• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.151-158
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• 2022

Background: Chemical emissions in the environment have rapidly increased with the accelerated industrialization taking place in recent decades. Residents of industrial complexes are concerned about the health risks posed by chemical exposure. Objectives: This study was performed to suggest modeling methods that take into account multimedia and multi-pathways in human exposure and risk assessment. Methods: The concentration of benzene emitted at industrial complexes in Daesan, South Korea and the exposure of local residents was estimated using the Caltox model. The amount of human exposure based on inhalation rate was stochastically predicted for various activity stages such as resting, normal walking, and fast walking. Results: The coefficient of determination (R²) for the CalTOX model efficiency was 0.9676 and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) was 0.0035, indicating good agreement between predictions and measurements. However, the efficiency index (EI) appeared to be a negative value at -1094.4997. This can be explained as the atmospheric concentration being calculated only from the emissions from industrial facilities in the study area. In the human exposure assessment, the higher the inhalation rate percentile value, the higher the inhalation rate and lifetime average daily dose (LADD) at each activity step. Conclusions: Prediction using the Caltox model might be appropriate for comparing with actual measurements. The LADD of females was higher ratio with an increase in inhalation rate than those of males. This finding would imply that females may be more susceptible to benzene as their inhalation rate increases.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.139-145
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• 2009

This study proposes a model of collection process for real-time forensic data, in which the manager was to respond to infringement incidents in terms of system operation and inspection and to collect, analyze and restore forensic data immediately after an incident took place. The suggested model was modeled in seven processes according to functional elements. Unlike the old and managerial forensic processes, the model allowed the manager to react to infringement incidents in the aspects of system operation and inspection and to follow the processes of collecting, analyzing, and restoring forensic data in case of an incident. There also was a feedback process designed towards the step of gathering forensic data through the stages of systematizing reaction strategies in order that he or she be able to bring about comprehensive and structural responses to an incident like the former processes in which it is difficult to bring about instant responses.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.120-127
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• 2023

Background: In general, measurement qualities of cross-culturally adapted quality of life (QOL) measures are altered in many aspects, although versions of them are well-validated measures. The latent trait and measurement qualities of the QOL measures for cancer-related samples should be considered when developing cross-culturally adapted measures. Objects: To investigate the latent trait of the translated into Korean World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) administered to different cancer survivors who had palliative rehabilitation care service (PRCS). Methods: A cross-sectional study with 139 cancer survivors who had an experience of cancer survivorship with PRCS were conducted with a two-step analytic procedure including exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to confirm the latent trait and Rasch rating scale modeling to investigate the measurement qualities of the cross-culturally adapted WHOQOL-BREF measure. Results: While the original WHOQOL-BREF measure constitutes a 4-latent trait, the EFA reveals that 24 items constitute six substantial factors. The item loadings are predominantly spread over factors 1 through 4 in a mixed manner of the latent traits, while the loadings of 'physical health' and 'environmental health' latent traits show similarity to what the original measure intended to assess. The latent trait of the cross-culturally adapted WHOQOL-BREF measure administered to different cancer survivors is likely to reveal more dimensions than the original WHOQOL-BREF measure. Person reliability (i.e., analogous to Cronbach's alpha) and separation are measured with 0.92 and 3.48, respectively. All items except the one item (medical treatment item) fit the Rasch rating model. Conclusion: Findings suggest that the latent trait and the measurement qualities of the cross-culturally adapted WHOQOL-BREF measure should be taken into consideration when applying versions of it to various populations.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.281-287
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• 2023

Establishing a ship's passage plan is an essential step before it starts to sail. The research related to the automatic generation of ship passage plans is attracting attention because of the development of maritime autonomous surface ships. In coastal water navigation, the land, islands, and navigation rules need to be considered. From the path planning algorithm's perspective, a ship's passage planning is a global path-planning problem. Because conventional global path-planning methods such as Dijkstra and A^* are time-consuming owing to the processes such as environmental modeling, it is difficult to modify a ship's passage plan during a voyage. Therefore, the D^* algorithm was used to address these problems. The starting point was near Busan New Port, and the destination was Ulsan Port. The navigable area was designated based on a combination of the ship trajectory data and grid in the target area. The initial path plan generated using the D^* algorithm was analyzed with 33 waypoints and a total distance of 113.946 km. The final path plan was simplified using the Douglas-Peucker algorithm. It was analyzed with a total distance of 110.156 km and 10 waypoints. This is approximately 3.05% less than the total distance of the initial passage plan of the ship. This study demonstrated the feasibility of automatically generating a path plan in coastal navigation for maritime autonomous surface ships using the D^* algorithm. Using the shortest distance-based path planning algorithm, the ship's fuel consumption and sailing time can be minimized.

• Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.21-36
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• 2023

Activity-based modeling systems have increasingly been developed to address the limitations of widely used traditional four-step transportation demand forecasting models. Accordingly, this paper introduces the Activity-BAsed Traveler Analyzer (ABATA) system. This system consists of multiple components, including an hourly total population estimator, activity profile constructor, hourly activity population estimator, spatial activity population estimator, and origin/destination estimator. To demonstrate the proposed system, the emission impact of land use changes in the 5-1 block Sejong smart city is evaluated as a case study. The results indicate that the land use with the scenario of work facility dispersed plan produced more emissions than the scenario of work facility centralized plan due to the longer travel distance. The proposed ABATA system is expected to provide a valuable tool for simulating the impacts of future changes in population, activity schedules, and land use on activity populations and travel demands.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.229-236
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• 2023

Background: In workers with moderate to severe work-related traumatic brain injury (wrTBI), this study aimed to investigate the effect of the timing of rehabilitation therapy initiation on the length of hospital stay and the factors that can influence this timing. Methods: We used data obtained from the Republic of Korea's nationwide Workers' Compensation Insurance. In the Republic of Korea, between the years 2010 and 2019, a total of 26,324 workers filed a claim for compensation for moderate to severe wrTBI. Multiple regression modeling was performed to compare the length of hospital stay according to the timing of rehabilitation therapy initiation following wrTBI. According to the timing of the initiation of rehabilitation therapy following TBI, the proportions of healthcare institutions that provided medical care during each admission step were compared. Results: The length of hospital stay for workers who started rehabilitation therapy within 90 days was significantly shorter than that for workers who started rehabilitationment were first admitted to tertiary hospitals. Approximately 39% of patients who received delayed rehabilitation treatment were first admitted to general hospitals, and 28.5% were first admitted to primary hospitals. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate the importance of early rehabilitation initiation and that the type of healthcare institution that the patient is first admitted to after wrTBI may influence the timing of rehabilitation initiation. The results of this study also emphasize the need to establish a Worker's Compensation Insuranceespecialized rehabilitation healthcare delivery system.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.598-603
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• 2023

Electrochemical ammonia production using catalysts offers a promising alternative to the conventional Haber-Bosch process, allowing for ambient temperature and pressure conditions, environmentally friendly operations, and high-purity ammonia production. In this study, we focus on the nitrogen reduction reactions occurring on the surfaces of ruthenium catalysts, employing first-principles calculations. By modeling reaction pathways for nitrogen reduction on the (0001) and (1000) surfaces of ruthenium, we optimized the reaction structures and predicted favorable pathways for each step. We found that the adsorption configuration of N₂ on each surface significantly influenced subsequent reaction activities. On the (0001) surface of ruthenium, the end-on configuration, where nitrogen molecules adsorb perpendicularly to the surface, exhibited the most favorable N₂ adsorption energy. Similarly, on the (1000) surface, the end-on configuration showed the most stable adsorption energy values. Subsequently, through optimized hydrogen adsorption in both distal and alternating configurations, we theoretically elucidated the complete reaction pathways required for the final desorption of NH₃.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.56-61
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• 2010

This paper describes optimization methods of acoustic models in HMM-based continuous speech recognition. Most of the conventional speech recognition systems use the same number of Gaussian mixture components for each HMM state. However, since the number of data samples available for each state is different from each other, it is possible to reduce the overall number of model parameters and the computational cost at the decoding step by optimizing the number of Gaussian mixture components. In this study, we introduced the Gaussian mixture weight term at the merging stage of Gaussian components in the minimum description length (MDL) based acoustic modeling optimization. Experimental results showed that the proposed method can obtain better ASR accuracy than the previous optimization method which does not consider the Gaussian mixture weight term.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.973-979
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• 2024

In the framework of the Generation IV research and development project, in which the French Commission of Alternative and Atomic Energies (CEA) is involved, a main objective for the design of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) is to meet the safety goals for severe accidents. Among the severe ones, the Unprotected Transient OverPower (UTOP) accidents can lead very quickly to a global melting of the core. UTOP accidents can be considered either as slow during a Control Rod Withdrawal (CRW) or as fast. The paper focuses on fast UTOP accidents, which occur in a few milliseconds, and three different scenarios are considered: rupture of the core support plate, uncontrolled passage of a gas bubble inside the core and core mechanical distortion such as a core flowering/compaction during an earthquake. Several levels and rates of reactivity insertions are also considered and the thermal-mechanical behavior of an ASTRID fuel pin from the ASTRID CFV core is simulated with the GERMINAL code. Two types of fuel pins are simulated, inner and outer core pins, and three different burn-up are considered. Moreover, the feedback from the CABRI programs on these type of transients is used in order to evaluate the failure mechanism in terms of kinetics of energy injection and fuel melting. The CABRI experiments complete the analysis made with GERMINAL calculations and have shown that three dominant mechanisms can be considered as responsible for pin failure or onset of pin degradation during ULOF/UTOP accident: molten cavity pressure loading, fuel-cladding mechanical interaction (FCMI) and fuel break-up. The study is one of the first step in fast UTOP accidents modelling with GERMINAL and it has shown that the code can already succeed in modelling these type of scenarios up to the sodium boiling point. The modeling of the radial propagation of the melting front, validated by comparison with CABRI tests, is already very efficient.

• Journal of Radiation Industry
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.173-181
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• 2023

3D printing is a technology that can transform and process computerized data obtained through modeling or 3D scanning via CAD. In the medical field, studies on customized 3D printing technology for clinical use or patients and diseases continue. The importance of research on filaments and molding methods is increasing, but research on manufacturing methods and available raw materials is not being actively conducted. In this study, we compare the characteristics of each material according to the manufacturing method of the phantom manufactured with 3D printing technology and evaluate its usefulness. We manufactured phantoms of the same size using poly methyl meta acrylate (PMMA), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) based on the international standard phantom of aluminum step wedge. We used SITEC's radiation generator (DigiRAD-FPC R-1000-150) and compared the shielding rate and line attenuation coefficient through the average after shooting 10 times. As a result, in the case of the measured dose transmitted through each phantom, it was confirmed that the appearance of the dose measured for phantoms decreased linearly as the thickness increased under each condition. The sensitivity also decreased as the steps increased for each phantom and confirmed that it was different depending on the thickness and material. Through this study, we confirmed that 3D printing technology can be usefully used for phantom production in the medical field. If further development of printing technology and studies on various materials are conducted, it is believed that they will contribute to the development of the medical research environment.