• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.117-133
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• 2008

Objectives : Since ancient times, Koreans have applied medicinal spabaths for treatment of various diseases. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of strontium, one of the common ingredients of such baths, experimentally on acute skin barrier damage. Materials and Methods : Male hairless mice, average weight 20g, were divided into six groups. Each group consisted of five mice. The first was the normal, non-treated group. The second was the control group with acute skin barrier damage intentionally induced by TS. The third was the Ba-Sr1 group bathed in 1mg/L strontium chloride before and after inducing acute skin barrier damage by TS. The fourth was the Ba-Sr7 group bathed in 7mg/L strontium chloride before and after inducing acute skin barrier damage by TS. The fifth was the Sr1 group bathed in 1mg/L of strontium chloride only after intentionally inducing acute skin barrier damage by TS. The sixth was the Sr7 group bathed in 7mg/L of strontium chloride only after intentionally inducing acute skin barrier damage by TS. External changes of skin, skin erythema level, transepidermal water loss level, and GOT and GPT level of each group were checked immediately before and after TS, 3 hrs, 5 hrs and 24 hrs after inducing acute skin barrier damage. Then, tissue samples were made and examined for damage to epithelial cells, stratum corneum, change of mucous polysaccharide in dermis and amount of mast cells. Statistical analysis was performed by one way-ANOVA, Scheffe and Duncan for a post hoc test and pairwise comparison for comparing for difference between each time. Statistical significance was achieved if the probability was less than 5% (p<0.05) Results : 1. From skin erythema and TEWL level indicating the function of the skin barrier, we can know that it is helpful to the skin barrier to bathe in a water solution including a low concentration of strontium. 2. In the control group with acute skin barrier damage induced by TS, skin barrier damage persisted until 3-5 hrs and recovered after 5-24 hrs. Differently from the control group, in the case of taking a bath in a water solution including strontium, skin barrier damage recovered after only 3-5 hrs. Therefore, the bath with a water solution including strontium can promote recovery of the skin barrier. 3. Bathing in water solution including a higher concentration of strontium was more beneficial to recovery of skin barrier damage. 4. There was no influence on serum GOT and GPT from bathing in a water solution including strontium. Conclusions : The strontium was effective for recovery and mitigation of acute skin barrier damage induced by tape stripping. I suggest that strontium (Sr) can be used as an external treatment medicine, addedinto bath water to treat acute skin barrier damage.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.17 no.2 s.75
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• pp.227-241
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• 2005

This paper presents a practical and realistic Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) optimum design methodology for steel bridges considering the long-term effect of environmental stressors such as corrosion and heavy truck traffics on bridge reliability. The LCC functions considered in the LCC optimization consist of initial cost, expected life-cycle maintenance cost, and expected life-cycle rehabilitation costs including repair/replacement costs, loss of contents or fatality and injury losses, road user costs, and indirect socio-economic losses. For the assessment of the life-cycle rehabilitation costs, the annual probability of failure, which depends upon the prior and updated load and resistance histories, should be accounted for. For the purpose, Nowak live load model and a modified corrosion propagation model, which takes into consideration corrosion initiation, corrosion rate, and repainting effect, are adopted in this study. The proposed methodology is applied to the LCC optimum design problem of an actual steel box girder bridge with 3 continuous spans (40m+50m+40m=130m). Various sensitivity analyses are performed to investigate the effects of various design parameters and conditions on the LCC-effectiveness. From the numerical investigation, it has been observed that local corrosion environments and the volume of truck traffic significantly influence the LCC-effective optimum design of steel bridges. Thus, these conditions should be considered as crucial parameters for the optimum LCC-effective design.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.409-416
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• 2017

In this paper, we consider a framework of compressed sensing over finite fields. One measurement sample is obtained by an inner product of a row of a sensing matrix and a sparse signal vector. A recovery algorithm proposed in this study for sparse signals based probabilistic decoding is used to find a solution of compressed sensing. Until now compressed sensing theory has dealt with real-valued or complex-valued systems, but for the processing of the original real or complex signals, the loss of the information occurs from the discretization. The motivation of this work can be found in efforts to solve inverse problems for discrete signals. The framework proposed in this paper uses a parity-check matrix of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes developed in coding theory as a sensing matrix. We develop a stochastic algorithm to reconstruct sparse signals over finite field. Unlike LDPC decoding, which is published in existing coding theory, we design an iterative algorithm using probability distribution of sparse signals. Through the proposed recovery algorithm, we achieve better reconstruction performance as the size of finite fields increases. Since the sensing matrix of compressed sensing shows good performance even in the low density matrix such as the parity-check matrix, it is expected to be actively used in applications considering discrete signals.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.283-291
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• 2016

As the infrastructures and populations are the condensed in the mega city, urban flood management becomes very important due to the severe loss of lives and properties. For the more accurate calculation of runoff from the urban catchment, hourly or even minute rainfall data have been utilized. However, the time steps of the measured or forecasted data under climate change scenarios are longer than hourly, which causes the difficulty on the application. In this study, daily rainfall data was disaggregated into hourly using the stochastic method. Based on the historical hourly precipitation data, Gram Schmidt orthonormalization process and K-Nearest Neighbor Resampling (KNNR) method were applied to disaggregate daily precipitation into hourly. This method was originally developed to disaggregate yearly runoff data into monthly. Precipitation data has smaller probability density than runoff data, therefore, rainfall patterns considering the previous and next days were proposed as 7 different types. Disaggregated rainfall was resampled from the only same rainfall patterns to improve applicability. The proposed method was applied rainfall data observed at Seoul weather station where has 52 years hourly rainfall data and the disaggregated hourly data were compared to the measured data. The proposed method might be applied to disaggregate the climate change scenarios.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.70-77
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• 2009

In an RFID network consisting of a single reader and many tags, a framed and slotted ALOHA, which provides a number of slots for the tags to respond, was introduced for arbitrating a collision among tags' responses. In a framed and slotted ALOHA, the number of slots in each frame should be optimized to attain the maximal efficiency in tag cognizance. While such an optimization necessitates the knowledge about the number of tags, the reader hardly knows it. In this paper, we propose a tag cognizance scheme based on framed and slotted ALOHA, which is characterized by directly taking a Bayes action on the number of slots without estimating the number of tags separately. Specifically, a Bayes action is yielded by solving a decision problem which incorporates the prior distribution the number of tags, the observation on the number of slots in which no tag responds and the loss function reflecting the cognizance rate. Also, a Bayes action in each frame is supported by an evolution of prior distribution for the number of tags. From the simulation results, we observe that the pair of evolving prior distribution and Bayes action forms a robust scheme which attains a certain level of cognizance rate in spite of a high discrepancy between the Due and initially believed numbers of tags. Also, the proposed scheme is confirmed to be able to achieve higher cognizance completion probability than a scheme using classical estimate of the number of tags separately.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.401-417
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• 2020

As an increasing demand for rapid railway transportation, the construction of sidetrack is inevitable to operate local and express trains simultaneously. However, the current technologies for the sidetrack construction method require a long construction period by interrupting the operation of the existing subway line, as well as cause a huge economic loss. Thus, it is necessary to study the sidetrack construction method under the special situation that the subway is in operation and to analyze the risk of the existing tunnel enlargement process for the sidetrack construction. Therefore, in this paper, the Government Complex Gwacheon station on Subway Line 4 was considered as a target station for the virtual sidetrack construction and the optimal sidetrack construction plan was derived. Subsequently, the application of risk management process was carried out in the order of identifying risk, risk response planning, performing a risk analysis, risk monitoring and control for potential risk events during the construction of sidetrack under the subway operation. A total of eight potential risk events and risk mitigation methods were selected, and a risk assessment matrix was established using the five-step risk probability and impact level criteria to perform the risk assessment including residual risks. Based on the results of the risk assessment, the risk grade and the reduction effect of each risk mitigation method were confirmed.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.117-117
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• 1992

Pubilc utility industries including the electric utility industry are facing a new stream of privatization com-petition with the private sector and deregulation. The necewssity to solve now and in the future power supply and demand problems has been increasing through the sophisticated generation expansion plan(GEP) approach con-sidering not only KEPCo's supply-side resources but also outside resources such as non-utility generation(NUG) demand-side management (DSM). Under the environmental situation in the current electric utility industry a new approach is needed to acquire multiple resources competitively. This study presents the development of a modified electric generation expansion analysis system(EGEAS) model with avoided cost based on the existing EGEAS model which is a dynamic program to develope an optimal generation expansion plan for the electric utility. We are trying to find optimal GEP in Korea's case using our modified model and observe the difference for the level of reliabilities such as the reserve margin(RM) loss of load probability(LOLP) and expected unserved energy percent(EUEP) between the existing EGEAS model and our model. In addition we are trying to calculate avoided cost for NUG resources which is a criterion to evaluate herem and test possibility of connection calculation of avoided cost with GEP implementation using our modified model. The results of our case study are as follows. First we were able to find that the generation expansion plan and reliability measures were largely influenced by capacity size and loading status of NUG resources, Second we were able to find that avoided cost which are criteria to evaluate NUG resources could be calculated by using our modified EGEAS model with avoided cost. We also note that avoided costs were calculated by our model in connection with generation expansion plans.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.382-395
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• 2013

The providers of meteorological information want to know the level of satisfaction of forecast users with their services. To provide better service, meteorological communities of each nation are administering a survey on satisfaction of forecast users. However, most researchers provided these users with simple questionnaires and the respondents had to choose one answer among different satisfaction levels. So, the results of this kind of survey have low explanation power and are difficult to use in developing strategy of forecast service. In this study, instead of cost-loss concept, we applied satisfaction-dissatisfaction concept to the $2{\times}2$ contingency table, which is a useful tool to evaluate value of forecast, and estimated satisfaction value of 24h precipitation forecasts in Shanghai, China and Seoul, Korea. Moreover, not only the individual satisfaction value of forecast but the user group's satisfaction value was evaluated. As for the result, it is effective to enhance forecast accuracy to improve the satisfaction value of deterministic forecast user group, but in the case of probabilistic forecast, it is important to know the level of dissatisfaction of user group and distribution of probability threshold of forecast users. These results can help meteorological communities to search for a solution which can provide better satisfaction value to forecast users.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.383-392
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• 2012

This study introduces $M_{(i,j,k)}BCP$ (Mining Business Continuity Planning) which is the smart management system of mine disasters to achieve the safe and eco-friendly mining. Where, 'i' is mine kinds, 'j' is mining processes, and 'k' is risks at process respectively. By specifically setting 'i=1=limestone mine', this study also suggests that $M_{(i,j,k)}BCP$ is the smart management system of limestone mine. Mining risks used in this study were obtained from professional survey and literature review. This study classified these risks by five different mining processes and reduced risk numbers approximately 60 to 26. And they were all allocated into $M_{(i,j,k)}BCP$ and assessed. To do assess risks, this study used four risk indexes which are probability, casualty, facility loss, and discontinuity respectively. By the results of the assessment of risks, results could be four specific groups based on their causes and impacts. In addition, one of the results showed that the most possible risks at limestone mine was the roof-fall and rock-fall in digging process. This result means that $M_{(1,2,1)}BCP$ should be established as a first priority at limestone mine.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.176-184
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• 2019

Purpose: It is unclear whether adding concurrent chemotherapy (CT) to definitive radiotherapy (RT) following induction CT is a tolerable and cost effective treatment for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients aged 70 years or older with comorbidities. This study evaluated the actual clinical outcomes between concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) and RT alone following induction CT or not in patients (≥70 years) in a single institution's clinical practice. Materials and Methods: A total of 82 patients with unresectable stage III NSCLC between 2004 and 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. Their treatment tolerance and clinical outcomes such as overall survival (OS), locoregional recurrence (LRR), treatment toxicities and distant metastasis (DM) were evaluated. Early mortality rates were also evaluated as 4-month mortality after RT. Results: Fifty-four patients received CCRT and 28 patients received RT alone. Induction CT before RT was performed for 68.5% and 50.0% in CCRT and RT alone groups. Treatment tolerance was significantly worse in CCRT (p = 0.046). The median survival was 21.1 and 18.1 months for CCRT and RT alone, which was not statistically significant. LRR and DM were also not different. Most early deaths after CCRT were attributed to non-cancer-related mortality. Acute esophagitis of grade ≥2 occurred more following CCRT (p = 0.017). In multivariate analysis, a Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) of ≥5 and a weight loss of ≥5% after RT were associated with poor OS. The factors adversely affecting 4-month survival were a CCI of ≥5 and CCRT. Conclusion: There were no significant differences in OS, LRR, and DM between CCRT and RT alone treatment in elderly patients. However, there was a poorer tolerance and higher incidence of acute esophagitis in the CCRT group. Specifically, when the patients had a CCI of ≥5, RT alone seems to be reasonable with a low probability of early death.