• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.282-289
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• 2022

Background: Airborne fungi are ubiquitous in the air and exposure to an airborne fungus can be a significant risk factor. The composition of fungi has been potentially important for human health, especially for respiratory diseases like asthma and atopic dermatitis. Therefore, we attempted to ascertain what kind of airborne fungi affect human health at a nationwide level. Objectives: This study was carried out to provide information on indoor fungi distribution at multi-use facilities throughout South Korea. Methods: We classified our data by region and public facility after collection, cultivation, and identification via the sequencing of the ITS (internal transcribed spacer) region. We investigated whether or not the proliferation of HaCaT cells was affected by the identified airborne fungi. Results: In our data, the most isolated airborne fungi by region were Penicillium spp (Seoul, Daegu), Periconia sp (Gyeonggi-do), Iprex sp (Gangwon-do), Phanerochaete sp (Busan), Bjerkandera sp (Gwangju), and Aspergillus sp (Jeju-do). In the public facilities, the most detected fungi were Cladosporium sp (public transport), Penicillium sp (apartment house, retail market, financial institution, karaoke room), Bjerokandera sp (underground parking lot, public toilet, medical institution), Periconia sp (retail store), and Fusarium sp (general restaurant). Next, we selected twenty airborne fungi to examine their cytotoxicity and proliferation of human skin cells. In this experiment, the proliferation of the cells was influenced by most of the identified fungi. In case of the cytotoxicity test, most genera except for Rhodotorula sp and Moesziomyces sp showed cytotoxicity in HaCaT cells. Conclusions: The distribution of mold in the indoor air in multi-use facilities in South Korea differs from region to region, and this is an indicator that should be considered in future health impact studies. In addition, as a result of culturing about 20 types of bacteria dominant in indoor air, it was found that most (90%) inhibit the growth of skin cells, which can be harmful to health. An in-depth study of the health effects of floating fungi is needed.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.464-474
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• 2022

Objectives: We introduced the cohort studies included in the Korean Cohort Consortium (KCC), focusing on large-scale cohort studies established in Korea with a prolonged follow-up period. Moreover, we also provided projections of the follow-up and estimates of the sample size that would be necessary for big-data analyses based on pooling established cohort studies, including population-based genomic studies. Methods: We mainly focused on the characteristics of individual cohort studies from the KCC. We developed "PROFAN", a Shiny application for projecting the follow-up period to achieve a certain number of cases when pooling established cohort studies. As examples, we projected the follow-up periods for 5000 cases of gastric cancer, 2500 cases of prostate and breast cancer, and 500 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The sample sizes for sequencing-based analyses based on a 1:1 case-control study were also calculated. Results: The KCC consisted of 8 individual cohort studies, of which 3 were community-based and 5 were health screening-based cohorts. The population-based cohort studies were mainly organized by Korean government agencies and research institutes. The projected follow-up period was at least 10 years to achieve 5000 cases based on a cohort of 0.5 million participants. The mean of the minimum to maximum sample sizes for performing sequencing analyses was 5917-72 102. Conclusions: We propose an approach to establish a large-scale consortium based on the standardization and harmonization of existing cohort studies to obtain adequate statistical power with a sufficient sample size to analyze high-risk groups or rare cancer subtypes.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.205-222
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• 2022

Objectives: This study examined the characteristics of patients according to nutritional status assessed by five nutritional screening tools: Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA), NUTRISCORE, Nutritional Risk Index (NRI), Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI), and Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT) and to compare the agreement, sensitivity, and specificity of these tools. Methods: A total of 952 gastric cancer patients who underwent gastrectomy and chemotherapy from January 2009 to December 2012 were included. The patients were categorized into malnutrition and normal status according to five nutritional screening tools one month after surgery. The Spearman partial correlation, Cohen's Kappa coefficient, the area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity of each two screening tools were calculated. Results: Malnutrition was observed in 86.24% of patients based on the PG-SGA and 85.82% based on the NUTRISCORE. When NRI or CONUT were applied, the proportions of malnutrition were < 30%. Patients with malnutrition had lower intakes of energy and protein than normal patients when assessed using the PG-SGA, NUTRISCORE, or NRI. Lower levels of albumin, hemoglobin, total lymphocyte count, and total cholesterol and longer postoperative hospital stays were observed among patients with malnutrition compared to normal patients when NRI, PNI, or CONUT were applied. Relatively high agreement for NUTRISCORE relative to PG-SGA was found; the sensitivity was 90.86%, and the AUC was 0.78. When NRI, PNI, and CONUT were compared, the sensitivities were 23.72% for PNI relative to NRI, 44.53% for CONUT relative to NRI, and 90.91% for CONUT relative to PNI. The AUCs were 0.95 for NRI relative to PNI and 0.91 for CONUT relative to PNI. Conclusions: NUTRISCORE had a high sensitivity compared to PG-SGA, and CONUT had a high sensitivity compared to PNI. NRI had a high specificity compared to PNI. This relatively high sensitivity and specificity resulted in 77.00% agreement between PNI and CONUT and 77.94% agreement between NRI and PNI. Further cohort studies will be needed to determine if the nutritional status assessed by PG-SGA, NUTRISCORE, NRI, PNI, and CONUT predicts the gastric cancer prognosis.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_3
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• pp.873-885
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• 2022

The particulate matter (PM) has emerged as a hot topic around the world as it has been reported that PM is related to an increase in mortality and prevalence rates. In South Korea, the importance of PM has been recognized since the late 1990s, and various studies on PM have been conducted. This study investigated the PM research topics and trends for papers (D=2,764) published in Research Information Sharing Service (RISS) using topic modeling based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). As a result, a total of 10 topics were identified in the whole papers, and the PM research topics were classified as 'PM reduction (Topic 1)', 'Government policy and management (Topic 2)', 'Characteristics of PM (Topic 3)', 'PM model (Topic 4)', 'Environmental education (Topic 5)', 'Bio (Topic 6)', 'Traffic (Topic 7)', 'Asian dust (Topic 8)', 'Indoor PM (Topic 9)', 'Human risk (Topic 10)'. In particular, the proportion of papers on topics 'Government policy and management (Topic 2)', 'PM model (Topic 4)', 'Environmental education (Topic 5)', and 'Bio (Topic 6)' to the toal number of papers increased over time (linear slope > 0). The results of this study provide the new literature review methodology related to particulate matter and the history and insight.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.363-368
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• 2021

Ship engine rooms have improved automation systems owing to the advancement of technology. However, there are many variables at sea, such as wind, waves, vibration, and equipment aging, which cause loosening, cutting, and leakage, which are not measured by automated systems. There are cases in which only one engineer is available for patrolling. This entails many risk factors in the engine room, where rotating equipment is operating at high temperature and high pressure. When the engineer patrols, he uses his five senses, with particular high dependence on vision. We hereby present a preliminary study to implement an engine-room patrol robot that detects and informs the machine room while a robot patrols the engine room. Images of ship engine-room equipment were classified using a convolutional neural network (CNN). After constructing the image dataset of the ship engine room, the network was trained with a pre-trained CNN model. Classification performance of the trained model showed high reproducibility. Images were visualized with a class activation map. Although it cannot be generalized because the amount of data was limited, it is thought that if the data of each ship were learned through transfer learning, a model suitable for the characteristics of each ship could be constructed with little time and cost expenditure.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.751-759
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• 2022

Currently, ultrasound examination for diagnostic ultrasound and health examination purposes is widely used, and it is showing an increasing trend due to the application of health insurance. However, the risk of ultrasound has not been clearly identified so far, and in this study, surface and deep temperature changes according to frequency and mode were measured by using a tissue mimicking phantom and TI and MI values were compared. A simulated phantom was manufactured by adding a small amount of kappa-caraginan powder with acoustic characteristics similar to that of the human body and potassium chloride for solidification, and the change of surface and depth temperature was measured using a surface thermometer and a probe thermometer. As a result, the convex probe using low frequency showed a higher temperature increase than the linear probe using high frequency, so there was a significant difference, and the temperature increase was the highest on the surface, and the depth of 1cm showed a temporary temperature increase, but there was no significant temperature change. There was no change in the deep temperature of 5 cm to 15 cm, and the TI and MI values did not change during the test time. Since only the surface temperature rose during the 15-minute test and there was no temperature change in the core, so it is not expected to show a temperature change that is harmful to the human body. However, it is thought that prolonged examination of one area may cause temperature rise, so it should be avoided.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.825-836
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• 2022

Micropiles can be used to support additional load in extended building structures. However, their use brings about a risk of exceeding the bearing capacity of existing piles. In this study, pre-compression was applied to distribute the load of an existing building to micropiles, and an indoor loading test was performed to confirm the structural applicability of a wedge-type anchorage device designed to improve its capacity. According to the test results, the maximum strain of the anchorage device was 0.63 times that of the yield strain, and the amount of slip generated at the time of anchorage was 0.11 mm, satisfying structural standards. In addition, using MIDAS GTS, a geotechnical finite element analysis software, the effect of the size of the pre-compression, the thickness of the soil layer, and the ground conditions around the tip on the reaction force of the existing piles and micropiles were analyzed. From the numerical analysis, as the size of the pre-compression load increased, the reaction force of the existing pile decreased, resulting in a reduction rate of up to 36 %. In addition, as the soil layer increased by 5 m, the reduction rate decreased by 4 %, and when the ground condition at the tip of the micropile was weathered rock, the reduction rate increased by 14 % compared with that of weathered soil.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.346-351
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• 2022

Background Postmastectomy breast reconstruction (PMR) increases patient satisfaction, quality of life, and psychosocial well-being. There is scarce data regarding the safety of PMR in chronic anticoagulated patients. Perioperative complications can reduce patient satisfaction; therefore, it is important to elucidate the safety of PMR in these patients. Methods A retrospective case-control study of patients who underwent PMR with implants and were on chronic anticoagulation was performed at our institution. Inclusion criteria were women ≥ 18 years old. Exclusion criteria included autologous reconstructions, lumpectomy, and oncoplastic procedures. Two controls for every one patient on anticoagulation were matched by age, body mass index, radiotherapy, smoking history, type of reconstruction, time of reconstruction, and laterality. Results From 2009 to 2020, 37 breasts (20 patients) underwent PMR with implant-based reconstruction and were on chronic anticoagulation. A total of 74 breasts (40 patients) who had similar demographic characteristics to the cases were defined as the control group. Mean age for the case group was 53.6 years (standard deviation [SD] = 16.1), mean body mass index was 28.6 kg/m² (SD = 5.1), and 2.7% of breasts had radiotherapy before reconstruction and 5.4% after reconstruction. Nine patients were on long-term warfarin, six on apixaban, three on rivaroxaban, one on low-molecular-weight heparin, and one on dabigatran. The indications for anticoagulation were prior thromboembolic events in 50%. Anticoagulated patients had a higher risk of capsular contracture (10.8% vs. 0%, p = 0.005). There were no differences regarding incidence of hematoma (2.7% vs. 1.4%, p = 0.63), thromboembolism (5% vs. 0%, p = 0.16), reconstructive-related complications, or length of hospitalization (1.6 days [SD = 24.2] vs. 1.4 days [SD = 24.2], p = 0.85). Conclusion Postmastectomy implant-based breast reconstruction can be safely performed in patients on chronic anticoagulation with appropriate perioperative management of anticoagulation. This information can be useful for preoperative counseling on these patients.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.231-245
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• 2022

When vertical shafts are constructed in soft clay with low strength, there is a risk of basal heave, which causes the excavation surface to heave due to the low bearing capacity of the ground against the imbalance of earth pressure at the excavation surface. Methods of deriving a safety factor have been proposed to evaluate the stability against the basal heave. However, there are limitations in that it is difficult to accurately evaluate the heave stability because many assumptions are included in the theoretical derivation. In this study, assuming that a circular vertical shaft is constructed in soft clay, the existing safety factor equation proposed through a theoretical approach was supplemented. Bearing capacity according to the shaft geometry, inhomogeneity of the soil, and the effect of soil plug were considered theoretically and applied in a previous safety factor equation. A three-dimensional numerical analysis was conducted to simulate the occurrence of basal heave and review the supplemented equation through various case studies. Several series of case studies were conducted targeting various factors affecting heave stability. It was verified that the additionally considered characteristics were properly reflected in the supplemented equation. Furthermore, the effects of each factor constituting the safety factor equation were examined using the results of the numerical analysis performed by simulating various cases. It was confirmed that considering the undrained shear strength increment according to depth had the most significant effect on the calculation of the safety factor.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.388-396
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• 2022

Background: In this study, we present recent trends in heart valve surgery in Korea through analyses of data from the Korea Heart Valve Surgery Registry (KHVSR). Methods: We enrolled 8,981 patients who were registered in the KHVSR from 2017 to 2020. Yearly trends in patients' baseline characteristics, surgical profiles, and early mortality rates were explored. The observed/expected mortality ratio (O/E ratio), calculated from the actual mortality in the KHVSR and the predicted mortality estimated using the EuroSCORE II, was also analyzed. Results: The proportion of aortic valve surgery significantly increased from 56.8% in 2017 to 60.3% in 2020. The proportion of all combined procedures and minimally invasive surgery significantly increased over the 4-year study period. The operative mortality rate was 2.9% in the entire cohort, while mitral valve repair showed the lowest mortality risk (0.9%). The mortality rates of isolated aortic valve replacement (AVR) significantly decreased from 2.1% in 2017 to 0.8% in 2020 (p=0.016). Overall, the O/E ratio was 0.784 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.677-0.902) demonstrating significantly lower actual mortality risks than expected based on the EuroSCORE II. In particular, the O/E ratios were as low as 0.364 (95% CI, 0.208-0.591) for isolated AVR. Conclusion: The recent data from the KHVSR showed increasing trends for complex procedures and minimally invasive surgery in heart valve surgery in Korea, and demonstrated remarkably low risks of operative mortality.