• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.368-375
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• 2013

Failure of small bore piping welds is a recurring problem at nuclear power plants. And the socket weld cracking in small bore piping has caused unplanned plant shutdowns for repair and high economic impact on the plants. Consequently, early crack detection, including the detection of manufacturing defects, is of the utmost importance. Until now, the surface inspection methods has been applied according to ASME Section XI requirements. But the ultrasonic inspection as a volumetric method is also applying to enforce the inspection requirement. However, the conventional manual ultrasonic inspection techniques are used to detect service induced fatigue cracks. And there was uncertainty on manual ultrasonic inspection because of limited access to the welds and difficulties with contact between the ultrasonic probe and the OD(outer diameter) surface of small bore piping. In this study, phased array ultrasonic inspection technique is applied to increase inspection speed and reliability. To achieve this object, the 3.5 MHz phased array ultrasonic transducer are designed and fabricated. The manually encoded scanner was also developed to enhance contact conditions and maintain constant signal quality. Additionally inspection system is configured and inspection procedure is developed.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.1-13
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• 2011

Recently, a number of OBU(On Board Unit) have being spreaded since ETCS(Electronic Toll Collection System)using DSRC(Dedicated Short Range Communication) was installed in the tollgate of the whole country. Many R&D and commercialization related to ITS service using DSRC and OBU mentioned above are ongoing such as traffic information collection and provision and a signal control, and public traffic information and management and so on. Especially, there are many researches conducted(conducting) on traffic information collection and provision using communication between OBU and RSE. However, Standards for both DSRC application and traffic collection and provision are not established clearly yet. So we would like to suggest a method of traffic information collection and provision without changing of standard related to DSRC. This method is to put the traffic messages into the existing Action primitive for ETC, which is described on "Technical criterion IV of basic traffic information exchange" which was notified by Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs. Proposed standard application method is applied both to RSE and OBE. It is the same system which ETCS used in highway, currently. We confirmed the efficiency and performance of the system through conducting a variety of driving test using 4 vehicles in real road condition. Result of the real road test shows the effectiveness and validity of this method with about 97% communication success rate and based on studying the cases of 3% communication failure, we can analyse the expected problems in traffic information collection and provision using this method.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.12-19
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• 2008

Detection of a number plate consists of three stages; division of a number plate, extraction of each character from the plate, recognition of the characters. Among of these three states, division stage of a number plate is the most important part and also the most time-consuming state. This paper suggests an effective region extraction method of a number plate for various images obtained from unmanned inspection systems of illegal parking violation, especially when we have to consider the diverse surrounding environments of roads. Our approaching method detects each region by investigating the characteristics in changes of brightness and intensity between the background part and character part, and the characteristics on character parts such as the sizes, heights, widths, and distance in between two characters. The method also divides a number plate into different types of the plate. This research can solve the number plate region detection failure problems caused by plate edge damages not only for Korean domestic number plates but also for new European style number plates. The method also reduces the time consumption by processing the detection in real-time, therefore, it can be used as a practical solution.

• The Korea Journal of Herbology
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.71-78
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• 2016

Objectives : Diabetic nephropathy is one of the most common chronic complications of diabetes and a leading cause of end-stage renal failure in the world. Mesangial cell proliferation is known as the major pathologic features such as glomerulosclerosis and renal fibrosis. Wiryeongtang (WRT) is a well-known traditional herbal formula as therapeutic agents for chronic edema and dysuresia of renal homeostasis. In the present study, we investigated whether WRT inhibits high glucose (HG)-induced renal dysfunction by TGF-β/Smads signal regulation in cultured mesangial cells.Methods : Inhibitory effect of WRT (10-50 ㎍/ml) on HG-stimulated mesangial cells proliferation and dysfunction were evaluated by [³H]-thymidine incorporation, Western blot, and RT-qPCR.Results : WRT significantly decreased HG-accelerated thymidine incorporation in human renal mesangial cell in a dose-dependent levels. WRT induced down-regulation of cyclins/CDKs and up-regulation of CDK inhibitor, p21waf1/cip1 and p27kip1 expression. In addition, HG enhanced expression of dysfunction biomarker such as collagen IV and CTGF, which was markedly attenuated by WRT. WRT decreased TGF-β1 and Smad-2/Smad-4 expression, whereas increased Smad-7 expression under HG. Furthermore, WRT inhibited HG-induced inflammatory factors level such as ICAM-1 and MCP-1 as well as NF-κB p65 nuclear translocation and intracellular ROS production.Conclusions : These results suggested that WRT may alleviate mesangial proliferation and inflammation possibly involved in renal fibrotic process, further diabetic nephropathy through disturbing TGF-β1/Smad signaling and NF-κB/ROS pathway. Thus, WRT might prove to be effective in the treatment of renal dysfunction leading to diabetic nephropathy.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.40 no.9
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• pp.835-842
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• 2016

In Korea, urban railway cars are typically maintained using the strategy of predictive maintenance. In an effort to overcome the limitations of the existing strategy, there is increased interest in adopting the condition-based maintenance strategy. In this study, a novel method is proposed to detect faults in the solenoid valves of the braking system in urban railway vehicles. We determined the key component (i.e., solenoid valve) that leads to braking system faults through the analysis of failure modes, effects, and criticality. Then, an equivalent circuit model was developed with the compensation of the temperature effect on solenoid coils. Finally, we presented how to detect faults with the equivalent circuit model and current signal measurements. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, we conducted a case study using real solenoid valves taken from urban railway vehicles. In summary, it was shown that the proposed method can be effective to detect faults in solenoid valves. We anticipate the outcome from this study can help secure the safety and reliability of urban railway vehicles.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.18B no.3
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• pp.117-130
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to produce a better way to detect crossroad accidents, which involves an efficient method to produce background images in consideration of object movement and preserve/demonstrate the candidate accident region. One of the prior studies proposed an employment of traffic signal interval within crossroad to detect accidents on crossroad, but it may cause a failure to detect unwanted accidents if any object is covered on an accident site. This study adopted inverse perspective mapping to control the scale of object, and proposed different ways such as producing robust background images enough to resist surrounding noise, generating candidate accident regions through information on object movement, and by using edge information to preserve and delete the candidate accident region. In order to measure the performance of proposed algorithm, a variety of traffic images were saved and used for experiment (e.g. recorded images on rush hours via DVR installed on crossroad, different accident images recorded in day and night rainy days, and recorded images including surrounding noise of lighting and shades). As a result, it was found that there were all 20 experiment cases of accident detected and actual effective rate of accident detection amounted to 76.9% on average. In addition, the image processing rate ranged from 10~14 frame/sec depending on the area of detection region. Thus, it is concluded that there will be no problem in real-time image processing.

• Korean Journal of Animal Reproduction
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.173-182
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• 2002

The mechanisms underlying of the visual assessment and resulting in optimum embryonic development following in vitro maturation, fertilization, and culture are unclear, It was known that in vitro produced embryos show more frequent occurrence of fragmentation, which resulted in poor developmental potential and decreased implantation rate. The objective of this study was to investigate the apoptotic rates in bovine blastocyst derived from in vitro fertilization (IVF) and nuclear transfer (NT). In addition, the expression levels of Bcl-2 and Bax gene were investigated in the blastocyst to confirm their potential roles in the regulation of apoptosis during preimplantation embryonic development. Analysis of apoptosis was carried out by using terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase mediate dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) method. The levels of Bcl-2 and Bax gene in the blastocyst derived from IVF and NT were determined by RT-PCR. The proportion of TUNEL positive signal in blastocyst derived from NT was significantly higher than that in blastocyst derived from IVF (p<0.001). Bcl-2 expression level of blastocyst derived from IVF was higher than that of blstocyst derived from NT. However, high expression level of Bax was observed in the blastocyst derived from NT. These results indicates that apoptosis is more responsible for fiagmentation in bovine blastocyst derived from NT than IVF. These results suggested that the increase of developmental failure followed by NT could be caused by nuclear fragmentation as apoptosis.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.409-418
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• 2021

Conformal coating is a technology that protects PCB(Printed Circuit Board) and minimizes PCB failures. Since the defects in the coating are linked to failure of the PCB, the coating surface is examined for air bubbles to satisfy the successful conditions of the conformal coating. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for detecting problematic bubbles in high-risk groups by applying image signal processing. The algorithm consists of finding candidates for problematic bubbles and verifying candidates. Bubbles do not appear in visible light images, but can be visually distinguished from UV(Ultra Violet) light sources. In particular the center of the problematic bubble is dark in brightness and the border is high in brightness. In the paper, these brightness characteristics are called valley and mountain features, and the areas where both characteristics appear at the same time are candidates for problematic bubbles. However, it is necessary to verify candidates because there may be candidates who are not bubbles. In the candidate verification phase, we used convolutional neural network models, and ResNet performed best compared to other models. The algorithms presented in this paper showed the performance of precision 0.805, recall 0.763, and f1-score 0.767, and these results show sufficient potential for bubble test automation.

• Journal of Radiation Industry
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.325-332
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• 2018

Carotid angiography covering the aortic arch includes contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CEA), which is applied to a large region and usually employs contrast media. However, the use of contrast media can be dangerous in infants, pregnant women, and patients with chronic renal failure (CRF). Follow-up patients informed of a lesion may also want to avoid constant exposure to contrast media. We aimed to apply time-of-flight (TOF) angiography to a large region and compare its usefulness with that of CEA. Ten patients (mean age, 58 years; range, 45~75 years) who visited our hospital for magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) participated in this study. A 3.0 Tesla Achieva magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system (Philips, Netherland) and the SENSE NeuroVascular 16-channel coil were employed for both methods. Both methods were applied simultaneously to the same patient. Three TOF stacks were connected to cover the aortic arch through the circle of Willis, and CEA was applied in the same manner. For the quantitative assessment, the acquired images were used to set the regions of interest (ROIs) in the common carotid artery (CCA) bifurcation, internal carotid artery, external carotid artery, middle cerebral artery, and vertebral artery, and to obtain the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) for the soft tissues. Three radiologists and one radiological resident performed the qualitative assessment on a 5-point scale - 1 point, "very bad"; 2 points, "bad"; 3 points, "average"; 4 points, "good"; and 5 points, "very good" - with regard to 4 items: (1) sharpness, (2) distortion, (3) vein contamination, and (4) expression of peripheral vessels. For the quantitative assessment, we estimated the mean SNR and CNR in each of the 5 ROIs. In general, the mean SNR was higher in TOF angiography (166.1, 205.2, 154.39, 172.23, and 161.95) than in CEA(92.05, 95.43, 84.76, 73.69, and 88.3). Both methods had a similar mean CNR: 67.62, 106.71, 55.9, 73.74, and 63.46 for TOF angiography, and 67.82, 71.19, 60.52, 49.45, and 64.07 for CEA. In all ROIs, the mean SNR was statistically significant (p<0.05), whereas the mean CNR was insignificant (p>0.05). The mean values of TOF angiography and CEA for each item in the qualitative assessment were 4.2 and 4.28, respectively for item 1; 2.93 and 4.55, respectively, for item 2; 4.6 and 3.13, respectively, for item 3; and 2.88 and 4.65, respectively, for item 4. Therefore, TOF angiography had a higher mean for item 3, and CEA had a higher mean for items 2 and 4; there was no significant difference between the two methods for item 1. The results for item 1 were statistically insignificant (p>0.05), whereas the results for items 2~4 were statistically significant (p<0.05). Both methods have advantages and disadvantages and they complement each other. However, CEA is usually applied to a large region covering the aortic arch. Time-of-flight angiography may be useful for people such as infants, pregnant women, CRF patients, and followup patients for whom the use of contrast media can be dangerous or unnecessary, depending on the circumstance.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.781-788
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• 2021

This paper is the study of a design to eliminate the communication error that occurs between the main controller and the servo controller of the K56 ammunition-carrying armored vehicle. The K56 assists in the operation of the K-55A1 self-propelled gun by automating the supply and loading of ammunition. The CAN communication board of the ammunition carrier is a key-function product mounted inside the main controller and installed for communication with the servo controller. It was confirmed that an undefined error would occur intermittently in the existing CAN communication board, interrupting the operation of the ammunition supply system during the loading process. In this paper, in order to solve the problem, the cause of the failure is identified through analysis and a functional test of the communication signal between the main controller and the servo controller. The error was resolved by redesigning and improving the Read/Write algorithm. Finally, the proposed cause analysis and design effectiveness were verified through the CAN communication board single item test and a system equipment application test. It is expected that this study will serve as a reference for improving defense capabilities through improving the reliability of CAN communication boards and by improving the reliability of the overall electronic equipment using DPRAM.