• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1565-1570
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• 2020

Photons with the energy of 60 keV are regularly used for some kinds of bone density examination devices, like the single photon absorptiometry (SPA). This article reports a flexible and lightweight rare earth/polymer composite for enhancing shielding efficiency against photon radiation with the energy of 60 keV. Lead oxide (PbO) and several rare earth element oxides (La₂O₃, Ce₂O₃, Nd₂O₃) were dispersed into natural rubber (NR) and the photon radiation shielding performance of the composites were assessed using monte carlo simulation method. For 60 keV photons, the shielding efficiency of rare earthbased composites were found to be much higher than that of the traditional lead-based composite, which has bad absorbing ability for photons with energies between 40 keV and 88 keV. In comparison with the lead oxide based composite, Nd₂O₃-NR composite with the same protection standard (the lead equivalent is 0.25 mmPb, 0.35 mmPb and 0.5 mmPb, respectively), can reduce the thickness by 35.29%, 37.5% and 38.24%, and reduce the weight by 38.91%, 40.99% and 41.69%, respectively. Thus, a flexible, lightweight and lead-free rare earth/NR composite could be designed, offering efficient photon radiation protection for the users of the single photon absorptiometry (SPA) with certain energy of 60 keV.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.15-22
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• 2013

The solar energy are an infinite source of energy and a clean energy without secondary pollution. The global solar energy reaching the earth's surface can be calculated easily according to the change of latitude, altitude, and sloped surface depending on the amount of the actual state of the atmosphere and clouds. The high-resolution solar-meteorological resource map with 1km resolution was developed in 2011 based on GWNU (Gangneung-Wonju National University) solar radiation model with complex terrain. The very high resolution solar energy map can be calculated and analyzed in Seoul and Eunpyung with topological effect using by 1km solar-meteorological resources map, respectively. Seoul DEM (Digital Elevation Model) have 10m resolution from NGII (National Geographic Information Institute) and Eunpyeong new town DSM (Digital Surface Model) have 1m spatial resolution from lidar observations. The solar energy have small differences according to the local mountainous terrain and residential area. The maximum bias have up to 20% and 16% in Seoul and Eunpyung new town, respectively. Small differences are that limited area with resolutions. As a result, the solar energy can calculate precisely using solar radiation model with topological effect by digital elevation data and its results can be used as the basis data for the photovoltaic and solar thermal generation.

• Solar Energy
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.49-63
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• 1996

Site elavation is one of the major factors which is influencing the incoming insolation. Because nonpermanent gases like ozone, water vapor are unmixed components of the atmosphere and their concentrations are function of height, the site elevation effects the relative proportion of the atmospheric constituents. We have measured solar radiation on Sobaek(1,350m) and in Poonggi area(280m). These values were compared to investigate the their charateristics and the potential for the solar utilization as an alternative energy for both high altitude area and low altitude area. From the results, we conclude that 1) Yearly mean 4,093 $kcal/m^2$. day of the horizontal global radiation in Mt. Sobaek was evaluated for clear day. 2) Insolation on Mt. Sobaek is $6{\sim}7%$ higher than Poonggi area during summer and winter seasons. 3) A significant difference of atomospheric clearness index is observed between Mt. Sobaek and Poonggi area at the same latitude.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.185-191
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• 2009

Few studies have attempted to analyze variations of daily maximum temperature in the summer whereas many studies have analyzed warming trends in other seasons with respect to greenhouse gases or urban heat islands. We analyzed daily maximum temperature data for the summer season (June to August) at 18 locations in South Korea from 1983 to 2007. Compared to the climatic normal (from 1971 to 2000), an average increase of $0.1^{\circ}C$ was found for the summer daily maximum temperature along with an increase of $0.61MJ\;m^{-2}$ in daily solar radiation. Approximately 65% of the annual variations of the summer daily maximum temperature could be explained by the solar radiance alone. Higher atmospheric transmittance due to lower aerosol concentration (especially of sulfur dioxide) is believed to have caused the recent increase in solar irradiance. Daily maximum temperature of the summer is expected to keep rising if the clean air activities are maintained in the future.

• Journal of Radiation Industry
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.133-140
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• 2014

The sterilization of health care products is widely used to choose conventional Ethylene Oxide gas sterilization in South Korea. But the method has brought serious issues because of the toxic residual gas and global warming of $CO_2$ evacuation after the sterilization process. This study is carried out to confirm the application possibility of gamma sterilization instead of Ethylene Oxide in sanitary aid products. Four kinds of products (gauze, menstrual pad, bandage, menstrual tampon) were treated with gamma irradiation of 15 kGy, then analyzed the achievement of the sterility assurance level (SAL) $10^{-6}$ through BI test. The cytotoxicity of accelerated samples of 6 months elapse evaluated by means of colony forming rate at various concentration of the extracts. pH and UV measurements at extract concentrations were tested according to the MFDS (Ministry of food & drug safety) guideline to verify a stability & safety of product sterilized. The results revealed that the extracts did not show any significant changes in cytoxicity assay as well as pH and UV values by gamma sterilization. All extract concentration was observed high cell viability, pH and UV values were calculated within the acceptable range prescribed by the guideline. It indicates that gamma sterilization could effectively substitute for conventional sterilization such as Ethylene Oxide sterilization in the sanitary aid products.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.551-563
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• 2016

According to the 4th and 5th assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global climate has been rapidly changing because of the human activities since Industrial Revolution. The perceived changes were appeared strongly in temperature and concentration of carbon dioxide ($CO_2$). Global average temperature has increased about $0.74^{\circ}C$ over last 100 years (IPCC, 2007) and concentration of $CO_2$ is unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years (IPCC, 2014). These phenomena influence precipitation, evapotranspiration and soil moisture which have an important role in hydrology, and that is the reason why there is a necessity to study climate change. In this study, Asia region was selected to simulate primary energy index from 1951 to 2100. To predict future climate change effect, Common Land Model (CLM) which is used for various fields across the world was employed. The forcing data was Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) data which is the newest greenhouse gas emission scenario published in IPCC 5th assessment. Validation of net radiation ($R_n$), sensible heat flux (H), latent heat flux (LE) for historical period was performed with 5 flux tower site-data in the region of AsiaFlux and the monthly trends of simulation results were almost equaled to observation data. The simulation results for 2006-2100 showed almost stable net radiation, slightly decreasing sensible heat flux and quite increasing latent heat flux. Especially the uptrend for RCP 8.5 has been about doubled compared to RCP 4.5 and since late 2060s, variations of net radiation and sensible heat flux would be significantly risen becoming an extreme climate condition. In a follow-up study, a simulation for energy index and hydrological index under the detailed condition will be conducted with various scenario established from this study.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.236-242
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• 2004

Cerebral ischemia resulting from transient or permanent occlusion of cerebral arteries leads to neuronal cell death and eventually causes neurological impairments. Bee venom has been used for the treatment inflammatory disease. In the present study, the effects of bee venom on apoptosis and cell proliferation in the hippocampal dentate gyrus following transient global ischemia in gerbils were investigated using immunohistochemistry for cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), caspase-3, and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU). It was shown that apoptotic cell death and cell proliferation in the hippocampal dentate gyrus were significantly increased following transient global ischemia in gerbils and that treatment of bee venom suppressed the ischemia-induced increase in apoptosis and cell proliferation in the dentate gyrus. The present results also showed that 1 mg/kg bee-venom treatment suppressed the ischemia-induced increasing apoptosis, cell proliferation, and COX-2 expression in the dentate gyrus. It is possible that the suppression of cell proliferation is due to the reduction of apoptotic cell death by treatment of bee venom. In the present study, bee venom was shown to prosses anti-apoptotic effect in ischemic brain disease, and this protective effect of bee venom against ischemia-induced neuronal cell death is closely associated with suppression on caspase-3 expression.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.11-22
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• 2022

It is suggested that magnetosonic waves (also known as equatorial noise) can scatter radiation belt electrons in the Earth's magnetosphere. Therefore, it is important to understand the global distribution of these waves between the proton cyclotron frequency and the lower hybrid resonance frequency. In this study, we developed an empirical model for estimating the global distribution of magnetosonic wave amplitudes and wave normal angles. The model is based on the entire mission period (approximately 2012-2019) of observations of Van Allen Probes A and B as a function of the distance from the Earth (denoted by L^*), magnetic local time (MLT), magnetic latitude (λ), and geomagnetic activity (denoted by the Kp index). In previous studies the wave distribution inside and outside the plasmasphere were separately investigated and modeled. Our model, on the other hand, identifies the wave distribution along with the ambient plasma environment-defined by the ratio of the plasma frequency (f_pe) to the electron cyclotron frequency (f_ce)-without separately determining the wave distribution according to the plasmapause location. The model results show that, as Kp increases, the dayside wave amplitude in the equatorial region intensifies. It thereby propagates the intense region towards the wider MLT and inward to L^* < 4. In contrast, the f_pe/f_ce ratio decreases with increasing Kp for all regions. Nevertheless, the decreasing aspect differs between regions above and below L^* = 4. This finding implies that the particle energy and pitch angle that magnetosonic waves can effectively scatter vary depending on the locations and geomagnetic activity. Our model agrees with the statistically observed wave distribution and ambient plasma environment with a coefficient of determination of > 0.9. The model is valid in all MLTs, 2 ≤ L^* < 6, |λ| < 20°, and Kp ≤ 6.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.221-232
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• 2016

Models to estimate solar radiation have been used because solar radiation is measured at a smaller number of weather stations than other variables including temperature and rainfall. For example, solar radiation has been estimated using the Angstrom-Prescott (AP) model that depends on two coefficients obtained empirically at a specific site ($AP_{Choi}$) or for a climate zone ($AP_{Frere}$). The objective of this study was to identify the coefficients of the AP model for reliable estimation of solar radiation under a wide range of spatial and temporal conditions. A global optimization was performed for a range of AP coefficients to identify the values of $AP_{max}$ that resulted in the greatest degree of agreement at each of 20 sites for a given month during 30 years. The degree of agreement was assessed using the value of Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC). When $AP_{Frere}$ was used to estimate solar radiation, the values of CCC were relatively high for conditions under which crop growth simulation would be performed, e.g., at rural sites during summer. The statistics for $AP_{Frere}$ were greater than those for $AP_{Choi}$ although $AP_{Frere}$ had the smaller statistics than $AP_{max}$ did. The variation of CCC values was small over a wide range of AP coefficients when those statistics were summarized by site. $AP_{Frere}$ was included in each range of AP coefficients that resulted in reasonable accuracy of solar radiation estimates by site, year, and month. These results suggested that $AP_{Frere}$ would be useful to provide estimates of solar radiation as an input to crop models in Korea. Further studies would be merited to examine feasibility of using $AP_{Frere}$ to obtain gridded estimates of solar radiation at a high spatial resolution under a complex terrain in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.85-96
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• 2019

Solar radiation is an important variable for estimation of energy balance and water cycle in natural and agricultural ecosystems. A deep neural network (DNN) model has been developed in order to estimate the daily global solar radiation. Temperature and precipitation, which would have wider availability from weather stations than other variables such as sunshine duration, were used as inputs to the DNN model. Five-fold cross-validation was applied to train and test the DNN models. Meteorological data at 15 weather stations were collected for a long term period, e.g., > 30 years in Korea. The DNN model obtained from the cross-validation had relatively small value of RMSE ($3.75MJ\;m^{-2}\;d^{-1}$) for estimates of the daily solar radiation at the weather station in Suwon. The DNN model explained about 68% of variation in observed solar radiation at the Suwon weather station. It was found that the measurements of solar radiation in 1985 and 1998 were considerably low for a small period of time compared with sunshine duration. This suggested that assessment of the quality for the observation data for solar radiation would be needed in further studies. When data for those years were excluded from the data analysis, the DNN model had slightly greater degree of agreement statistics. For example, the values of $R^2$ and RMSE were 0.72 and $3.55MJ\;m^{-2}\;d^{-1}$, respectively. Our results indicate that a DNN would be useful for the development a solar radiation estimation model using temperature and precipitation, which are usually available for downscaled scenario data for future climate conditions. Thus, such a DNN model would be useful for the impact assessment of climate change on crop production where solar radiation is used as a required input variable to a crop model.