• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.294-304
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• 2023

Objective: We aimed to investigate whether image standardization using deep learning-based computed tomography (CT) image conversion would improve the performance of deep learning-based automated hepatic segmentation across various reconstruction methods. Materials and Methods: We collected contrast-enhanced dual-energy CT of the abdomen that was obtained using various reconstruction methods, including filtered back projection, iterative reconstruction, optimum contrast, and monoenergetic images with 40, 60, and 80 keV. A deep learning based image conversion algorithm was developed to standardize the CT images using 142 CT examinations (128 for training and 14 for tuning). A separate set of 43 CT examinations from 42 patients (mean age, 10.1 years) was used as the test data. A commercial software program (MEDIP PRO v2.0.0.0, MEDICALIP Co. Ltd.) based on 2D U-NET was used to create liver segmentation masks with liver volume. The original 80 keV images were used as the ground truth. We used the paired t-test to compare the segmentation performance in the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and difference ratio of the liver volume relative to the ground truth volume before and after image standardization. The concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) was used to assess the agreement between the segmented liver volume and ground-truth volume. Results: The original CT images showed variable and poor segmentation performances. The standardized images achieved significantly higher DSCs for liver segmentation than the original images (DSC [original, 5.40%-91.27%] vs. [standardized, 93.16%-96.74%], all P < 0.001). The difference ratio of liver volume also decreased significantly after image conversion (original, 9.84%-91.37% vs. standardized, 1.99%-4.41%). In all protocols, CCCs improved after image conversion (original, -0.006-0.964 vs. standardized, 0.990-0.998). Conclusion: Deep learning-based CT image standardization can improve the performance of automated hepatic segmentation using CT images reconstructed using various methods. Deep learning-based CT image conversion may have the potential to improve the generalizability of the segmentation network.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.8-13
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• 2017

This study was conducted to develop an agent-based computing platform enabling simulation of on-farm produce contamination by enteric foodborne pathogens, which is herein called PPMCS (Preharvest Produce Microbial Contamination Simulator). Also, fecal contamination of preharvest produce was simulated using PPMCS. Although Agent-based Modeling and Simulation, the tool applied in this study, is rather popular in where socio-economical human behaviors or ecological fate of animals in their niche are to be predicted, the incidence of on-farm produce contamination which are thought to be sporadic has never been simulated using this tool. The agents in PPMCS including crop, animal as a source of fecal contamination, and fly as a vector spreading the fecal contamination are given their intrinsic behaviors that are set to be executed at certain probability. Once all these agents are on-set following the intrinsic behavioral rules, consequences as the sum of all the behaviors in the system can be monitored real-time. When fecal contamination of preharvest produce was simulated in PPMCS as numbers of animals, flies, and initially contaminated plants change, the number of animals intruding cropping area affected most on the number of contaminated plants at harvest. For further application, the behaviors and variables of the agents are adjustable depending on user's own scenario of interest. This feature allows PPMCS to be utilized in where different simulating conditions are tested.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 1993.06a
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• pp.1041-1043
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• 1993

Fuzzy logic based Control Theory has gained much interest in the industrial world, thanks to its ability to formalize and solve in a very natural way many problems that are very difficult to quantify at an analytical level. This paper shows a solution for treating membership function inside hardware circuits. The proposed hardware structure optimizes the memoried size by using particular form of the vectorial representation. The process of memorizing fuzzy sets, i.e. their membership function, has always been one of the more problematic issues for the hardware implementation, due to the quite large memory space that is needed. To simplify such an implementation, it is commonly [1,2,8,9,10,11] used to limit the membership functions either to those having triangular or trapezoidal shape, or pre-definite shape. These kinds of functions are able to cover a large spectrum of applications with a limited usage of memory, since they can be memorized by specifying very few parameters ( ight, base, critical points, etc.). This however results in a loss of computational power due to computation on the medium points. A solution to this problem is obtained by discretizing the universe of discourse U, i.e. by fixing a finite number of points and memorizing the value of the membership functions on such points [3,10,14,15]. Such a solution provides a satisfying computational speed, a very high precision of definitions and gives the users the opportunity to choose membership functions of any shape. However, a significant memory waste can as well be registered. It is indeed possible that for each of the given fuzzy sets many elements of the universe of discourse have a membership value equal to zero. It has also been noticed that almost in all cases common points among fuzzy sets, i.e. points with non null membership values are very few. More specifically, in many applications, for each element u of U, there exists at most three fuzzy sets for which the membership value is ot null [3,5,6,7,12,13]. Our proposal is based on such hypotheses. Moreover, we use a technique that even though it does not restrict the shapes of membership functions, it reduces strongly the computational time for the membership values and optimizes the function memorization. In figure 1 it is represented a term set whose characteristics are common for fuzzy controllers and to which we will refer in the following. The above term set has a universe of discourse with 128 elements (so to have a good resolution), 8 fuzzy sets that describe the term set, 32 levels of discretization for the membership values. Clearly, the number of bits necessary for the given specifications are 5 for 32 truth levels, 3 for 8 membership functions and 7 for 128 levels of resolution. The memory depth is given by the dimension of the universe of the discourse (128 in our case) and it will be represented by the memory rows. The length of a world of memory is defined by: Length = nem (dm(m)＋dm(fm) Where: fm is the maximum number of non null values in every element of the universe of the discourse, dm(m) is the dimension of the values of the membership function m, dm(fm) is the dimension of the word to represent the index of the highest membership function. In our case then Length=24. The memory dimension is therefore 128*24 bits. If we had chosen to memorize all values of the membership functions we would have needed to memorize on each memory row the membership value of each element. Fuzzy sets word dimension is 8*5 bits. Therefore, the dimension of the memory would have been 128*40 bits. Coherently with our hypothesis, in fig. 1 each element of universe of the discourse has a non null membership value on at most three fuzzy sets. Focusing on the elements 32,64,96 of the universe of discourse, they will be memorized as follows: The computation of the rule weights is done by comparing those bits that represent the index of the membership function, with the word of the program memor . The output bus of the Program Memory (μCOD), is given as input a comparator (Combinatory Net). If the index is equal to the bus value then one of the non null weight derives from the rule and it is produced as output, otherwise the output is zero (fig. 2). It is clear, that the memory dimension of the antecedent is in this way reduced since only non null values are memorized. Moreover, the time performance of the system is equivalent to the performance of a system using vectorial memorization of all weights. The dimensioning of the word is influenced by some parameters of the input variable. The most important parameter is the maximum number membership functions (nfm) having a non null value in each element of the universe of discourse. From our study in the field of fuzzy system, we see that typically nfm 3 and there are at most 16 membership function. At any rate, such a value can be increased up to the physical dimensional limit of the antecedent memory. A less important role n the optimization process of the word dimension is played by the number of membership functions defined for each linguistic term. The table below shows the request word dimension as a function of such parameters and compares our proposed method with the method of vectorial memorization[10]. Summing up, the characteristics of our method are: Users are not restricted to membership functions with specific shapes. The number of the fuzzy sets and the resolution of the vertical axis have a very small influence in increasing memory space. Weight computations are done by combinatorial network and therefore the time performance of the system is equivalent to the one of the vectorial method. The number of non null membership values on any element of the universe of discourse is limited. Such a constraint is usually non very restrictive since many controllers obtain a good precision with only three non null weights. The method here briefly described has been adopted by our group in the design of an optimized version of the coprocessor described in [10].

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.407-428
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• 1991

The eastern coastal area having variability of climate is located within Taebaek mountain range and the east coast of Korea. It is therefore ease to cause the wind damages in paddy field during rice growing season. The wind damages to rice plant in this area were mainly caused by the Fohn wind (dry and hot wind) blowing over the Taebaek mountain range and the cold humid wind from the coast. The dry wind cause such as the white head, broken leaves, cut-leaves, dried leaves, shattering of grain, glume discolouration and lodging, On the other hand the cold humid wind derived from Ootsuku air mass in summer cause such symptom as the poor rice growth, degeneration of rachis brenches and poor ripening. To minimize the wind damages and utilize as a preparatory data for wind injury of rice in future, several experiments such as the selection of wind resistant variety to wind damage, determination of optimum transplanting date, improvement of fertilizer application methods, improvement of soils and effect of wind break net were carried out for 8 years from 1982 to 1989 in the eastern coastal area. The results obtained are summarized as follows. 1. According to available statisical data from Korean meteorological services (1954-1989) it is apperent that cold humid winds frequently cause damage to rice fields from August 10th to September 10th, it is therefore advisable to plan rice cultivation in such a way that the heading date should not be later than August 10th. 2. During the rice production season, two winds cause severe damage to the rice fields in eastern coastal area of Korea. One is the Fohn winds blowing over the Taebaek mountain range and the other is the cold humid wind form the coast. The frequency of occurrence of each wind was 25%. 3. To avoid damage caused by typhoon winds three different varieties of rice were planted at various areas. 4. In the eastern coastal area of Korea, the optimum ripening temperature for rice was about 22.2$^{\circ}C$ and the optimum heading date wad August 10th. The optimum transplanting time for the earily maturity variety was June 10th., medium maturity variety was May 20th and that of late maturity was May 10th by means of growing days degree (GDD) from transplanting date to heading date. 5.38% of this coastal area is sandy loamy soil while 28% is high humus soil. These soil types are very poor for rice cultivation. In this coastal area, the water table is high, the drainage is poor and the water temperature is low. The low water temperature makes it difficult for urea to dissolve, as a result rice growth was delayed, and the rice plant became sterile. But over application of urea resulted in blast disease in rice plants. It is therefore advise that Ammonium sulphate is used in this area instead of urea. 6. The low temperature of the soil inhibits activities of microorganism for phosphorus utilization so the rice plant could not easily absorb the phosphorus in the soil. Therefore phosphorus should be applied in splits from transplanting to panicle initiation rather than based application. 7. Wind damage was severe in the sandy loamy soil as compared to clay soils. With the application of silicate. compost and soil from mointain area. the sand loamy soil was improved for rice grain colour and ripening. 8. The use of wind break nets created a mocro-climate such as increased air. soil and water temperature as well as the reduction of wind velocity by 30%. This hastened rice growth, reduced white head and glume discolouration. improved rice quality and increased yield. 9. Two meter high wind break net was used around the rice experimental fields and the top of it. The material was polyethylene sheets. The optimum spacing was 0.5Cm x 0.5Cm. and that of setting up the wind break net was before panicle initiation. With this set up, the field was avoided off th cold humid wind and the Fohn. The yield in the treatment was 20% higher than the control. 10. After typhoon, paddy field was irrigated deeply and water was sprayed to reduce white head, glume discolouration, so rice yield was increased because of increasing ripening ratio and 1, 000 grain weight.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.4557-4563
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to suggest the criteria to public welfare service support for improving life quality of the haenyeo (female divers) through analyzing public welfare services and desires of the haenyeo in Jeju, Busan, and Tongyeong. Accordingly, research period was set from May 11 to June 21, 2010. The haenyeo in each region of Jeju, Yeongdo-gu (Busan), Tongyeong-si were selected as subjects. Recording of interviewing methods was used to recognize current status of public welfare. We analyzed by comparing desires of the haenyeo to public welfare services by dividing them economically, medically, educationally, and culturally. As a result of researching public welfare services to the haenyeo in each region, supports for protection of diving, growing area, public welfare service for aged diving haenyeo, and medical service were conducted. Tewak protecting net, Seonjinji visiting, and welfare facilities are supported in Busan-si but there is no support in Tongyeong-si. Therefore, desires of the haenyeo to such public welfare services are as followings: First, the desires of the haenyeo in Jeju to economic supports are indicated as supports for haenyeo experience spot, diving suit, and overseas visiting. To educational supports, it is indicated as supports for identity education, diving disease prevention education, and foreign language education. To cultural supports, it is indicated as supports for installation of welfare hall and exchange visit to foreign haenyeo culture. Second, in Busan, there were desires to establish changing room and fishery sales lot and to support diving suit as for economic supports, desires to support diving disease and medical benefits as for medical supports, desires to education of diving skill as for educational supports, and desires to establish welfare hall and haenyeo museum as for cultural supports. Third, in Tongyeong where public welfare services to the haenyeo are very poor, there were desires to support diving suit and to support changing room as for economic supports, as same as in Busan, desires to support diving disease and medical benefits as for medical supports.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.153-172
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• 1990

The present paper investigates the potential value of strategic antitrust policy in an oligopolistic international market. The market is characterized by a non-cooperative Cournot-Nash equilibrium and by asymmetry in costs among firms in the world market. The model is useful for two reasons. First, it is important in the context of policy-making to examine the conditions under which it may be beneficial to relax antitrust law to enhance competitiveness. Second, the explicit derivation of the level of cost-saving required for a gain in total domestic surplus provides an empirical rule for excluding industries that do not satisfy the requirements for a socially beneficial antitrust exemption. Results of the analysis include a criterion that tells how the cost-saving and concentration effects of a merger offset each other. The criterion is derived from fairly general assumptions on demand functions and is simple enough to be applied as a part of the merger guidelines. Another interesting policy implication of our analysis is that promoting mergers would not be a beneficial strategy in a net importing industry where cost-saving opportunities are thin. Cost-saving domestic mergers are more likely to increase national welfare in exporting industries. The best candidate industries for application of strategic antitrust policy are those with the following characteristics: (i) a large potential for efficiency enhancement; (ii) high market concentration at the world but not the domestic level; (iii) a high ratio of exports to imports. Recently, many policymakers and economists in Korea have also come to believe that the appropriate antitrust policy in an era of increased foreign competition may actually be to encourage rather than to prohibit domestic mergers. The Industry Development Act of 1986 and the proposed bill for Mergers and Conversions in the Financial Industry of 1990 reflect this changing perspective on antitrust policy. Antitrust laws may burden domestic firms in the sense that they have a more constrained strategy set. Expenditures to avoid antitrust attacks could also increase costs for domestic firms. But there is no clear evidence that the impact of antitrust policy is significant enough to harm the competitiveness of domestic firms. As a matter of fact, it is necessary for domestic financial institutions to become large in scale in this era of globalization. However, the absence of empirical evidence for efficiency enhancement from mergers suggests caution in the relaxation of antitrust standards.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1784-1792
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• 2007

This study set out to identify the problems with hat labels and to search for improvement measures by examining and analyzing consumers' practice of managing their hats. It also intended to provide accurate and enough information about how to keep and wash hats and thus help consumers use their hats for a long period. In an attempt to investigate how consumers wash and manage their hats, a survey was carried out to 395 individuals in their twenties and over who owned hats living in urban areas including Seoul, and were quota sampled according to age and gender. The survey period is March to April 2007. The collected data were statistically treated with the SPSS 12.0 program in terms of frequency, percentage, mean, standard error, cross tabulation, t-test, and one-way ANOVA. The findings were as followed. First, the respondents were in the average level of perceiving and practicing the washing methods of their hats. The female respondents who had more experiences with laundering than the males knew and practiced the washing methods for hats better than males. Second, compared to other clothing items, hat wearers were more likely to pay careful attention to their hats by putting their hats in a laundry net and applying a laundry detergent for wool fabrics when using a washing machine or washing their hats with their own hands. And third, most of the hat wearers were aware of the importance of hat labels and showed a lower level of trust in them than other clothing items. The suppliers need to offer accurate and practical labels in order to regain the consumers' trust. Many consumers had some difficulties figuring out the size system of hats. In particular, the male consumers had a low level of perception of labels, which implies that there should be specific efforts to educate them about general labels.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.317-325
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• 2011

This study was conducted to examine the effect of supplemental lighting on the growth and yield of hydroponically grown sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum L. cv. sprit) under low levels of natural light in winter. The plants were treated with natural light only (control), 3-hour supplemental lighting before sunrise, after sunrise and after sunset with high pressure sodium (HPS, 400W). As the result of these three treatments, the supplemental lighting promoted photosynthesis in the low light intensity condition and particularly photosynthesis was more active right after sun rise in the morning, 1.5-$3.0{\mu}molCO_2{\cdot}m^{-2}{\cdot}s^{-1}$ comparing to those of supplemental lighting after sunset, 0.5-$1.5{\mu}molCO_2{\cdot}m^{-2}{\cdot}s^{-1}$. Transpiration rate and stomatal conductance sharply increased with supplemental lighting after sunrise then they decreased again after turning the lights off. Stomatal size was observed $32.2{\mu}m^2$ after supplemental lighting, whereas the size of the natural light was almost closed at $7.7{\mu}m^2$. The average plant height of sweet papper cv. spirit was 185 cm before sunrise, 188 cm after sunrise and 208 cm after sunset with supplemental lighting for 3hours while the control was 171 cm. With supplemental lighting a better number of fruit set per plant was measured 4.3 before and after sunrise, 3.7 after sunset but 2.6 in the control. Interestingly, there were no significant differences in the sugar content ($^{\circ}Brix$) degree between treatment of supplemental lighting, whereas slight differences between seasons were seen. The marketable fruit yield of sweet pepper (cv. spirit) was $116.0kg{\cdot}ha$ with supplemental lighting, whereas the control (natural light only) was $75.8kg{\cdot}ha$. Despite of spending electricity and depreciation cost, the economic analysis showed net income with supplemental lighting after sunrise was 51% higher than control treatment in cv. spirit.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.719-746
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• 2014

This study attempts to estimate the value of the water quality improvement by deriving the equilibrium price of the water pollutant emission permit for the imaginary water pollutant emission trading market. It is reasonable to say that there is already an implicit social agreement for the unit value of water pollutant, when the government set the Total Water Pollutant Loading System for the major river basin as a part of the Comprehensive Measures for Water Management, particularly for the Nakdong River Basin. Therefore, we can derive the unit value of water pollutant emission, which is already implied in the pollution allowance for each city or county by the Total Water Pollutant Loading System. Once estimated, it will be useful to the economic assessment of the water quality related projects. An imaginary water pollutant emission trading system for the Nakdong River Basin, where Total Water Pollutant Loading System is already effective, is constructed for the estimation of the equilibrium price of water pollutant permit. By estimating marginal abatement cost curve or each city or county, we can compute the equilibrium price of the permit and then it is regarded as the economic value of the water pollutant. The marginal net benefit function results from the relationship between the emission and the benefit, and then the equilibrium price of permit comes from constructing the excess demand function of the permit by using the total allowable permit of the local government entity. The equilibrium price of the permit would be estimated to be $1,409.3won/kg{\cdot}BOD$. This is within reasonable boundary compared for the permit price compared to foreign example. This permit price would be applied to calculate for the economic value of the water quality pollutants, and also be expected to use directly for the B/C analysis of the business involved with water quality change.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.131-138
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• 1988

Collection of organisms for the fisheries resources community were obtained with a set net during 8 months between May, 1985 and May, 1986 on the coast of Pukchon, Cheju Island, Korea. Most of organisms, representing 36 species, were less than 20cm $(93\%)$ in length, and 130g $(91\%)$ in weight. The four most abundant species were jack mackerel, Trachurus japonicus ; squid, Todarodes pacificus : damsel fish, Chromis notatus : and rabbit fish, Siganus fuscescens, which comprised about $83\% in number and about $73\%$ of the total catch. The diversity index of the number of species and information indices for individual and catch were the highest in October and the lowest in Septemer, indicating a close relationship with the change between the species number and catch at that time. A cluster analysis of 17 species was illustrated from the similarity matrix. All of the 17 species were grouped at the 0.2 similarity level. Three groups were present at 0.60 level, whereas species in other groups were sporadic in occurrence.