• Journal of Life Science
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• v.23 no.9
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• pp.1133-1139
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• 2013

During the collection of boar semen, bacterial contamination usually occurs. The contamination has deleterious effects both on semen quality and on sow fertility. The majority of contaminants are gram-negative bacteria, especially Serratia marcescens. In this study, we developed a PCR assay for the identification of S. marcescens targeting the luxS gene (GenBank no. EF164926). S. marcescens yielded a specific 306 bp PCR product. However, no amplification was observed in the other strains tested. The detection limit of PCR was $50pg/{\mu}l$ of template DNA of S. marcescens. The antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of S. marcescens isolated from boar semen were tested using the disk diffusion method. Gentamicin, ceftiofur, florfenicol, and neomycin showed high sensitivity in this test. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was also determined by the broth microdilution method. The $MIC_{90}$ values of ceftiofur, enrofloxacin, gentamicin, and neomycin were 8, 8, 8, and $16{\mu}g/ml$, respectively. These results indicate that PCR amplification of the luxS gene is a reliable and effective method for the identification of S. marcescens and that ceftiofur, enrofloxacin, gentamicin, and neomycin are effective semen extenders for controlling S. marcescens.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.43-56
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• 1998

A multiplex PCR method was designed by employing primers specific for the eaeA gene, conserved sequences of Shiga-like toxins (SLT-I.II), and the 60-MDa plasmid of enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) O157:H7 strain. A set of six synthetic oligonucleotide primers derived from sequences of the SLT-I.II, eaeA, and 60-MDa plasmid genes of E. coli O157:H7 were used in a multiplex PCR amplification procedure to detect these genes in the same enteric pathogens. In two enterohemorrhagic E. coli O157:H7 (ATCC 35150, ATCC 43894) reference strains, PCR products of 317bps (eaeA), 228bps (SLT-I.II), and 167bps (60-MDa plasmid) were successfully amplified simultaneously in a single reaction. However, the specific PCR products were not amplified in control strains of other enteric bacteria. The sensitivity of the multiplex PCR assay for detection of the SLT-I.II, eaeA, and 60-MDa plasmid genes of E. coli O157:H7 was found to be 2.5$\times$10$^{6}$ of bacteria in diarrheal stool to amplify all three bands. The multiplex PCR technology will allow large-scale screening of many clinical specimens or contaminated foods, and will be a very useful method for the detection of a wide range of microorganisms present in the environment, including EHEC O157:H7 in various types of specimens. The multiplex PCR assay has the potential to be used as a specific and rapid method for clinical diagnosis of disease caused by EHEC O157:H7.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.786-792
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• 2010

This paper presents a real-time lane detection method which can accurately find the lane-mark boundaries in complex road environment. Unlike many existing methods that pay much attention on the post-processing stage to fit lane-mark position among a great deal of outliers, the proposed method aims at removing those outliers as much as possible at feature extraction stage, so that the searching space at post-processing stage can be greatly reduced. To achieve this goal, a grid-based morphology operation is firstly used to generate the regions of interest (ROI) dynamically, in which a directional edge-linking algorithm with directional edge-gap closing is proposed to link edge-pixels into edge-links which lie in the valid directions, these directional edge-links are then grouped into pairs by checking the valid lane-mark width at certain height of the image. Finally, lane-mark colors are checked inside edge-link pairs in the YUV color space, and lane-mark types are estimated employing a Bayesian probability model. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective in identifying lane-mark edges among heavy clutter edges in complex road environment, and the whole algorithm can achieve an accuracy rate around 92% at an average speed of 10ms/frame at the image size of $320{\times}240$.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.42-52
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• 2013

The aim of this study is to present a prediction model of construction cost for a bridge that has a high reliability using historical data from the planning phase based on a CBR (Case-Based Reasoning) method in order to overcome limitations of existing construction cost prediction methods, which is linearly estimated. To do this, a reasoning model of bridge construction cost by a spreadsheet template was suggested using complexly both CBR and GA (Genetic Algorithm). Besides, this study performed a case study to verify the suggested cost reasoning model for bridge construction projects. Measuring efficiency for a result of the case study was 8.69% on average. Since accuracy of the suggested prediction cost is relatively high compared to the other analysis methods for a prediction of construction cost, reliability of the suggested model was secured. In the case that information for detailed specifications of each bridge type in an initial design phase is difficult to be collected, the suggested model is able to predict the bridge construction cost within the minimized measuring efficiency with only the representative specifications for bridges as an improved correction method. Therefore, it is expected that the model will be used to estimate a reasonable construction cost for a bridge project.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.2714-2726
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• 1997

In this paper, adaptive symbol changes-based medical image compression method is presented. First, the differenctial image domain is obtained using the differentiation rules or obaptive predictors applied to original mdeical image. Also, the algorithm determines the context associated with the differential image from the domain. Then prediction symbols which are thought tobe the most probable differential image values are maintained at a high value through the adaptive symbol changes procedure based on estimates of the symbols with polarity coincidence between the differential image values to be coded under to context and differential image values in the model template. At the coding step, the differential image values are encoded as "predicted" or "non-predicted" by the binary adaptive arithmetic encoder, where a binary decision tree is employed. The simlation results indicate that the prediction hit ratios of differential image values using the proposed algorithm improve the coding gain by 25% and 23% than arithmetic coder with ISO JPEG lossless predictor and arithmetic coder with differentiation rules or adaptive predictors, respectively. It can be used in compression part of medical PACS because the proposed method allows the encoder be directly applied to the full bit-planes medical image without a decomposition of the full bit-plane into a series of binary bit-planes as well as lower complexity of encoder through using an additions when sub-dividing recursively unit intervals.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.8.1-8.1
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• 2011

Nanocrystalline titanium dioxide ($TiO_2$) materials have been widely used as an electron collector in DSSC. This is required to have an extremely high porosity and surface area such that the dye can be sufficiently adsorbed and be electronically interconnected, resulting in the generation of a high photocurrent within cells. In particular, their geometrical structures and crystalline phase have been extensively investigated as important issues in improving its photovoltaic efficiency. In this study, we present a new strategy to fabricate a photoelectrode having a periodic structured $TiO_2$ film templated from 1D or 3D polystyrene (PS) microspheres array. Monodisperse PS spheres of various radiuses were used for colloidal array on FTO glasses and two types of photoelectrode structures with different $TiO_2$ materials were investigated respectively. One is the igloo-shaped electrode prepared by $TiO_2$ deposition by RF-sputtering onto 2D microsphere-templated substrates. At the interface between the film and substrate, there are voids formed by the decomposition of PS microspheres during the calcination step. These holes might be expected to play the predominant roles as scattering spherical voids to promote a light harvesting effect, a spacious structure for electrolytes with higher viscosity and effective paths for electron transfer. Additionally the nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ phase prepared by the RF-sputtering method was previously reported to improve the electron drift mobility within $TiO_2$ electrodes. This yields solar cells with a cell efficiency of 2.45% or more at AM 1.5 illumination, which is a very remarkable result, considering its $TiO_2$ electrode thickness (<2 ${\mu}m$). This study can be expanded to obtain higher cell efficiency by higher dye loading through the increase of surface area or multi-layered stacking. The other is the inverse opal photonic crystal electrode prepared by titania particles infusion within 3D colloidal arrays. To obtain the enlargement of ordered area and high quality of crystallinity, the synthesis of titania particles coated with a organic thin layer were applied instead of sol-gel process using the $TiO_2$ precursors. They were dispersed so well in most solvents without aggregates and infused successfully within colloidal array structures. This ordered mesoporous structure provides the large surface area leading to the enough adsorption of dye molecules and have an light harvesting effect due to the photonic band gap properties (back-and-forth reflection effects within structures). A major advantage of this colloidal array template method is that the pore size and its distribution within $TiO_2$ photoelectrodes are determined by those of latex beads, which can be controlled easily. These materials may have promising potentials for future applications of membrane, sensor and so on as well as solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.37-47
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• 2009

For the inspection of wood, machine vision is the most common automated inspection method used at present. It is required to sort wood products by grade and to locate surface defects prior to cut-up. Many different sensing methods have been applied to inspection of wood including optical, ultrasonic, X-ray sensing in the wood industry. Nowadays the scanning system mainly employs CCD line-scan camera to meet the needs of accurate detection of lumber defects and real-time image processing. But this system needs exact feeding system and low deviation of lumber thickness. In this study low cost CCD area sensor was used for the development of image processing system for lumber being fed. When domestic red pine being fed on the conveyer belt, lumber images of irregular term of captured area were acquired because belt conveyor slipped between belt and roller. To overcome incorrect image merging by the unstable feeding speed of belt conveyor, it was applied template matching algorithm which was a measure of the similarity between the pattern of current image and the next one. Feeding the lumber over 13.8 m/min, general area sensor generates unreadable image pattern by the motion blur. The red channel of RGB filter showed a good performance for removing background of the green conveyor belt from merged image. Threshold value reduction method that was a image-based thresholding algorithm performed well for knot detection.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.403-408
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• 2003

A general meaning of caricaturing is that a representation, especially pictorial or literary, in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect. In other words, a caricature is defined as a rough sketch(dessin) which is made by detecting features from human face and exaggerating or warping those. There have been developed many methods which can make a caricature image from human face using computer. In this paper, we propose a new caricaturing system. The system uses a real-time image or supplied image as an input image and deals with it on four processing steps and then creates a caricatured image finally. The four Processing steps are like that. The first step is detecting a face from input image. The second step is extracting special coordinate values as facial geometric information. The third step is deforming the face image using local warping method and the coordinate values acquired in the second step. In fourth step, the system transforms the deformed image into the better improved edge image using a fuzzy Sobel method and then creates a caricatured image finally. In this paper , we can realize a caricaturing system which is simpler than any other exiting systems in ways that create a caricatured image and does not need complex algorithms using many image processing methods like image recognition, transformation and edge detection.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.375-375
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• 2012

Graphene is a sp2-hybridized carbon sheet with an atomic-level thickness and a wide range of graphene applications has been intensely investigated due to its unique electrical, optical, and mechanical properties. In particular, hybrid graphene structures combined with various nanomaterials have been studied in energy- and sensor-based applications due to the high conductivity, large surface area and enhanced reactivity of the nanostructures. Conventional metal-catalytic growth method, however, makes useful applications difficult since a transfer process, used to separate graphene from the metal substrate, should be required. Recently several papers have been published on direct graphene growth on the two dimensional planar substrates, but it is necessary to explore a direct growth of hierarchical nanostructures for the future graphene applications. In this study, uniform graphene layers were successfully synthesized on highly dense dielectric nanowires (NWs) without any external catalysts. We also demonstrated that the graphene morphology on NWs can be controlled by the growth parameters, such as temperature or partial pressure in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system. This direct growth method can be readily applied to the fabrication of nanoscale graphene electrode with designed structures because a wide range of nanostructured template is available. In addition, we believe that the direct growth growth approach and morphological control of graphene are promising for the advanced graphene applications such as super capacitors or bio-sensors.

• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.177-182
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• 2012

Mesoporous anatase $TiO_2$ nanoparticles have been synthesized by a hydrothermal method using a tri-block copolymer as a soft template. The resulting $TiO_2$ materials have a high specific surface area of $230\;m^2/g$, a predominant pore size of 6.8 nm and a pore volume of 0.404 mL/g. The electrochemical properties of mesoporous anatase $TiO_2$ for lithium ion battery (LIB) anode materials have been investigated by typical coin cell tests. The initial discharge capacity of these materials is 240 mAh/g, significantly higher than the theoretical capacity (175 mAh/g) of LTO ($Li_4Ti_5O_{12}$). Although the discharge capacity decreases with the C-rate increase, the mesoporous $TiO_2$ is very promising for LIB anode because the surface for the Li insertion is presented significantly with mesopores. Nitrogen doping has a certain effect to control the capacity decrease by improving the electron transport in $TiO_2$ framework.