• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.475-489
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• 2010

In order to verify the enhancement of ozone and carbon monoxide (CO) during springtime in East Asia, we investigated weather conditions and data from remote sensors, air quality models, and air quality monitors. These include the geopotential height archived from the final (FNL) meteorological field, the potential vorticity and the wind velocity simulated by the Meteorological Mesoscale Model 5 (MM5), the back trajectory estimated by the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model, the total column amount of ozone and the aerosol index retrieved from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), the total column density of CO retrieved from the Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT), and the concentration of ozone and CO simulated by the Model for Ozone and Related Chemical Tracers (MOZART). In particular, the total column density of CO, which mightoriginate from the combustion of fossil fuels and the burning of biomass in China, increased in East Asia during spring 2000. In addition, the enhancement of total column amounts of ozone and CO appeared to be associated with both the upper cut-off low near 500 hPa and the frontogenesis of a surface cyclone during a weak Asian dust event. At the same time, high concentrations of ozone and CO on the Earth's surface were shown at the Seoul air quality monitoring site, located at the surface frontogenesis in Korea. It was clear that the ozone was invaded by the downward stretched vortex anomalies, which included the ozone-rich airflow, during movement and development of the cut-off low, and then there was the catalytic photochemical reaction of ozone precursors on the Earth's surface during the day. In addition, air pollutants such as CO and aerosol were tracked along both the cyclone vortex and the strong westerly as shown at the back trajectory in Seoul and Busan, respectively. Consequently, the maxima of ozone and CO between the two areas showed up differently because of the time lag between those gases, including their catalytic photochemical reactions together with the invasion from the upper troposphere, as well as the path of their transport from China during the weak Asian dust event.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.55-68
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• 1994

We have reviewed three different techniques to estimate molecular cloud mass, and discussed the uncertainties involved. We found that determination of the most important parameter, the $^{13}CO$ abundance, is not very sensitive to the real LTE conditions, and that any possible error in deriving LTE column density may not introduce an error in the total gas column density, as far as the visual extinction is established for the object cloud. The virial technique always endows the largest mass estimate as there are several uncertainties, even if the cloud is in virial equilibrium. The strong indicator of the cloud perturbation is the centroid velocity dispersion. The mass using CO luminosity is based on the empirical law, but weakly dependent on the virial assumption, thus it still gives a larger mass estimate. The mass discrepancy is likely to be inevitable, and a factor of two or three difference between mass estimates could easily be attributed to the uncertainties mentioned above. The LTE mass estimate may be the most reliable one if we use the relation visual extinction and $^{13}CO$ column density of the object cloud, and the intercept is included.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.71-94
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• 1991

With the 14 m radio telescope at DRAO and the 4 m at Nagoya University, we have made detailed maps of $^{12}CO$ and $^{13}CO$ emissions from two Barnard objects B133 and B134 in the $J=1{\rightarrow}O$ rotational transition lines. Usual LTE analyses of the CO observations led us to determine the distribution of column densities over an entire area encompassing both globules. Total gas masses estimated from the column density map are $90\;M_{\odot}$ and $20\;M_{\odot}$ for B133 and B134, respectively. The radial velocity of B133 is red shifted with respect to B134 by $0.8\;km\;s^{-1}$, which is too lagre to bind the two clouds as a binary system. We have shown that the usual stability analysis based on the simplified version of virial theorem with the second time-derivative of the moment of inertia term $\ddot{I}$ being ignored could mislead us in determining whether a given cloud eventually collapses or not. The lull version of the scalar virial theorem with the $\ddot{I}$ term is shown to be useful in following up the time-dependent variations of the cloud size R and its streaming velocity $\dot{R}$ as functions of time. Results of our stability analysis suggest that B133 will eventually collapse in $(2{\sim}4){\times}10^6$ years.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 1994

The 4.8GHz formaldehyde absorption line in the dark clouds in M17 and NGC 2024 regions has been mapped. In both nebulae, we detected two $H_2CO$ line components. In M17, the 24km $S^{-1}$ cloud is closely associated with the HII region located in front of the radio continuum source, and the 19km $S^{-1}$ cloud is associated with the visual dark clouds with a larger extent which are closer to us. The 19km $S^{-1}$ cloud has a mass motion approaching to the HII region. In both clouds, a velocity gradient from the north-east to the south-west directions is observed. The linewidth has no variation indicating no collapsing motion. In NGC 2024, the 9km $S^{-1}$ feature is extended along the dark bar in front of the bright nebula and a weak second component at 13km $S^{-1}$ is confined to the immediate vicinity of the radio source. Indications are that the 9km $S^{-1}$ cloud is physically associated with the dark bar and the 13km $S^{-1}$ cloud is located behind the radio source. The angular extent, the column density, and the total mass of the clouds are derived. The radial velocities of other molecular lines observed in these clouds are compared.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.233-242
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• 2004

The $HCO^+$ 1-0 transition line was observed toward the Sgr B2 region in our Galactic center. We found that there exist two large-scale velocity structures of $v_{lsr}\;{\sim}50\;and\;{\sim}100kms^{-1}$, which are thought to interact with each other. A new gas clump 'OF28 Cloud'('Odenwald & Fazio FIR 38' Cloud), showing different chemical and kinematical properties with the Sgr B2(M) cloud, was found in the $50kms^{-1}$ gas component. Toward the core of this component, we derive the $HCO^+$ total column density, $N(HCO^+)=(2-5){\times}10^{14}cm^{-2}$ and the mass $M=1{\times}10^6M_{\odot}$, by estimating its size, ${\sim}15pc$, from the half-power width of this component. We also found that there is a highly turbulent component in this region in the velocity range of about $100kms^{-1}$. The column density of this component is $N(HCO^+)=1{\times}10^{13}cm^{-2}$. The $HCO^+$ in this region may form effectively by the reaction between $C^+$ and OH, which are the elements whose abundances increase rapidly in shocked region.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.880-890
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• 2020

Objective: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are known to be at risk of osteoporosis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between thoracic vertebral bone density measured on chest CT (D_Thorax) and clinical variables, including survival, in patients with COPD. Materials and Methods: A total of 322 patients with COPD were selected from the Korean Obstructive Lung Disease (KOLD) cohort. D_Thorax was measured by averaging the CT values of three consecutive vertebral bodies at the level of the left main coronary artery with a round region of interest as large as possible within the anterior column of each vertebral body using an in-house software. Associations between D_Thorax and clinical variables, including survival, pulmonary function test (PFT) results, and CT densitometry, were evaluated. Results: The median follow-up time was 7.3 years (range: 0.1-12.4 years). Fifty-six patients (17.4%) died. D_Thorax differed significantly between the different Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease stages. D_Thorax correlated positively with body mass index (BMI), some PFT results, and the six-minute walk distance, and correlated negatively with the emphysema index (EI) (all p < 0.05). In the univariate Cox analysis, older age (hazard ratio [HR], 3.617; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.119-6.173, p < 0.001), lower BMI (HR, 3.589; 95% CI, 2.122-6.071, p < 0.001), lower forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV₁) (HR, 2.975; 95% CI, 1.682-5.262, p < 0.001), lower diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide corrected with hemoglobin (DL_CO) (HR, 4.595; 95% CI, 2.665-7.924, p < 0.001), higher EI (HR, 3.722; 95% CI, 2.192-6.319, p < 0.001), presence of vertebral fractures (HR, 2.062; 95% CI, 1.154-3.683, p = 0.015), and lower D_Thorax (HR, 2.773; 95% CI, 1.620-4.746, p < 0.001) were significantly associated with all-cause mortality and lung-related mortality. In the multivariate Cox analysis, lower D_Thorax (HR, 1.957; 95% CI, 1.075-3.563, p = 0.028) along with older age, lower BMI, lower FEV₁, and lower DL_CO were independent predictors of all-cause mortality. Conclusion: The thoracic vertebral bone density measured on chest CT demonstrated significant associations with the patients' mortality and clinical variables of disease severity in the COPD patients included in KOLD cohort.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.271-282
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• 2003

We present results of a $H^{13}CN$ J=1-0 mapping survey of molecular clouds toward the Galactic Center (GC) region of $-1.6^{\circ}{\le}{\iota}{\le}2^{\circ}$ and $-0.23^{\circ}{\le}b{\le}0.30^{\circ}$ with 2' grid resolution. The $H^{13}CN$ emissions show similar distribution and velocity structures to those of the $H^{12}CN$ emissions, but are found to better trace the feature saturated with $H^{12}CN$ (1-0). The bright components among multi-components of $H^{12}CN$ line profiles usually appear in the $H^{13}CN$ line while most of the dynamically forbidden, weak $H^{12}CN$ components are seldom detected in the $H^{13}CN$ line. We also present results of other complementary observations in $^{12}CO$ (J=1-0) and $^{13}CO$ (J=1-0) lines to estimate physical quantities of the GC clouds, such as fractional abundance of HCN isotopes and mass of the GC cloud complexes. We confirm that the GC has very rich chemistry. The overall fractional abundance of $H^{12}CN$ and $H^{13}CN$ relative to $H_2$ in the GC region is found to be significantly higher than those of any other regions, such as star forming region and dark cloud. Especially cloud complexes nearer to the GC tend to have various higher abundance of HCN. Total mass of the HCN molecular clouds within $[{\iota}]{\le}6^{\circ}$ is estimated to be ${\~}2 {\times}10^7\;M_{\bigodot}$ using the abundances of HCN isotopes, which is fairly consistent with previous other estimates. Masses of four main complexes in the GC range from a few $10^5$ to ${\~}10^7\;M_{\bigodot}$ All the HCN spectra with multi-components for the four main cloud complexes were investigated to compare the line widths of the complexes. The largest mode (45 km $s^{-1}$) of the FWHM distributions among the complexes is in the Clump 2. The value of the mode tends to be smaller at the farther complexes from the GC.