• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.20
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• pp.8993-9004
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• 2014

Background: The incidence rate and the treatment costs of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are high, especially in Thailand. Previous studies indicated that early detection by a surveillance program could help by down-staging. This study aimed to compare the costs and health outcomes associated with the introduction of a HCC surveillance program with no program and to estimate the budget impact if the HCC surveillance program were implemented. Materials and Methods: A cost utility analysis using a decision tree and Markov models was used to compare costs and outcomes during the lifetime period based on a societal perspective between alternative HCC surveillance strategies with no program. Costs included direct medical, direct non-medical, and indirect costs. Health outcomes were measured as life years (LYs), and quality adjusted life years (QALYs). The results were presented in terms of the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) in Thai THB per QALY gained. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were applied to investigate parameter uncertainties. Budget impact analysis (BIA) was performed based on the governmental perspective. Results: Semi-annual ultrasonography (US) and semi-annual ultrasonography plus alpha-fetoprotein (US plus AFP) as the first screening for HCC surveillance would be cost-effective options at the willingness to pay (WTP) threshold of 160,000 THB per QALY gained compared with no surveillance program (ICER=118,796 and ICER=123,451 THB/QALY), respectively. The semi-annual US plus AFP yielded more net monetary benefit, but caused a substantially higher budget (237 to 502 million THB) than semi-annual US (81 to 201 million THB) during the next ten fiscal years. Conclusions: Our results suggested that a semi-annual US program should be used as the first screening for HCC surveillance and included in the benefit package of Thai health insurance schemes for both chronic hepatitis B males and females aged between 40-50 years. In addition, policy makers considered the program could be feasible, but additional evidence is needed to support the whole prevention system before the implementation of a strategic plan.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.151-155
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• 2006

Root nodule biomass, and seedling biomass and growth were examined for 2-year-old Robinia pseudoacacia and Amorpha fruticosa seedlings following fertilization treatments. Organic fertilizer, solid combination fertilizer, and organic fertilizer plus solid combination fertilizer were used for the study. Root nodule biomass (g/plant) ranged from 3.00 to 7.06 for R. pseudoacacia and varied from 1.52 to 2.32 for A. fruticosa, respectively. In all treatments, root nodule biomass of R. pseudoacacia was significantly higher than those of A. fruticosa. Fertilization significantly increased root nodule biomass for only R. pseudoacacia, however, there were no significant differences in root nodule biomass among fertilization treatments. Root nodule biomass was not influenced by soil nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) concentrations following fertilization treatments. Seedling biomass (components and total) and growth (diameter at root collar and height) were strongly correlated with root nodule biomass for the two N fixing tree species.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.785-804
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• 2017

Due to various factors such as postures, facial expressions and illuminations, face recognition by videos often suffer from poor recognition accuracy and generalization ability, since the within-class scatter might even be higher than the between-class one. Herein we address this problem by proposing a hierarchical cascaded classifier for video face recognition, which is a multi-layer algorithm and accounts for the misclassified samples plus their similar samples. Specifically, it can be decomposed into single classifier construction and multi-layer classifier design stages. In single classifier construction stage, classifier is created by clustering and the number of classes is computed by analyzing distance tree. In multi-layer classifier design stage, the next layer is created for the misclassified samples and similar ones, then cascaded to a hierarchical classifier. The experiments on the database collected by ourselves show that the recognition accuracy of the proposed classifier outperforms the compared recognition algorithms, such as neural network and sparse representation.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.197-205
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• 2004

In this paper, we studied on the hardware implementation of a 3${\times}$3 window weighted median filter using bit-level sorting algorithm. The weighted median filter is a generalization of the median filter that is able to preserve :,harp changes in signal and is very effective in removing impulse noise. It has been successfully applied in various areas such as digital signal and video/image processing. The weighted median filters are, for the most part, based on word-level sorting methods, which have more hardware and time complexity, However, the proposed bit-serial sorting algorithm uses weighted adder tree to overcome those disadvantages. It also offers a simple pipelined filter architecture that is highly regular with repeated modules and is very suitable for weighted median filtering. The algorithm was implemented by VHDL and graphical environment in MAX＋PlusII of ALTERA. The simulation results indicate that the proposed design method is more efficient than the traditional ones.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.83 no.2
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• pp.148-154
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• 1994

As a vegetative propagation method for ash species, which is a dioecism and a long cycle of fructification, cut-stem was soaked in water to induce adventitious sprouts, and 2-year-old ash seedling was cut in a nursery to induce adventitious sprouts. We obtained the 1,019 adventitious sprouts from branches of 101 plus trees througout the country. The mean ortet-age is 48. There is not a correlation between ortet ages and production of adventitious sprouts. These sprouts were placed in a cutting bed for rooting. Root ability varied with environmental factors of cuttings. The best rooting(87%) resulted from cutting performed in a vinyl-plastic greenhouse. Rooting was better on perlite+peat moss(2 : 1) medium than other media tested. The rooting ability was generally higher in 2-year-old ortet than plus tree ortet. In the root development of cuttings the non-container cuttings was better than container cuttings.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.147-154
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• 1999

This study was carried out to obtain reasonable management method of salt-affected soil for ecological restoration in the reclaimed land. Chemical properties of reclaimed soil was investigated base on reclamation years. Ionic acitivity in soil and satruration extract were analyzed to estimate the effect of salt interception by planting ground treatment. The soil porperties of reclaimed land was saline-sodic soil with $11.3dSm^{-1}$ of electrical conductivity, 34.8% of exchangeable sodium percent in first reclamation year. Electrical conductivity, exchangeable sodium and exchangeable chlorine were remarkedly decreased during six years after reclamation but chemical properties of reclaimed soil was unsuitable status for tree growth. Exchangeable sodium perecnt was higher in the neighborhood parks and street tree sites than in the buffer green spaces and was higher in subsoil than in topsoil of profile in all sites. Content of soduim, chloride and sulfate in saturation extract were more than other ions. Content of soduim and chloride were higher in the neighborhood parks and street tree sites than in the buffer green spaces and were higher in subsoil than in topsoil. Content of calcium plus magnesium of soil was higher in the buffer green space than in the neighborhood park and street tree but content of calcium and magnesium in saturation extract were higher, as result from exchangeable sodium, in the neighborhood parks and street tree sites than in the buffer green spaces. Concentration of salt in soil showed the difference with mounding height and planting ground treatment. The lowest concentration of salt appeared in buffer green spaces and street tree sites was the highest. Salt interception by mounding height in the same planting ground treatment was more effective 120cm of mounding height than 70cm of mounding height.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.83 no.4
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• pp.480-485
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• 1994

Growth and wood quality characters such as height, DBH, specific gravity, traceried length and width were measured for 16-year-old open-pollinated progenies of 38 selected plus trees of Abies holophylla Max. The results were as follows ; 1) The superior families in growth and wood quality characters were Chonbuk 4(498.2cm) and Kyonggi 9(485.7cm) for height, Kyonggi 12(9.2cm) and 9(9.1cm) for DBH, Kaongbuk 2(0.480) and Kangwon 7(0.473) for specific gravity, Kyonggi 9(2.77mm) and Kangwon 11(2.71mm) for tracheid length and Kyonggi 9(0.039mm), Kangwon 11, 12 and Kyunggi 7(0.036mm) for tracheid width, respectively. 2) There were significant differences among the families in height and specific gravity at 1% and 5% level. 3) There were high significant negative correlations between specific gravity and other characters such as height, DBH, tracheid length and width at 1% level($r=-0.242^{**}{\sim}-0.635^{**}$) 4) The heritabilities were 0.55 for height, 0.25 for DBH, 0.44 for specific gravity, and 0.24 for tracheid width.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.571-588
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• 2016

Eucalyptus pellita F. Muell is one of pulp woods that is being developed through breeding plantation programs in Indonesia. The research aimed at exploring the chemical and morphological characteristics of fiber, and to determine the rank of plus trees from 4 provenances based on the suitability for pulps. The materials included the plus trees of E. pellita (9 years) from the 2nd generation of progeny tests in Pelaihari, South Borneo. Wood properties under investigation included the chemical properties and morphological fiber characteristics (fiber dimensions and its derived properties). In the present study, data were analyzed using descriptive statistic, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Pearson's correlation. Results showed that the chemical properties of E. pellita, i.e. the contents of ethanol-toluene extractives, hot water soluble extractives, holocellulose, alphacelullose, and lignin were $3.08{\pm}1.00%$, $1.41{\pm}0.38%$, $75.26{\pm}2.58%$, $49.02{\pm}2.88%$, and $29.49{\pm}1.86%$, respectively. The average values of wood fiber morphology were $1.02{\pm}0.08$ mm (fiber length), $13.25{\pm}1.64{\mu}m$ (fiber diameter), of $6.94{\pm}1.70{\mu}m$ (lumen diameter), $3.15{\pm}0.52{\mu}m$ (fiber wall thickness), $0.97{\pm}0.30$ (Runkel ratio), $0.57{\pm}0.10$ (Luce's shape factor), $78.21{\pm}10.34$ (slenderness ratio) and $130.91{\pm}33.77{\times}10^3{\mu}m^3$ (solids factor). The AHP scoring rank indicated that the best individuals were 28.4.3.28 (Kiriwo Utara), 12.1.5.28 (North Kiriwo), 19.11.5.45 (Serisa Village), 3.8.4.9 (South Kiriwo), and 6.6.3.15 (South Kiriwo). Pearson correlation analysis showed significant correlations between the levels of fiber length with alpha-cellulose content (r = 0.39) as well as the fiber length with ethanol-toluene extractive contents (r = -0.41).

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.79 no.2
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• pp.109-114
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• 1990

The axillary buds of 15-year-old Tilia amurensis were cultured on Saito and Ide (IS), Murashige and Skoog (MS) media and woody plant medium (WPM) to establish an effective micropropagation method. Five levels of 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) were tested. On IS medium and WPM addition of 1.0/l BAP enhanced shoot development and shoot elongation, whereas addition of 0.5/l BAP was effective on MS medium. A better results were obtained from WPM with 1.0/l BAP and MS with 0.1/l BAP. Developed shoots were subcultured on each basal media but with 0.2/l BAP, Multiple shoots were almost doubled in a month. Root formation could be enhanced at higher concentration of indole-3-butyric acid (IBA). Better rooting rate (83.3%) was achieved on a half-strength MS medium with 3.0 /l IBA. Regenerated plantlets were successfully transferred to soil. To investigate the clonal variation in shoot development and shoot elongation by axillary bud culturing, seven plus tree clones were tested, Clonal variation in tissue culturability among plus trees was recognized by the Duncan's multiple range test at the 5% level. Kang Won No. 12 showed the best response on WPM with 1.0/l BAP.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.542-549
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• 2023

Since the growing interest in surrogate modeling, there has been continuous research aimed at simulating nonlinear chemical processes using data-driven machine learning. However, the opaque nature of machine learning models, which limits their interpretability, poses a challenge for their practical application in industry. Therefore, this study aims to analyze chemical processes using Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), a concept that improves interpretability while ensuring model accuracy. While conventional sensitivity analysis of chemical processes has been limited to calculating and ranking the sensitivity indices of variables, we propose a methodology that utilizes XAI to not only perform global and local sensitivity analysis, but also examine the interactions among variables to gain physical insights from the data. For the ammonia synthesis process, which is the target process of the case study, we set the temperature of the preheater leading to the first reactor and the split ratio of the cold shot to the three reactors as process variables. By integrating Matlab and Aspen Plus, we obtained data on ammonia production and the maximum temperatures of the three reactors while systematically varying the process variables. We then trained tree-based models and performed sensitivity analysis using the SHAP technique, one of the XAI methods, on the most accurate model. The global sensitivity analysis showed that the preheater temperature had the greatest effect, and the local sensitivity analysis provided insights for defining the ranges of process variables to improve productivity and prevent overheating. By constructing alternative models for chemical processes and using XAI for sensitivity analysis, this work contributes to providing both quantitative and qualitative feedback for process optimization.