• Computers and Concrete
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.293-307
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• 2005

The development and the main features of an expert system for modeling the requirements of durable concrete in chemical exposure, called the Durable Concrete Advisor for Chemical Exposure (DCACE), are described. The system was developed to help improve the quality of concrete exposed to chemical environment by minimizing mistakes and deficiencies in selecting concrete constituents. Using Kappa-PC expert system shell, an object-oriented model was developed where the rule-based reasoning operates on or across objects. The American Concrete Institute manual of concrete practice was chosen as the main source of knowledge. Other textual sources were also consulted for knowledge acquisition. The major objectives of the research were acquisition and formalization of the relevant knowledge and building an expert system for making durable concrete for chemical exposure regarding sulfate attack, acid attack, seawater attack and carbonation. Similar to most expert systems, this system has explanation facilities, can be incrementally expanded, and has an easy to understand knowledge base. The performance of the system is demonstrated by an example session. The system is user-friendly and can be used as an educational tool.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• 제21권5호
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• pp.400-407
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• 2011

The suggested method of previous Son's study dichotomized subjective response data to modeling noise exposure-response. The method used maximum liklihood estimation instead of least square estimation and the noise exposure-response curve of the study was logistic regression analysis result. The method was originated to modeling community response rate such as %HA or %A. It can be useful when the subjective response was investigated based on predicted noise level. It is difficult to measure the single source emitting noise such as railway because various traffic noise sources combined in our life. The suggested method was adopted to model in this study and railway noise-exposure response curves were modeled because the noise level of this area was predicted data. The data of this study was used by previous Ko's paper but he dealt the area as combined noise area and divided the data by dominant noise source. But this study used all data of this area because the annoyance response to railway noise was higher than other noise according to the result of correlation analysis. The trend of the %HA and %A prediction model to train noise of this study is almost same as the model based on measured noise of previous Lim's study although the investigated areas and methods were different.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• 제21권4호
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• pp.516-523
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• 2016

In this paper, coupling factors are calculated based on numerical analysis in order to assess various non-uniform low-frequency magnetic field exposure situations. Two types of non-uniform magnetic field sources are considered; circular coil and parallel wires with balanced currents. For each magnetic field source, source current values are determined so that reference magnetic field magnitude can be measured at the specified point on the human model. Various exposure situations are investigated by changing parameters such as the distance between source and human model, radius of circular coil, and the gap between parallel wires. For equivalent human models, prolate spheroid model and simplified human model from IEC 62311 standard are used. The calculated coupling factor values are compared with those obtained by 2D uniform disk human model, and the dependence of coupling factor on the choice of equivalent human model is analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Medical Association
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• 제61권12호
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• pp.749-755
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• 2018

Particulate matter is an air pollutant emitted from both natural and anthropogenic sources, and its adverse health effects have been well documented in time-series analyses and cohort studies. The effect size of particulate matter exposure-a roughly 0.5% increase in mortality for each $10{\mu}g/m^3$ increment of short-term exposure to particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ${\leq}10{\mu}m$ and approximately a 10% increase for each $10{\mu}g/m^3$ increment of long-term exposure to particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ${\leq}2.5{\mu}m$-is small compared to other risk factors, but the exposure is involuntary and affects the entire population, which makes particulate matter pollution an important public health issue. The World Health Organization and Korean government have both established guidelines for particulate matter concentrations, but the Korean guideline is less stringent than that of the World Health Organization. The annual mean concentration of particulate matter in Korea is decreasing, but the trend seems to be slowing. In addition to policy efforts to reduce particulate matter emission, personal approaches such as the use of face masks and air purifiers have been recommended. Personal approaches may not solve the fundamental problem, but can provide temporary mitigation until efforts to reduce emission make progress.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• 제29권4호
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• pp.241-250
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• 2011

The safety of human exposure to an ever-increasing number and diversity of electromagnetic field (EMF) sources both at work and at home has clearly become a public health issue. To date many $in$ $vivo$ and $in$ $vitro$ studies revealed that EMF exposure can alter cellular metabolism, endocrine function, immune activity, reproductive function, and fetal development in animal system. The major parameters found to be altered in cells or individuals following EMF exposure include an increase of free radicals, DNA damage, cancer risk, developmental defect, and reproductive dysfunctions. Epidemiological studies reported EMF can increase life-threatening illnesses such as leukemia, brain cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, clinical depression, suicide, and Alzheimer's disease has been identified. These effects of EMF exposure differ according to duration of exposure, frequency of waves, and strength (energy) of EMF. In the present review, we briefly introduced the physical properties of EMF and summarized the effect of EMF on human and wildlife animals according to types of EMF, duration of exposure at cellular and organism levels.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• 제64권7호
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• pp.341-346
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• 2021

Background: The results differ among published studies regarding exposure to meconium and the risk of developing autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Purpose: The present study pooled all of the epidemiologic studies retrieved from broader databases on the association between meconium exposure and risk of developing ASD in children. Methods: The Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases were searched without language restrictions for articles published between their inception to February 20, 2020, using relevant keywords. The pooled odds ratios (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated as random-effect estimates of the associations among studies. A subgroup analysis was conducted to explore any potential sources of heterogeneity among studies. Results: The pooled estimate of OR reported a weakly significant association between meconium exposure and ASD development in children (OR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.03-1.24). There was low heterogeneity among the articles reporting risk for ASD among children (I²=19.3%; P=0.259). The results of subgroup analysis based on meconium exposure showed a significant association between a meconium-stained neonate and ASD development (OR, 1.18; 95% CI, 1.11-1.24). Couclusion: Meconium exposure was weakly associated with an increased risk of ASD. However, more evidence based on large prospective cohort studies is required to provide conclusive evidence about whether meconium exposure is associated with an increased risk of ASD development.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• 제30권
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• pp.10.1-10.14
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• 2015

Recent cohort studies have relied on exposure prediction models to estimate individual-level air pollution concentrations because individual air pollution measurements are not available for cohort locations. For such prediction models, geographic variables related to pollution sources are important inputs. We demonstrated the computation process of geographic variables mostly recorded in 2010 at regulatory air pollution monitoring sites in South Korea. On the basis of previous studies, we finalized a list of 313 geographic variables related to air pollution sources in eight categories including traffic, demographic characteristics, land use, transportation facilities, physical geography, emissions, vegetation, and altitude. We then obtained data from different sources such as the Statistics Geographic Information Service and Korean Transport Database. After integrating all available data to a single database by matching coordinate systems and converting non-spatial data to spatial data, we computed geographic variables at 294 regulatory monitoring sites in South Korea. The data integration and variable computation were performed by using ArcGIS version 10.2 (ESRI Inc., Redlands, CA, USA). For traffic, we computed the distances to the nearest roads and the sums of road lengths within different sizes of circular buffers. In addition, we calculated the numbers of residents, households, housing buildings, companies, and employees within the buffers. The percentages of areas for different types of land use compared to total areas were calculated within the buffers. For transportation facilities and physical geography, we computed the distances to the closest public transportation depots and the boundary lines. The vegetation index and altitude were estimated at a given location by using satellite data. The summary statistics of geographic variables in Seoul across monitoring sites showed different patterns between urban background and urban roadside sites. This study provided practical knowledge on the computation process of geographic variables in South Korea, which will improve air pollution prediction models and contribute to subsequent health analyses.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권4호
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• pp.1153-1164
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• 2024

In recent years, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have been used to search for lost or stolen radioactive sources to avoid radiation exposure for operators. To achieve autonomous localization of radioactive sources, the UGVs must have the ability to automatically determine the next radiation measurement location instead of following a predefined path. Also, the radiation field of radioactive sources has to be reconstructed or inverted utilizing discrete measurements to obtain the radiation intensity distribution in the area of interest. In this study, we propose an effective source localization framework and method, in which UGVs are able to autonomously explore in the radiation area to determine the location of radioactive sources through an iterative process: path planning, radiation field reconstruction and estimation of source location. In the search process, the next radiation measurement point of the UGVs is fully predicted by the design path planning algorithm. After obtaining the measurement points and their radiation measurements, the radiation field of radioactive sources is reconstructed by the Gaussian process regression (GPR) model based on machine learning method. Based on the reconstructed radiation field, the locations of radioactive sources can be determined by the peak analysis method. The proposed method is verified through extensive simulation experiments, and the real source localization experiment on a Cs-137 point source shows that the proposed method can accurately locate the radioactive source with an error of approximately 0.30 m. The experimental results reveal the important practicality of our proposed method for source autonomous localization tasks.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• 제15권4호
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• pp.311-317
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate Rn concentration and annual radiation exposure level in the basement and first floor. The Rn Cup monitors were placed in different environments such as shopping stage, office building, Apartment, Hospital, house in Seoul from Match 1996 to April 1997 and CR-39 films were collected every two months. The mean radon concentration in the basement of house($88.6\;Bq/m^3$) showed the highest level among the areas, while radon concentration on the first floor of house($50.5\;Bq/m^3$) showed the higher than other areas. The annual radiation exposure dose that person on the floor / in the basement of differential place in the seoul can be exposed during living was estimated from 24.11 to 87.64 mRem/yr. This radiation dose is significantly lower than 130mRem maximum radiation dosage from the radon nuclide prescribed by the ICRP, with respect to the overall average exposure of the working adult. this study indicated that possible radon sources on the first floor / in the basement areas are radon intrusion from soil gas, construction materials, or ground water leaking. Further study is needed to quantitatively assess major contributions of radon-222 and health effect to radon exposure.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• 제24권3호
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• pp.256-262
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• 2014

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify the major volatile organic compounds generated during extrusion work with nylon 66 resin and evaluate causes of discomfort among extrusion workers. Methods: A thermal decomposition experiment using nylon 66 resin collected at a worksite was conducted in the laboratory. Based on hazards identified through the thermal decomposition experiment, the exposure levels of the workers were evaluated. Results: The major decomposition products were formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, aniline, cyclopentanone and diphenyl amine. These materials were identical to those sampled in the extrusion booth. The sources of the annoying smells, about which the workers had complained, were formaldehyde, aniline, diphenyl amine, and other hazards in the vapor and fine particles produced by the extrusion work. Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and aniline were detected from air samples among workers involved in extrusion work. However, the concentration levels were much lower than Korean occupational exposure limits. The average concentration levels of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and aniline were 0.0120 ppm, 0.0036 ppm and 0.0006 ppm, respectively. Conclusions: The extrusion process at around $300^{\circ}C$ thermally decomposes the nylon 66 resin, emitting formaldehyde, aniline, and other hazards, which might have made workers uncomfortable due to their smells. The workers exposure levels to volatile organic compounds were far lower than Korean occupational exposure limits. However, since formaldehyde is a human carcinogen and acetaldehyde and aniline are also confirmed animal carcinogens, it is recommended that exposure levels should be maintained at a minimum level.