• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
• /
• v.49 no.5
• /
• pp.569-576
• /
• 2007

receptor(MC4R) gene and carcass traits was examined in randomly selected commercial pigs. A porcine MC4R gene was genotyped for Asp298Asn(nt. 892G>A) by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism(PCR-RFLP). A total of three genotypes, A/A, A/G, and G/G, were found with 28.8, 22.8, and 48.4% frequencies, respectively. In the whole population, pigs containing 892A/- showed significantly higher marbling score than those of homozygotes G/G(P<0.05). Two homozygotes, A/A and G/G showed lower in meat color score but higher in water holding capacity than those of heterozygotes A/G(P<0.01). However, the carcass weight of the barrows containing wild type -/G was significantly higher(i.e. more than 2.5kg) than those of homozygotes A/A(P<0.05). The effects of each genotype on carcass traits in the gilts were similar to those of the whole population, but not in barrows, suggesting an unknown sex-related effect on carcass traits. This study suggested that the genotype MC4R A/- could improve the meat quality in the commercial pig production. However, since the genetic polymorphism of MC4R gene differentially affected the carcass traits in sex-related manner, therefore, both parameters, the sex and genotype, should be considered for marker-assisted selection in commercial pig production.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
• /
• v.42 no.7 s.337
• /
• pp.27-34
• /
• 2005

Iterative detection (ID) has proven to be a near-optimal solution for concatenated Finite State Machines (FSMs) with interleavers over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. When perfect channel state information (CSI) is not available at the receiver, an adaptive ID (AID) scheme is required to deal with the unknown, and possibly time-varying parameters. The basic building block for ID or AID is the soft-input soft-output (SISO) or adaptive SISO (A-SISO) module. In this paper, Reduced State SISO (RS-SISO) algorithms have been applied for complexity reduction of the A-SISO module. We show that serially concatenated CPM (SCCPM) with AID has turbo-like performance over fading ISI channels and also RS-A-SISO systems have large iteration gains. Various design options for RS-A-SISO algorithms are evaluated. Recently developed density evolution technique is used to analyze RS-A-SISO algorithms. We show that density evolution technique that is usually used for AWGN systems is also a good analysis tool for RS-A-SISO systems over frequency-selective fading channels.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.139-148
• /
• 2000

In this paper, the interaction of oblique incident waves with a bottom-mounted and fluid-filled flexible membrane structure is investigated in the frame of linear hydro-elastic theory. The static shape of a membrane structure containing the fluid of a specific density is initially unknown and must be calculated before the hydrodynamic analysis. To solve hydrodynamic problem, the fluid domain is divided into the inner and outer region. The inner solution based on discrete membrane dynamic model and simple-source distribution over the entire fluid boundaries is matched to the outer solution ba~ed on an eigenfunction expansion method. The numerical results were compared to a series of Ohyama's experimental results. The measured reflection and tran¬smission coefficients reasonably follow the trend of predicted values. Using the computer program developed, the performance of a bottom-mounted and fluid-filled flexible membrane strocture is tested with various system parameters (membrane shape, internal pressure, density ratio) and wave characteristics (wave frequencies, incident wave angle). It is found that a bottom-mounted and fluid-filled flexible membrane structure can be an effel;tive wave barrier if properly designed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.43-58
• /
• 2014

As the use of trading systems has increased rapidly, many researchers have become interested in developing effective stock market prediction models using artificial intelligence techniques. Stock market prediction involves multifaceted interactions between market-controlling factors and unknown random processes. A successful stock prediction model achieves the most accurate result from minimum input data with the least complex model. In this research, we develop a combination model of ${\pi}$-fuzzy logic and support vector machine (SVM) models, using a genetic algorithm to optimize the parameters of the SVM and ${\pi}$-fuzzy functions, as well as feature subset selection to improve the performance of stock market prediction. To evaluate the performance of our proposed model, we compare the performance of our model to other comparative models, including the logistic regression, multiple discriminant analysis, classification and regression tree, artificial neural network, SVM, and fuzzy SVM models, with the same data. The results show that our model outperforms all other comparative models in prediction accuracy as well as return on investment.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.277-286
• /
• 2002

Most of the problems in dealing with the tunnel construction are the uncertainties and complexities of the stress conditions and rock strengths in ahead of the tunnel excavation. The limitations on the investigation technology, inaccessibility of borehole test in mountain area and public hatred also restrict our knowledge on the geologic conditions on the mountainous tunneling area. Nevertheless an extensive and superior geophysical exploration data is possibly acquired deep within the mountain area, with up to the tunnel locations in the case of alternative design or turn-key base projects. An appealing claim in the use of artificial neural networks (ANN) is that they give a more trustworthy results on our data based on identifying relevant input variables such as a little geotechnical information and biological learning principles. In this study, error back-propagation algorithm that is one of the teaching techniques of ANN is applied to presupposition on Rock Mass Ratings (RMR) for unknown tunnel area. In order to verify the applicability of this model, a 4km railway tunnel's field data are verified and used as input parameters for the prediction of RMR, with the learned pattern by error back propagation logics. ANN is one of basic methods in solving the geotechnical uncertainties and helpful in solving the problems with data consistency, but needs some modification on the technical problems and we hope our study to be developed in the future design work.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.330-339
• /
• 2012

Background : Hypertension is treated with both lifestyle modification and pharmacotherapy. The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC-7), published in 2003, provides a streamlined management approach to hypertension for the primary care physician. The JNC-7 is the gold standard also in Korea. According to the JNC-7, special therapeutic considerations are recommended for high-risk individuals with compelling indications. The presence of compelling indications in any given patient should be considered when selecting specific pharmacotherapy to treat hypertension. However, in patients with compelling indications, it is unknown that hepatotoxicity is caused by Calcium Channel Blocker (CCB), one of 1st anti-hypertensive drugs. Now, the CCB is the most used 1st anti-hypertensive drug in Korea Therefore, we evaluated the changes in blood liver function parameters (ALT, AST, Total bilirubin, serum albumin) for the study group. Methods : We randomly collected and retrospectively analyzed Electronic Medical Record data (n=28,788) of patients, and who took calcium channel blockers(non-dihydropyridines; diltiazem, verapamil, dihydropyridines; amlodipine, barnidipine, benidipine, clinidipine, efonidipine, felodipine, isradipine, lacidipine, lercanidipine, nicardipine, nifedipine, nimodipine), with having liver function tests (LFTs) from July 1st 2009 to June 30th 2010 at the Seoul National University Hospital in Korea. Control groups are two antihypertensive agents: RAS blockade (ARB; candesartan, irbesartan, losartan, olmesartan, telmisartan, valsartan, ACE-I; cilazapril, enalapril, fosinopril, imidapril, perindopril, ramipril) and, Diuretics (loop; furosemide, torsemide, thiazide; hydrochlorothiazide[HCTZ], indapamide). Patients not having LFT results at these three standard points of time(baseline, during, medication, and after finishing medication) were excluded. The collected data were analyzed by using the SPSS (Version12.0) and Microsoft Excel (Version2007). Results : 711 patients who were treated CCB (297), RAS blockade (232) or Diuretics (182) monotherapy were selected for the study. In selected patients, liver damage degree(changes of each LFTs value) was higher in diuretics group than other groups, followed by RAS blockade and CCB. In diuretics group's was loop-diuretics group was higher than thiazide-diuretics group. In CCB group, Nondihydropyridine-CCB's damage degree was higher than Dihydropyrine-CCB's that. Conclusions : Despite the limitations due to the retrospective study, among patients with abnormal LFTs, the use of CCBs led to a less liver damage than other 1st anti-hypertensive agents. It can be recommended CCBs as one of the initial treatments of hypertension in patients with liver disease.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.33 no.5
• /
• pp.395-405
• /
• 2014

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate 1) somatotopic arrangement of the second and third fingers in SI area 2) difference of neural activation in the SI area produced by stimulation with different frequencies 3) correlation between the intensity of tactile perception by different stimulus intensity and the level of brain activation measurable by means of fMRI. Background: Somatosensory cortex can obtain the information of environmental stimuli about "where" (e.g., on the left palm), "what" (e.g., a book or a dog), and "how" (e.g., scrub gently or scrub roughly) to organism. However, compared to visual sense, the neural mechanism underlying the processing of specific electrotactile stimulus is still unknown. Method: 10 right-handed subjects participated in this study. Non-painful electrotactile stimuli were delivered to two different finger tips of right hand. Functional brain images were collected from 3.0T MRI using the single-shot EPI method. The scanning parameters were as follows: TR and TE were 3000, 35ms, respectively, flip angle 60, FOV $24{\times}24cm$, matrix size $64{\times}64$, slice thickness 4mm (no gap). SPM5 was used to analyze the fMRI data. Results: Significant activations produced by the stimulation were found in the SI, SII, the subcentral gyrus, the precentral gyrus, and the insula. In all participants, statistically significant activation was observed in the contralateral SI area and the bilateral SII areas by the stimulation on the fingers but ipsilaterally dominant. The SI area representing the second finger generally located in the more lateral and inferior side than that of the third finger across all the subjects. But no difference in brain area was found for the stimulation of the fingers by different frequencies. And two typical patterns were observed on the relationship between the perceived psychological intensity and the amount of voxels in the primary sensory cortex during the stimulation. Conclusion: It was possible to discriminate the representation sites in the SI by electrotactile stimulation of digit2 and digit3. But we could not find the differences of the brain areas according to different stimulation frequencies from 3 to 300Hz. Application: The results of the study can provide a deeper understanding of somatosensory cortex and offer the information for tactile display for blinds.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
• /
• 2000.11a
• /
• pp.21-22
• /
• 2000

Expressed sequence tags (EFTs) are the partial segments of cDNA produced from 5 or 3 single-pass sequencing of cDNA clones, error-prone and generated in highly redundant sets. Advancement and expansion of Genomics made biologists to generate huge amount of ESTs from variety of organisms-human, microorganisms as well as plants, and the cumulated number of ESTs is over 5.3 million, As the EST data being accumulate more rapidly, it becomes bigger that the needs of the EST analysis tools for extraction of biological meaning from EST data. Among the several needs of EST analyses, the extraction of protein sequence or functional motifs from ESTs are important for the identification of their function in vivo. To accomplish that purpose the precise and accurate identification of the region where the coding sequences (CDSs) is a crucial problem to solve primarily, and it will be helpful to extract and detect of genuine CD5s and protein motifs from EST collections. Although several public tools are available for EST analysis, there is not any one to accomplish the object. Furthermore, they are not targeted to the plant ESTs but human or microorganism. Thus, to correspond the urgent needs of collaborators deals with plant ESTs and to establish the analysis system to be used as general-purpose public software we constructed the pipelined-EST analysis system by integration of public software components. The software we used are as follows - Phred/Cross-match for the quality control and vector screening, NCBI Blast for the similarity searching, ICATools for the EST clustering, Phrap for EST contig assembly, and BLOCKS/Prosite for protein motif searching. The sample data set used for the construction and verification of this system was 1,386 ESTs from human intrathymic T-cells that verified using UniGene and Nr database of NCBI. The approach for the extraction of CDSs from sample data set was carried out by comparison between sample data and protein sequences/motif database, determining matched protein sequences/motifs that agree with our defined parameters, and extracting the regions that shows similarities. In recent future, in addition to these components, it is supposed to be also integrated into our system and served that the software for the peptide mass spectrometry fingerprint analysis, one of the proteomics fields. This pipelined-EST analysis system will extend our knowledge on the plant ESTs and proteins by identification of unknown-genes.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
• /
• v.60 no.2
• /
• pp.125-129
• /
• 2017

Lumbar degenerative kyphosis (LDK) is a subgroup of the flat-back syndrome and is most commonly caused by unique life styles, such as a prolonged crouched posture during agricultural work and performing activities of daily living on the floor. Unfortunately, LDK has been used as a byword for degenerative sagittal imbalance, and this sometimes causes confusion. The aim of this review was to evaluate the exact territory of LDK, and to introduce another appropriate term for degenerative sagittal deformity. Unlike what its name suggests, LDK does not only include sagittal balance disorder of the lumbar spine and kyphosis, but also sagittal balance disorder of the whole spine and little lordosis of the lumbar spine. Moreover, this disease is closely related to the occupation of female farmers and an outdated Asian life style. These reasons necessitate a change in the nomenclature of this disorder to prevent misunderstanding. We suggest the name "primary degenerative sagittal imbalance" (PDSI), which encompasses degenerative sagittal misalignments of unknown origin in the whole spine in older-age patients, and is associated with back muscle wasting. LDK may be regarded as a subgroup of PDSI related to an occupation in agriculture. Conservative treatments such as exercise and physiotherapy are recommended as first-line treatments for patients with PDSI, and surgical treatment is considered only if conservative treatments failed. The measurement of spinopelvic parameters for sagittal balance is important prior to deformity corrective surgery. LDK can be considered a subtype of PDSI that is more likely to occur in female farmers, and hence the use of LDK as a global term for all degenerative sagittal imbalance disorders is better avoided. To avoid confusion, we recommend PDSI as a newer, more accurate diagnostic term instead of LDK.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.14 no.9
• /
• pp.5435-5440
• /
• 2013

Background: Recent estimates suggest that in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) the burden of cancer in terms of DALYs lost is amongst the highest in South East Asia. As such, increasingly cancer is becoming an important public health concern in the country. Lao PDR however has no population-based cancer registry and only one hospital-based registry. Cancer treatment within the country is extremely limited. Patients who can, may travel to neighboring countries for treatment, but little information about this is available in the country. The aim of this study was to estimate some of the otherwise largely unknown parameters of the cancer burden in Lao PDR. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective, descriptive study based on the records of 847 Lao cancer cases treated with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy at Srinagarind Hospital, Khon Kaen University, in Thailand between 1988 and 2010. Results: The annual rate of registration of Lao cancer cases fluctuated, but showed an increasing trend. Most cancers were diagnosed by histology (65.2%), and a combination of endoscopy and radiology (15.6%). In most cases (70.2%) the stage of cancer at diagnosis could not be determined. In those whose stage could be identified, 54.0% were at the final stage (Stage IV). Among males, the commonest cancer sites were the liver (16.1%), blood (12.3%) and nasopharynx (10.6%). Those in female patients were the cervix (22.2%), breast (14.6%) and blood (8.1%). Conclusions: This study indicates that despite some fluctuations, the number of Lao cancer patients presenting at Srinagarind Hospital, Khon Kaen, gradually increased between 1988 and 2010. The unfavorable pattern of late-stage cancer diagnosis among male and female patients suggests a need for cancer control interventions and the establishment of cancer registration and treatment facilities within Lao PDR.