• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.320-333
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• 2001

Background : Peak expiratory flow (PEF) provides a simple, quantitative, and reproducible measure of the existence and severity of airflow obstructions. Peak flow meters are designed to monitor the condition asthma patients. There are many reports showing the normal predicted value of PEF in other countries. Studies on healthy Korean adults have been performed in a relatively small sample number and a lower limit for the normal value was not reported. Therefore, an attempt to provide normal predictive PEF value with a lower limit was made. Method : The PEF(Mini-Wright Peak Flow Meter) measurements and spirometry were done in 233 men and 631 women without history of respiratory disease. All subjects were non-smokers with no respiratory symptoms. The normal predictive value and its lower limit were developed by multiple regression analysis. The result was compared with regression equations in other reports. Results : The regression equation for the normal PEF predictive value(L/min) is $25.117+4.587{\times}$Age(year)-$0.064{\times}Age^2+2.931{\times}$Height(cm) in men($R^2=025$), and 146.942-$0.011{\times}Age^2+1.795{\times}$Height(cm)+$0.836{\times}$Weight(kg) in women($R^2=0.21$). The regression equation for the lower limit of this value (L/min) is $25.117+4.587{\times}$Age(year)-$0.064{\times}Age^2+1.936{\times}$Height(cm) in men, and $146.942-0.011{\times}Age^2+1.232{\times}$Height(cm)+$0.481{\times}$Weight(kg) in women. The residuals were normally distributed. The PEF in Korean males was sililar to those reported in British and Japanese subjects. The PEF in Korean females was similar to that in British subjects, but higher than the PEF in Japanese subjects. The lower limit of normal value was 71% of normal predictive PEF value in men and 76% in women. Conclusion : The normal predictive PEF value and its lower limit was measured from 233 male and 631 female asymptomatic, lifelong non-smoking participants. The normal predictive value was different from those of other studies on Korean subjects. Therefore, further studies are required.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.357-366
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• 1993

Background: Lung clearance of inhaled $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA reflects alveolar epithelial permeability and it had been reported as more sensitive than conventional pulmonary function tests in detecting lung epithelial damage. However, measuring lung clearance of inhaled $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA by gamma camera may not always reflect alveolar epithelial permeability exactly because it is influenced by mucociliary clearance depending on the site of particle deposition. Moreover, this method takes much time and patient's effort because he has to sit or lie still in front of the camera for a prolonged period. Most of the absorbed DTPA is excreted in urine within 24 hours and the amount of excreted DTPA in urine during the first few hours after inhalation is influenced by absorption rate which is correlated with the alveolar-epithelial permeability suggesting that the urinary excretion, especially in first few hours, may be an alternate index for lung clearance. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of ratio of excreted $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA in 2 hour and 24 hour urine as an index of alveolar-epithelial damage. Methods: Pulmonary function tests including diffusing capacity and lung clearance of $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA measured by gama camera ($T_{1/2}$) and 2hr/24hr urine excretion ratio (Ratio) of inhaled $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA in 8 normal subjects and 14 patients with diffuse interstitial lung disease were compared. Results: 1) In the normal control, there was significant negative correlation between the $T_{1/2}$ and the Ratio (r=-0.77, p<0.05). In patients with diffuse interstitial lung disease, there also was significant negative correlation between $T_{1/2}$ and Ratio(r=-0.63, p<0.05). 2) In diffuse interstitial lung disease patients, the $T_{1/2}$ was $38.65{\pm}11.63$ min which was significantly lower than that of normal control, $55.53{\pm}11.15$ min and the Ratio was $52.15{\pm}10.07%$ also signifantly higher than that of the normal control, $40.43{\pm}5.53%$ (p<0.05). 3) There was no significant correlations between $T_{1/2}$ or Ratio and diffusing capactiy of lung in both patients and controls (p>0.05). Conclusion: These results suggests that 2hr/24hr urine excretion ratio of inhaled $^{99m}Tc$-DTPA is a useful simple bedside test in assessing alveolar epithelial permeability and that it may be used as an additive follow-up test in patients with diffuse interstitial lung disease complementing conventional pulmonary function tests.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.153-163
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• 1999

Purpose: The purpose of our study is to provide useful information for diagnostic methods of fatty liver by childhood simple obesity and to provide correlation between serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) for screening test and abdominal computerized tomography (CT) and liver biopsy for confirmative diagnostic methods of fatty liver. Methods: Among 78 obese childrens who visited our hospital, CT was carried out in 26 childrens. Of these, liver biopsy was carried out in 15 childrens who had high obesity index or severe elevated ALT. Based on the level of serum ALT, 26 cases were classified into 3 groups, and compared with physical measurements and degree of fatty infiltration on CT and liver biopsy. Results: 1) Correlation between ALT and physical measurements: Of 26 obese children, ALT was abnormally elevated (>30 IU/L) in 17 cases (67.4%) but there was no significant correlation between ALT and physical measurements (p>0.05). 2) Correlation between degree of fatty infiltration on CT and ALT: Of 26 cases, 13 cases (50%) revealed fatty liver on CT. The degree of fatty liver on CT had significant correlation with elevation of ALT (p<0.05). 3) Correlation between the degree of fatty infiltration on liver biopsy and ALT: Liver biopsy was performed in 15 cases of which 14 cases revealed fatty liver. But one case had normal hepatic histology with severe obesity and normal ALT. Fourteen fatty liver cases on liver biopsy were classified into 3 groups by the degree of fatty infiltration and analysed with obesity index and ALT. The histologic hepatic steatosis had no significant correlation with obesity index (p>0.05), but significant correlation with ALT (p<0.05). 4) Correlation between CT and liver biopsy finding: Both CT and liver biopsy were performed in 15 cases of which 6 cases revealed normal finding on CT and 9 cases manifested fatty liver. There was significant correlation between CT and liver biopsy findings (r=0.6094). Conclusion: The results of our study suggest that abdominal CT and liver biopsy are useful and accurate methods of estimating fatty liver in the childhood obesity. But biochemical abnormalities of routine liver function tests dot not correlate well with severity of the fatty liver and liver injury.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.531-536
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• 2013

We developed a simple, sensitive, and specific analytical method for prometryn using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Prometryn is a selective herbicide used for the control of annual grasses and broadleaf weeds in cotton and celery crops. On the basis of high specificity, sensitivity, and reproducibility, combined with simple analytical operation, we propose that our newly developed method is suitable for use as a Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS, Korea) official method in the routine analysis of individual pesticide residues. Further, the method is applicable in clams. The separation condition for GC-MS was optimized by using a DB-5MS capillary column ($30m{\times}0.25mm$, 0.25 ${\mu}m$) with helium as the carrier gas, at a flow rate of 0.9 mL/min. We achieved high linearity over the concentration range 0.02-0.5 mg/L (correlation coefficient, $r^2$ >0.998). Our method is specific and sensitive, and has a quantitation limit of 0.04 mg/kg. The average recovery in clams ranged from 84.0% to 98.0%. The reproducibility of measurements expressed as the coefficient of variation (CV%) ranged from 3.0% to 7.1%. Our analytical procedure showed high accuracy and acceptable sensitivity regarding the analytical requirements for prometryn in fishery products. Finally, we successfully applied our method to the determination of residue levels in fishery products, and showed that none of the analyzed samples contained detectable amounts of residues.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.127-138
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• 2011

The core service of most research portal sites is providing relevant research papers to various researchers that match their research interests. This kind of service may only be effective and easy to use when a user can provide correct and concrete information about a paper such as the title, authors, and keywords. However, unfortunately, most users of this service are not acquainted with concrete bibliographic information. It implies that most users inevitably experience repeated trial and error attempts of keyword-based search. Especially, retrieving a relevant research paper is more difficult when a user is novice in the research domain and does not know appropriate keywords. In this case, a user should perform iterative searches as follows : i) perform an initial search with an arbitrary keyword, ii) acquire related keywords from the retrieved papers, and iii) perform another search again with the acquired keywords. This usage pattern implies that the level of service quality and user satisfaction of a portal site are strongly affected by the level of keyword management and searching mechanism. To overcome this kind of inefficiency, some leading research portal sites adopt the association rule mining-based keyword recommendation service that is similar to the product recommendation of online shopping malls. However, keyword recommendation only based on association analysis has limitation that it can show only a simple and direct relationship between two keywords. In other words, the association analysis itself is unable to present the complex relationships among many keywords in some adjacent research areas. To overcome this limitation, we propose the hybrid approach for establishing association network among keywords used in research papers. The keyword association network can be established by the following phases : i) a set of keywords specified in a certain paper are regarded as co-purchased items, ii) perform association analysis for the keywords and extract frequent patterns of keywords that satisfy predefined thresholds of confidence, support, and lift, and iii) schematize the frequent keyword patterns as a network to show the core keywords of each research area and connecting keywords among two or more research areas. To estimate the practical application of our approach, we performed a simple experiment with 600 keywords. The keywords are extracted from 131 research papers published in five prominent Korean journals in 2009. In the experiment, we used the SAS Enterprise Miner for association analysis and the R software for social network analysis. As the final outcome, we presented a network diagram and a cluster dendrogram for the keyword association network. We summarized the results in Section 4 of this paper. The main contribution of our proposed approach can be found in the following aspects : i) the keyword network can provide an initial roadmap of a research area to researchers who are novice in the domain, ii) a researcher can grasp the distribution of many keywords neighboring to a certain keyword, and iii) researchers can get some idea for converging different research areas by observing connecting keywords in the keyword association network. Further studies should include the following. First, the current version of our approach does not implement a standard meta-dictionary. For practical use, homonyms, synonyms, and multilingual problems should be resolved with a standard meta-dictionary. Additionally, more clear guidelines for clustering research areas and defining core and connecting keywords should be provided. Finally, intensive experiments not only on Korean research papers but also on international papers should be performed in further studies.

• International Journal of Vascular Biomedical Engineering
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.19-24
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• 2006

Background: Pulse wave velocity (PWV), which is inversely related to the distensibility of an arterial wall, offers a simple and potentially useful approach for an evaluation of cardiovascular diseases. In spite of the clinical importance and widespread use of PWV, there exist no standard either for pulse sensors or for system requirements for accurate pulse wave measurement. Objective of this study was to assess the reproducibility of PWV values using a newly developed PWV measurement system in healthy subjects prior to a large-scale clinical study. Methods: System used for the study was the PP-1000 (Hanbyul Meditech Co., Korea), which provides regional PWV values based on the measurements of electrocardiography (ECG), phonocardiography (PCG), and pulse waves from four different sites of arteries (carotid, femoral, radial, and dorsalis pedis) simultaneously. Seventeen healthy male subjects with a mean age of 33 years (ranges 22 to 52 years) without any cardiovascular disease were participated for the experiment. Two observers (observer A and B) performed two consecutive measurements from the same subject in a random order. For an evaluation of system reproducibility, two analyses (within-observer and between-observer) were performed, and expressed in terms of mean difference ${\pm}2SD$, as described by Bland and Altman plots. Results: Mean and SD of PWVs for aorta, arm, and leg were $7.07{\pm}1.48m/sec,\;8.43{\pm}1.14m/sec,\;and\;8.09{\pm}0.98m/sec$ measured from observer A and $6.76{\pm}1.00m/sec,\;7.97{\pm}0.80m/sec,\;and\;\7.97{\pm}0.72m/sec$ from observer B, respectively. Between-observer differences ($mean{\pm}2SD$) for aorta, arm, and leg were $0.14{\pm\}0.62m/sec,\;0.18{\pm\}0.84m/sec,\;and\;0.07{\pm}0.86m/sec$, and the correlation coefficients were high especially 0.93 for aortic PWV. Within-observer differences ($mean{\pm}2SD$) for aorta, arm, and leg were $0.01{\pm}0.26m/sec,\;0.02{\pm}0.26m/sec,\;and\;0.08{\pm}0.32m/sec$ from observer A and $0.01{\pm}0.24m/sec,\;0.04{\pm}0.28m/sec,\;and\;0.01{\pm}0.20m/sec$ from observer B, respectively. All the measurements showed significantly high correlation coefficients ranges from 0.94 to 0.99. Conclusion: PWV measurement system used for the study offers comfortable and simple operation and provides accurate analysis results with high reproducibility. Since the reproducibility of the measurement is critical for the diagnosis in clinical use, it is necessary to provide an accurate algorithm for the detection of additional features such as flow wave, reflection wave, and dicrotic notch from a pulse waveform. This study will be extended for the comparison of PWV values from patients with various vascular risks for clinical application. Data acquired from the study could be used for the determination of the appropriate sample size for further studies relating various types of arteriosclerosis-related vascular disease.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.384-392
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• 2022

The objective of this study was to estimated nitrogen content and chlorophyll using RGB, Hyperspectral sensors to diagnose of nitrogen nutrition in apple tree leaves. Spectral data were acquired through image processing after shooting with high resolution RGB and hyperspectral sensor for two-year-old 'Hongro/M.9' apple. Growth data measured chlorophyll and leaf nitrogen content (LNC) immediately after shooting. The growth model was developed by using regression analysis (simple, multi, partial least squared) with growth data (chlorophyll, LNC) and spectral data (SPAD meter, color vegetation index, wavelength). As a result, chlorophyll and LNC showed a statistically significant difference according to nitrogen fertilizer level regardless of date. Leaf color became pale as the nutrients in the leaf were transferred to the fruit as over time. RGB sensor showed a statistically significant difference at the red wavelength regardless of the date. Also hyperspectral sensor showed a spectral difference depend on nitrogen fertilizer level for non-visible wavelength than visible wavelength at June 10th and July 14th. The estimation model performance of chlorophyll, LNC showed Partial least squared regression using hyperspectral data better than Simple and multiple linear regression using RGB data (Chlorophyll R²: 81%, LNC: 81%). The reason is that hyperspectral sensor has a narrow Full Half at Width Maximum (FWHM) and broad wavelength range (400-1,000 nm), so it is thought that the spectral analysis of crop was possible due to stress cause by nitrogen deficiency. In future study, it is thought that it will contribute to development of high quality and stable fruit production technology by diagnosis model of physiology and pest for all growth stage of tree using hyperspectral imagery.

• Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2009

To obtain the information on antioxidant activity by harvesting parts and time in Cudrania tricuspidata Bureau, total phenolic contents, flavonoid contents, superoxide dismutase (SOD) like activity and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl(DPPH) radical scavenging activity of methanol extracts from Cudrania tricuspidata were investigated. Total phenolic contents was the highest in leaf [$30.2{\sim}38.8\;mg/g$ dry weight (DW)] and followed by root bark, stem bark, fruit, root except bark and stem except bark. Among harvesting time, total phenolic contents of leaf was the highest as $38.1{\sim}38.8\;mg/g$ DW in May and June, and then decreased to October. Root bark harvested in April and May contained $26.6{\sim}27.8\;mg/g$ DW total phenolic compounds and total phenolic content fell to a very low values at 1.8 mg/g DW in February. Flavonoid contents was very high in leaf and root bark. Especially, root bark harvested in April had the highest of flavonoid contents as 23.2 mg/g DW. As a result of simple linear regression analysis of total phenolic contents on flavonoid contents according to harvesting parts, it showed a high correlation (p < 0.001) with $0.57{\sim}0.97\;R^2$ (coefficient of determination). As $RC_{50}$ value, that was, the concentration of sample required for 50% reduction of DPPH absorbance, was $13.7{\sim}20.5\;{\mu}g/mL$ in leaf so DPPH radical scavenging activity was very high. But SOD like activity of $1,000\;{\mu}g$ extract/mL MeOH was a low value of $0.3{\sim}9.2%$ in all samples.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.30 no.1 s.108
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• pp.45-55
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• 2005

Knowledge of the relationship between crop yield and yield-limiting factors is essential for precision farming. However, developing this knowledge is not easy because these yield-limiting factors are interrelated and affect crop yield in different ways. In this study, data for grain yield and yield-limiting factors, including crop chlorophyll content, soil chemical properties, and topography were collected for a small (0.3 ha) rice paddy field in Korea and a large (36 ha) upland corn field in the USA, and relationships were investigated with path analysis. Using this approach, the effects of limiting factors on crop yield could be separated into direct effects and indirect effects acting through other factors. Path analysis provided more insight into these complex relationships than did simple correlation or multiple linear regression analysis. Results of correlation analysis for the rice paddy field showed that EC, Ca, and $SiO_2$ had significant (P<0.1) correlations with rice yield, while pH, Ca, Mg, Na, $SiO_2,\;and\;P_2O_5$ had significant correlations with the SPAD chlorophyll reading. Path analysis provided additional information about the importance and contribution paths of soil variables to rice yield and growth. Ca had the highest direct effect (0.52) and indirect effect via Mg (-0.37) on rice yield. The indirect effect of Mg through Ca (0.51) was higher than the direct effect (-0.38). Path analysis also enabled more appropriate selection of important factors limiting crop yield by considering cause-and-effect relationships among predictor and response variables. For example, although pH showed a positive correlation (r=0.35) with SPAD readings, the correlation was mainly due to the indirect positive effects acting through Mg and $SiO_2$, while pH not only showed negative direct effects, but also negatively impacted indirect effects of other variables on SPAD readings. For the large upland Missouri corn field, two topographic factors, elevation and slope, had significant (P<0.1) direct effects on yield and highly significant (P<0.01) correlations with other limiting factors. Based on the correlation analysis alone, P and K were determined to be nutrients that would increase corn yield for this field. With the help of path analysis, however, increases in Mg could also be expected to increase corn yield in this case. In general, path analysis results were consistent with published optimum ranges of nutrients for rice and com production. We conclude that path analysis can be a useful tool to investigate interrelationships between crop yield and yield limiting factors on a site-specific basis.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.170-179
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• 2012

We examined pretreatment methods eliminating potassium and sodium efficiently for coir bag used in hydroponics by analyzing drainage coming from coir bags. In the first experiment we investigated for six coir bags with the high market shares. The three types of pretreatment were washing coir bags with only water for 7 days (W7S0), washing with water for 4 days and further with nutrient solution for 3 days (W4S3), and washing with only nutrient solution for 7 days (W0S7). In the second experiment we tested reproducibility of the experiment results for Bio Grow and coco Mix among six coir bags used in the first experiment to verify the results. As a result, the best pretreatments for the pH stabilization were W4S3 and W0S7. The EC value of the drainage was stabilized to less than 1.0 that is the same as EC of the supply solution on the fourth day in all treatments. The nutrients of the drainage in W7S0 was stabilized in 3~4 days but calcium and magnesium were depleted. We assessed that washing longer than 4 days was waste of water. The stabilization of coir bags in W0S7 was similar to it in W4S3, but washing with the nutrient solution for 7 days seemed to be uneconomical. The reproducibility experiment for two coir bags ensured the results in the first experiment. Therefore, the pretreatment method, which is the most simple to implement and economic, seems to wash with water for 3 days and then with the nutrient solution for 1 day before planting on coir bag.