• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.3875-3879
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• 2015

Background: The neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a simple index of systemic inflammatory response, and has been shown to be a prognostic indicator in some types of cancer. Inflammation has been implicated in the initiation and progression of thyroid cancer. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship of NLR with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) and different benign thyroid pathologies like multinodular goiter (MNG) and lymphocytic thyroiditis (LT). Materials and Methods: We retrospectively evaluated the neutrophil, lymphocyte counts and NLR calculated from these parameters of 232 patients with histologically confirmed as multinodular goiter (group MNG) (n=70), lymphocytic thyroiditis (group LT) (n=97), LT with PTC (group LT-PTC) (n=25) and PTC (group PTC) (n=40). The optimal cut-off value for NLR was determined. Results: NLR level was significantly higher in groups LT-PTC and PTC as compared to groups MNG and LT (p<0.05). NLR of LT subgroups according to TSH levels were not different (p>0.05). When we grouped the patients as benign and malignant according to PTC presence, the optimum NLR cut-off point obtained from ROC analysis was 1.91 (sensitivity 89.0% and specificity 54.5%). Conclusions: Since NLR was significantly elevated in group LT-PTC and group PTC, NLR value may give an opinion as a potential marker in differentiation of benign and malign thyroid disorders. For this purpose a cut-off value of 1.91 for NLR may be accepted.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.6327-6330
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• 2013

Haematuria is a common presentation of bladder cancer and requires a full urologic evaluation. This study aimed to develop a scoring system capable of stratifying patients with haematuria into high or low risk groups for having bladder cancer to help clinicians decide which patients need more urgent assessment. This cross-sectional study included all adult patients referred for haematuria and subsequently undergoing full urological evaluation in the years 2001 to 2011. Risk factors with strong association with bladder cancer in the study population were used to design the scoring system. Accuracy was determined by the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. A total of 325 patients with haematuria were included, out of which 70 (21.5%) were diagnosed to have bladder cancer. Significant risk factors associated with bladder cancer were male gender, a history of cigarette smoking and the presence of gross haematuria. A scoring system using 4 clinical parameters as variables was created. The scores ranged between 6 to 14, and a score of 10 and above indicated high risk for having bladder cancer. It was found to have good accuracy with an area under the ROC curve of 80.4%, while the sensitivity and specificity were 90.0% and 55.7%, respectively. The scoring system designed in this study has the potential to help clinicians stratify patients who present with haematuria into high or low r isk for having bladder cancer. This will enable high-risk patients to undergo urologic assessment earlier.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.1096-1101
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• 2009

The plate heat exchanger(PHE) in heat pump has two flow streams of the refrigerant and water. The flow direction of the refrigerant, unlike that of water, can be changed by a 4-way valve depending on operating condition. Therefore the flow arrangement is a parallel flow for heating and a counter flow for cooling, respectively. In this study, the effects of the flow direction of the water on the heat transfer rate are investigated experimentally. The experiments are carried out for brazed plate heat exchangers under a parallel and counter flow conditions in evaporation and condensation. The experimental parameters in this study include the mass flux of the refrigerant 410A from 3 to $14\;kg/m^2s$ and the flow patterns for the pressure of PHE fixed at 0.97 and 2.46 MPa. The results show that both the heat transfer rate and frictional pressure drop across the PHE increase with the mass flux. The heat transfer rate of the refrigerant 410A for evaporation show great sensitivity to flow direction of the water. The heat transfer rate for evaporation with a counter flow are 5-30% higher than that with a parallel flow.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.29-36
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• 1995

A constant solid state flow velocity/mass sensor has been fabricated and its characteristics were measured according to flow velocity and fluid temperature. Parameters of the sensor circuit were obtained by simulation using finite difference method. Sensitivity was 10mW/(cm/sec) in the range of flow velocity 0-45cm/sec and response time was within two seconds. For the experiment of fluid temperature variation, the sensor output was compensated at the rate of temperature variation $0.1^{\circ}C/min$, however, with the rate of $0.2^{\circ}C/min$ it took two minutes to be compensated. Since it is not quite often to have such a rate of temperature variation of $0.2^{\circ}C/min$ or more, the developed sensor output can be used for most applications to detect small amount of flow-rate.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.991-995
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• 2006

The layered double hydroxide with the insertion of chloride ions (LDH-Cl), which was synthesized by the co-precipitation method, was applied to investigate the fundamental aspects of the absorptive agent for phosphate removal from wastewater. The adsorption capacity was best described by the Langmuir-FreundIich isotherm, and the estimated isotherm parameters indicate that the LDH-CI capacity for the phosphate removal is much higher than that observed using a natural adsorbent material such iron oxide tailing. The kinetic experiment also showed that the LDH-Cl adsorption reaction rapidly at the adsorptive rate of 0.55 mg-P/g-LDH/min, implying that this adsorbent can be of use in the full-scale applications. The pH had a minimal effect on the LDH adsorption capacity in the range of 5 to 11, although the capacity dropped at the low pHs because of the change in LDH surface properties. Furthermore, other anions such as $Cl^-$ and $NO_3{^-}$ commonly found in the wastewater streams insignificantly affected the phosphate removal efficiencies, while $HCO_3{^-}$ ions had a negative effect on the LDH adsorption capacity due to its high selectivity. The phosphate removal experiment using the actual secondary effluent from a wastewater treatment plant showed the similar decrease in adsorption capacity, indicating that the bicarbonate ions in the wastewater were competing with phosphate for the adsorptive site in the surface of the LDH-Cl. Overall, the synthetic adsorbent material, LDH-Cl, can be a feasible alternative over other conventional chemical agents, since the LDH-Cl exhibits the high phosphate removal capacity with the low sensitivity to other environmental conditions.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.503-515
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• 1989

Critical parameters affecting sensitivity and specificity of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) for detection of antibodies to avian infections bronchitis virus(IBV) were standardized. By adopting the optimized conditions an equation calculating ELISA antibody titers from the observations at single serum dilution was formulated. The purified antigen of IBV Mass-41 strain was dispensed into polystyrene microplate wells at a concentration of 300ng per well($100{\mu}l$) and the plates were coated by completey drying at $37^{\circ}C$. Diluted chicken serum and horseradish peroxidase conjugated goat anti-chicken IgG were added in order in $100{\mu}l$ volumes per well and allowed to react for 30 minutes each at room temperature. Just before use and after each reaction the plates were washed three times with distilled water. Finally o-phenylenediamine solution was added as an enzyme substrate. After incubation for another 15 minutes at room temperature absorbances were read at 492nm. Hyperimmune serum against Mass-41 strain was used as internal reference positive(IRP) serum. After repeated titration of IRP and negative serum, a constant titer of IRP was determined. Serum titrations were carried out for various sample sera together with IRP and negative sera and the observed titers of sample sera were corrected by reflecting the ratio between observed and constant titers of IRP serum. These corrected titers of the sample sera were plotted against sample/positive(S/P) OD ratios. All the OD's measured in the serum titrations were also corrected by substracting negative serum OD. The following equation was formulated from the above data; $Log_{10}$ ELISA titer=$5.568({\log}_{10}S/P)+4.161$ Thus it was possible to calculate ELISA titer by measuring absorbance at 1/400 single serum dilution. Titer measured by cross ELISA tests employing Mass-41 strain and three local IBV isolates were similar. These results suggest that the ELISA tests standardized in this study can be used for evaluating not only vaccinal immunity but also for infection status against fields IBV's.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.247-252
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• 2015

Exercise is one of the most common stressors in horses. Although various physiological parameters such as cortisol respond to exercise, there is no reliable parameter for the measurement of exercise-induced stress in sport horses. This study was performed to discover a new biomarker with high sensitivity for exercise-induced stress. The expression of fos mRNA was increased more than 10-fold in horse blood samples collected after an hour of exercise, as compared with before the exercise. The plasma cortisol levels were also increased after the exercise, but only by about two-fold. The fos mRNA levels were well-correlated with plasma cortisol concentrations. These findings suggest that fos mRNA expression in blood may be useful for the measurement of exercise-induced stress in horses.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.266-269
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• 2018

A compact Q-band waveguide-to-microstrip transition for UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) radiometer applications is presented. The key features of this transition are simplicity, compactness, easy matching, and lower sensitivity to the dimensions and fabrication tolerances. The simple E-plane patch-type design is insensitive to the backshort cavity enclosure and misalignment between the waveguide and microstrip substrate. The primary parameters are optimized using a three-dimensional(3D) electromagnetic simulator(ANSYS HFSS). It exhibited better than 20-dB return loss at mid-band frequencies with less than 1-dB insertion loss for the back-to-back transition, and a return loss better than 15 dB over the frequency range of 36 GHz to 42 GHz.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2008.07a
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• pp.1295-1296
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• 2008

Hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$) biosensor is one of the most developing sensors because this kind of sensors is highly selective and responds quickly to the specific substrate. Hemoglobin (Hb) has been used as ideal biomolecules to construct hydrogen peroxide biosensors because of their high selectivity to $H_2O_2$. The direct electron transfer of Hb has widely investigated for application in the determination of $H_2O_2$ because of its simplicity, high selectivity and intrinsic sensitivity. An electrochemical detection for hydrogen peroxide was investigated based on immobilization of hemoglobin on DNA/Fe(pyterpy)$^{2+}$ modified gold electrode. The pyterpy monolayers were firstly an electron deposition onto the gold electrode surface of the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). It is offered a template to attach negatively charged DNA. The fabrication process of the electrode was verified by quartz crystal analyzer (QCA). The experimental parameters such as pH, applied potential and amperometric response were evaluated and optimized. Under the optimized conditions, this sensor shows the linear response within the range between $3.0{\times}10^{-6}$ to $9.0{|times}10^{-4}$ M concentrations of $H_2O_2$. The detection limit was determined to be $9{\times}10^{-7}$ M (based on the S/N=3).

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.447-470
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• 2014

Numerical simulation of the non-linear behavior of (RC) structural walls subjected to severe earthquake ground motions requires a reliable modeling approach that includes important material characteristics and behavioral response features. The objective of this paper is to optimize a simplified method for the assessment of the seismic response and damage development analyses of an RC structural wall building using macro-element model. The first stage of this study investigates effectiveness and ability of the macro-element model in predicting the flexural nonlinear response of the specimen based on previous experimental test results conducted in UCLA. The sensitivity of the predicted wall responses to changes in model parameters is also assessed. The macro-element model is next used to examine the dynamic behavior of the structural wall building-all the way from elastic behavior to global instability, by applying an approximate Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA), based on Uncoupled Modal Response History Analysis (UMRHA), setting up nonlinear single degree of freedom systems. Finally, the identification of the global stiffness decrease as a function of a damage variable is carried out by means of this simplified methodology. Responses are compared at various locations on the structural wall by conducting static and dynamic pushover analyses for accurate estimation of seismic performance of the structure using macro-element model. Results obtained with the numerical model for rectangular wall cross sections compare favorably with experimental responses for flexural capacity, stiffness, and deformability. Overall, the model is qualified for safety assessment and design of earthquake resistant structures with structural walls.