• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.80-86
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• 2010

Objectives: We investigated the genotoxicity of two chemicals, methyl formate and 2-methylbutane, using male ICR mice bone marrow cells for the screening of micronucleus induction. Although these two chemicals have already been tested numerous times, a micronucleus test has not been conducted and the amounts used have recently been increased. Methods: 7 week male ICR mice were tested at dosages of 250, 500, and 1,000 mg/kg for methyl formate and 500, 1,000, and 2,000 mg/kg for 2-methlybutane, respectively. After 24 hours of oral administration with the two chemicals, the mice were sacrificed and their bone marrow cells were prepared for smearing slides. Results: As a result of counting the micronucleated polychromatic erythrocyte (MNPCE) of 2,000 polychromatic erythrocytes, all treated groups expressed no statistically significant increase of MNPCE compared to the negative control group. There were no clinical signs related with the oral exposure of these two chemicals. Conclusion: It was concluded that the two chemicals did not induce micronucleus in the bone marrow cells of ICR mice, and there was no direct proportion with dosage. These results indicate that the two chemicals have no mutagenic potential under each study condition.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.2321-2326
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• 2011

Cervical vertebrae are a complex structure and an important part of human body connecting the head and the trunk. In this paper, we propose a method to extract sternocleidomastoid muscle from ultrasonography images of cervical vertabrae automatically. In our method, Region of Interests(ROI) is extracted first from an ultrasonography image after removing unnecessary auxiliary information such as metrics. Then we apply Ends-in search stretching algorithm in order to enhance the contrast of brightness. Average binarization is then applied to those pixels which its brightness is sufficiently large. The noise part is removed by image processing algorithms. After extracting fascia encloses sternocleidomastoid muscle, target muscle object is extracted using the location information of fascia according to the number of objects in the fascia. When only one object is to be extracted, we search downward first to extract the target muscle area and then search from right to left to extract the area and merge them. If there are two target objects, we extract first from the upper-bound of higher object to the lower-bound of lower object and then remove the fascia of the target object area. Smearing technique is used to restore possible loss of the fat area in the process. The thickness of sternocleidomastoid muscle is then calculated as the maximum thickness of those extracted objects. In this experiment with 30 real world ultrasonography images, the proposed method verified its efficacy and accuracy by health professionals.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.24-30
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• 2012

In this study, we have examined the effects of the storage time and temperature on DNA quality and have also studied the effects of the hydration buffer in which DNA is dissolved. This study was performed using 160 human blood samples collected with informed consent from 2007 to 2008 in the hospital where this cohort study was performed. The DNA extracted was dissolved using distilled water (DW) or Tris-EDTA (TE) buffer, and stored in the deep freezer or refrigerator for up to 10 weeks at $-70^{\circ}C$, $-20^{\circ}C$, $4^{\circ}C$, and $25^{\circ}C$, respectively. DNA integrity was determined by the degree of smearing of DNA on the gel. After four weeks, all of the 20 DNA samples dissolved in DW and stored at $25^{\circ}C$ were entirely degraded. After 10 weeks, 6 of the 20 DNA samples dissolved in TE buffer and stored at $25^{\circ}C$ were fairly degraded, and 4 of the 20 DNA samples dissolved in DW and stored at $4^{\circ}C$ were fairly degraded. The 20 DNA samples dissolved in TE buffer and stored at $4^{\circ}C$ were stable for 10 weeks. DNA samples stored at $-20^{\circ}C$ and $-70^{\circ}C$ did not appear to degrade in either DW or TE buffer, even at the 10-week point. We suggest that TE buffer should use for DNA elution, in order to protect against degradation and to preserve DNA for a long period of time, and the samples should be stored at $-20^{\circ}C$ or $-70^{\circ}C$.

• The Korean Journal of Cytopathology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.120-125
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• 2006

Distinguishing small cell carcinoma from other lung malignancies is of great clinico-therapeutic significance. Small cell carcinoma is an aggressive tumor with a tendency to metastasize early. Survival time if untreated is low but this tumor is highly responsive to chemotherapy. We have occasionally experienced difficulties in differentiation between adenocarcinoma and small cell carcinoma of the lung in fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC). The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility of distinguishing small cell carcinoma from adenocarcinoma of the lung in FNAC. We evaluated cytomorphological features of FNAC specimens from 62 small cell carcinomas and 57 adenocarcinomas from the lung that were confirmed by biopsy and/or immunohistochemistry on cell block. Cytomorphological details of the two tumors were compared. Nuclear smearing and nearly absent cytoplasm were the most distinct findings in small cell carcinoma compared to adenocarcinoma (p<0.05). Necrotic background, architecture and chromatin pattern, nuclear molding and nucleoli were significantly different (p<0.05). Nuclear size, nuclear membrane nature and nuclear size variation however were not helpful in distinguishing the two tumors. Combining several features described above, small cell carcinoma can be properly differentiated from adenocarcinoma on FNAC. FNAC is proposed as a diagnostic tool of small cell carcinoma of the lung in the case of inaccessibility to biopsy, and so may allow the proper therapeutic strategies to be determined in such cases

• Journal of fish pathology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.143-150
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• 1998

Characteristics and distribution of the natural commensal flora in the surrounding environment and tissues of clam in Hadong area were studied under varying conditions of growth media and incubation temperatures. Total numbers of bacteria present in intestinal tract, gill, body fluid and surrounding mud were found to be not influenced by the used BHIA, STA and SNA media. Although the growth rate of bacteria at the condition of $15^{\circ}C$ incubation temperature was slower than that of $25^{\circ}C$ and $35^{\circ}C$, it showed the highest number of total bacteria compared with other two different conditions of incubation temperature. Interestingly, the proportion of bacteria able to form colony on several selective media was higher in replica analysis from nutrient media to selective media than that in direct smearing from samples. The generic diversity of bacteria isolated from the tissues and analyzed by API 20E and API 20NE kit showed similar pattern with each other and distinct from that of environment. The distribution of bacteria in the surrounding mud or mantle fluid of clam indicated a high diversity comparable to that found for the gill or intestinal tract microflora, with Pseudomonas being the prevalent group. It implies that the tissues of clam may probide a selective habitat for a commensal microflora.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.61-70
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• 1992

Photon, neutron and beta radiation fields were measured at PWR plants which are the representative types of nuclear power plant operated in Korea. The photon energy spectra were measured at locations in the auxiliary building during operation period and in the containment vessel(C/V) during shutdown period using a portable gamma spectrometer with a HPGe detector. The distribution of average energy was found to range from 440 to 780 keV in the C/V and from 280 keV to 760 keV in the auxiliary building, respectively. The average neutron energy measured at the five locations around the operation deck in the C/V in operation using a BMSS (Bonner Multi-Sphere Spectrometer) ranged from 20 keV to 210 keV. A computer code, BUNKI was used to unfold the spectrum. The beta energy spectra in the C/V and in the auxiliary building in annual outage were determined using 14 smear samples taken from the highly contaminated areas. The analysis showed that the representative corrosion product, $^{60}Co$ made main contribution to the beta energy field.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.77-85
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• 2001

This paper proposes a method of time-scale modification of polyphonic audio signals based on a sinusoidal model. The signals are modeled with sinusoidal component and noise component. A multiresolution filter bank is designed which splits the input signal into six octave-spaced subbands without aliasing and sinusoidal modeling is applied to each subband signal. To alleviate smearing of transients in time-scale modification a dynamic segmentation method is applied to subbands which determines the analysis-synthesis frame size adaptively to fit time-frequency characteristics of the subband signal. For extracting sinusoidal components and calculating their parameters matching pursuit algorithm is applied to each analysis frame of subband signal. In accordance with spectrum analysis a psychoacoustic model implementing the effect of frequency masking is incorporated with matching pursuit to provide a resonable stop condition of iteration and reduce the number of sinusoids. The noise component obtained by subtracting the synthesized signal with sinusoidal components from the original signal is modeled by line-segment model of short time spectrum envelope. For various polyphonic audio signals the result of simulation shows suggested sinusoidal modeling can synthesize original signal without loss of perceptual quality and do more robust and high quality time-scale modification for large scale factor because of representing transients without any perceptual loss.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.62 no.3
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• pp.184-191
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• 2007

Background: For the diagnosis of pleural tuberculosis, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of pleural effusion specimens has shown very low sensitivity, which might be due to the small number of bacilli in the samples. The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether the sensitivity of PCR testing can be improved when increasing the amount of pleural effusion specimens. Methods: We prospectively analyzed pleural effusion specimens obtained from 53 patients for whom the exclusion of the possibility of tuberculous pleural effusion was necessary. We performed Mycobacterium tuberculosis PCR testing using the Cobas Amplicor MTB test (Roche Diagnostic Systems) with three different amounts (10ml, 25ml, and 50ml) of pleural effusion specimen in each patient. Pleural tuberculosis was defined as having one of the following: culture-positive pleural fluid sample, histopathologic finding consistent with tuberculosis on pleural biopsy, culture-positive sputum specimen, and/or positive response to anti-tuberculous medication without other possible causes of pleural effusion. Results: Of the 53 patients, 26 received the diagnosis of pleural tuberculosis. The sensitivities of AFB smearing, Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture of pleural effusion specimen, pleural biopsy, and measurement of ADA were 3.8%, 15.4%, 84.6%, and 88.5%, respectively. The results of PCR testing were positive for 3 (11.5%), 4 (15.4%), and 3 (11.5%) of the 26 patients when using 10ml, 25ml, and 50ml of pleural effusion specimens, respectively. These results did not show a statistically significant difference in the sensitivity of PCR testing when increasing the amount of pleural effusion samples (p>0.05, symmetry exact test). Conclusion: For specimens such as pleural effusion, in which the bacillary load is very low, the clinical utility of PCR testing seems highly limited with the kits designed for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis. An increased amount of pleural effusion sample does not improve the sensitivity of PCR testing.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2006

In Korea, a resident registration card has various personal information such as a present address, a resident registration number, a face picture and a fingerprint. A plastic-type resident card currently used is easy to forge or alter and tricks of forgery grow to be high-degree as time goes on. So, whether a resident card is forged or not is difficult to judge by only an examination with the naked eye. This paper proposed an automatic recognition method of a resident card which recognizes a resident registration number by using a refined ART2-based RBF network newly proposed and authenticates a face picture by a template image matching method. The proposed method, first, extracts areas including a resident registration number and the date of issue from a resident card image by applying Sobel masking, median filtering and horizontal smearing operations to the image in turn. To improve the extraction of individual codes from extracted areas, the original image is binarized by using a high-frequency passing filter and CDM masking is applied to the binaried image fur making image information of individual codes better. Lastly, individual codes, which are targets of recognition, are extracted by applying 4-directional contour tracking algorithm to extracted areas in the binarized image. And this paper proposed a refined ART2-based RBF network to recognize individual codes, which applies ART2 as the loaming structure of the middle layer and dynamicaly adjusts a teaming rate in the teaming of the middle and the output layers by using a fuzzy control method to improve the performance of teaming. Also, for the precise judgement of forgey of a resident card, the proposed method supports a face authentication by using a face template database and a template image matching method. For performance evaluation of the proposed method, this paper maked metamorphoses of an original image of resident card such as a forgey of face picture, an addition of noise, variations of contrast variations of intensity and image blurring, and applied these images with original images to experiments. The results of experiment showed that the proposed method is excellent in the recognition of individual codes and the face authentication fur the automatic recognition of a resident card.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.131-136
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• 2001

Object : The clinical uses of screws are increasing with broader applications in spinal disorders. When screws are inserted repeatedly to achieve optimal position, tips of screw pitch may become damaged during insertion even though there are significant differences in the moduli of elasticity between bone and titanium. The effect of repeated screw insertion on pullout resistance was investigated. Methods : Three different titanium screws(cortical lateral mass screw, cancellous lateral mass screw and cervical vertebral body screw) were inserted into the synthetic cancellous material and then extracted axially at a rate of 2.4mm/min using Instron(Model TT-D, Canton, MA). Each set of screws was inserted and pulled out three times. There were six screws in each group. The insertional torque was measured with a torque wrench during insertion. Pullout strength was recorded with a digital oscilloscope. Results : The mean pullout force measurements for the cortical lateral mass screws($185.66N{\pm}42.60$, $167.10N{\pm}27.01$ and $162.52 N{\pm}23.83$ for first, second and third pullout respectively : p=0.03) and the cervical vertebral body screws($386.0N{\pm}24.1$, $360.2N{\pm}17.5$ and $330.9N{\pm}16.7$ : p=0.0024) showed consecutive decrease in pullout resistance after each pullout, whereas the cancellous lateral mass screws did not($194.00N{\pm}36.47$, $219.24N{\pm}26.58$ and 199.49N(36.63 : p=0.24). The SEM after insertion and pullout three times showed a blunting in the tip of the screw pitch and a smearing of the screw surface. Conclusions : Repetitive screw insertion and pullout resulted in the decrease of pullout resistance in certain screws possibly caused by blunting the screw tip. This means screw tips suffer deformations during either repeated insertion or pullout. Thus, the screws that have been inserted should not be used for the final construct.