• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.346-356
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• 2008

Asbestos is the name of a group of minerals with long and thin fibers that originate naturally in the environment. Asbestos mainly affects lungs and the membrane that surrounds the lungs. In general, PCM (phase contrast microscopy) and PLM (polarized light microscopy) have been used to analyze asbestos fibers. However, these methods have often problems to over-estimate number concentration when counting real asbestos fibers. Moreover, there are many difficulties when separating and identifying various asbestos and non-asbestos fibers. In order to determine quantitative information on fibrous particles, source profiles for asbestos and non-asbestos fibers must be initially developed on the basis of their chemical compositions and physical parameters. In our study, a SEM/EDX was used to develop source profiles from known asbestos samples as reference samples. We could make the source profile matrix consisting of 6 types of asbestos fibers and 2 types of non-asbestos fibers by analyzing 380 fibers. Based on these profiles, a rule building expert system was developed by using the visual basic application (VBA). Various fibers were successfully classified by 2 simple rules in the EXCEL environment based on several visual steps such as inserting data, viewing results, and saving results. For a case study to test the expert system, samples from a construction materials and from various indoor environments such as a residental area, a preschool classroom, and an underground store were collected and analyzed. As a result of the survey, a total of 76 individual test fiber particles was well classified into 5 different types of particle classes; 9.3% of chrysotile, 15.4% of amosite, 0.8 of crocidolite, 4.2% of tremolite, 5.8% glass fiber, 21.1% of other fibers, and 43.5% of unknown fibers in terms of number concentration. Even though unknown portion was high, it will be decreased markedly when expanding fiber source profiles.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.439-454
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to extensively identify $PM_{10}$ sources and to estimate their contributions to the study area, based on the analysis of the $PM_{10}$ mass concentration and the associated inorganic elements, ions, and total carbon. The contribution of $PM_{10}$ sources was estimated by applying a receptor method because identifying air emission sources were effective way to control the ambient air quality. $PM_{10}$ particles were collected from May to November 2007 in the Yongin-Suwon bordering area. $PM_{10}$ samples were collected on quartz filters by a $PM_{10}$ high-volume air sampler. The inorganic elements (Al, Mn, V, Cr, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb, Si, Ba, Ti and Ag) were analyzed by an ICP-AES after proper pre-treatments of each sample. The ionic components of these $PM_{10}$ samples ($Cl^_$, $NO_3^-$, $SO_4^{2-}$, $Na^+$, $NH_4^+$, $K^+$, $Ca^{2+}$, and $Mg^{2+}$) were analyzed by an IC. The carbon components (OC1, OC2, OC3, OC4, OP, EC1, EC2 and EC3) were also analyzed by DRI/OGC analyzer. Source apportionment of $PM_{10}$ was performed using a positive matrix factorization (PMF) model. After performing PMF modeling, a total of 8 sources were identified and their contribution were estimated. Contributions from each emission source were as follows: 13.8% from oil combustion and industrial related source, 25.4% from soil source, 22.1% from secondary sulfate, 12.3% from secondary nitrate, 17.7% from auto emission including diesel (12.1%) and gasoline (5.6%), 3.1% from waste incineration and 5.6% from Na-rich source. This study provides information on the major sources affecting air quality in the receptor site, and therefore it will help us maintain and manage the ambient air quality in the Yongin-Suwon bordering area by establishing reliable control strategies for the related sources.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.74-85
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• 2013

Since the underground transportation system is a closed environment, indoor air quality problems may seriously affect many passengers' health. The purpose of this study was to understand $PM_{10}$ characteristics in the underground air environment and further to quantitatively estimate $PM_{10}$ source contributions in a Seoul Metropolitan subway station. The $PM_{10}$ was intensively collected on various filters with $PM_{10}$ aerosol samplers to obtain sufficient samples for its chemical analysis. Sampling was carried out in the M station on the Line-4 from April 21 to 28, July 13 to 21, and October 11 to 19 in the year of 2010 and January 11 to 17 in the year of 2011. The aerosol filter samples were then analyzed for metals, water soluble ions, and carbon components. The 29 chemical species (OC1, OC2, OC3, OC4, CC, PC, EC, Ag, Al, Ba, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, Si, Ti, V, Zn, $Cl^-$, $NO_3{^-}$, $SO_4{^{2-}}$, $Na^+$, $NH_4{^+}$, $K^+$, $Mg^{2+}$, $Ca^{2+}$) were analyzed by using ICP-AES, IC, and TOR after proper pretreatments of each sample filter. Based on the chemical information, positive matrix factorization (PMF) model was applied to identify the $PM_{10}$ sources and then six sources such as biomass burning, outdoor, vehicle, soil and road dust, secondary aerosol, ferrous, and brakewear related source were classified. The contributions rate of their sources in tunnel are 4.0%, 5.8%, 1.6%, 17.9%, 13.8% and 56.9% in order.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.789-799
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• 2008

For the communication between human and computer in an interactive computing environment, the gesture recognition has been studied vigorously. The algorithms which use the 2D features for the feature extraction and the feature comparison are faster, but there are some environmental limitations for the accurate recognition. The algorithms which use the 2.5D features provide higher accuracy than 2D features, but these are influenced by rotation of objects. And the algorithms which use the 3D features are slow for the recognition, because these algorithms need the 3d object reconstruction as the preprocessing for the feature extraction. In this paper, we propose a method to extract the 3D features combined with the 3D object reconstruction in real-time. This method generates three kinds of 3D projection maps using the modified GPU-based visual hull generation algorithm. This process only executes data generation parts only for the gesture recognition and calculates the Hu-moment which is corresponding to each projection map. In the section of experimental results, we compare the computational time of the proposed method with the previous methods. And the result shows that the proposed method can apply to real time gesture recognition environment.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.174-183
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• 2015

The major purpose of this study is to construct a retrospective exposure assessment for benzene through a review of literature on Korea. Airborne benzene measurements reported in 34 articles were reviewed. A total of 15,729 individual measurements were compiled. Weighted arithmetic means [AM(w)] and their variance calculated across studies were summarized according to 5-year period intervals (prior to the 1970s through the 2010s) and industry type. Industries were classified according to Korea Standard Industrial Classification (KSIC) using information provided in the literature. We estimated quantitative retrospective exposure to benzene for each cell in the matrix through a combination of time and KSIC. Analysis of the AM(w) indicated reductions in exposure levels over time, regardless of industry, with mean levels prior to the 1980-1984 period of 50.4 ppm (n = 2,289), which dropped to 2.8 ppm (n = 305) in the 1990-1994 period, and to 0.1 ppm (n = 294) in the 1995-1999 period. There has been no improvement since the 2000s, when the AM(w) of 4.3 ppm (n = 6,211) for the 2005-2009 period and 4.5 ppm (n = 3,358) for the 2010-2013 period were estimated. A comparison by industry found no consistent patterns in the measurement results. Our estimated benzene measurements can be used to determine not only the possibility of retrospective exposure to benzene, but also to estimate the level of quantitative or semiquantitative retrospective exposure to benzene.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.46 no.9
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• pp.16-23
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• 2009

In this paper, we propose a new distributed Alamouti space-time block coding scheme using cooperative relay system composed of one source node, three relay nodes and one destination node. The source node is assumed to be equipped with two antennas which respectively use a 2-beam array to communicate with two nodes selected from the three relay nodes. During the first time slot, the two signals which respectively were transmitted by one antenna at the source, are selected by one relay node, added, amplified, and forwarded to the destination. During the second time slot, the other two relay nodes implement the conjugate and minusconjugate operations to the two received signals, respectively, each in turn is amplified and forwarded to the destination node. This transmission scheme represents a new distributed Alamouti space-time block code that can be constructed at the relay-destination channel. Through an equivalent matrix expression of symbols, we analyze the performance of this proposed space-time block code in terms of the chernoff upper bound pairwise error probability (PEP). In addition, we evaluate the effect of the coefficient $\alpha$ ($0{\leq}{\alpha}{\leq}1$) determined by power allocation between the two antennas at the source on the received signal performance. Through computer simulation, we show that the received signals at the three relays have same variance only when the value of $\alpha$ is equal to $\frac{2}{3}$, as a consequence, a better performance is obtained at the destination. These analysis results show that the proposed scheme outperforms conventional proposed schemes in terms of diversity gain, PEP and the complexity of relay nodes.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.44 no.8
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• pp.8-15
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• 2007

In this paper, we fabricated the field emitter display using oxidized porous polysilicon(OPPS). Their field emission characteristics and the brightness were investigated for each pixel. The OPPS emitter was operated to each pixel using passive matrix for application of large panel display. We set up the proper thickness and width of upper electrode. The fine structure of OPPS was analyzed and the field emission characteristics of each pixel were investigated. As a result of field emission characteristics of different upper electrode thickness and width, we confirmed that the most efficient thickness was 2nm/7nm and increased the emission efficiency over the width of 2.5 mm. Even if field emission characteristics of each pixel was a little different but we confirmed the same leakage current and emission current, emission efficiency at each pixel. The leakage current and emission current was decreased according to the time increases but all of each pixel were uniformly decreased. We confirmed that the brightness of each pixel was not different and the brightness of OPPS field emitter was 700 cd/m2 at the Vps=20 V. Accordingly, the patterned OPPS field emitter can be applied to high quality field emission display devices.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2007

Seoul's transportation system was changed drastically starting the first of June in two thousand. This policy includes integrated distance-based fare system and public transportation card system called smart card. Especially, as public transportation card data contains individual travel, transfer and using modes information it is possible to catch the characteristics of path-based individuals and mass transit. Thus, public transportation card data can contribute to evaluate the mass transit service in integrated public transportation networks. In addition, public transportation card data are able to help to convert previous researches and analyses with link-based trip assignment models to path-based mass transit service analysis. In this study, an algorithm being suitable for path-based trip assignment models is suggested and proposed algorithm can also contribute to make full use of public transportation card data. For this, column generation algorithm hewn to draw the stable solution is adopted. This paper uses the methodology that is to take local approximate equilibrium from partial network and expand local approximate equilibrium to global equilibrium.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.59-69
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• 2018

In this paper, we present a robust beamforming design to tackle the weighted sum-rate maximization (WSRM) problem in a multicell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) - non-orthogonal multipleaccess (NOMA) downlink system for 5G wireless communications. This work consider the imperfectchannel state information (CSI) at the base station (BS) by adding uncertainties to channel estimation matrices as the worst-case model i.e., singular value uncertainty model (SVUM). With this observation, the WSRM problem is formulated subject to the transmit power constraints at the BS. The objective problem is known as on-deterministic polynomial (NP) problem which is difficult to solve. We propose an robust beam forming design which establishes on majorization minimization (MM) technique to find the optimal transmit beam forming matrix, as well as efficiently solve the objective problem. In addition, we also propose a joint user clustering and power allocation (JUCPA) algorithm in which the best user pair is selected as a cluster to attain a higher sum-rate. Extensive numerical results are provided to show that the proposed robust beamforming design together with the proposed JUCPA algorithm significantly increases the performance in term of sum-rate as compared with the existing NOMA schemes and the conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) scheme.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.408-418
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• 2020

The sinus node (SN) is located at the apex of the cardiac conduction system, and SN dysfunction (SND)-characterized by electrical remodeling-is generally attributed to idiopathic fibrosis or ischemic injuries in the SN. SND is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disorders, including syncope, heart failure, and atrial arrhythmias, particularly atrial fibrillation. One of the histological SND hallmarks is degenerative atrial remodeling that is associated with conduction abnormalities and increased right atrial refractoriness. Although SND is frequently accompanied by increased fibrosis in the right atrium (RA), its molecular basis still remains elusive. Therefore, we investigated whether SND can induce significant molecular changes that account for the structural remodeling of RA. Towards this, we employed a rabbit model of experimental SND, and then compared the genome-wide RNA expression profiles in RA between SND-induced rabbits and sham-operated controls to identify the differentially expressed transcripts. The accompanying gene enrichment analysis revealed extensive pro-fibrotic changes within 7 days after the SN ablation, including activation of transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling and alterations in the levels of extracellular matrix components and their regulators. Importantly, our findings suggest that periostin, a matricellular factor that regulates the development of cardiac tissue, might play a key role in mediating TGF-β-signaling-induced aberrant atrial remodeling. In conclusion, the present study provides valuable information regarding the molecular signatures underlying SND-induced atrial remodeling, and indicates that periostin can be potentially used in the diagnosis of fibroproliferative cardiac dysfunctions.