• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.121-126
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• 2011

Purpose: Vaccum-assisted closure (VAC) has rapidly evolved into a widely accepted treatment of contaminated wounds, envenomations, infiltrations, and wound complications. This results in a sealed, moist environment where tissue is given the opportunity to survive as edema is removed and perfusion is increased. Many plastic surgeons now place a VAC device directly over the fasciotomy site at the time of the initial procedure. Large amounts of the fluid are withdrawn, and fasciotomies can be closed primarily sooner. This study was designed to observe the effect of VAC in preventing complications in snake bitten hands. Methods: In our study of three cases of snake bite, three of them underwent the VAC treatment & fasciotomy of the wound in the hand. This cases, the posterior compartment of the hand was bitten for a few days, releasing incisions were made of the posterior hand and 125 mmHg of continuous vacuum was applied to fasciomy incision site and the biting wound. The dressings were changed three times per week. Results: Our study examining the effects of applied vacuum in preventing snake bite wounds showed that the incidence of tissue necrosis and compartment syndrome was significantly lower for vacuum-treated wounds than for conservative wounds. Serum myoglobin, CK-MB, and CPK levels measured after fasciotomy incision were significantly decreased. We obtained satisfactory results from early dorsal fasciotomy, drainage of the edema with the VAC system, and then primary closure. The postoperative course was uneventful. Conclusion: Envenomation is a term implying that sufficient venom has been introduced into the body to cause either local signs at the site of the bite and/or systemic signs. Use of the vacuum-assisted closure device in snake bite can result in a decreased rate of tissue necrosis, lymphatic fluid collection, hemolytic fluid collection, and edema. Early fasciotomy of the dorsal hand and VAC apply is the alternative treatment of the snake bite.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.173-178
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• 2017

Objectives: Medicinal plants are vital sources of bioactive compounds that are useful for the treatment of patients with snake bites or are indirectly applicable for boosting the effects of conventional serum therapy. These plants are being used traditionally by local healers and tribes for the treatment of patients with snake bites and therefore can be used as an alternative against snake envenomation. Scientifically, using the secondary metabolites of plants to neutralize venom enzymes has an extra benefit of being based on traditional knowledge; also, the use of such metabolites for the treatment of patients with snake bites is cheaper and the treatment can be started sooner. Methods: All the available information on various secondary metabolites exhibiting venom neutralizing ability were collected via electronic search (using Google books, Pubmed, SciFinder, Scirus, Google Scholar, and Web of Science) and articles of peer-reviewed journals. Results:Recent interest in different plant has focused on isolating and identifying of different phytoconstituents that exhibit Phospholipase A2 activity and other venom enzyme neutralizing ability. In this support convincing evidence in experimental animal models are available. Conclusion: Secondary metabolites are naturally present, have no side effect, are stable for a long time, can be easily stored, and can neutralize a wide range of snake enzymes, such as phospholipase A2, hyaluronidase, protease, L-amino acid oxidase, 5'nucleotidase, etc. The current review presents a compilation of important plant secondary metabolites that are effective against snake venom due to enzyme neutralization.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.42-53
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• 2017

One of the negative ecological effects following road construction is roadkill; animals die on the roads after being struck by vehicles. Roadkills have been a major concern in South Korea due to the large mountain areas in the country and have been mentioned as a causal factor for the decline in wildlife. Although snake roadkills frequently occur, as with mammals, birds, and amphibians, there are not many related studies done on snake roadkills. In this study, we determined snake roadkill patterns in the northeast part of South Korea including most of the Gangwon-do areas and parts of Gyeonggi-do, Chungcheongbuk-do, and Gyeongsangbuk-do by analyzing the snake roadkills found between May 2007 and Aug 2012. We identified a total of 155 roadkilled snakes from 10 different species. Red-sided water snake (Rhabdophis tigrinus), Red-tongue viper snake (Gloydius ussuriensis), Cat snake (Elaphe dione), Red-banded snake (Dinodon rufozonatus), and Viper snake (Gloydius brevicaudus) accounted for more than 90% of the total cases. It was found that more active forager snakes were killed than sit-and-wait foragers, more male snakes were killed than female snakes, and more adult snakes were killed than subadult snakes. The snake roadkill frequency was the highest in September between the altitudes of 200 and 400 m, and on roads between either a mountain and a body of water or between a mountain and a crop field. Our results are expected to enhance the understanding of snake roadkills in general and to determine the areas, specific sites and species for planning projects for snake roadkill reduction in the northeast of South Korea.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.460-467
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• 2022

In this study, we collected snake roadkill data from 2006 to 2017 and developed a species distribution model to identify the pattern of snake roadkill and predict the potential hotspot of snake roadkill in the Odaesan National Park of South Korea. During the study period, snake roadkills occurred most frequently on the road, which passes through between forest and stream at an altitude of about 600 m. The modeling result showed that the occurrence probability of snake roadkill was high on a road with a gentle slope at a distance of 25 m from the stream and an altitude of 600 m. The most susceptible regions for snake roadkill in the Odaesan National Park were located on National Route 6, about 2.2 km and 11.7 km away from the southern border of the park, and on Local Road 446, 3.44 km away from the southern border of the park. The results of this study suggest that providing alternative basking places and eco-corridors and installing protection fences that block the inflow of snakes into roads, preferentially around roads and streams at an altitude lower than 700 m would be an effective way of reducing snake roadkill in the Odaesan National Park.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.5-14
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• 2011

Objectives: Fibrinolytic enzyme preparations were isolated from the snake venom of Macrovipera lebetica turanica in this study. Methods: The purity of the preparations was determined using SDS-PAGE and the enzymic characteristics of the purified fibrinolytic enzyme were determined. Results: 1. All of the two preparations with fibrinolytic activity obtained from the snake venom of M. l. turanicat contained the major polypeptide with the molecular weight of 27,500. One of the preparation showed purified fibrinolytic enzyme. 2. The purified fibrinolytic enzyme hydrolyzed ${\alpha}$-chain of fibrinogen faster than ${\beta}$-chain but not ${\gamma}$-chain. 3. The fibrinolytic activity was inhibited completely by EDTA, EGTA, 1,10-phenanthroline, and dithiothreitol. 4. The fibrinolytic activity was inhibited completely by calcium chloride, iron(III) chloride, mercuric chloride, and cobalt (II) chloride. 5. The fibrinolysis zone formed after addition of zinc sulfate was smaller but clearer than the control. Conclusions: These results suggested that the fibrinolytic enzyme purifed from the snake venom of M. l turanica was a metalloprotease containing dithiol group.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.279-285
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• 2020

We intended to describe 2 digenean trematodes found from a Chinese sea snake, Laticauda semifasciata, as the new fauna in the Republic of Korea. The snake was caught offshore of Aewol-eup, Jeju-do, in August 2017. Two species of fluke were found in the lung and intestinal tract of the snake in the process of necropsy. They were identified as Pulmovermis cyanovitellosus Coil and Kuntz, 1960 and Harmotrema laticaudae Yamaguti, 1933, respectively based on the morphological characters. Pulmovermis cyanovitellosus showed elongated body with well-developed and elongated male genital system and compact vitelline. And H. laticaudae was characterized by linguiform body with heavily armed cirrus with excretory system. This is the first time both species have been reported and described off the Korean coast. We provide morphological descriptions with some comments on their biology and geographical distribution. In addition, the taxonomic validity of the genus Hydrophitrema Sandars, 1960 was discussed, in terms of morphological descriptions and host ranges. This study provides novel insight into digenean fluke species existing off the coast of Korea.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.241-244
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• 2005

Many building detection methods mainly rely on line segments extracted from aerial or satellite imagery. Building detection methods based on line segments, however, are difficult to succeed in high resolution satellite imagery such as IKONOS imagery, for most buildings in IKONOS imagery have small size of roofs with low contrast between roof and background. In this paper, we propose an efficient method to extract line segments and group them at the same time. First, edge preserving filtering is applied to the imagery to remove the noise. Second, we segment the imagery by watershed method, which collects the pixels with similar intensities to obtain homogeneous region. The boundaries of homogeneous region are not completely coincident with roof boundaries due to low contrast in the vicinity of the roof boundaries. Finally, to resolve this problem, we set up snake model with segmented region boundaries as initial snake's positions. We used a greedy algorithm to fit a snake to roof boundary. Experimental results show our method can obtain more .correct roof boundary with small size and low contrast from IKONOS imagery. Snake algorithm, building roof detection, watershed segmentation, edge-preserving filtering

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.9-18
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• 2001

Feature detection is important in various mesh processing techniques, such as mesh editing, mesh morphing, mesh compression, and mesh signal processing. In this paper, we propose a geometric snake as an interactive tool for feature detection on a 3D triangular mesh. A geometric snake is an extension of an image snake, which is an active contour model that slithers from its initial position specified by the user to a nearby feature while minimizing an energy functional. To constrain the movement of a geometric snake onto the surface of a mesh, we use the parameterization of the surrounding region of a geometric snake. Although the definition of a feature may vary among applications, we use the normal changes of faces to detect features on a mesh.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.13B no.4 s.107
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• pp.361-368
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• 2006

In this paper we present a snake-based scheme for efficiently detecting contours of objects with boundary concavities. The proposed method is composed of two steps. First, the object's boundary is detected using the proposed snake model. Second, snake points are optimized by inserting new points and deleting unnecessary points to better describe the object's boundary. The proposed algorithm can successfully extract objects with boundary concavities. Experimental results have shown that our algorithm produces more accurate segmentation results than the conventional algorithm.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.215-224
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• 2013

This paper proposes a robust lane detection algorithm for bumpy or slope changing roads by estimating extrinsic camera parameters, which represent the pose of the camera mounted on the car. The proposed algorithm assumes that two lanes are parallel with the predefined width. The lane detection and the extrinsic camera parameter estimation are performed simultaneously by utilizing B-snake in motion compensated and merged feature map with consecutive sequences. The experimental results show the robustness of the proposed algorithm in various road environments. Furthermore, the accuracy of extrinsic camera parameter estimation is evaluated by calculating the distance to a preceding car with the estimated parameters and comparing to the radar-measured distance.