• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.158-164
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• 2011

Breast cancer is the most frequently appearing cancer in women, these days. To reduce mortality of breast cancer, periodic check-up is strongly recommended. X-ray mammography is one of powerful diagnostic imaging systems to detect 50~100 um micro-calcification which is the early sign of breast cancer. Although x-ray mammography has very high spatial resolution, it is not easy yet to distinguish cancerous tissue from normal tissues in mammograms and new tissue characterizing methods are required. Recently ultrasound elastography technique has been developed, which uses the phenomenon that cancerous tissue is harder than normal tissues. However its spatial resolution is not enough to detect breast cancer. In order to develop a new elastography system with high resolution we are developing x-ray elasticity imaging technique. It uses the small differences of tissue positions with and without external breast compression and requires an algorithm to detect tissue displacement. In this paper, computer simulation is done for preliminary study of x-ray elasticity imaging. First, 3D x-ray breast phantom for modeling woman's breast is created and its elastic model for FEM (finite element method) is generated. After then, FEM experiment is performed under the compression of the breast phantom. Using the obtained displacement data, 3D x-ray phantom is deformed and the final mammogram under the compression is generated. The simulation result shows the feasibility of x-ray elasticity imaging. We think that this preliminary study is helpful for developing and verifying a new algorithm of x-ray elasticity imaging.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1514-1524
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• 2019

Hydrogen-steam gas mixture may be injected into containment with flow regime varying both spatially and transiently due to wall effect and pressure difference between primary loop and containment in severe accidents induced by loss of coolant accident. Preliminary CFD analysis is conducted to gain information about the helium flow regime transition process from jet to buoyancy plume for forthcoming experimental study. Physical models of impinging jet and wall condensation are validated using separated effect experimental data, firstly. Then helium transportation is analyzed with the effect of jet momentum, buoyancy and wall cooling discussed. Result shows that helium distribution is totally dominated by impinging jet in the beginning, high concentration appears near gas source and wall where jet momentum is strong. With the jet weakening, stable light gas layer without recirculating eddy is established by buoyancy. Transient reversed helium distribution appears due to natural convection resulted from wall cooling, which delays the stratification. It is necessary to concern about hydrogen accumulation in lower space under the containment external cooling strategy. From the perspective of experiment design, measurement point should be set at the height of connecting pipe and near the wall for stratification stability criterion and impinging jet modelling validation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.527-536
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• 2022

The radiation shielding characteristic of neutron shielding material has been studied as the preliminary study in order to design cosmic-ray shielding material. Specially, Soft Magnetic Material, known to be effective in EMP and radiation shielding, has been investigated to check if the material would be applicable to cosmic-ray shielding. In this work, thermal neutron shielding experiment was conducted and the Monte Carlo N-Particle(MCNP) was applied to employ skymap.dat, which is cosmic-ray data embedded in MCNP. As a result, polyethylene, borated polyethylene, and carbon nano tube, containing carbon or hydrogen, have been found to be effective in reduction of neutron flux below 20 MeV (including thermal, epithermal, evaporation). In contrast, the materials composed of iron such as SS316 and Soft Magnetic Material show a good shielding performance in the cascade energy range (above 20 MeV). Since Soft Magnetic Material is consisting of 13% of boron, it can also decrease thermal neutron flux, so it is expected that it would show a significant reduction on the entire range of neutron energy if the Soft Magnetic Material is used with hydrogen and carbon, so called low Z material.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.206-211
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• 2020

Tungsten alloys are used widely in general industrial fields, but they are difficult to cast, so products are manufactured using powder metallurgy. In this study, a mixed powder of tungsten, nickel, and iron homogenized using a ball mill was added to pure water as a solvent, and PVA as a binder was added to prepare a spray drying mixture. The mixed liquid was prepared using a spraying machine. A study was carried out to produce a granular powder that can reduce the variations between products during the molding and sintering process of the powder metallurgy method. A preliminary experiment was conducted to confirm the influence of the variables in the granulation process. Through the preliminary test results, this experiment was performed with the volume of solvent of the spray drying the mixture as an independent variable, and granular powder having a mean particle size similar to that of the existing mass-production conditions and an increased apparent density was prepared. In addition, a pilot test was conducted for the molding and sintering process. The improved granular powder reduced the characteristic variation (weight variation) of the mass-produced product.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-72
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• 2007

An echo planar imaging (EPI)-based spin-echo sequence Is often used to obtain diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data on most of the clinical MRI systems, However, this sequence is confounded with the susceptibility artifacts, especially on the temporal lobe in the human brain. Therefore, the objective of this study was to design a pulse sequence that relatively immunizes the susceptibility artifacts, but can map diffusion tensor components in a single-shot mode. A multi-slice multi-echo pulsed-gradient spin-echo (MePGSE) sequence with eight echoes wasdeveloped with selective refocusing pulses for all slices to map the full tensor. The first seven echoes in the train were diffusion-weighted allowing for the observation of diffusion in several different directions in a single experiment and the last echo was for crusher of the residual magnetization. All components of diffusion tensor were measured by a single shot experiment. The sequence was applied in diffusive phantoms. The preliminary experimental verification of the sequence was illustrated by measuring the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) for tap water and by measuring diffusion tensor components for watermelon. The ADC values in the series of the water phantom were reliable. The MePGSE sequence, therefore, may be useful in human brain studies.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.254-264
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• 2012

Rayleigh-Benard natural convection experiments were carried out as the preliminary experiment to simulate the natural convection of the core melt at the severe accident conditions. This work focused on the influences of plate separation distance(s), the existence of the side walls and crust geometries of upper and lower plates. Based upon the analogy concept, a cupric acid-copper sulfate electroplating system($H_2SO_4-CuSO_4$) was employed as the mass transfer system and measurements were made for $Ra_s$ ranging from $1.06{\times}10^7$ to $2.91{\times}10^{10}$. The test results measured for a single horizontal plate were in good agreement with the correlation reported by McAdams and those for two horizontal plates showed the similar trend to the existing Rayleigh-Benard heat transfer correlations developed by Dropkin and Somerscales, Globe and Dropkin. The measured heat transfer rate decreased with the increasing separation distance between the two plates and became similar to those for a single horizontal plate. Fin arrays mounted on both upper and lower plates enhanced the heat transfer rates. For all cases, the heat transfer rates measured for open side walls are higher than those for closed ones.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.545-556
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• 2022

This study is a preliminary experiment to test on the effect of musical harmony on the suppression of the discomfort from tinnitus. The experiment was conducted on 25 adults with normal hearing. They listened to the three types (1. original music, 2. melody only, 3. harmony only) of Brandenburg concerto no. 3, G Major (J S Bach) and rated tinnitus annoyance scales. The results show that the tinnitus annoyance was significantly reduced when they listened to the tinnitus sound and any of the three types of the same musics compared to when listening to the tinnitus sound only (p < 0.019). Suppression of tinnitus was observed to be greater in the original music containing harmony and the harmony part only than in the music excluding the harmony part (the melody part only) (p < 0.012). The suppression effect was slightly better in the original music including the harmony part than in the harmony part only, but there was no statistical significance (p = 0.189). The experimental results suggest that the harmony in music plays an important role in suppressing tinnitus annoyance, compared to the melody. Validations with tinnitus patients are necessary to underpin the findings, which can enable us to embark further studies for making use of them for clinical applications.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.257-270
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• 2008

Three experiments were carried out in order to determine whether users have longer using time, better recall of product information, and flow in an aesthetically appealing product (media player) in products offering good usability. For the experiment, fourteen emotional words were employed which were made up of 8 aesthetic and 6 usability words. In a preliminary experiment, the subjects freely used three media players and selected emotional words by a 7-point likert scale to distinguish a group of similar usability value and another group contrary to the other in aesthetic and usability value. (N=18) In the main experiment, it was hypothesized that users use more and have more flow and recalled information in the case of the aesthetically appealing product. Therefore, in the main experiment, we measured how much time subjects spent using the product and asked them to make an assumption regarding the time spent by the group that has the same usability value. We then examined the time they spent and the gap between the actual and estimated time. We also calculated the amount of menu information recalled via a questionnaire. In the last experiment, we selected the group of products contrary to each other in aesthetic and usability value and assessed the differences in using time, recall of product information, and flow. (N=18) The empirical results provide evidence that aesthetically appealing products are associated with greater flow and recall of product information than other products, thus supporting the hypothesis. In addition, it was found that there is a positive correlation between the aesthetically appealing product and flow index as well as with recalled information.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.319-336
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• 2021

This paper discusses the results of launch environment tests for the engineering qualification model (EQM) of nanosatellite Scale magNetospheric and Ionospheric Plasma Experiment (SNIPE) for scientific missions and lessons learned for the design of nanosatellites. SNIPE is a group of four formation-flying 6U nanosatellites with a range of payloads for missions including space weather measurement. We developed the EQM to verify the preliminary design prior to fabricating the flight model. Launch environment test of EQM was conducted for the first time in 2019, and all failures were corrected and verified at the second test conducted in 2021. A notable point of the two tests is that the nanosatellite deployer used in the first test is different from that of the second test. The second deployer has the capability to fix the internal satellite whereas the first deployer just contains and deploys the satellite. Thus actual mechanical loads the satellite receives is reduced for the second test compared to the first test. This work compares the mechanical responses of two tests and proposes general guidelines for structural design of nanosatellites.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.45-54
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• 2017

A social phenomenon that occurs in a physical space is said to be a complex system. However, space syntax, which is commonly employed by researchers to identify such social phenomena, has various limitations in interpreting their complexity. On the other hand, agent-based modeling considers a variety of factors including the personality of the agent, objective-oriented work flows, estimation according to time flows and better prediction of space use through diverse parameters depending the situation, as well as the characteristics of the space. The agent-based method thus has the potentials to be developed as an alternative to space syntax techniques. In particular, discrete event driven simulation(DEVS), which is part of the agent-based modeling method, embraces the concept of networks just like space syntax, which allows a possible theoretical linkage in the future. This study suggests a procedural model of agent-based DEVS reflecting two different connection methods, i.e. connections between adjacent areas and those of the entire space, and attempts to identify the relationship between the local and regional indices of space syntax. A number of spaces were selected as examples-one for a preliminary experiment and eight modified for the main experiment-and space syntax and DEVS were applied to each of them. The comparative analysis of the results led to the conclusions as follows: 1) Adjacent connections were closely related to local indices, while the whole-space approach to regional indices. Local integration shows both characteristics. 2) Observation of the time flow model indicated a faster convergence with the range of 1 to 3-fold of the total time of one lap, with the error of less than 10%. 3) The heat map analysis showed more obvious characteristics of using the space for the entire space rather than adjacent connections. 4) Space syntax shows higher eligibility than ABM.