• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.421-441
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• 2021

Fruit detection in orchards is one of the most crucial tasks for designing the visual system of an automated harvesting robot. It is the first and foremost tool employed for tasks such as sorting, grading, harvesting, disease control, and yield estimation, etc. Efficient visual systems are crucial for designing an automated robot. However, conventional fruit detection methods always a trade-off with accuracy, real-time response, and extensibility. Therefore, an improved method is proposed based on coarse-to-fine multitask cascaded convolutional networks (MTCNN) with three aspects to enable the practical application. First, the architecture of Fruit-MTCNN was improved to increase its power to discriminate between objects and their backgrounds. Then, with a few manual labels and operations, synthetic images and labels were generated to increase the diversity and the number of image samples. Further, through the online hard example mining (OHEM) strategy during training, the detector retrained hard examples. Finally, the improved detector was tested for its performance that proved superior in predicted accuracy and retaining good performances on portability with the low time cost. Based on performance, it was concluded that the detector could be applied practically in the actual orchard environment.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.988-993
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• 2012

Four experimental diets were formulated to contain 700 g/kg cereal with decreasing levels of wheat:barley inclusion. Diet 1 contained 700 g/kg wheat, diet 2 contained 600 g/kg wheat and 100 g/kg barley, diet 3 contained 500 g/kg wheat and 200 g/kg barley and diet 4 contained 400 g/kg wheat and 300 g/kg barley. The diets were offered to pigs on three trials to investigate effects on the performance of individually (n = 72) and group housed (n = 480) pigs and on nutrient digestibility in pigs housed in metabolizm crates (n = 24). Performance was assessed from 10 wks of age until slaughter and carcass characteristics were measured. For the group performance study, one pig from each pen (in total 24) at 10, 15 wks and at finish were slaughtered to ascertain scores for stomach ulceration, stomach weights and intestinal length. Level of wheat inclusion did not significantly (p>0.05) affect liveweight gain (LWG) or feed conversion ratio (FCR). Feed intake was lowest (p<0.05) for individually housed pigs offered diets containing 700 g/kg wheat during the 10-15 wk period, which indicated that individually housed pigs attempted to eat to a constant energy intake. There was little evidence of stomach ulceration across treatments and increasing wheat inclusion had no detrimental effect. Higher levels of wheat inclusion tended to increase backfat depth at the $P_2$ position which could lead to increasing grading penalties in a commercial situation although more research is required in this area. Increasing level of wheat inclusion increased digestible energy (DE) content but the lack of effect on FCR and killing out percentage indicated that utilization of energy from barley and wheat was similar. Digestibility coefficients increased linearly with increasing wheat content, which can be attributed to the lower level of fibre and higher level of starch in wheat compared with barley.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.231-238
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• 2003

Rose and chrysanthemum are the most popular flowers in Korean floriculture. Sorting flowers is a labor intensive operation in cultivation of the cut flowers and needed to be mechanized. Machine vision is one of the promising solutions for this purpose. This study was carried out to develop hardware and software of a cut flower sorting system using machine vision and to test its performance. Results of this study were summarized as following; 1. Length of the cut flower measured by the machine vision system showed a good correlation with actual length of the flower at a level of the coefficients of determination (R$^2$) of 0.9948 and 0.9993 for rose and chrysanthemum respectively and average measurement errors of the system were about 2% and 1% of the shortest length of the sample flowers. The experimental result showed that the machine vision system could be used successfully to measure length of the cut flowers. 2. Stem diameter of the cut flowers measured by the machine vision system showed a correlation with actual diameter at the coefficients of determination (R$^2$) of 0.8429 and 0.9380 for rose and chrysanthemum respectively and average measurement errors of the system were about 15% and 7.5% of the shortest diameter of the sample flowers which could be a serious source of error in grading operation. It was recommended that the error rate should be considered to set up grading conditions of each class of the cut flowers. 3. Bud maturity of 20 flowers each judged using the machine vision system showed a coincidence with the judgement by inspectors at ranges of 80%∼85% and 85%∼90% for rose and chrysanthemum respectively. Performance of the machine vision system to judge bud maturity could be improved through setting up more precise criteria to judge the maturity with more samples of the flowers. 4. Quality of flower judged by stem curvature using the machine vision system showed a coincidence with the judgement by inspectors at 90% for good and 85% for bad flowers of both rose and chrysanthemum. The levels of coincidence was considered as that the machine vision system used was an acceptable system to judge the quality of flower by stem curvature.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.251-260
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• 2020

A growing interest has emerged in recycling used automobile batteries into energy storage systems (ESSs) to prevent their harmful effects to the environment from improper disposal and to recycle such resources. To transform used batteries into ESSs, composing battery modules with similar performance by grading them is crucial. Imbalance among battery modules degrades the performance of an entire system. Thus, the selection of modules with similar performance and remaining life is the first prerequisite in the reuse of used batteries. In this study, we develop an instrument to measure the impedance spectrum of a battery module to predict the useful remaining life of the used battery. The developed hardware and software are used to apply the AC perturbation to the used battery module and measure its impedance spectrum. The developed instrument can measure the impedance spectrum of the battery module from 0.1 Hz to 1 kHz and calculate the equivalent circuit parameters through curve fitting. The performance of the developed instrument is verified by comparing the measured impedance spectra with those obtained by a commercial equipment.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.107-120
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• 2020

In a performance-based evaluation of structures in use, the current performance is assessed by summing up the weighting of the evaluation indices for each performance. In this study, to suggest a performance-based evaluation technique for NATM tunnels in use, the performance evaluation indices were derived by examining the characteristics and similarities of each index developed from previous study. The weighting of the evaluation indices was derived by calculating the relative importance of each evaluation indices from the AHP analysis. In order to develop a quantitative evaluation model, grading criteria for each performance index was derived through literature review, and performance evaluation tables for road and railway tunnels were presented. In order to verify the significance of the proposed performance evaluation model, the correlation analysis was performed between each evaluation index and the final evaluation result. In the correlation analysis, the survey data measured through precision safety diagnosis in the tunnel in use was applied. It may be said that the proposed evaluation indices, weighting, criteria and evaluation models for tunnels in use can be applied to the performance-based maintenance system of tunnels.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.188-195
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• 2014

This paper was evaluated the rheology properties according to each step of paste, mortar and HPFRCC as a part of the basic study to development of sprayed high performance fiber reinforced cementitious composites(HPFRCC) for protection and blast resistant. Rheology test results in step of paste, in case of GGBFs and FA, it showed that the plastic viscosity and yield stress reduced gradually according to the increase of mixing rate, and in case of SF, the plastic viscosity and yield stress increased radically starting from the mixing rate of 10%. Rheology test results in step of mortar, type of aggregates, it showed that particle shape and grading of aggregate is influence on plastic viscosity and yield stress, and change of volume ratio is influence on plastic viscosity than yield stress. Fluidity and rheology test results in step of HPFRCC, if after a fiber mixed, it showed that viscosity agent is more effective to improve the fluidity and fiber dispersion than superplasticizer.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.211-216
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• 2016

Purpose: The use of electronic tools in teaching is growing rapidly in all fields, and there are many options to choose from. We present one such platform, Learning Catalytics$^{TM}$ (LC) (Pearson, New York, NY, USA), which we utilized in our oral and maxillofacial radiology course for second-year dental students. Materials and Methods: The aim of our study was to assess the correlation between students' performance on course exams and self-assessment LC quizzes. The performance of 354 predoctoral dental students from 2 consecutive classes on the course exams and LC quizzes was assessed to identify correlations using the Spearman rank correlation test. The first class was given in-class LC quizzes that were graded for accuracy. The second class was given out-of-class quizzes that were treated as online self-assessment exercises. The grading in the self-assessment exercises was for participation only and not accuracy. All quizzes were scheduled 1-2 weeks before the course examinations. Results: A positive but weak correlation was found between the overall quiz scores and exam scores when the two classes were combined (P<0.0001). A positive but weak correlation was likewise found between students' performance on exams and on in-class LC quizzes (class of 2016) (P<0.0001) as well as on exams and online LC quizzes (class of 2017) (P<0.0001). Conclusion: It is not just the introduction of technological tools that impacts learning, but also their use in enabling an interactive learning environment. The LC platform provides an excellent technological tool for enhancing learning by improving bidirectional communication in a learning environment.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.1064-1075
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• 2021

Recently, a high level of dietary crude protein (CP) has become of interest as a possible practice to improve the carcass quality of beef cattle, and its level has been increasing in the field. However, there is little scientific evidence that supports this. This study was conducted to test whether a high dietary CP level would improve growth performance, body metabolism, and carcass traits in Hanwoo beef cattle. A total of 32 Hanwoo finishing beef cattle (18 multiparous cows, six heifers, and eight steers) participated in a 12-weeks feeding trial. Two kinds of total mixed rations were prepared to contain two different CP; 156 g/kg for the control (CON) and 173 g/kg of CP for the treatment (HCP), while maintaining a similar level of metabolizable energy. The experiment was ended when more than half of the steers reached the target body weight (730 kg). Blood was collected at the end of the experiment. After harvesting, the carcass trait was evaluated at the slaughterhouse according to Korean standards. The carcass yield score and grade were also calculated based on revised criteria. Overall, dry matter intake, average daily gain, blood metabolites concentration, and the carcass traits, except for backfat thickness and the yield score, did not differ between the treatments. The HCP had lower backfat thickness than those of CON. There was no difference in the carcass yield grade, but the yield score was higher in the HCP treatment. According to the newly revised carcass grading criteria, both yield score and grade were higher in HCP than in CON. Increasing CP supply decreased the carcass's backfat thickness without altering growth performance and body metabolism, resulting in improved yield score and grade. Therefore, feeding a high CP diet may be beneficial in the farm income, although it may also increase feed cost and nitrogen excretion to the environment.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.33-38
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• 2022

Planner configuration thin film solar cells (TFSCs) with SnS/CdS heterojunction performed a lower short-circuit current (J_SC). In this study, we have demonstrated a path to overcome deficiency in J_SC by the incorporation of Se in the SnS absorber. We carried out the incorporation of Se in VTD grown SnS absorber by rapid thermal annealing (RTA). The diffusion of Se is mostly governed by RTA temperature (T_RTA), also it is observed that film structure changes from cube-like to plate-like structure with T_RTA. The maximum J_SC of 23.1 mA cm^-2 was observed for 400℃ with an open-circuit voltage (V_OC) of 0.140 V for the same temperature. The highest performance of 2.21% with J_SC of 18.6 mA cm^-2, V_OC of 0.290 V, and fill factor (FF) of 40.9% is observed for a T_RTA of 300℃. In the end, we compare the device performance of Se- incorporated SnS absorber with pristine SnS absorber material, increment in J_SC is approximately 80% while a loss in V_OC of about 20% has been observed.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.57-65
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• 2023

The public safety management guidelines were introduced in 2019 and continue to be dedicated to advancing comprehensive measures for public safety management, with a primary focus on prioritizing the safety and well-being of the public within governmental institutions. To achieve this goal, our previous study developed a establishment procedure of risk assessment-based safety inspection system for public institutions that order construction projects and applied it to highway construction projects to evaluate its effectiveness. To enhance the practicality of the establishment procedure, it is essential to collect and analyze feedback from stakeholders regarding its performance and suitability. This study conducted a survey involving 200 participants who had experience with the establishment procedure, and performed statistical analyses to evaluate its performance and applicability. The survey results indicated that the participants reported a high level of satisfaction (scoring 4 and above on a 5-point Likert scale) in several areas: specialization of safety inspection items for different types of work (with a satisfaction rate of 65%), the evaluation process for safety ratings (64.5%), and their willingness to recommend the procedure to other institutions (75.5%). In the factor analysis with Varimax rotation, two factors emerged: (1) a specialization factor related to safety inspection items, and (2) a grading factor associated with safety evaluation results. Regression analyses of these factors unveiled significant positive relationships with improvements in safety and health performance, including the prevention of fatal accidents, heightened safety responsibility, and raised safety inspection standards. The establishment procedure of safety inspection system developed in our previous study can play a crucial role in reducing accidents resulting in fatalities and injuries at construction sites, ultimately contributing to a safer working environment for all involved parties.