• The Korean journal of internal medicine
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1093-1102
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• 2018

Background/Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate parameters that predict radiation-induced liver disease (RILD) following stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and to identify the clinical significance of RILD. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 117 HCC patients who were treated by SBRT from March 2011 to February 2015. RILD was defined as elevated liver transaminases more than five times the upper normal limit or a worsening of Child-Pugh (CP) score by 2 within 3 months after SBRT. All patients were assessed at 1 month and every 3 months after SBRT. Results: Median follow-up was 22.5 months (range, 3 to 56) after SBRT. RILD was developed in 29 of the 117 patients (24.7%). On univariate analysis, significant predictive factors of RILD were pretreatment CP score (p < 0.001) and normal liver volume (p = 0.002). Multivariate analysis showed that CP score was a significant predictor of RILD (p < 0.001). The incidence of RILD increased above a CP score of 6 remarkably. The rate of recovery from RILD decreased significantly above a CP score of 8. Survival analysis showed that CP score was an independent prognostic factor of overall survival (p = 0.001). Conclusions: CP score is a significant factor to predict RILD in patients with chronic liver disease. RILD can be tolerated by patients with a CP score ${\leq}7$. However, careful monitoring of liver function is needed for patients with a CP score 7 after SBRT.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.563-573
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• 2022

This work aimed to develop a new equation for turbidity (Turb) simulation and prediction using statistical methods based on principal component analysis (PCA) and multiple linear regression (MLR). For this purpose, water samples were collected monthly over a five year period from Cheurfa dam, an important reservoir in Northwestern Algeria, and analyzed for 12 parameters, including temperature (T°), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity (Turb), dissolved oxygen (DO), ammonium (NH₄⁺), nitrate (NO₃^-), nitrite (NO₂^-), phosphate (PO₄^3-), total suspended solids (TSS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD₅) and chemical oxygen demand (COD). The results revealed a strong mineralization of the water and low dissolved oxygen (DO) content during the summer period. High levels of TSS and Turb were recorded during rainy periods. In addition, water was charged with phosphate (PO₄^3-) in the whole period of study. The PCA results revealed ten factors, three of which were significant (eigenvalues >1) and explained 75.5% of the total variance. The F1 and F2 factors explained 36.5% and 26.7% of the total variance, respectively and indicated anthropogenic pollution of domestic agricultural and industrial origin. The MLR turbidity simulation model exhibited a high coefficient of determination (R² = 92.20%), indicating that 92.20% of the data variability can be explained by the model. TSS, DO, EC, NO₃^-, NO₂^-, and COD were the most significant contributing parameters (p values << 0.05) in turbidity prediction. The present study can help with decision-making on the management and monitoring of the water quality of the dam, which is the primary source of drinking water in this region.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.121-133
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• 2023

The demand for cement and limestone crushed materials has increased many folds due to the tremendous increase in construction activities in Pakistan during the past few decades. The number of cement production industries has increased correspondingly, and so the rock-blasting operations at the limestone quarry sites. However, the safety procedures warranted at these sites for the blast-induced ground vibrations (BIGV) have not been adequately developed and/or implemented. Proper prediction and monitoring of BIGV are necessary to ensure the safety of structures in the vicinity of these quarry sites. In this paper, an attempt has been made to predict BIGV using artificial neural network (ANN) at three selected limestone quarries of Pakistan. The ANN has been developed in Python using Keras with sequential model and dense layers. The hyper parameters and neurons in each of the activation layers has been optimized using randomized and grid search method. The input parameters for the model include distance, a maximum charge per delay (MCPD), depth of hole, burden, spacing, and number of blast holes, whereas, peak particle velocity (PPV) is taken as the only output parameter. A total of 110 blast vibrations datasets were recorded from three different limestone quarries. The dataset has been divided into 85% for neural network training, and 15% for testing of the network. A five-layer ANN is trained with Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function, Adam optimization algorithm with a learning rate of 0.001, and batch size of 32 with the topology of 6-32-32-256-1. The blast datasets were utilized to compare the performance of ANN, multivariate regression analysis (MVRA), and empirical predictors. The performance was evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R²), mean absolute error (MAE), mean squared error (MSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and root mean squared error (RMSE)for predicted and measured PPV. To determine the relative influence of each parameter on the PPV, sensitivity analyses were performed for all input parameters. The analyses reveal that ANN performs superior than MVRA and other empirical predictors, andthat83% PPV is affected by distance and MCPD while hole depth, number of blast holes, burden and spacing contribute for the remaining 17%. This research provides valuable insights into improving safety measures and ensuring the structural integrity of buildings near limestone quarry sites.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.418-430
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• 2017

The quality of surface water is a very important issue to use various demands like as drinking water, industrial, agricultural and recreational usages. There has been an increasing demand for monitoring water quality of many rivers by regular measurements of various water quality variables. However precise and effective monitoring is not enough, if the acquired dataset is not analyzed thoroughly. Therefore, the aim of this study was to estimate differences of seasonal and regional water quality using multivariate data analysis for each investing tributaries in Han River. Statistical analysis was applied to the data concerning 11 mainly parameters (flow, water temperature, pH, EC, DO, BOD, COD, SS, TN, TP and TOC) for the time period 2012~2016 from 12 sampling sites. The seasonal water quality variations showed that each of BOD, TN, TP and TOC average concentration in spring and winter was higher than that of summer and fall, respectively. In summer each flow rate and average concentration of SS was higher than any other seasons, respectively. The correlation analysis were explained that EC had a strong relationship with BOD (r=0.857), COD (r=0.854), TN (r=0.899) and TOC (r=0.910). According to principal component analysis, five principal components (Eigenvalue > 1) are controlled 98.0% of variations in water quality. The first component included TP, DO, pH. The second component included EC, TN. The third component included SS. The fourth component included flow. The last component included Temp. Cluster analysis classified that spring is similar to fall and winter with water quality parameters. AnyA, WangsA, JungrA and TancA were identified as affected by organic pollution. Cluster analysis derived seasonal differences with investigating sites and better explained the principal component analysis results.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.105-117
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• 2018

This study conducted health assessment and multivariate vegetation analysis using the riparian vegetation index in 30 sites of the Geumgang mainstream and Mihocheon to obtain practical data on the river management of the Geumgang. The result showed that the number of plant communities was 54. The flora was 75 families, 185 genera, 243 species, 2 subspecies, 21 varieties, 2 varieties, and 268 taxa. The riparian vegetation index was 38.3 (3.3; G-D1 ~ 66.7; G-U2, G-U4, and G-M3), and the health of the rivers in this area was evaluated as normal (grade C). The health of rivers was the highest in the upper stream of Geumgang mainstream and lowest in the downstream of Geumgang mainstream. The relationship between riparian vegetation index and chlorophyll-a content was low. The riparian vegetation was divided into five groups of Digitaria ciliaris colony group, Salix gracilistyla colony group, Erigeron annuus colony group, the group dominated by Humulus japonicus, Salix koreensis, Miscanthus sacchariflorus, and Phragmites japonica colonies, and the group dominated by Conyza canadensis and Echinochloa crusgalli var. echinata colonies. They had the similar health conditions. The CCA analysis showed that the environmental factors affecting the distribution of vegetation were physical factors such as vegetation area, artificial structure area, waterway area, branch width, channel width, and bank height and the biological factors such as the number of species. As such, it is necessary to maintain the health condition through continuous monitoring where the health condition is high and to apply active measures such as ecological restoration where the health condition is low.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.1296-1307
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• 1997

Background : Erdosteine is a thiol derivative developed for the treatement of chronic obstructive bronchitis, including acute infective exacerbation of chronic bronchitis. Erdosteine has mucomodulating and antioxidant properties and especially exhibits excellent gastrointestinal tolerability. Methods : The study was conducted as a prospective evaluation, with 2 comparative groups orally treated with erdosteine 300mg (bid.) or ambroxol 30mg (b.i.d.) for 7 days and the design of trial was double-blind. The treatments have been assigned randomly to patients (n=80) with acute or chronic bronchitis. The primary end-point used to determine efficacy in this study was subjective symptoms including expectorating frequence, expectoration volume, expectorating difficulty, expectoration viscosity, cough intensity and dyspnea. The secondary end-points of efficacy was the result of arterial blood gas analysis and pulmonary function test. Safety was evaluated with adverse drug reactions and laboratory tests monitoring. 61 patients was included in the efficacy analysis, due to the fact that 19 patients drop-out for different reasons. The obtained values have been analyzed with paired Hest., ANOVA test., multivariate $t^2$-test, repeated measures analysis of covariance, two sample t-test, loglinear-logit model analysis, Fisher's exact test. Results : 1) There was no significant difference on demographic data and vital signs between erdosteine and ambroxol treated groups. 2) The comparison between erdosteine and ambroxol treated groups showed no significant difference in improvement of each symptom in spite of the more favorable efficacy obtained with erdosteine. No difference on the contrary was observed for arterial blood gas analysis and pulmonary function test. 3) As safety is concerned, no clinical significant changes in laboratory test and symptom were induced in erdosteine and ambroxol treated group and two patients in ambroxol treated group drop-out for adverse reactions in symptom. 4) In the evaluation of final clinical efficacy, erdosteine improved more effectively patient's overall symptoms {very good effect (11/31), good effect (12/31), moderate effect (6/31), no effect (2/31), aggravation (0/31)} than ambroxol {very good effect (6/30), good effect (14/30), moderate effect (5/30), no effect (4/30), aggravation (2/30)}. And the probability of symptomatic improvement by erdosteine compared to ambroxol was 2.5 times. (p<0.05). Conclusion : This study showed that erdosteine was clinically effective and safe drug for treatment of acute and chronic bronchitis.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.49 no.11
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• pp.1211-1215
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• 2006

Purpose : In this study, we analyzed the short term changes of thyroid function, incidence and risk factors of thyroid dysfunction soon after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in children. Methods : We enrolled 80 pediatric patients following allogeneic HSCT, at the Catholic HSCT center between January, 2004 and February, 2006. Serum TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone), total serum thyroxine and total serum triiodothyronine levels were systematically measured in 80 patients before the HSCT, and at 1 month, 6 months and 12 months after HSCT. Results : Thyroid function statistically decreased at 1 month after HSCT(P<0.001). Thyroid dysfunction at 1 month was observed in 43 (54 percent) of 80 patients, 31 (39 percent) of whom presented with euthyroid sick syndrome (ETS). Thyroid dysfunction was normalized within 1 year after HSCT. In univariate analysis, malignant disease and the presence of acute graft-versus-host disease (grade ${\geq}II$) were risk factors for ETS (P=0.04, 0.01 respectively). In multivariate analysis, we could not detect an independent risk factor for ETS (P=0.19, 0.06 respectively). Conclusion : The present study suggests that the incidence of thyroid dysfunction is high after allogeneic HSCT. Therefore, regular monitoring of thyroid hormone levels after HSCT is required.