• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2018

During early pregnancy, before the development of a functioning thyroid gland, thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) is a very sensitive marker of thyroid dysfunction during pregnancy. Normal values have been modified during gestation with a downward shift. The fetus is influenced by the TSH supplied by the mother. TSH and free thyroxine (FT4) concentrations vary during pregnancy and conventional units can vary between laboratories. A downward shift of the TSH reference range occurs during pregnancy, with a decrease in both the lower and upper limits of maternal TSH, relative to the typical non-pregnant TSH reference range. Each laboratory produces its own reference TSH and FT4 concentrations because there are many different assays that yield different results in pregnancy. Therefore, automated immunoassays used for serum FT4 analysis are still used widely, but the important considerations discussed above must be noted. The use of population-based, trimester-specific reference ranges remains the best way to handle this issue The slight downward shift in the upper reference range of TSH occurring in the latter first trimester (7~12 weeks) of pregnancy, typically not observed prior to 7 weeks. Their use indicates high or low levels in a quantitative manner independent of the reference ranges. These data highlight the importance of calculating population-based pregnancy-specific thyroid parameter reference intervals. A precision medicine initiative in this area will require the collection and analysis of a large number of genetic, biological, psychosocial, and environmental variables in large cohorts of individuals. Large prospective randomized controlled trials will be needed to resolve these controversies.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.549-562
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• 2017

The US railroad network carries 40% of the nation's total freight. Railroad bridges are the most critical part of the network infrastructure and, therefore, must be properly maintained for the operational safety. Railroad managers inspect bridges by measuring displacements under train crossing events to assess their structural condition and prioritize bridge management and safety decisions accordingly. The displacement of a railroad bridge under train crossings is one parameter of interest to railroad bridge owners, as it quantifies a bridge's ability to perform safely and addresses its serviceability. Railroad bridges with poor track conditions will have amplified displacements under heavy loads due to impacts between the wheels and rail joints. Under these circumstances, vehicle-track-bridge interactions could cause excessive bridge displacements, and hence, unsafe train crossings. If displacements during train crossings could be measured objectively, owners could repair or replace less safe bridges first. However, data on bridge displacements is difficult to collect in the field as a fixed point of reference is required for measurement. Accelerations can be used to estimate dynamic displacements, but to date, the pseudo-static displacements cannot be measured using reference-free sensors. This study proposes a method to estimate total transverse displacements of a railroad bridge under live train loads using acceleration and tilt data at the top of the exterior pile bent of a standard timber trestle, where train derailment due to excessive lateral movement is the main concern. Researchers used real bridge transverse displacement data under train traffic from varying bridge serviceability levels. This study explores the design of a new bridge deck-pier experimental model that simulates the vibrations of railroad bridges under traffic using a shake table for the input of train crossing data collected from the field into a laboratory model of a standard timber railroad pile bent. Reference-free sensors measured both the inclination angle and accelerations of the pile cap. Various readings are used to estimate the total displacements of the bridge using data filtering. The estimated displacements are then compared to the true responses of the model measured with displacement sensors. An average peak error of 10% and a root mean square error average of 5% resulted, concluding that this method can cost-effectively measure the total displacement of railroad bridges without a fixed reference.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.207-222
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• 2011

A stabilized incompressible smoothed particles hydrodynamics (ISPH) method is utilized to simulate free falling rigid body into water domain. Both of rigid body and fluid domain are modeled by SPH formulation. The proposed source term in the pressure Poisson equation contains two terms; divergence of velocity and density invariance. The density invariance term is multiplied by a relaxed parameter for stabilization. In addition, large eddy simulation with Smagorinsky model has been introduced to include the eddy viscosity effect. The improved method is applied to simulate both of free falling vessels with different materials and water entry-exit of horizontal circular cylinder. The applicability and efficiency of improved method is tested by the comparisons with reference experimental results.

• Architectural research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.41-47
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• 2011

A study on the free vibration analysis of elastic bar is described in this paper. In order to determine the natural frequencies of bars, a bar element is developed by using isogeometric formulation. The B-spline is introduced to represent the geometry of bar and the same geometric definition is also used to define its unknown displacement field in isogeometric formulation. Therefore, the stiffness and mass matrices are derived by the order-free B-spline basis function. The efficiency and accuracy of the present isogeometric bar elementis demonstrated by using several numerical tests. From numerical results, it is found to be that the present isogeometric element produces very accurate natural frequencies of bars. Finally, the present isogeometric solutions are provided as future reference solutions.

• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• v.73 no.10
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• pp.1466-1472
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• 2018

A key comparison has been made between the air-kerma standards of the National Institute of Metrology (NIM), China, and other Asia Pacific Metrology Programme (APMP) members in the medium-energy X-ray. This paper reviews the primary standard Free-air ionization chamber correction factor experimental method and Monte Carlo simulation method in the NIM. The experimental method and the Monte Carlo simulation method are adopted to obtain the correction factor for the medium-energy X-ray primary standard free-air ionization chamber at 100 kV, 135 kV, 180 kV, 250 kV four CCRI reference qualities. The correction factor has already been submitted to the APMP as key comparison data and the results are in good agreement with those obtained in previous studies. This study shows that the experimental method and the EGSnrc simulation method are usually used in the measurement of the correction factor. In particular, the application of the simulation methods is more common.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.5 s.98
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• pp.58-65
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• 1999

A magnetic levitation system requires a robustness to overcome a dynamic instability due to disturbances. In this paper a robust controller for a magnetically levitated fine manipulator is presented. The proposed controller consists of following two parts: a model reference controller and an $H_{\infty}$ controller. First, the model reference control stabilizes the motion of the manipulator. Then, the motion of the manipulator follows that of the reference model. Second, the $H_{\infty}$ control minimizes errors generated from the model reference control due to noise and disturbance since the $H_{\infty}$ control is a kind of robust control. The experiments of position control and tracking control are carried out by use of the proposed controller under the conditions of free disturbances and forced disturbances. Also, the experiments using PID controller are carried out under the same conditions. The results from above two controllers are compared to investigate the control performances. As the results, it is observed that the proposed controller has similar position accuracy but better tracking performances comparing to the PID controller as well as good disturbance rejection effect due to the robust characteristics of the controller. In conclusion. it is verified that the proposed controller has the simple control structure, the good tracking performances and good disturbance rejection effect due to the robust characteristics of the controller.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.197-201
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• 2014

In Korea, brucellosis has been reported periodically in cattle and rarely in dogs; however, it has not previously been screened in domestic animals such as elk, pigs and goats. To investigate the serological prevalence, serum samples were taken from the aforementioned animals annually during 2007-2013 and screened by the rose-bengal test (RBT) or modified RBT, after which positive sera were evaluated by the standard tube agglutination test (STAT). Finally, RBT and STAT-positive sera were confirmed by competitive-ELISA. Brucella abortus biovar 1 was isolated from three elk that were shown to be positive serologically in 2008. There was no evidence of brucellosis in pigs. Based on serological monitoring and investigation of etiological agents, there is no evidence of outbreak of brucellosis in elk, pigs or goats of Korea since 2008. However, the possibility for brucellosis from cattle to affect these other livestock exists; therefore, extensive and continuous serological monitoring is required to maintain their brucellosis-free status.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.25 no.3A
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• pp.325-333
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• 2000

The proposed RPSS(Reference Picture Segment Selection) mode is the RPS mode in picture segment of the ISD mode. The RPS mode has the weakness that it has to change the whole reference picture even if transmission error occurs only in the small part of picture. If the RPS mode is applied only to an error-occurred part and a conventional coding scheme is applied to an error-free part, the higher coding efficiency can be obtained. Simulation results show that there is the optimal number of segment which provides that best performance with given environment such as the BER(Bit Error Rate) of wireless channels, the characteristics of imput sequence, what kind of RPSS mode is used, etc. To apply the channel-adoptive RPSS mode later, the scheme which can change the number of segment without INTRA refresh and spatial error propagation is proposed in this paper.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2014.06a
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• pp.262-263
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• 2014

현재 MPEG 에서 Royalty-Free 비디오 코덱인 Type-1 표준으로 진행중인 IVC(Internet Video Coding)에서는 저지연 모드(LD: Low-Delay) 부호화 구조에서 비참조 P 프레임 부호화 기법을 적응적으로 사용하여 부호화 이득을 얻고 있다. 비참조 P 프레임 기법은 P 프레임의 타입을 지정하여 고정된 부호화 구조의 비참조 P 프레임을 적용하고 있으나, ITM(IVC Test Model) 9.0 에 구현된 부호화 구조는 다중참조 프레임(MRF: Multiple Reference Frame)을 사용할 때 시간적 예측 거리가 먼 참조 프레임을 먼저 예측하는 단점이 있다. 본 논문에서는 다중참조 프레임에서 기존의 P 프레임 타입 설정을 변경하여 비참조 P 프레임의 부호화 구조를 개선하였다. 실험결과 제안 기법은 시퀀스에 따른 큰 성능 저하 없이 기존 기법 대비 0.6% 정도의 추가적인 비트율 감소로 얻음으로써 비참조 P 프레임 기법이 ITM 9.0 대비 7.9% 정도의 비트율 감소를 얻음을 확인하였다.

• The Journal of the Korean Society for Microbiology
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.23-33
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• 1987

To detect lepotospiral strains which produce hemolysin and determine the optimal condition for assaying hemolysin, we screened reference strains and observed some property of hemolysin. Hemolysin activity was assayed with cell free culture liquids and erythrocyte suspension. The production of hemolysin by local strains isolated in Korea was assayed and compared with that of reference strains. The hemolysin was produced by 18 strains among 38 reference strains and 3 local strains isolated in Korea. The production of hemolysin began with growth of Leptospira cultured in EMJH medium and reached maximum at stationary phase. The optimum temperature for hemolytic activity was $37^{\circ}C$. At lower temperature the activity of hemolysin was decreased progressively. The hemolytic activity was completely inactivated after :30 minutes' exposure at $56^{\circ}C$. Hemolysis pattern was "hot-cold type" which showed increased hemolysis after cold incubation. The hemolysin was most active on sheep erythrocyte and less active on ox, goat, human and guinea pig erythrocyte with the decreasing order.