• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.420-429
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• 2018

Soil stabilization is a soil remediation technique that reduces the mobility of heavy metals in soils. Although it is a well-established technique, it is nonetheless essential to perform a follow-up chemical assessment via a leaching test to evaluate the immobilization of heavy metals in the soil matrix. Unfortunately, a standard chemical assessment is not sufficient for evaluation of the biological functional state of stabilized soils slated for agricultural use. Therefore, it is useful to employ a pyrosequencing-based microbial community analysis for the purpose. In this study, a recently stabilized site in the proximity of an exhausted mine was analyzed for bacterial diversity, richness, and relative abundance as well as the effect of environmental factors. Based on the Shannon and Chao1 indices and rarefaction curves, the results showed that the stabilized layer exhibited lower bacterial diversity than control soils. The prevalence of dominant bacterial populations was examined in a hierarchical manner. Relatively high abundances of Proteobacteria and Methylobacter tundripaludum were observed in the stabilized soil. In particular, there was substantial abundance of the Methylobacter genus, which is known for its association with heavy metal contamination. The study demonstrated the efficacy of (micro)biological assessment for aiding in the understanding and post-management of stabilized soils.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.435-446
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• 2019

The existing piezoelectric spherical transducers with fixed prescribed dynamic characteristics limit their application in scenarios with multi-frequency or frequency variation requirement. To address this issue, this work proposes an improved design of piezoelectric spherical transducers using the resistance tuning method. Two piezoceramic shells are the functional elements with one for actuation and the other for tuning through the variation of load resistance. The theoretical model of the proposed design is given based on our previous work. The effects of the resistance, the middle surface radius and the thickness of the epoxy adhesive layer on the dynamic characteristics of the transducer are explored by numerical analysis. The numerical results show that the multi-frequency characteristics of the transducer can be obtained by tuning the resistance, and its electromechanical coupling coefficient can be optimized by a matching resistance. The proposed design and derived theoretical solution are validated by comparing with the literature given special examples as well as an experimental study. The present study demonstrates the feasibility of using the proposed design to realize the multi-frequency characteristics, which is helpful to improve the performance of piezoelectric spherical transducers used in underwater acoustic detection, hydrophones, and the spherical smart aggregate (SSA) used in civil structural health monitoring, enhancing their operation at the multiple working frequencies to meet different application requirements.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.238-243
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• 2022

In this study, a pyrene-core single molecule with amino (-NH₂) functional group material was hybridized using ZnO quantum dots (QDs). The suppressed performance of the 1-aminopyrene (1-PyNH₂) single molecule as an emissive layer (EML) in light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was exploited by adopting the ZnO@1-PyNH₂ core-shell structure. Unlike pristine 1-PyNH₂ molecules, the ZnO@1-PyNH₂ hybrid QDs formed energy proximity levels that enabled charge transfer. This result can be interpreted as an improvement in surface roughness. The uniform and homogeneous EML alleviates dark-spot degradation. Moreover, LEDs with the ITO/PEDOT:PSS/TFB/EML/TPBi/LiF/Al configuration were fabricated to evaluate the performance of two emissive materials, where pristine-1-PyNH₂ molecules and ZnO@1-PyNH₂ QDs were used as the EML materials to verify the improvement in electrical characteristics. The ZnO@1-PyNH₂ LEDs exhibited blue luminescence at 443 nm (FWHM = 49 nm), with a turn-on voltage of 4 V, maximum luminance of 1500 cd/m², maximum luminous efficiency of 0.66 cd/A, and power efficiency of 0.41 lm/W.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.593-603
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• 2022

The critical buckling temperature rise of a newly proposed piezoelectrically active sandwich plate (ASP) has been investigated in this work. This structure includes a porous polymeric layer integrated between two piezoelectric nanocomposite layers. The piezoelectric material is made of a passive polymeric material that is activated by lead-free nanowires (NWs) of zinc oxide (ZnO) embedded inside the matrix. In both nanocomposite layers and porous core, functional graded (FG) patterns have been considered for the distributions of ZnO NWs and voids, respectively. By adopting a higher-order theory of plates, the governing equations of thermal buckling are obtained. This set of equations is then treated using an extended mesh-free solution. The effects of plate dimensions, porosity states, and the nanowire parameters have been investigated on the critical buckling temperature rises of the proposed lightweight ASPs with different boundary conditions. The results disclose that the use of porosities in the core and/or mixing ZnO NWs in the face sheets substantially arise the critical buckling temperatures of the newly proposed active sandwich plates.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.195-207
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• 2022

Computational drawbacks associated with regular predictive models have motivated engineers to use hybrid techniques in dealing with complex engineering tasks like simulating the compressive strength of concrete (CSC). This study evaluates the efficiency of tree potential metaheuristic schemes, namely shuffled complex evolution (SCE), multi-verse optimizer (MVO), and beetle antennae search (BAS) for optimizing the performance of a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) system. The models are fed by the information of 1030 concrete specimens (where the amount of cement, blast furnace slag (BFS), fly ash (FA1), water, superplasticizer (SP), coarse aggregate (CA), and fine aggregate (FA2) are taken as independent factors). The results of the ensembles are compared to unreinforced MLP to examine improvements resulted from the incorporation of the SCE, MVO, and BAS. It was shown that these algorithms can considerably enhance the training and prediction accuracy of the MLP. Overall, the proposed models are capable of presenting an early, inexpensive, and reliable prediction of the CSC. Due to the higher accuracy of the BAS-based model, a predictive formula is extracted from this algorithm.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.576-590
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• 2023

Machine learning is widely used in various academic fields, and recently it has been actively applied in the medical research. In the medical field, machine learning is used in a variety of ways, such as speeding up diagnosis, discovering new biomarkers, or discovering latent traits of a disease. In the respiratory field, a relative regional air volume change (RRAVC) map based on quantitative inspiratory and expiratory computed tomography (CT) imaging can be used as a useful functional imaging biomarker for characterizing regional ventilation. In this study, we seek to predict RRAVC using various regular machine learning models such as extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), and multi-layer perceptron (MLP). We experimentally show that MLP performs best, followed by XGBoost. We also propose several relative coordinate systems to minimize intersubjective variability. We confirm a significant experimental performance improvement when we apply a subject's relative proportion coordinates over conventional absolute coordinates.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2023

Lubricant-impregnated nanoporous surfaces (LIS), which is created by impregnating water-immiscible oil into nanoporous surface structure, have been explored considering wide range of application fields. Due to the lubricant impregnated in nanoporous structure, the surface shows extreme de-wetting with a high mobility of water droplets, so that various functionalities can be realized. The lubricant layer inhibits the contact of corrosive media to porous structure as well as metal substrate, thus the surface improves the corrosion resistance. The water on the surface freeze without any contact to solid porous structure, showing a low ice adhesion for de-icing an anti-icing. The extremely high mobility of water droplets on lubricant-impregnated porous surfaces also contributes the enhancement of condensation heat transfer as well as water harvesting from fog and moisture. Moreover, the bacteria adhesion on metal surface forming biofilms causing serious hygiene issues can be inhibited on the lubricantimpregnated surfaces. Despite of such superior functionalities, the lubricant-impregnated porous surface has a limitation of lubricant depletion by external flow of fluids. Therefore, extensive efforts to improve the durability of lubricant-impregnated surface are required for practical applications.

• Elastomers and Composites
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.197-204
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• 2022

Recently, the demand has increased for protective clothing materials capable of shielding the wearer from bullets, fragment bullets, knives, and swords. It is therefore necessary to develop light and soft protective clothing materials with excellent wearability and mobility. To this end, research is being conducted on hybrid design methods for various highly functional materials, such as carbon nanotube (CNT) sheets, which are well known for their low weight and excellent strength. In this study, a hybrid protective material using CNT sheets was developed and its performance was evaluated. The material design incorporated a bonding method that used a binder for interlayer combination between the CNT sheets. Four types of binders were selected according to their characteristics and impregnated within CNT sheets, followed by further combination with aramid fabric to produce the hybrid protective material. After applying the binder, the tensile strength increased significantly, especially with the phenoxy binder, which has rigid characteristics. However, as the molecular weight of the phenoxy binder increased, the adhesive force and strength decreased. On the other hand, when a 25% lightweight-design and high-molecular-weight phenoxy binder were applied, the backface signature (BFS) decreased by 6.2 mm. When the CNT sheet was placed in the middle of the aramid fabric, the BFS was the lowest. In a stab resistance test, the penetration depth was the largest when the CNT sheet was in the middle layer. As the binder was applied, the stab resistance improvement against the P1 blade was most effective.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.688-695
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• 2011

This study was carried out for some survey about soil compaction in the multi-cropping system of paddy field. Investigated sites were 90 farmer's fields in south-eastern part of Korea. The tillage practices season was different according to cropping system of paddy; in spring for mono rice cultivation and in autumn for the multi-cropping field. The average tillage depth in investigated sites was about 25 cm, however, it is different between the farmer's tillage practices and soil characteristics. It is high correlation to tillage deep and minimum resistance of penetration. The reaching soil deep to maximum resistance of penetration was about 27 cm, and average penetration resistance of the deep is 1.8~2.0 MPa for moderately fine-textured soils and more than 3.0 MPa for moderately coarse-textured soils. The difference of penetration resistance between cultivating and compacted layer was in order to sandy loam > clayey loam > clayey, and the difference was lesser in poorly drained soils than somewhat poorly ones. In the rice mono cropping field, the maximum resistance in no-tillage for 15 years was 1.18~1.25 Mpa at 20~25 cm in soil deep, however, the resistance of field with every year tillage practices was 2.03~2.21 Mpa. In the extremely compacted sandy loam textured soils, the penetration resistance at 30 cm in soil depth was drastically reduced by the subsoil from 5.2 Mpa to 3.2 Mpa, and the watermelon root in plastic film house was deep elongated.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.377-387
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• 2000

There are a few tanycytes between the general ependymal cells lining the ependymal layer of the brain ventricle. These cells are considered as modified ependymal cells which possess a long basal process. Tanycytes are known to have an ability to communicate by absorbing substances from cerebrospinal fluid and transporting them to the blood vessels and/or to the neurons in the CNS. The third and fourth ventricular tanycytes were mainly studied as subjects but it's rare to find reports about the tanycytes of the area postrema. Glial fibrillary acidic protein is an intermediate filament protein that is expressed especially in astrocytes of the CNS. But GFAP is also found in filament of the tanycytes and its process. Therefore this study was carried out for the examination of the GFAP immunoreactive tanycytes lining the area postrema of the bat, and we also examined the ultrastructure of tanycytes using electron microscope. GFAP immunoreactive tanycytes were located in the caudal portion of the fourth ventricle, and especially mainly in the transitional zone between the floor of the caudal fourth ventricle and ependymal layer lining the area postrema. A few GFAP immunoreactive tanycytes were also found in the ependymal layer lining the area postrema, and some groups of tanycytes were found in the ependymal layer of the area postrema near the floor of the caudal fourth ventricle , The processes of tanycytes were stained deeply with anti-GFAP antibody. Especially the GFAP immunoreactive tanycytes lining the area postrema had very long processes that cross the whole width of the area postrema. In the electron microscope, the cell body of ependymal tanycyte was located on the ependymal layer and had a long basal process. Intermediate filaments were observed around the nucleus and well developed in the process of tanycrte. Longitudinal oriented long mitochondria and a few lipid droplets were also found in this process. After immunocytocheical staining, the gold particles were found only in the intermediate filaments. We could not determine the function of the tanycytes in the area postrema. Thus, further investigation is required to determine the functional relationship between the tanycytes and the area postrema in hibernating animal, the bat.