• Title/Summary/Keyword: environment control

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Evaluation of $^{14}C$ Behavior Characteristic in Reactor Coolant from Korean PWR NPP's (국내 경수로형 원자로 냉각재 중의 $^{14}C$ 거동 특성 평가)

  • Kang, Duk-Won;Yang, Yang-Hee;Park, Kyong-Rok
    • Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.1-7
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    • 2009
  • This study has been focused on determining the chemical composition of $^{14}C$ - in terms of both organic and inorganic $^{14}C$ contents - in reactor coolant from 3 different PWR's reactor type. The purpose was to evaluate the characteristic of $^{14}C$ that can serve as a basis for reliable estimation of the environmental release at domestic PWR sites. $^{14}C$ is the most important nuclide in the inventory, since it contributes one of the main dose contributors in future release scenarios. The reason for this is its high mobility in the environment, biological availability and long half-life(5730yr). More recent studies - where a more detailed investigation of organic $^{14}C$ species believed to be formed in the coolant under reducing conditions have been made - show that the organic compounds not only are limited to hydrocarbons and CO. Possible organic compounds formed including formaldehyde, formic acid and acetic acid, etc. Under oxidizing conditions shows the oxidized carbon forms, possibly mainly carbon dioxide and bicarbonate forms. Measurements of organic and inorganic $^{14}C$ in various water systems were also performed. The $^{14}C$ inventory in the reactor water was found to be 3.1 GBq/kg in PWR of which less than 10% was in inorganic form. Generally, the $^{14}C$ activity in the water was divided equally between the gas- and water- phase. Even though organic $^{14}C$ compound shows that dominant species during the reactor operation, But during the releasing of $^{14}C$ from the plant stack, chemical forms of $^{14}C$ shows the different composition due to the operation conditions such as temperature, pH, volume control tank venting and shut down chemistry.

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Protective Effect of Kefir Grain Against Dextran Sodium Sulfate-Induced Colitis in Rats (Dextran Sodium Sulfate로 대장염을 유도한 흰쥐에서 캐피어 원말의 장보호 효과)

  • Ko, Young-Eun;Kim, Mi-Kyoung;Cho, Han-Young;Lee, In-Young;Ly, Sun-Yung
    • Journal of Nutrition and Health
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    • v.41 no.5
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    • pp.391-401
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    • 2008
  • Probiotics have emerged as a potential treatment modality for numerous gastrointestinal disorders, including IBD. However, few probiotics have undergone appropriate preclinical screening in vivo. Kefir is considered a probiotic, benefiting the host through its effects in the intestinal tract. Despite numerous studies examining the action of probiotics on the host organism, few have analyzed the effects on intestinal environment. We assessed the protective effect of kefir for three weeks before inducing colitis with 2% dextran sodium sulfate for five days. The DSS loads were similar in all DSS treatment group. The results of the experiment are as follows. Food intake and FER of experimental groups were not significantly different each other, but water consumption tended to be higher in all DSS treatment groups as compared with the normal control. And visual inspection of feces revealed mild diarrhea in rat given 2% DSS. The anti-inflammatory activity of kefir was determined by myeloperoxidase activity during the DSS treatment, and there was no significant difference in any group. The levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) as a colonic lipid peroxidation were significantly lower in the kefir intake groups than in rats treated with 2% DSS alone. The DNA % in tail and tail moment values as a DNA damage level of the blood lymphocytes in kefir intake groups tended to be lower than 2% DSS treatment alone, especially tail lengths were significantly diminished. According to the colonic histopathological assay, there were a severe inflammation of lamina propria and submucosa and mild edema in mucosa and sub mucosa in DSS alone treated group. We found a slight regenerative change in kefir treatment groups. In our experiments, this means that ulcerative colitis related to oxidative injury might be prevented by kefir as a probiotic. Further studies of the potential benefits of kefir as a probiotic in inflammatory condition are encouraged.

Interaction Between TCP and MAC-layer to Improve TCP Flow Performance over WLANs (유무선랜 환경에서 TCP Flow의 성능향상을 위한 MAC 계층과 TCP 계층의 연동기법)

  • Kim, Jae-Hoon;Chung, Kwang-Sue
    • Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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    • v.35 no.2
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    • pp.99-111
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    • 2008
  • In recent years, the needs for WLANs(Wireless Local Area Networks) technology which can access to Internet anywhere have been dramatically increased particularly in SOHO(Small Office Home Office) and Hot Spot. However, unlike wired networks, there are some unique characteristics of wireless networks. These characteristics include the burst packet losses due to unreliable wireless channel. Note that burst packet losses, which occur when the distance between the wireless station and the AP(Access Point) increase or when obstacles move temporarily between the station and AP, are very frequent in 802.11 networks. Conversely, due to burst packet losses, the performance of 802.11 networks are not always as sufficient as the current application require, particularly when they use TCP at the transport layer. The high packet loss rate over wireless links can trigger unnecessary execution of TCP congestion control algorithm, resulting in performance degradation. In order to overcome the limitations of WLANs environment, MAC-layer LDA(Loss Differentiation Algorithm)has been proposed. MAC-layer LDA prevents TCP's timeout by increasing CRD(Consecutive Retry Duration) higher than burst packet loss duration. However, in the wireless channel with high packet loss rate, MAC-layer LDA does not work well because of two reason: (a) If the CRD is lower than burst packet loss duration due to the limited increase of retry limit, end-to-end performance is degraded. (b) energy of mobile device and bandwidth utilization in the wireless link are wasted unnecessarily by Reducing the drainage speed of the network buffer due to the increase of CRD. In this paper, we propose a new retransmission module based on Cross-layer approach, called BLD(Burst Loss Detection) module, to solve the limitation of previous link layer retransmission schemes. BLD module's algorithm is retransmission mechanism at IEEE 802.11 networks and performs retransmission based on the interaction between retransmission mechanisms of the MAC layer and TCP. From the simulation by using ns-2(Network Simulator), we could see more improved TCP throughput and energy efficiency with the proposed scheme than previous mechanisms.

Distributional characteristics of risky phytoplankton species at inner and outer sites around Incheon seaport of Korea (인천항 내, 외에서 식물플랑크톤 위해종의 분포특성)

  • Kwon, Oh Youn;Kang, Jung-Hoon
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.15 no.11
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    • pp.6958-6965
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    • 2014
  • This study examined the occurring pattern of potential risky species and the related abiotic factors for port-specific environmental management considering the control of ballast water-induced foreign species at Incheon seaport. From a total of 62 species observed during the study, 13 red-tide and 7 toxic phytoplankton, normally occurring species in Korean waters, occurred from the seasonal investigation at the inner and outer sites of the Incheon seaport from 2007 to 2009. The number of potential risky phytoplankton was relatively high at the outer site of the port during summer and winter. Red-tide species, such as Skeletonema spp., Thalassiosira nordenskioldii, and Paralia sulcata, dominated the total standing crops at the inner site (avg. 72.4%) and outer site (avg. 77.6%) in spring and summer, being positively correlated with the concentrations of total suspended solids (TSS) and pH (p<0.05). In summer, the red-tide species (Skeletonema spp.) and toxic species (Alexandrium catenella, A. tamarense, Dinophysis acuminata and Pseudo-nitzschia spp.) co-dominated (avg. 74.2%) at the inner site, while Skeletonema spp. and P. sulcata predominated (avg. 67.2%) at the outer site. During the study periods, the toxic species were significantly and positively correlated with the chemical oxygen demand (COD), dissolved inorganic nitrogen, silicate and phosphate (p < 0.05). The chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentration of phytoplankton at the outer site ranged from 1.49 to $5.46{\mu}g/L$ on average, which was 3-5 times higher than that at the inner site in spring, summer and autumn, whereas there was no difference in the concentration between inner (avg. $0.94{\mu}g/L$) and outer (avg. $0.95{\mu}g/L$) sites in winter. In summary, diverse red-tide species dominated and a relatively high chl-a concentration existed at the outer site, whereas a relatively high number of toxic species and low chl-a concentration was observed at the inner site in summer. The potential risky species can outbreak in association with the concentration of nutrients, COD and TSS, suggesting that distinctive management of potential risky species is needed considering the environmental characteristics of Incheon seaport.

Effects of early commercial milk supplement on the mucosal morphology, bacterial community and bacterial metabolites in jejunum of the pre- and post-weaning piglets

  • Hu, Ping;Niu, Qingyan;Zhu, Yizhi;Shi, Chao;Wang, Jing;Zhu, Weiyun
    • Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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    • v.33 no.3
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    • pp.480-489
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    • 2020
  • Objective: Sow milk (SM) may not be able to meet the piglet's nutritional needs in late lactation. Hence, this study was conducted to investigate the effects of early commercial milk (CM) supplement on the mucosal morphology, bacterial community and bacterial metabolites in jejunum of piglets. Methods: Ten litters of newborn piglets ([Yorkshire×Landrace]×Duroc) were randomly divided into 2 groups of 5 litters. The piglets in the control group were suckled by the sow (SM), while the piglets in the treatment group (CM supplement) were supplemented with a CM supplement along with suckling from d 4 to d 28 of age. Results: No significant differences were observed about jejunal mucosal morphology on d 28 and d 35 between two groups. On d 28, the activity of lactase in the jejunum was significantly decreased in the CM group, while the activity of sucrase and the ratio of maltase to lactase were significantly increased (p<0.05). On d 35, the activity of maltase in the jejunum was significantly increased in the CM group (p<0.05), and maltase to lactase ratio tended to increase in the CM group (p = 0.065). In addition, piglets in the CM group had a higher abundance of Clostridium XI, Tuicibater, and Moraxella in the jejunum on d 28, while the abundance of Lactobacillus was significantly increased on d 35 (p<0.05). Conclusion: The early CM supplement improved the maturation of the jejunum to some extent by enhancing the maltase and sucrase activities. Moreover, the early CM supplement could help maintain the homeostasis of internal environment in jejunum by increasing the microbial-derived metabolites.

Exhaled Nitric Oxide Concentration in Children with Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis : Association with Atopy and Bronchial Hyperresponsiveness (천식 및 알레르기성 비염 환아에서의 호기 일산화질소 농도 : 아토피 및 기도과민성과의 연관성)

  • Nah, Kyu Min;Park, Yang;Kang, Eun Kyeong;Kang, Hee;Koh, Young Yull;Lee, Sun Wha;Paek, Domyung
    • Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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    • v.46 no.3
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    • pp.284-290
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    • 2003
  • Purpose : A new airway inflammatory marker, exhaled nitric oxide(ENO) has been reported to correlate with bronchial hyperresponsiveness(BHR) and atopy. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship of ENO with BHR or atopy in patients with asthma and with allergic rhinitis. Methods : The subjects consisted of 55 children with asthma, 17 with allergic rhinitis, and 14 healthy controls. The asthma group was subdivided into the atopic asthma group(n=37) and the nonatopic asthma group(n=18) and the allergic rhinitis group into BHR group(n=7) and non-BHR group(n=10). All were investigated with spirometry and measurements of ENO concentration. The correlations between ENO concentration and both methacholine $PC_{20}$(provocative concentration causing a 20% decrease in forced expiratory volume in one second) and the number of allergen skin test positivity were analyzed. Results : ENO concentrations of both asthma and allergic rhinitis groups were significantly greater than that of control(P<0.01). ENO concentration of atopic asthma was significantly greater than that of nonatopic asthma(P<0.01). In allergic rhinitis, ENO concentration did not differ according to the presence or absence of BHR(P=0.50). ENO concentrations correlated significantly with the number of skin test positivity(r=0.32, P=0.02) or methacholine $PC_{20}$(r=-0.38, P<0.01) in asthma group, but not in the allergic rhinitis group(r=0.42, P=0.09; r=-0.06, P=0.83). Conclusion : In asthma patients, some pathogenetic mechanisms associated with atopy and BHR seem to influence ENO concentration. In allergic rhinitis patients, some factors other than BHR may be important in determining ENO concentration.

An Analysis on the Current Status of Daily Outdoor Play Parents Recognize (Focused on Gyeonggi-do) (부모가 인식하고 있는 일상적 바깥놀이 실태 분석 (경기도를 중심으로))

  • Kim, Yong-Sook;Yoon, Hee-Bong;Yoo, Ji-Eun
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.17 no.12
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    • pp.461-472
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    • 2017
  • The purpose of this study is to analyze the current status and condition of children's playgrounds in K which parents recognize as in Gyeonggi-do and provide basic data for the qualitative environment for daily outdoor play of young Children. To do so, a survey of 269 parents living in Gyeonggi-do was conducted and reconstructed based on the advanced research related to outdoor play. Also it was evaluated and revised after consultation with 3 children education specialists. The repossessed questionaries were frequency-analyzed with SPSS 20.0 program. The result of the analysis on outdoor playgrounds is in the following. First of all, it was analyzed that parents required 1 or 2 hours for their children to play outdoors in a type of "forest playgrounds." Moreover, they said that it was really important for the children to feel "interesting and funny" during the outdoor play, and they recognized that the play would be helpful for the children's socialization. However, they felt that a risk factor of the outdoor play was "a vehicle risk in streets." Secondly, the study suggested that there were outdoor playgrounds around parents' houses, and a type of the outdoor play was "a playground installed in the apartment complex." Furthermore, most of the parents weren't satisfied with the outdoor play because the apartment neglected the management of the playgrounds, and there were no playing facilities that were good enough to derive children's curiosity and adventurous spirit. The result also showed that most of the children played outdoors with "their mothers," and they participated in indoor activities, especially playing a game or watching TV rather than outdoor activities after attending a children educational institute. Lastly, when it comes to areas of outdoor play to be improved, it was necessary to "expand playgrounds that children can use for each season," build "safe playgrounds" for a type of the outdoor play," provide "playing spaces" for a spatial type, and "control vehicles around the playgrounds and deal with dangerous things" to prevent safety accidents. The result can expand the understanding of outdoor play for Young Children and offer discussions about the relevant organizations and studies.

A Hybrid Forecasting Framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Artificial Neural Network (사례기반 추론기법과 인공신경망을 이용한 서비스 수요예측 프레임워크)

  • Hwang, Yousub
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.43-57
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    • 2012
  • To enhance the competitive advantage in a constantly changing business environment, an enterprise management must make the right decision in many business activities based on both internal and external information. Thus, providing accurate information plays a prominent role in management's decision making. Intuitively, historical data can provide a feasible estimate through the forecasting models. Therefore, if the service department can estimate the service quantity for the next period, the service department can then effectively control the inventory of service related resources such as human, parts, and other facilities. In addition, the production department can make load map for improving its product quality. Therefore, obtaining an accurate service forecast most likely appears to be critical to manufacturing companies. Numerous investigations addressing this problem have generally employed statistical methods, such as regression or autoregressive and moving average simulation. However, these methods are only efficient for data with are seasonal or cyclical. If the data are influenced by the special characteristics of product, they are not feasible. In our research, we propose a forecasting framework that predicts service demand of manufacturing organization by combining Case-based reasoning (CBR) and leveraging an unsupervised artificial neural network based clustering analysis (i.e., Self-Organizing Maps; SOM). We believe that this is one of the first attempts at applying unsupervised artificial neural network-based machine-learning techniques in the service forecasting domain. Our proposed approach has several appealing features : (1) We applied CBR and SOM in a new forecasting domain such as service demand forecasting. (2) We proposed our combined approach between CBR and SOM in order to overcome limitations of traditional statistical forecasting methods and We have developed a service forecasting tool based on the proposed approach using an unsupervised artificial neural network and Case-based reasoning. In this research, we conducted an empirical study on a real digital TV manufacturer (i.e., Company A). In addition, we have empirically evaluated the proposed approach and tool using real sales and service related data from digital TV manufacturer. In our empirical experiments, we intend to explore the performance of our proposed service forecasting framework when compared to the performances predicted by other two service forecasting methods; one is traditional CBR based forecasting model and the other is the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. We ran each service forecasting 144 times; each time, input data were randomly sampled for each service forecasting framework. To evaluate accuracy of forecasting results, we used Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) as primary performance measure in our experiments. We conducted one-way ANOVA test with the 144 measurements of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches. For example, the F-ratio of MAPE for three different service forecasting approaches is 67.25 and the p-value is 0.000. This means that the difference between the MAPE of the three different service forecasting approaches is significant at the level of 0.000. Since there is a significant difference among the different service forecasting approaches, we conducted Tukey's HSD post hoc test to determine exactly which means of MAPE are significantly different from which other ones. In terms of MAPE, Tukey's HSD post hoc test grouped the three different service forecasting approaches into three different subsets in the following order: our proposed approach > traditional CBR-based service forecasting approach > the existing forecasting approach used by Company A. Consequently, our empirical experiments show that our proposed approach outperformed the traditional CBR based forecasting model and the existing service forecasting model used by Company A. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides some research background information such as summary of CBR and SOM. Section 3 presents a hybrid service forecasting framework based on Case-based Reasoning and Self-Organizing Maps, while the empirical evaluation results are summarized in Section 4. Conclusion and future research directions are finally discussed in Section 5.

Cafeteria Users' Preference for an Indoor Green-wall in a University Dining Hall (실내 벽면녹화 공간 이용자 행태연구 - 대학구내식당 녹화 칸막이 선호를 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Hae-Ryung;Ahn, Tong-Mahn
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.43 no.6
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    • pp.62-72
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    • 2015
  • The objective of this research is to investigate the different aspects in which users positively identify with indoor green walls and the influences that it has on usage behaviors. Under the hypothesis that public space users prefer locations with green walls, the effect on their behavior was observed. After installing indoor green walls, behavioral observations and questionnaires were carried out to analyze green wall preferences. The observation experiment was carried out for a total of 8 days in order to see what influences the preferences for of indoor green walls had on usage behaviors and compare a control group with an experimental group that experienced a green wall. The usage time data were put into an SPSS statistics program and used to run an independent sample t-test. The questionnaire was carried out for two days from March 1st to 2nd 2014 after the observation was completed, and was done by 224 users of the two areas. The results from the experiment are as follows. First, comparisons between the total usage time of seats adjoined to partitions in both the green walled area and the partitioned area showed that there was no preference for indoor green walls. Second, the results appeared to show a higher percentage of women users in the green walled area, compared to the original partitioned area. Third, it showed that partitions and plants did not have any influence on seat choices. Fourth, the questionnaire showed preferences for indoor green walls. Out of the 94 people who sat in the partitioned area, 11.7% answered that they wanted to sit in the green walled area, they couldn't due to the lack of available seats. Furthermore, out of the 130 people who sat in the green walled area, 24.6% said they chose the seat because of their preference for the green wall. Although 64.3% of users of the two areas said that they would choose the green walled area if under the same circumstances, the behavior observation did not reflect this.

Human Health Risk, Environmental and Economic Assessment Based on Multimedia Fugacity Model for Determination of Best Available Technology (BAT) for VOC Reduction in Industrial Complex (산업단지 VOC 저감 최적가용기법(BAT) 선정을 위한 다매체 거동모델 기반 인체위해성·환경성·경제성 평가)

  • Kim, Yelin;Rhee, Gahee;Heo, Sungku;Nam, Kijeon;Li, Qian;Yoo, ChangKyoo
    • Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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    • v.58 no.3
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    • pp.325-345
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    • 2020
  • Determination of Best available technology (BAT) was suggested to reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a petrochemical industrial complex, by conducting human health risk, environmental, and economic assessment based on multimedia fugacity model. Fate and distribution of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) was predicted by the multimedia fugacity model, which represent VOCs emitted from the industrial complex in U-city. Media-integrated human health risk assessment and sensitivity analysis were conducted to predict the human health risk of BTEX and identify the critical variable which has adverse effects on human health. Besides, the environmental and economic assessment was conducted to determine the BAT for VOCs reduction. It is concluded that BTEX highly remained in soil media (60%, 61%, 64% and 63%), and xylene has remained as the highest proportion of BTEX in each environment media. From the candidates of BAT, the absorption was excluded due to its high human health risk. Moreover, it is identified that the half-life and exposure coefficient of each exposure route are highly correlated with human health risk by sensitivity analysis. In last, considering environmental and economic assessment, the regenerative thermal oxidation, the regenerative catalytic oxidation, the bio-filtration, the UV oxidation, and the activated carbon adsorption were determined as BAT for reducing VOCs in the petrochemical industrial complex. The suggested BAT determination methodology based on the media-integrated approach can contribute to the application of BAT into the workplace to efficiently manage the discharge facilities and operate an integrated environmental management system.