• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.43 no.2 s.308
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• pp.19-29
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• 2006

As the security of personal information is becoming more important in mobile phones, we are starting to apply iris recognition technology to these devices. In conventional iris recognition, magnified iris images are required. For that, it has been necessary to use large magnified zoom & focus lens camera to capture images, but due to the requirement about low size and cost of mobile phones, the zoom & focus lens are difficult to be used. However, with rapid developments and multimedia convergence trends in mobile phones, more and more companies have built mega-pixel cameras into their mobile phones. These devices make it possible to capture a magnified iris image without zoom & focus lens. Although facial images are captured far away from the user using a mega-pixel camera, the captured iris region possesses sufficient pixel information for iris recognition. However, in this case, the eye region should be detected for accurate iris recognition in facial images. So, we propose a new fast iris detection method, which is appropriate for mobile phones based on corneal specular reflection. To detect specular reflection robustly, we propose the theoretical background of estimating the size and brightness of specular reflection based on eye, camera and illuminator models. In addition, we use the successive On/Off scheme of the illuminator to detect the optical/motion blurring and sunlight effect on input image. Experimental results show that total processing time(detecting iris region) is on average 65ms on a Samsung SCH-S2300 (with 150MHz ARM 9 CPU) mobile phone. The rate of correct iris detection is 99% (about indoor images) and 98.5% (about outdoor images).

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.1029-1042
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• 2021

As part of the next-generation Compact Advanced Satellite 500 (CAS500) project, CAS500-4 is scheduled to be launched in 2025 focusing on the remote sensing of agriculture and forestry. To obtain quantitative information on vegetation from satellite images, it is necessary to acquire surface reflectance through atmospheric correction. Thus, it is essential to develop an atmospheric correction method suitable for CAS500-4. Since the absorption and scattering characteristics in the atmosphere vary depending on the wavelength, it is needed to analyze the sensitivity of atmospheric correction parameters such as aerosol optical depth (AOD) and water vapor (WV) considering the wavelengths of CAS500-4. In addition, as CAS500-4 has only five channels (blue, green, red, red edge, and near-infrared), making it difficult to directly calculate key parameters for atmospheric correction, external parameter data should be used. Therefore, thisstudy performed a sensitivity analysis of the key parameters (AOD, WV, and O₃) using the simulated images based on Sentinel-2 satellite data, which has similar wavelength specifications to CAS500-4, and examined the possibility of using the products of GEO-KOMPSAT-2A (GK2A) as atmospheric parameters. The sensitivity analysisshowed that AOD wasthe most important parameter with greater sensitivity in visible channels than in the near-infrared region. In particular, since AOD change of 20% causes about a 100% error rate in the blue channel surface reflectance in forests, a highly reliable AOD is needed to obtain accurate surface reflectance. The atmospherically corrected surface reflectance based on the GK2A AOD and WV was compared with the Sentinel-2 L2A reflectance data through the separability index of the known land cover pixels. The result showed that two corrected surface reflectance had similar Seperability index (SI) values, the atmospheric corrected surface reflectance based on the GK2A AOD showed higher SI than the Sentinel-2 L2A reflectance data in short-wavelength channels. Thus, it is judged that the parameters provided by GK2A can be fully utilized for atmospheric correction of the CAS500-4. The research findings will provide a basis for atmospheric correction of the CAS500-4 in the future.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.321-327
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• 2006

In Korea, there is a growing competitive for water resources between industrial, domestic and agricultural consumer, and the environment as many other OECD countries. The demand on water use is also affecting aquatic ecosystems particularly where withdrawals are in excess of minimum environmental needs for rivers, lakes and wetland habits. OECD developed three indicators related to water use by the agriculture in above contexts : the first is a water use intensity indicator, which is expressed as the quantity or share of agricultural water use in total national water utilization; the second is a water stress indicator, which is expressed as the proportion of rivers (in length) subject to diversion or regulation for irrigation without reserving a minimum of limiting reference flow; and the third is a water use efficiency indicator designated as the technical and the economic efficiency. These indicators have different meanings in the aspect of water resource conservation and sustainable water use. So, it will be more significant that the indicators should reflect the intrinsic meanings of them. The problem is that the aspect of an overall water flow in the agro-ecosystem and recycling of water use not considered in the assessment of agricultural water use needed for calculation of these water use indicators. Namely, regional or meteorological characteristics and site-specific farming practices were not considered in the calculation of these indicators. In this paper, we tried to calculate water use indicators suggested in OECD and to modify some other indicators considering our situation because water use pattern and water cycling in Korea where paddy rice farming is dominant in the monsoon region are quite different from those of semi-arid regions. In the calculation of water use intensity, we excluded the amount of water restored through the ground from the total agricultural water use because a large amount of water supplied to the farm was discharged into the stream or the ground water. The resultant water use intensity was 22.9% in 2001. As for water stress indicator, Korea has not defined nor monitored reference levels of minimum flow rate for rivers subject to diversion of water for irrigation. So, we calculated the water stress indicator in a different way from OECD method. The water stress indicator was calculated using data on the degree of water storage in agricultural water reservoirs because 87% of water for irrigation was taken from the agricultural water reservoirs. Water use technical efficiency was calculated as the reverse of the ratio of irrigation water to a standard water requirement of the paddy rice. The efficiency in 2001 was better than in 1990 and 1998. As for the economic efficiency for water use, we think that there are a lot of things to be taken into considerations to make a useful indicator to reflect socio-economic values of agricultural products resulted from the water use. Conclusively, site-specific, regional or meteorogical characteristics as in Korea were not considered in the calculation of water use indicators by methods suggested in OECD(Volume 3, 2001). So, it is needed to develop a new indicators for the indicators to be more widely applicable in the world.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.29-41
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• 2014

Ecosystem services provide various benefits to human beings, but are considered to be free of cost. To protect ecosystems in an economically sustainable way, several developing countries have adopted a policy known as the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) that compensates upstream services with monetary incentives collected from service users. Vietnam is one of the countries that have enacted a nationwide PES policy. However, the policy in Vietnam requires further development in order to evaluate the spatial priority zones based on the quantification of ecosystem services. To obtain a recent and high-quality land cover map, we first classified the land cover in the Da River basin, in northern Vietnam, using Landsat dataset. We then applied a water balance theory and an USLE equation to assess hydrological ecosystem services concerning water supply and sediment retention. Following the assessment, we identified the priority areas for hydrological ecosystem services exclusively for forest environments. We found that the quantity and distribution of services from forests varied, due to the topography, climate, and land cover. According to a quantile distribution, Mt. Phu Luong, Mt. Fansipan, and Hoang Lien National Park were evaluated as high service areas in terms of both water yield and sediment retention. As a result, this assessment method can help construct spatial priority zones concerning ecosystem service distribution, and can also contribute to benefit sharing by indicating which forest and landowners require compensation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.278-284
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• 2014

Water temperature due to climate change can be estimated using the air temperature because the air and water temperatures are closely related and the water temperatures have been widely used as the indicators of the environmental and ecological changes. It is highly necessary to estimate the frequency distribution of the air and water temperatures, for the climate change derives the change of the coastal water temperatures. In this study, the distribution function of the air temperatures is estimated by using the long-term coastal air temperature data sets in Korea. The candidate distribution function is the bi-modal distribution function used in the previous studies, such as Cho et al.(2003) on tidal elevation data and Jeong et al.(2013) on the coastal water temperature data. The parameters of the function are optimally estimated based on the least square method. It shows that the optimal parameters are highly correlated to the basic statistical informations, such as mean, standard deviation, and skewness coefficient. The RMS error of the parameter estimation using statistical information ranges is about 5 %. In addition, the bimodal distribution fits good to the overall frequency pattern of the air temperature. However, it can be regarded as the limitations that the distribution shows some mismatch with the rapid decreasing pattern in the high-temperature region and the some small peaks.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.319-326
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• 2002

$SrCl_2:Eu^{2+}$ phosphors were prepared by the solid phase reaction method, and their photostimulated luminescence(PSL) and photoluminescence(PL) characteristics were investigated. The PSL and PL peak of the $SrCl_2:Eu^{2+}$ phosphors are due to the $5d{\rightarrow}4f$ transition of $Eu^{2+}$ ions in phosphors. The PSL and PL spectrum obtained by the 355nm excitation was observed in $380{\sim}440\;nm$ region with the peak at 407 nm. The dose response of the PSL phosphors were linear within $2.5\;mGy{\sim}200\;mGy$ of 100 kV X-ray. The fading of the phosphors at room temperature was approximately 60% after 20 min.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.6_3
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• pp.1215-1221
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• 2017

SeNtinel's Application Platform (SNAP) is an open source software developed by the European Space Agency and consists of several toolboxes that process data from Sentinel satellite series, including SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and optical satellites. Among them, S1TBX (Sentinel-1 ToolBoX)is mainly used to process Sentinel-1A/BSAR images and interferometric techniques. It provides flowchart processing method such as Graph Builder, and has convenient functions including automatic downloading of DEM (Digital Elevation Model) and image mosaicking. Therefore, if computer memory is sufficient, InSAR (Interferometric SAR) and DInSAR (Differential InSAR) perform smoothly and are widely used recently in the world through rapid upgrades. S1TBX also includes existing SAR data processing functions, and since version 5, the processing capability of KOMPSAT-5 has been added. This paper shows an example of processing the interference technique of KOMPSAT-5 SAR image using S1TBX of SNAP. In the open mine of Tavan Tolgoi in Mongolia, the difference between DEM obtained in KOMPSAT-5 in 2015 and SRTM 1sec DEM obtained in 2000 was analyzed. It was found that the maximum depth of 130 meters was excavated and the height of the accumulated ore is over 70 meters during 15 years. Tidal and topographic InSAR signals were observed in the glacier area near Jangbogo Antarctic Research Station, but SNAP was not able to treat it due to orbit error and DEM error. In addition, several DInSAR images were made in the Iraqi desert region, but many lines appearing in systematic errors were found on coherence images. Stacking for StaMPS application was not possible due to orbit error or program bug. It is expected that SNAP can resolve the problem owing to a surge in users and a very fast upgrade of the software.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.495-506
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• 2018

Global interest in climate change and sea level rise has led to active research on the velocities of glaciers. In studies about the velocity of glaciers, in-situ measurements can obtain the most accurate data but have limitations to acquire periodical or long-term data. Offset tracking using SAR is actively being used as an alternative of in-situ measurements. Offset tracking has a limitation in that the accuracy of observation is lower than that of other observational techniques, but it has been improved by recent studies. Recent studies in the $Uv{\hat{e}}rsbreen$ glacier area have shown that glacier altitudes decrease at a rate of 1.5 m/year. The glacier displacement velocities in this region are heavily influenced by climate change and can be important in monitoring and forecasting long-term climate change. However, there are few concrete examples of research in this area. In this study, we applied the improved offset tracking method to observe the two-dimensional velocity in the $Uv{\hat{e}}rsbreen$ glacier. As a result, it was confirmed that the glacier moved at a maximum rate of 133.7 m/year. The measruement precisions for azimuth and line-of-sight directions were 5.4 and 3.3 m/year respectively. These results will be utilized to study long-term changes in elevation of glaciers and to study environmental impacts due to climate change.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.237-250
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• 2013

At Gosan ABC superstation in Jeju Island, we measured organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) in $PM_{2.5}$ from October 2009 to June 2010 using a Sunset Laboratory Model-4 Semi-Continuous OC/EC Field Analyzer. It employs TOT (Thermal-Optical-Transmittance) method with NIOSH 5040 protocol and enables to continuously monitor OC and EC concentrations with 1-hour time resolution. The mean values of OC and EC for the entire period of measurements were $2.1{\pm}1.4{\mu}g/m^3$ and $0.7{\pm}0.6{\mu}g/m^3$, respectively. The OC/EC ratio was 3 and EC accounted $25{\pm}2.1%$ of total carbon (TC, TC=OC+EC). Although OC and EC showed similar trend in seasonal variation, the ratio of OC to EC was the highest in early summer when temperature was the highest and the air was affected by biomass burning in the southern part of China. In winter, the high OC and EC concentrations were likely influenced by increased coal combustion from residential heating. The high OC and EC concentrations were observed during events such as haze, dust, and the combination of the two. During the haze events, OC and EC were enhanced with increase in $PM_{10}$, $PM_{2.5}$, $SO_2$, and $NO_2$ with broad maxima. When dust occurred, both OC and EC started decreasing after reaching their maxima a couple of hours before $PM_{10}$ maximum. The peak separation of carbonaceous species and aerosol masses with time was more noticeable when haze event was followed by dust plume. These results confirm that OC and EC are key components of haze occurring in the study region.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.331-337
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• 2009

Interleukin-13 (IL-13) has been proposed as a therapeutic target for bronchial asthma as it plays crucial roles in the pathogenesis of the disease. We developed an in vitro test system measuring transcriptional downregulatory activities on IL-13 as a primary screening method to select drug candidates from natural products. The promoter region of IL-13 (-2,048 to +1) was cloned into the upstream of a luciferase gene in the plasmid pGL4.14 containing the hygromycin resistance gene as a selection marker, generating pGL4.14-IL-13. The EL-4 thymoma and RBL-2H3 mast cells transiently expressing this plasmid highly produced the luciferase activities by responding to PI (PMA and ionomycin) stimulation up to 8-fold and 13-fold compared with the control, respectively, whereas cyclosporin A, a well-known antiasthmatic agent, significantly downregulated the activities. The BF1 clone of RBL-2H3 cells constitutively expressing pGL4.14-IL-13 was established by selecting surviving cells under a constant lethal dose of hygromycin treatment. The feasibility of this system was evaluated by measuring the downregulatory activities of 354 natural products on the IL-13 promoter using the BF1 clone. An extract from Morus bombycis (named TBRC 156) significantly inhibited PI-induced luciferase activities and IL-13 mRNA expression, but not the protein expression. Fisetin (named TBRC 353) inhibited not only PI-induced luciferase activities and mRNA expression, but also the IL-13 protein secretion, whereas myricetin (named TBRC 354) could not suppress the IL-13 expression at all. Our data indicated that this in vitro test system is able to discriminate the effects on IL-13 expression, and furthermore, that it might be suitable as a simple and time-saving primary screening system to select antiasthmatic agents by measuring transcriptional activities of the IL-13 promoter.