• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.422-430
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• 2020

The Korean Society of Urogenital Radiology (KSUR) aimed to present a consensus statement for patient preparation, standard technique, and pain management in relation to transrectal ultrasound-guided prostate biopsy (TRUS-Bx) to reduce the variability in TRUS-Bx methodologies and suggest a nationwide guideline. The KSUR guideline development subcommittee constructed questionnaires assessing prebiopsy anticoagulation, the cleansing enema, antimicrobial prophylaxis, local anesthesia methods such as periprostatic neurovascular bundle block (PNB) or intrarectal lidocaine gel application (IRLA), opioid usage, and the number of biopsy cores and length and diameter of the biopsy needle. The survey was conducted using an Internet-based platform, and responses were solicited from the 90 members registered on the KSUR mailing list as of 2018. A comprehensive search of relevant literature from Medline database was conducted. The strength of each recommendation was graded on the basis of the level of evidence. Among the 90 registered members, 29 doctors (32.2%) responded to this online survey. Most KSUR members stopped anticoagulants (100%) and antiplatelets (76%) one week before the procedure. All respondents performed a cleansing enema before TRUS-Bx. Approximately 86% of respondents administered prophylactic antibiotics before TRUS-Bx. The most frequently used antibiotics were third-generation cephalosporins. PNB was the most widely used pain control method, followed by a combination of PNB plus IRLA. Opioids were rarely used (6.8%), and they were used only as an adjunctive pain management approach during TRUS-Bx. The KSUR members mainly chose the 12-core biopsy method (89.7%) and 18G 16-mm or 22-mm (96.5%) needles. The KSUR recommends the 12-core biopsy scheme with PNB with or without IRLA as the standard protocol for TRUS-Bx. Anticoagulants and antiplatelet agents should be discontinued at least 5 days prior to the procedure, and antibiotic prophylaxis is highly recommended to prevent infectious complications. Glycerin cleansing enemas and administration of opioid analogues before the procedure could be helpful in some situations. The choice of biopsy needle is dependent on the practitioners' situation and preferences.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.61-77
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• 2024

The purpose of this study was to develop a method for rapidly diagnosing urban thermal comfort using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based data. The research was conducted at Changwon National University's College of Engineering site and Yongji Park, both located in Changwon, Gyeongsangnam-do. Baseline data were collected using field measurements and UAVs. Specifically, the study calculated field measurement-based thermal comfort indices PET and UTCI, and used UAVs to create and analyze vegetation index (NDVI), sky view factor (SVF), and land surface temperature (LST) images. The results showed that UAV-predicted PET and UTCI had high correlations of 0.662 and 0.721, respectively, within a 1% significance level. The explanatory power of the prediction model was 43.8% for PET and 52.6% for UTCI, with RMSE values of 6.32℃ for PET and 3.16℃ for UTCI, indicating that UTCI is more suitable for UAV-based thermal comfort evaluation. The developed method offers significant time-saving advantages over traditional approaches and can be utilized for real-time urban thermal comfort assessment and mitigation planning

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.71-79
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• 2024

Purpose: This study aims to identify SUV, SNR, spatial resolution, and axial uniformity under the same reconstruction conditions and to find out the differences between equipment models. Materials and Methods: The equipment was GE's Discovery 600, 710, IQ, MI(GE Healthcare, USA), and the Phantom used ACR(American College of Radiology) Flangeless Esser Phantom and PET/SPECT Performance Phantom. The PET/SPECT Performance Phantom injected 18F-FDG at a concentration of 3.8 kBq/mL, and the ACR Flangeless Esser Phantom made the conditions for Hot Spot and Background activity for 4 : 1. Image evaluation was compared and evaluated for SUV, SNR, spatial resolution, and axial uniformity with the same reconstruction that added SharpIR of VPHD. Results: The SUV_max showed a difference up to 4.6% with an average of 2.71, 2.35, 1.89, and 1.43 from Hot Spot 1 to 4, and the SUV_mean showed a difference up to 4.7% with 2.06, 1.75, 1.49, and 1.27. There was a difference up to 5% between equipment, and there was no significant difference between both SUV_max and SUV_mean. SNR showed a difference up to 0.04 with an average of 0.37, 0.26, 0.18, and 0.11. FWHM showed a difference up to 0.27. Lastly, COV of axial uniformity was up to 0.018. Conclusion: SUV showed differences within 5% between equipment and showed no significant difference. This is considered to be used as basic data that can be used for the development and replacement of equipment because it has the advantage of being able to observe with a large number of equipment.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.284-290
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• 2024

Speech emotion recognition (SER) is a technique that is used to analyze the speaker's voice patterns, including vibration, intensity, and tone, to determine their emotional state. There has been an increase in interest in artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, which are now widely used in medicine, education, industry, and the military. Nevertheless, existing researchers have attained impressive results by utilizing acted-out speech from skilled actors in a controlled environment for various scenarios. In particular, there is a mismatch between acted and spontaneous speech since acted speech includes more explicit emotional expressions than spontaneous speech. For this reason, spontaneous speech-emotion recognition remains a challenging task. This paper aims to conduct emotion recognition and improve performance using spontaneous speech data. To this end, we implement deep learning-based speech emotion recognition using the VGG (Visual Geometry Group) after converting 1-dimensional audio signals into a 2-dimensional spectrogram image. The experimental evaluations are performed on the Korean spontaneous emotional speech database from AI-Hub, consisting of 7 emotions, i.e., joy, love, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and neutral. As a result, we achieved an average accuracy of 83.5% and 73.0% for adults and young people using a time-frequency 2-dimension spectrogram, respectively. In conclusion, our findings demonstrated that the suggested framework outperformed current state-of-the-art techniques for spontaneous speech and showed a promising performance despite the difficulty in quantifying spontaneous speech emotional expression.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.260-268
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• 2024

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide, and more than 604,000 new cases were reported in 2020 alone, resulting in approximately 341,831 deaths. The Cox regression model is a major model widely adopted in cancer research, but considering the existence of nonlinear associations, it faces limitations due to linear assumptions. To address this problem, this paper proposes ResSurvNet, a new model that improves the accuracy of cervical cancer mortality prediction using ResNet's residual learning framework. This model showed accuracy that outperforms the DNN, CPH, CoxLasso, Cox Gradient Boost, and RSF models compared in this study. As this model showed accuracy that outperformed the DNN, CPH, CoxLasso, Cox Gradient Boost, and RSF models compared in this study, this excellent predictive performance demonstrates great value in early diagnosis and treatment strategy establishment in the management of cervical cancer patients and represents significant progress in the field of survival analysis.

• Korean Journal of Ichthyology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.270-277
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• 2023

Since its introduction in 1973, the bass, Micropterus salmoides, has spread to dams and rivers in Korea, adversely affecting native fish communities. In this study, after complete removal of bass from Bukchosan Reservoir, an farm reservoir that has lost its function, an attempt was made to indirectly confirm the adverse effects of bass on fish by comparing fish communities in reservoirs of a similar size where bass inhabit. The study was conducted three times a year from 2019 to 2022. As a result of the study, in Bukchosan Reservoir, where the species composition of fish was judged to be simplified due to the habitat of bass, only four species such as Carassius auratus and Rhinogobius brunneus that could be used as a food source for bass appeared before the removal of bass, but after the removal of bass. The appearance and increase of the population of the introduced small freshwater fish (Oryzias sinensis, Rhinogobius giurinus) were confirmed. When comparing Gangjeong Reservoir, Susim Reservoir, which are other reservoirs inhabited by bass investigated in this study, and Bukchosan Reservoir, this result is judged to show a trend of stabilization and recovery of fish species after removal of bass in small reservoirs with high predation pressure of bass.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.63-75
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• 2024

Drinking water is an essential element to ensure the basic human right to live, and the quality of clean water must always be ensured. However, domestic water facilities, which were installed intensively in the early 2000s, are deteriorating. The accidents such as discoloration of water such as chromaticity and turbidity as well as leakage of substances frequently occur. However, since it is virtually impossible to replace all water pipes, the detailed standards for maintenance of water pipe network facilities established in 2021 require water pipe cleaning. The swab pig method, one of the water pipe cleaning methods, is a method of physically removing substances in pipes and is evaluated as having the highest cleaning efficiency. However, Swab is highly likely to be damaged or deformed during the cleaning process, and may even be lost. Therefore, in this study, the material of the pig was changed to a material with high compressibility, and it was made as close as possible to the inner wall of the water pipe. And, to maximize cleaning efficiency, a rotation swab pig with a rotation blade was developed. In addition, high-strength wire and winding equipment were additionally developed to eliminate the possibility of loss and to determine the location of the pig. The inlet and outlet are connected with wires, and after verifying the performance of each detailed technology, the technology was applied on a test bed with a 30m section. As a result of the application, the performance of the technology was verified by measuring the process time and evaluating applicability.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.113 no.2
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• pp.210-221
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• 2024

This study aimed to investigate the effects of forest walking based on an exercise prescription on body composition of older adults. Forty-four older adults (average age: 69.3 ± 3.1 years) participated in this study. The experimental group engaged in forest walking based on a prescribed exercise intensity considering the participants' respective health conditions. The participants walked three times a week for more than an hour each time for 8 weeks. By contrast, the participants in the control group spent their days according to their usual lifestyle. The analysis involved the following: ① a comparison of the measurements taken before and after the 8-week period of forest walking in the experimental group, ② a comparison between pre- and post-study measurements in the control group, and ③ a comparison of the changes (post-study minus pre-study values) between the experimental and control groups. The results were as follows: ① the experimental group showed significant decreases in weight, body fat mass, and body mass index; ② the control group exhibited significant decreases in muscle mass and ratio in right arm and left leg, muscle ratio in trunk, and body water mass in right arm; and ③ weight and body fat index decreased in the experimental group but increased in the control group. In conclusion, forest walking based on an exercise prescription had a positive impact on body composition of older adults.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.143-154
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• 2024

In this study, we improved the vitamin C test method and reviewed data on the adjustable range of chromatography conditions for quantification. First, we adjusted the mobile phase conditions such as solvent composition, salt concentration, pH and column temperature and in particular, it was confirmed through an improved test method that the peak derived from the buffer solution could be clearly separated from the target component, vitamin C by adjusting the pH. The retention time of vitamin C was partially changed by adjusting the column diameter, length and particle size but the number of theoretical plates indicated similar values and did not affect the separation and quantitative analysis of the target component. The flow rate according to the column specifications was derived from the equation proposed by the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug administration) and the Korean MFDS (Ministry of Food and Drug Safety), and evaluation of the applicability to vitamin complexes showed high selectivity for vitamin C even with altered stationary phase conditions and flow rates. In conclusion, vitamin C can be optimally separated and detected by changing the chromatographic method conditions and it was confirmed that the mobile and stationary phase conditions of liquid chromatography can be slightly adjusted in case the assay method uses an isocratic elution.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.93-100
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• 2024

Pore water freezes in low-temperature compaction, which leads to different compaction characteristics compared to room temperature conditions. In regions like Alberta, Canada, where organic soils are prevalent, compaction performance is influenced by the high water retention and compressibility of organic soils, as well as their sensitivity to freezing and thawing. Alberta's strict environmental regulations demand the reuse of excavated soil for backfill, and the long winter season creates challenging conditions for civil engineering projects. In this study, a laboratory compaction test was conducted to evaluate the low-temperature compaction characteristics of organic soils with varying organic content. The results indicate that the optimum moisture content increases as the organic content increases, and the maximum dry unit weight decreases by up to 21.9%. In addition, under temperature conditions below -4℃, no optimum moisture content was observed, and the dry unit weight decreased as the moisture content increased.