohwacheon area of Daechung Reservoir, approximately 500,000 m²), which was higher compared to other physical or physicochemical cyanobacteria removal technologies (0.02~4.72%/day). Utilizing the evaluation method of cyanobacteria removal efficiency presented in this study, it will be possible to compare and evaluate the cyanobacteria removal technologies currently being applied in Korea. This method could also be used to assess the performance and efficiency of physical or physicochemical combined cyanobacteria removal techniques in the "Guidelines for the Installation and Operation of Algae Removal Facilities and the Use of Algae Removal Agents" operated by the National Institute of Environmental Research.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.50
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• pp.275-289
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• 2023

Since the implementation of the Living Modified Organisms (LMOs) Act in 2008, approximately 10 million tons of genetically modified corn, soybean, potato, canola, and other crops have been imported into South Korea. The import approval procedures have been completed for approximately 191 cases that include seven crops. Of these, approximately 90 cases, excluding crossbreeds of approved LMOs, were reviewed via consultation risk evaluation in four areas: human health, crop culture, natural ecology, and marine fishery environment. LMO developers in South Korea, who are major stakeholders in the import of LMO crops produced overseas, have raised concerns regarding procedural inefficiency in consultation reviews and the need of excessive reviews that are unsuitable for food-feed processing purposes. These procedures reflect the perspective of consultation agencies that deviate from the nature of risk assessment and demand specific supplementary data that do not reflect familiarity and substantial equilibrium. Based on frequent instances of unintentional environmental release of LMO crops imported into Korea, the ministries responsible for consultation insist on a review that considers the climate and natural environment of Korea. In addition, the ministries mandate that their reviews reflect the expertise of competent ministries and are based on risk assessment principles and methods in accordance with international guidelines. In this regard, considering that traits introduced into LMO crops involving familiar agricultural crops have been considered safe for more than two decades, we have suggested reasonable alternatives to several risk assessment items for agricultural LMOs. These alternatives can mitigate conflicts of interest among key stakeholders within the scope of the current LMO regulations.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.55-78
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• 2021

Tosolve complex and diverse social problems and ensure the quality of life of individuals, social robots that can interact with humans are attracting attention. In the past, robots were recognized as beings that provide labor force as they put into industrial sites on behalf of humans. However, the concept of today's robot has been extended to social robots that coexist with humans and enable social interaction with the advent of Smart technology, which is considered an important driver in most industries. Specifically, there are service robots that respond to customers, the robots that have the purpose of edutainment, and the emotionalrobots that can interact with humans intimately. However, popularization of robots is not felt despite the current information environment in the modern ICT service environment and the 4th industrial revolution. Considering social interaction with users which is an important function of social robots, not only the technology of the robots but also other factors should be considered. The design elements of the robot are more important than other factors tomake consumers purchase essentially a social robot. In fact, existing studies on social robots are at the level of proposing "robot development methodology" or testing the effects provided by social robots to users in pieces. On the other hand, consumer emotions felt from the robot's appearance has an important influence in the process of forming user's perception, reasoning, evaluation and expectation. Furthermore, it can affect attitude toward robots and good feeling and performance reasoning, etc. Therefore, this study aims to verify the effect of appearance of social robot and consumer emotions on consumer's attitude toward social robot. At this time, a social robot design evaluation model is constructed by combining heterogeneous data from different sources. Specifically, the three quantitative indicator data for the appearance of social robots from the ABOT Database is included in the model. The consumer emotions of social robot design has been collected through (1) the existing design evaluation literature and (2) online buzzsuch as product reviews and blogs, (3) qualitative interviews for social robot design. Later, we collected the score of consumer emotions and attitudes toward various social robots through a large-scale consumer survey. First, we have derived the six major dimensions of consumer emotions for 23 pieces of detailed emotions through dimension reduction methodology. Then, statistical analysis was performed to verify the effect of derived consumer emotionson attitude toward social robots. Finally, the moderated regression analysis was performed to verify the effect of quantitatively collected indicators of social robot appearance on the relationship between consumer emotions and attitudes toward social robots. Interestingly, several significant moderation effects were identified, these effects are visualized with two-way interaction effect to interpret them from multidisciplinary perspectives. This study has theoretical contributions from the perspective of empirically verifying all stages from technical properties to consumer's emotion and attitudes toward social robots by linking the data from heterogeneous sources. It has practical significance that the result helps to develop the design guidelines based on consumer emotions in the design stage of social robot development.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.971-976
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• 2009

The consumption of raw sprouts has increased in popularity worldwide because the food is natural and healthy. However, in Korea, nothing is known on the safety standards of sprout producers or changes in the microbial populations of sprouts during sprouting. We evaluated the microbial safety and quality of sprouts during each step in the sprouting process. Bacteriological analysis showed that seeds had a Total Plate Count (TPC) ranging from 3.04 - 5.21 log CFU/g and coliform counts ranging from 1.80 - 3.86 log CFU/g. TPC and coliform counts increased rapidly during the sprouting process to attain values of 6.99 - 8.26 and 3.70 - 7.15 log CFU/g, respectively, regardless of decontamination of seeds with commercial sanitizer. TPC and coliform counts were on high level after sprouts were washed. Escherichia coli was detected in samples of domestic radish sprouts at all stages from seed to storage, rape sprouts in the stages from soaked seed to storage, and red radish sprouts during sprouting, and no sanitizer was used in any of these processes. Untreated red radish sprouts were also positive for Bacillus cereus at all processing steps and Listeria monocytogenes after germination. However, pathogens were not detected at any sprouting stage of seeds treated with sanitizer. It is necessary to carefully control commercial sprouting, and to develop HACCP guidelines applicable to all sprouting processes, commencing at the first step in raw seed production.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.875-881
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• 2013

The failure of a bolted joint owing to stress corrosion cracking (SCC) has been considered one of the most important structural integrity issues in a nuclear power plant. In this study, the failure possibility of bolting, which is used to support the steam generator of a pressurized water reactor, owing to SCC and brittle fracture was evaluated in accordance with guidelines proposed by the Electric Power Research Institute, which are called the Reference Flaw Factor method. For this evaluation, first, detailed finite element stress analyses were conducted to obtain the actual nominal stresses of bolting in which either service loads or bolt preloads were considered. Based on these nominal stresses, the structural integrity of bolting was addressed from the viewpoints of SCC and toughness. In addition, the accuracy of the EPRI Reference Flaw Factor for assessing bolting failure was investigated using finite element fracture mechanics analyses.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1625-1638
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• 2014

Recently, Low Impact Development (LID) has been emphasized as a critical strategy for improving urban water cycle and adapting to climate change. LID is needed to be incorporated in urban planning and development process for effective implementation in the real world. However, little research has examined the relationship between urban planning and LID in Korea. This study addresses this critical gap by 1) examining whether current urban planning institutional system considers LID or not and 2) assessing the extent to which local comprehensive plans integrate LID in seven large cities. Study results show that a few planning guidelines declaratively mention the need of LID but they don't include specific LID strategies. In addition, we found that 7 local comprehensive plans in the sample received a mean score of 11.71, which represents 19.52% of the total possible points and there are wide variations among cities. These findings indicate that there is still considerable room for improvement of local governments on LID. We propose the revision of planning guideline by incorporating LID principles and non-structural and structural LID technologies.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.5-12
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• 2012

Recently the installation of reinforced earth retaining walls in the domestic construction site has increased, surpassing conventional RC walls. These reinforced walls have various types depending on the reinforcing material, installation method and the form of face panel. However, there are difficulties in design and construction management due to the unproved safety of construction method. In case of reinforcing materials, despite the fact that they come in all different sizes and types produced by small businesses or partially imported with cheap price and low quality, no proper standards for designing the walls have been suggested. In order to apply reinforced retaining wall system to broad cases and design the walls effectively considering site conditions, specific design and construction guidelines for efficient construction management are needed. In conclusion, this study verified that reduction factors can be greatly affected by grain sizes and stiffness of backfill materials and granularity range, therefore in case of relatively large construction site, it is required to redesign the reinforced retaining wall by evaluating site installation resistance test, applying respective reduction factors to each backfill material and select the right geogrid depending on the usage of retaining wall so as to enhance the safety of reinforced earth retaining walls with efficiency.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.615-627
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• 2012

The market penetration of the smart phones has brought significant changes to the related industries. As the mobile phone market as well as the smart phone application market are growing rapidly, competition among small-size application developers has become severe. However, due to the severe competition and expensive market entry costs, the developers argue that it is necessary to develope the applications from the perspective of the users. However, studies on application development from the users' perspectives are still in the early stages and they have not provided various approaches. Therefore, based on the Open Coding method of Ground Theory, this study collected data on applications review from related communities and blogs of Korean web portal sites, and identified indices which users consider important when they use the applications. In addition, we conduct a comparative analysis between those indices by calculating their frequency of exposure. As a result, a total of 30 sub-categories of indicators such as amusement, controllability, versatility and ease of use appeared to be predominant to users and those lower categories were grouped into five categories; sensibility, design, technology, price, and social skills. The results of this study suggest to the application developers the guidelines of user oriented design and development. It can be used to develop the evaluation tool for application usability.

• The Korean Journal of Pesticide Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.478-481
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• 2013

This study was performed to evaluate the acute skin and eye irritation of plant extracts (neem and sophora) against rabbit. The result of skin irritation test indicated that neem extracts and sophora extracts were not irritant. For eye irritation test, the result showed no irritation for neem extracts. Sophora extracts have a severe eye irritation and the symptoms have been reduced to day 3. Thus, safety guidelines for agricultural workers is considered to be needed when sophora extracts is used as an organic agricultural materials.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.75-85
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• 2019

The lateral load from traffic depends on standard truck's axle loads and locations, loading distance from the inner wall. The method of limit state design has been adopted and used for design of roads in the Republic of Korea since 2015. The concept of equivalent height of soil accounting for traffic loading is often used for design of retaining walls to quantify the traffic loads transmitted to the inner wall faces. Due to the different characteristics of the standard design trucks between Korea and US (AASHTO), the direct use of the guidelines from AASHTO LRFD leads to incorrect estimation of traffic load effects on retaining walls. This paper presents the results of evaluation of equivalent height of soil to reflect the standard truck of the nation, based on the findings from analytical solutions using 3D finite element method. Compare to US, the standard truck loading has a structure where the axle load is concentrated so that the equivalent load height is estimated to be slightly larger than AASHTO for lower retaining wall height. It would be reasonable to present the equivalent load height in Korea more conservatively than AASHTO in terms of securing long term stability of the retaining wall structure.