• Title/Summary/Keyword: low cost method

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A Applicability Study on the Asphalt Concrete Pavement Condition Index in Narrow Regional Roads using Road Crack (도로 균열율을 사용한 소규모 지역 아스팔트 콘크리트 포장상태평가지수의 적정성 검토)

  • Kim, Sung-Ho;Kim, Kyungnam;Kim, Nakseok
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.38 no.3
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    • pp.467-475
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    • 2018
  • The purpose of this study is to propose the evaluation criteria of asphalt pavement condition in narrow regional road considering the traffic environment in order to reduce road budget of local governments. In general, narrow regional roads are considered relatively less important because they have low travel speed and low traffic volume of heavy-vehicle. Generally, automatic surveying equipment is used for investigations of pavement condition, but the operating costs are not efficient for the narrow regional roads because the cost is too high. This study presents the pavement condition evaluation index suitable for narrow regional roads. In this study, the pavement condition evaluation index is presented considering the traffic environment of narrow regional roads. The pavement condition were classified into three classes based on the crack measured by visual inspection, and the validity of the pavement condition evaluation index presented through the expert's questionnaire survey was examined. Pavement condition for the narrow regional roads was classified into three grades based on the index values calculated by visual inspection. Expert's surveys were conducted to evaluate the validity of the proposed pavement condition evaluation. The proposed evaluation index shows a high correlation with questionnaire survey result ($R^2=0.88$). The proposed evaluation index which is obtained through visual crack inspection under limited conditions can be applied to narrow regional roads. In addition, it is expected that it will be effective not only for road management but also for road management budget by more economical evaluation method of pavement condition.

Digital Map Updates with UAV Photogrammetric Methods (무인항공사진측량 방법에 의한 수치지도 갱신)

  • Lim, Soo Bong;Seo, Choon Wook;Yun, Hee Cheon
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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    • v.33 no.5
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    • pp.397-405
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    • 2015
  • Currently, Korea's digital maps are being produced through traditional aerial photogrammetry methods. Aerial photogrammetry is the most economical way to produce a map of a wide area. However, timely survey is not allowed depends on weather condition and it is inefficient for small area surveying in economic point of view. Therefore, it costs too much and needs long time to produce a map for various small areas where are terrestrial changes for updating the map. In contrast, UAV photogrammetry is possible to work even in cloudy weather because of shooting at low altitude below the clouds. It also has excellent mobility and shoot quickly and well suited for small-scale mapping in several places by low cost. In this study, we produced an ortho-photo and digital map with the UAV photogrammetry method using SIFT and SfM algorithm and verified its accuracy to evaluate the applicability for future digital map updates. The accuracy was verified by comparing the results of the ground survey for check points selected on the digital map. Test results show small errors at ±2.6cm in X coordinates, ±2.8cm in Y coordinates and ±5.8cm in height and we could find a possibility that UAV photogrammetry would be fully applicable for digital map updating.

Angiogenesis Markers in Breast Cancer - Potentially Useful Tools for Priority Setting of Anti-Angiogenic Agents

  • Keyhani, Elahe;Muhammadnejad, Ahad;Behjati, Farkhondeh;Sirati, Fereidoon;Khodadadi, Faranak;Karimlou, Masoud;Moghaddam, Fatemeh A.;Pazhoomand, Reza
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.14 no.12
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    • pp.7651-7656
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    • 2013
  • Background: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women in both developed and developing countries. The burden is increasing in low-income and middle-income countries (LMCs) and threatens the public health of such societies. Introduction of expensive monoclonal antibodies to cancer treatment regimens poses a real challenge in the health systems of LMCs. Despite controversy of cost-effectiveness of bevacizumab in breast cancer, some studies indicate gain of patients from this drug. The present study aimed to propose a priority setting model for administration of anti-angiogenic agents in breast cancer via assessment of tumor angiogenesis by the microvessel density (MVD) method and associations with clinicopathological characteristics (including simultaneous mutations of TP53 and HER-2 genes). Materials and Methods: Age, axillary lymph nodes status, tumor size, stage and grade, estrogen and progesterone receptors status, HER-2/neu status (by immunohistochemistry and FISH test), TP53 mutation, Ki-67 (for proliferation assay) and CD34 (for angiogenesis assay) were assessed in 111 breast cancer patients. The molecular subtype of each tumor was also determined and correlations of simultaneous mutations of HER-2 and p53 genes with angiogenesis and other clinicopathological characteristics were evaluated. Results: There were significant associations between simultaneous mutations of HER-2 and p53 genes and all other parameters except tumor size. The degree of angiogenesis in the ERBB2 subtype was greater than the others. Younger patients showed a higher angiogenesis rate rather those older than 50 years. Conclusions: Our results demonstrated that patients with simultaneous mutations of HER-2 and p53 genes, those with ERBB2 molecular subtype and also younger women (often triple negative) seem more eligible for obtaining anti-angiogenic agents. These results suggest a model for priority setting of patients with breast cancer for treatment with anti-angiogenic drugs in LMCs.

Effect of the Concentration of Citrate on the Growth of Aqueous Chemical Bath Deposited ZnO and Application of the Film to Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Solar Cells (Citrate 농도에 따른 수용액 화학조 증착 ZnO 성장 및 ZnO 박막의 Cu(In,Ga)Se2 태양전지 응용)

  • Cho, Kyung Soo;Jang, Hyunjun;Oh, Jae-Young;Kim, Jae Woo;Lee, Jun Su;Choi, Yesol;Hong, Ki-Ha;Chung, Choong-Heui
    • Korean Journal of Materials Research
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    • v.30 no.4
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    • pp.204-210
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    • 2020
  • ZnO thin films are of considerable interest because they can be customized by various coating technologies to have high electrical conductivity and high visible light transmittance. Therefore, ZnO thin films can be applied to various optoelectronic device applications such as transparent conducting thin films, solar cells and displays. In this study, ZnO rod and thin films are fabricated using aqueous chemical bath deposition (CBD), which is a low-cost method at low temperatures, and environmentally friendly. To investigate the structural, electrical and optical properties of ZnO for the presence of citrate ion, which can significantly affect crystal form of ZnO, various amounts of the citrate ion are added to the aqueous CBD ZnO reaction bath. As a result, ZnO crystals show a nanorod form without citrate, but a continuous thin film when citrate is above a certain concentration. In addition, as the citrate concentration increases, the electrical conductivity of the ZnO thin films increases, and is almost unchanged above a certain citrate concentration. Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) solar cell substrates are used to evaluate whether aqueous CBD ZnO thin films can be applicable to real devices. The performance of aqueous CBD ZnO thin films shows performance similar to that of a sputter-deposited ZnO:Al thin film as top transparent electrodes of CIGS solar cells.

ZnO nanostructures for e-paper and field emission display applications

  • Sun, X.W.
    • 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2008.10a
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    • pp.993-994
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    • 2008
  • Electrochromic (EC) devices are capable of reversibly changing their optical properties upon charge injection and extraction induced by the external voltage. The characteristics of the EC device, such as low power consumption, high coloration efficiency, and memory effects under open circuit status, make them suitable for use in a variety of applications including smart windows and electronic papers. Coloration due to reduction or oxidation of redox chromophores can be used for EC devices (e-paper), but the switching time is slow (second level). Recently, with increasing demand for the low cost, lightweight flat panel display with paper-like readability (electronic paper), an EC display technology based on dye-modified $TiO_2$ nanoparticle electrode was developed. A well known organic dye molecule, viologen, was adsorbed on the surface of a mesoporous $TiO_2$ nanoparticle film to form the EC electrode. On the other hand, ZnO is a wide bandgap II-VI semiconductor which has been applied in many fields such as UV lasers, field effect transistors and transparent conductors. The bandgap of the bulk ZnO is about 3.37 eV, which is close to that of the $TiO_2$ (3.4 eV). As a traditional transparent conductor, ZnO has excellent electron transport properties, even in ZnO nanoparticle films. In the past few years, one-dimension (1D) nanostructures of ZnO have attracted extensive research interest. In particular, 1D ZnO nanowires renders much better electron transportation capability by providing a direct conduction path for electron transport and greatly reducing the number of grain boundaries. These unique advantages make ZnO nanowires a promising matrix electrode for EC dye molecule loading. ZnO nanowires grow vertically from the substrate and form a dense array (Fig. 1). The ZnO nanowires show regular hexagonal cross section and the average diameter of the ZnO nanowires is about 100 nm. The cross-section image of the ZnO nanowires array (Fig. 1) indicates that the length of the ZnO nanowires is about $6\;{\mu}m$. From one on/off cycle of the ZnO EC cell (Fig. 2). We can see that, the switching time of a ZnO nanowire electrode EC cell with an active area of $1\;{\times}\;1\;cm^2$ is 170 ms and 142 ms for coloration and bleaching, respectively. The coloration and bleaching time is faster compared to the $TiO_2$ mesoporous EC devices with both coloration and bleaching time of about 250 ms for a device with an active area of $2.5\;cm^2$. With further optimization, it is possible that the response time can reach ten(s) of millisecond, i.e. capable of displaying video. Fig. 3 shows a prototype with two different transmittance states. It can be seen that good contrast was obtained. The retention was at least a few hours for these prototypes. Being an oxide, ZnO is oxidation resistant, i.e. it is more durable for field emission cathode. ZnO nanotetropods were also applied to realize the first prototype triode field emission device, making use of scattered surface-conduction electrons for field emission (Fig. 4). The device has a high efficiency (field emitted electron to total electron ratio) of about 60%. With this high efficiency, we were able to fabricate some prototype displays (Fig. 5 showing some alphanumerical symbols). ZnO tetrapods have four legs, which guarantees that there is one leg always pointing upward, even using screen printing method to fabricate the cathode.

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A VLSI Design of High Performance H.264 CAVLC Decoder Using Pipeline Stage Optimization (파이프라인 최적화를 통한 고성능 H.264 CAVLC 복호기의 VLSI 설계)

  • Lee, Byung-Yup;Ryoo, Kwang-Ki
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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    • v.46 no.12
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    • pp.50-57
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    • 2009
  • This paper proposes a VLSI architecture of CAVLC hardware decoder which is a tool eliminating statistical redundancy in H.264/AVC video compression. The previous CAVLC hardware decoder used four stages to decode five code symbols. The previous CAVLC hardware architectures decreased decoding performance because there was an unnecessary idle cycle in between state transitions. Likewise, the computation of valid bit length includes an unnecessary idle cycle. This paper proposes hardware architecture to eliminate the idle cycle efficiently. Two methods are applied to the architecture. One is a method which eliminates an unnecessary things of buffers storing decoded codes and then makes efficient pipeline architecture. The other one is a shifter control to simplify operations and controls in the process of calculating valid bit length. The experimental result shows that the proposed architecture needs only 89 cycle in average for one macroblock decoding. This architecture improves the performance by about 29% than previous designs. The synthesis result shows that the design achieves the maximum operating frequency at 140Mhz and the hardware cost is about 11.5K under a 0.18um CMOS process. Comparing with the previous design, it can achieve low-power operation because this design is implemented with high throughputs and low gate count.

Minimal Sampling Rate for Quasi-Memoryless Power Amplifiers (전력증폭기 모델링을 위한 최소 샘플링 주파수 연구)

  • Park, Young-Cheol
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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    • v.44 no.10
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    • pp.185-190
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    • 2007
  • In this paper, minimum sampling rates and method of nonlinear characterization were suggested for low power, quasi-memoryless PAs. So far, the Nyquist rate of the input signal has been used for nonlinear PA modeling, and it is burdening Analog-to-digital converters for wideband signals. This paper shows that the input Nyquist rate sampling is not a necessary condition for successful modeling of quasi-memoryless PAs. Since this sampling requirement relives the bandwidth requirements for Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for feedback paths in digital pre-distortion systems, relatively low-cost ADcs can be used to identify nonlinear PAs for wideband signal transmission, even at severe aliasing conditions. Simulation results show that a generic memoryless nonlinear RF power amplifier with AMAM and AMPM distortion can be successfully identified at any sampling rates. Measurement results show the modeling error variation is less than 0.8dB over any sampling rates.

Potential Ability of Traditional Korean Medical Tourism and Economic Valuation of Sasang Constitutional Typology Diagnosis from Foreigner's Perspective (외국인이 인식하는 한의학 의료관광의 가능성 및 사상체질진단 경제적 가치평가)

  • Kim, Hyoung-Soon;Lee, Hee-Seung;Cha, Byung-Hun;Joo, Jong-Cheon
    • Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.115-124
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    • 2011
  • 1. Objectives : This study aimed to provide practical insights on the development of traditional Korean medical tourism and maximize the satisfaction of foreign patients. The main objectives of this study were also to evaluate Sasang Constitutional Medicine(S.C.M.) diagnosis cost from foreigners' perspectives. 2. Methods : For this study, the data were collected from tourists to Korea between January 3, 2010 to February 20, 2010. The sample used in this study was mainly composed of Japanese, Chines and US/Canada, because they are the major national visitor origin group to Korea. The primary data were collected by questionnaire survey using a standardized instrument with a convenience sampling procedure, and efforts of the interviews involved an on-site, self-administrated questionnaire to those sitting or visiting tourist attractions. The total size of the sample was 276 of which 275 showed no missing value against the factors needed for final analysis and were for analysis as an effective sample. SPSS 13.0 for window was used to analyze the collected data on which descriptive statistics and the Limited Dependent(LIMDEP) 8.0 program was used in estimating the willingness-to-pay(WTP) for traditional Korean medical tourism through the Contingent Valuation Method(CVM). A dichotomous choice question form of a CVM was applied to estimating the value. 3. Results and Conclusion: 1. There was significant statistical relationship between attributes when considering medical tourism destination and socio-demographic profiles such as age group, nationality, educational level and occupation. 2. In the level of recognition on Korean medicine, north Americans showed low level of recognition compared to other nationalities. In addition, in terms of age group, 20's and 30's showed low level of recognition on Korean medicine, 3. In relation to the level of interest on Korean medicine, Japanese respondents had higher interesting level on Korean medicine. Also singles had higher level of interest. 4. Regarding preferred Korean medical treatment program, there found significant statistical relationship between Korean medical treatment program and socio-demographic characteristics. 5. The estimating result of the logit model showed that the variables affecting the WTP for Sasang Constitutional medicine diagnosis were offered price and potential ability of medical tourism destination. 6. In relation to WTP for Sasang Constitutional medicine diagnosis, Japanese respondents showed a WTP of USD 62.69 and Chinese respondents showed USD 57.09. On the other hands, respondents from north America and other countries showed a WTP of USD 65.50. In conclusion, from this study, the results found that the opportunities in tradition Korean medical tourism are immense and the possible rewards are numerous. It is time to continue to promote 'Sasang Constitutional medicine' and make the Korean medical tourism programs considering on nationalities, age group, gender and WTP.

An Empirical Study on the Effects of e-Mail Marketing : A focus on e-Mail Campaign for Credit Card Consumers (이메일 마케팅 성과에 관한 연구: 신용카드 고객을 대상으로 한 캠페인을 중심으로)

  • Shin, Sung-Hoon;Chung, Soo-Yeon;Park, Cheol
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.49-67
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    • 2009
  • E-mail marketing is the cheapest channel in target marketing. The channel works amazingly well for marketers who know how to use it. The e-mail marketers are able to integrate transactional and behavioral data to improve the targeting content of e-mail marketing campaigns. The cost in e-mail marketing is low and e-mail marketing makes no pollution. But, the e-mail response rate is lower than all the other channels. So, it is very hard for companies to increase their sales volumes, though the companies are ready to execute e-mail marketing campaigns on the side of computer systems. Marketers can send messages easily to target customers compared to other channels. But, the possibility to be read by the customers is low. Normal e-mails are continually devalued by spam mails. This study shows the influence of e-mail marketing to increase sales used by credit cards, on the basis of the real data promoted by A bank, in the Republic of Korea. The analysis on the traits of the respondent can help marketers to target customers. If additional studies on the response prediction model on the basis of traits of potential respondents are done, the targeting method to increase the effectiveness of e-mail marketing will be better structured and organized.

Estimation of Road-Network Performance and Resilience According to the Strength of a Disaster (재난 강도에 따른 도로 네트워크의 성능 및 회복력 산정 방안)

  • Jung, Hoyong;Choi, Seunghyun;Do, Myungsik
    • International Journal of Highway Engineering
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.35-45
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    • 2018
  • PURPOSES : This study examines the performance changes of road networks according to the strength of a disaster, and proposes a method for estimating the quantitative resilience according to the road-network performance changes and damage scale. This study also selected high-influence road sections, according to disasters targeting the road network, and aimed to analyze their hazard resilience from the network aspect through a scenario analysis of the damage recovery after a disaster occurred. METHODS : The analysis was conducted targeting Sejong City in South Korea. The disaster situation was set up using the TransCAD and VISSIM traffic-simulation software. First, the study analyzed how road-network damage changed the user's travel pattern and travel time, and how it affected the complete network. Secondly, the functional aspects of the road networks were analyzed using quantitative resilience. Finally, based on the road-network performance change and resilience, priority-management road sections were selected. RESULTS : According to the analysis results, when a road section has relatively low connectivity and low traffic, its effect on the complete network is insignificant. Moreover, certain road sections with relatively high importance can suffer a performance loss from major damage, for e.g., sections where bridges, tunnels, or underground roads are located, roads where no bypasses exist or they exist far from the concerned road, including entrances and exits to suburban areas. Relatively important roads have the potential to significantly degrade the network performance when a disaster occurs. Because of the high risk of delays or isolation, they may lead to secondary damage. Thus, it is necessary to manage the roads to maintain their performance. CONCLUSIONS : As a baseline study to establish measures for traffic prevention, this study considered the performance of a road network, selected high-influence road sections within the road network, and analyzed the quantitative resilience of the road network according to scenarios. The road users' passage-pattern changes were analyzed through simulation analysis using the User Equilibrium model. Based on the analysis results, the resilience in each scenario was examined and compared. Sections where a road's performance loss had a significant influence on the network were targeted. The study results were judged to become basic research data for establishing response plans to restore the original functions and performance of the destroyed and damage road networks, and for selecting maintenance priorities.