• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.549-552
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• 2019

This study aimed to determine the prevalence of intestinal helminth parasitic infections and associated risk factors for the human infection among the people of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Infection status of helminths including Echinococcus granulosus was surveyed in domestic and wild animals from 4 sites in the Samarkand region, Uzbekistan during 2015-2018. Fecal samples of each animal were examined with the formalin-ether sedimentation technique and the recovery of intestinal helminths was performed with naked eyes and a stereomicroscope in total 1,761 animals (1,755 dogs, 1 golden jackal, and 5 Corsac foxes). Total 658 adult worms of E. granulosus were detected in 28 (1.6%) dogs and 1 (100%) golden jackal. More than 6 species of helminths, i.e., Taenia hydatigena, Dipylidium caninum, Diplopylidium nolleri, Mesocestoides lineatus, Toxocara canis, and Trichuris vulpis, were found from 18 (1.0%) dogs. Six (T. hydatigena, Toxascaris leonina, Alaria alata, Uncinaria stenocephala, D. caninum, and M. lineatus) and 2 (D. nolleri and M. lineatus) species of helminths were also detected from 5 Corsac foxes and 1 golden jackal, respectively. Taeniid eggs were found in 2 (20%) out of 10 soil samples. In the present study, it was confirmed that the prevalences of helminths including E. granulosus are not so high in domestic and wild animals. Nevertheless, the awareness on the zoonotic helminth infections should be continuously maintained in Uzbekistan for the prevention of human infection.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.207-214
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• 2012

Burns are one of the most devastating forms of trauma and wound healing is a complex and multicellular process, which is executed and regulated by signaling networks involving numerous growth factors, cytokines, and chemokines. Recombinant human granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rhGM-CSF) was specifically produced from rice cell culture through use of a recombinant technique in our laboratory. The effect of rhGM-CSF on promotion of deep second-degree burn wound healing on the back skin of a hamster model was evaluated through a randomized and double-blind trial. As macroscopic results, hamster skins of the experimental groups showed earlier recovery by new epidermis than the control groups. Immunohistochemical reactions of proliferating cell nuclear antigen and transforming growth factor-b1, which are indicators of cell proliferation, were more active in the experimental group, compared with the control group. On electron microscopy, basal cells in the epidermis of the experimental group showed oval nuclei, prominent nucleoli, numerous mitochondria and abundant free ribosomes. In addition, fibroblasts contained well-developed rough endoplasmic reticulum with dilated cisternae. Bundles of collagen fibrils filled the extracellular spaces. Particularly, ultrastructural features indicating active metabolism for regeneration of injured skin at 15 days after burn injury, including abundant euchromatin, plentiful free ribosomes, and numerous mitochondria, were observed. These findings suggest that use of rhGM-CSF could result in accelerated deep second-degree burn wound healing in animal models.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.286-292
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• 2020

Imaging through multicore fiber (MCF) is of great significance in the biomedical domain. Although several techniques have been developed to image an object from a signal passing through MCF, these methods are strongly dependent on the surroundings, such as vibration and the temperature fluctuation of the fiber's environment. In this paper, we apply a new, strong technique called deep learning to reconstruct the phase image through a MCF in which each core is multimode. To evaluate the network, we employ the binary cross-entropy as the loss function of a convolutional neural network (CNN) with improved U-net structure. The high-quality reconstruction of input objects upon spatial light modulation (SLM) can be realized from the speckle patterns of intensity that contain the information about the objects. Moreover, we study the effect of MCF length on image recovery. It is shown that the shorter the fiber, the better the imaging quality. Based on our findings, MCF may have applications in fields such as endoscopic imaging and optical communication.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.835-845
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• 2019

File Carving is a technique for attempting to recover a file without metadata, such as a formated storage media or a damaged file system, and generally looks for a specific header / footer signature and data structure of the file. However, file carving is faced with the problem of recovering fragmented files for a long time, and it is very important to propose a solution for digital forensics because important files are relatively fragmented. To overcome these limitations, various carving techniques and tools are continuously being developed, and data sets from various researches and institutions are provided for functional verification. However, existing data sets are ineffective in verifying tools because of their limited environmental conditions. Therefore, this paper refers to the importance of fragmented file carving and develops 16 images for carving tool verification based on scenarios. The developed images' carving rate and accuracy of each media is shown through Foremost which is well known as a commercial carving tool.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.71-76
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• 2019

Background: An 8-year-old girl had severe neck pain and stiffness after trauma. CT scan showed atlantoaxial rotatory subluxation (AARS). She had conservative treatment because she did not have neurological symptoms and spinal basilar artery dysfunction. Conservative therapy was halter traction twice for 4 weeks. However, pain and stiffness persisted. She had been recommended to have surgery from her physician, but she received manual therapy for non-surgical procedures. Methods: The joint mobilization, muscle energy technique, motor control exercise, and deep neck flexor (DNF) endurance exercise were applied as manual therapy and 10 session for 2weeks. Results: Clinical outcomes were measured at initial baseline, after 2 weeks, and after 6weeks. Active range of motion was completely restored after 6weeks and numeric pain rating scale was completely reduced after 2 weeks. The strength of neck flexor muscle recovered to normal after 2 weeks, and the DNF endurance was improved to 25 seconds after 2 weeks and to 42 seconds after 6weeks. Motor control capacity recovered to 30 ㎜Hg after 2 weeks. Conclusions: This case report describes the immediate and short-term clinical outcomes for a patient presenting with symptoms of neck pain following AARS. Clinical rationale and patient preference aided the decision to incorporate manual therapy as a treatment for this patient. Manual therapy has shown a successful recovery in AARS patients, more research is needed to validate the inference of this case report.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.461-471
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• 2018

The role of urban agriculture should not be limited as a small-scale crop cultivation activity as it was, but it has to be considered as an entire process of a agriculture activity for the restoration of the city community. This study is based on the assumption that there has been a significant change in urban lifestyle and urban farming preference, considering the overall improvement in standard of living after implementation of five day work week system. It was conducted for urban citizens who were interested in actual urban agriculture for ages 19 and over who visited the Korea Urban Agriculture Exhibition in 2018. Only 115 valid samples were used for the empirical analysis. To analyze the demographic characteristics and effects of urban agriculture, frequency analysis and descriptive statistics were conducted. In order to analyze the reliability and validity of the measurement variables of the effect, the variables that deteriorate the validity were removed and 15 variables of the urban agricultural effect were selected. According to the result of factor analysis, three factors were extracted as follows: socially sustainable effect, negative effect and economically sustainable effect. In order to examine the effects of urban agriculture depending on income level, the one-way ANOVA, which is a statistical technique for verifying differences in the sample means, was performed. The psychological stability of people, the recovery of humanity through communion with nature, and the vitalization of agriculture linked with local agriculture had significant correlations with income level. The negative effect showed no significant correlation with income level. The improvement of the local environment was found to have an impact in relation with income level. We expect that there will be more studies on policies for the new types and models of urban agriculture in order to make it easier for urban citizens to approach it.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.347-355
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• 2018

This study investigated the effects of the processing number of multi-axial diagonal forging (MADF) on the microstructural changes of OFC fabricated by MADF processes. The as-extruded OFC was cut to $25mm^3$ cube for the MADF processes. The MADF process consists of plane forging with a thickness reduction of 30% and diagonal forging with a diagonal forging angle of $135^{\circ}$. In order to analyze the microstructural evolutions according to the number of repetitions, 1, 2, 3 and 4 cycles of the MADF process were performed. OFC specimens were successfully deformed without surface cracking for up to 4 cycles of MADF. The grain size, average misorientation and average grain orientation spread (GOS) of MADF processed materials were analyzed using EBSD technique and their Vicker's hardness were also measured. The results showed that MADF process effectively refined the microstructure of OFC with initial average grain size of $84.2{\mu}m$. The average grain sizes of specimens MADF processed for 1, 2, 3, 4 cycles were refined to be $8.5{\mu}m$, $2.2{\mu}m$, $1.5{\mu}m$, $1.1{\mu}m$, respectively. The grain refinement seemed to be saturated when OFC was MADF processed over 2 cycles. In the case of specimens subjected to two or more cycles of MADF, the degree of decrease in average grain size was drastically reduced as the number of cycles increased due to softening phenomena such as dynamic recovery or dynamic recrystallization during processing. The degree of increase in average Vicker's hardness was also dramatically reduced as the number of cycles increased due to the same reason.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.846-857
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• 2019

Voltage step-down converters are very popular in distributed power systems, voltage regular modules, electric vehicles, etc. However, a high step-down voltage ratio is required in many applications to prevent the traditional buck converter from operating at extreme duty cycles. In this paper, a series capacitor interleaved buck converter with a soft switching technique is proposed. The DC voltage ratio of the proposed converter is half that of the traditional buck converter and the voltage stress across the one main switch and the diodes is reduced. Moreover, by paralleling the series connected auxiliary switch and the auxiliary inductor with the main inductor, zero voltage transition (ZVT) of the main switches can be obtained without increasing the voltage or current stress of the main power switches. In addition, zero current turned-on and zero current switching (ZCS) of the auxiliary switches can be achieved. Furthermore, owing to the presence of the auxiliary inductor, the turned-off rate of the output diodes can be limited and the reverse-recovery switching losses of the diodes can be reduced. Thus, the efficiency of the proposed converter can be improved. The DC voltage gain ratio, soft switching conditions and a design guideline for the critical parameters are given in this paper. A loss analysis of the proposed converter is shown to demonstrate its advantages over traditional converter topologies. Finally, experimental results obtained from a 100V/10V prototype are presented to verify the analysis of the proposed converter.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.881-893
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• 2019

This paper proposes a practical sliding-mode controller design for shaping the impedances of cascaded boost-converter power decoupling circuits for reducing the second order harmonic ripple in photovoltaic (PV) current. The cascaded double-boost converter, when used as power decoupling circuit, has some advantages in terms of a high step-up voltage-ratio, a small number of switches and a better efficiency when compared to conventional topologies. From these features, it can be seen that this topology is suitable for residential (PV) rooftop systems. However, a robust controller design capable of rejecting double frequency inverter ripple from passing to the (PV) source is a challenge. The design constraints are related to the principle of the impedance-shaping technique to maximize the output impedance of the input-side boost converter, to block the double frequency PV current ripple component, and to prevent it from passing to the source without degrading the system dynamic responses. The design has a small recovery time in the presence of transients with a low overshoot or undershoot. Moreover, the proposed controller ensures that the ripple component swings freely within a voltage-gap between the (PV) and the DC-link voltages by the small capacitance of the auxiliary DC-link for electrolytic-capacitor elimination. The second boost controls the main DC-link voltage tightly within a satisfactory ripple range. The inverter controller performs maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for the input voltage source using ripple correlation control (RCC). The robustness of the proposed control was verified by varying system parameters under different load conditions. Finally, the proposed controller was verified by simulation and experimental results.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.63-70
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• 2019

This study investigates the effects of multi-axial diagonal forging (MADF) processing number on the microstructures of AA1100 fabricated using MADF processes. The cast AA1100 was annealed at $400^{\circ}C$ for 3hrs in $N_2$ atmosphere and cut into $25mm^3$ cubes for the MADF processes. The MADF process consist of plane forging with a thickness reduction of 30% and a diagonal forging with a diagonal forging angle of 135 degrees. In order to analyze the microstructural variations based on the number of repetitions, 1, 2, 3 and 4 cycles of the MADF process were performed. AA1100 specimens were successfully deformed without cracking of the surface for up to 4 cycles of MADF. The grain size, average misorientation and average grain orientation spread (GOS) of MADF processed materials were analyzed using EBSD technique. The results showed that MADF process effectively refined the microstructure of AA1100 with an initial average grain size of $337.4{\mu}m$. The average grain sizes of specimens which were MADF processed for 2, 3, 4 cycles were refined to be $1.9{\mu}m$, $1.6{\mu}m$, $1.4{\mu}m$, respectively. The grain refinement appeared saturated when AA1100 got MADF processed over 2 cycles. When the specimen was subjected to two or more cycles of MADF, the degree of decrease in the average grain size drastically decreased with an increase in the number of cycle due to the softening phenomena such as dynamic recovery or dynamic recrystallization during processing.