• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.305-314
• /
• 2023

With the development of medical technology and radiation treatment equipment, the frequency of high-precision radiation therapy such as intensity modulation radiation therapy has increased. Image-guided radiation therapy has become essential for radiation therapy in precise and complex treatment plans. In particular, with the introduction of imaging equipment for diagnosis in a linear accelerator, CBCT scanning became possible, which made it possible to calibrate and correct the patient's posture through 3D images. Although more precise reproduction of the patient's posture has become possible, the exposure dose delivered to the patient during the image acquisition process cannot be ignored. Radiation optimization is necessary in the field of radiation therapy, and efforts to reduce exposure are necessary. However, when acquiring 3D CBCT images by changing the imaging conditions to reduce exposure, there should be no image quality or artefacts that would make it impossible to align the patient's position. In this study, Rando phantom was used to scan and evaluate images for each shooting condition. The highest SNR was obtained at 100 kV 80 mA 25 ms F1 filter 180°. As the tube voltage and tube current increased, the noise decreased, and the bowtie filter showed the optimal effect at high tube current. Based on the actual scanned images, it was confirmed that patient alignment was possible under all imaging conditions, and that image-guided radiation therapy for patient alignment was possible under the condition of 70 kV 10 mA 20 ms F0 filter 180°, which showed the lowest SNR. In this study, image evaluation was conducted according to the imaging conditions, and low tube voltage, tube current, and small rotation angle scan are expected to be effective in reducing radiation exposure. Based on this, the patient's exposure dose should be kept as low as possible during CBCT imaging.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.208-213
• /
• 2007

The objective of the experiment was to determine the optimum cultural [moisture levels (55, 60 and 70%), days of fermentation (7, 14 and 21), temperature (25 and $35^{\circ}C$) of incubation)] and nutritional parameters (urea addition (0 and 2%) and variable levels of single super phosphate (0.25 and 0.50% SSP)) for bio-processing of the mustard (Brassica campestris) straw (MS) under solid-state fermentation (SSF) system. The performance of SSF was assessed in terms of favorable changes in cell wall constituents, protein content and in vitro DM digestibility of the MS. Sorghum based inoculum (seed culture) of Ganoderma lucidum to treat the MS was prepared. The 50 g DM of MS taken in autoclavable polypropylene bags was mixed with a pre-calculated amount of water and the particular nutrient in the straw to attained the desired levels of water and nutrient concentration in the substrate. A significant progressive increase in biodegradation of DM (p<0.001), NDF (p<0.01) and ADF (p<0.05) was observed with increasing levels of moisture. Among the cell wall constituents the loss of ADF fraction was greatest compared to that of NDF. The loss of DM increased progressively as the fermentation proceeded and maximum DM losses occurred at 28 days after incubation. The protein content of the treated MS samples increased linearly up to the day $21^{th}$ of the incubation and thereafter declined at day $28^{th}$, whereas the improvement in in vitro DM digestibility were apparent only up to the day $14^{th}$ of the incubation under SSF and there after it declined. The acid detergent lignin (ADL) degradation was slower during the first 7 days of SSF and thereafter increased progressively and maximum ADL losses were observed at the day $28^{th}$ of the SSF. The biodegradation of DM and ADL was not affected by the variation in incubation temperature. Addition of urea was found to have inhibitory effect on fungal growth. The effect of both the levels (0.25 and 0.50) of SSP addition in the substrate, on DM, NDF, ADF, cellulose and ADL biodegradation was similar. Similarly, the protein content and the in vitro DM digestibility remain unaffected affected due to variable levels of the SSP inclusion in the substrate. From the results it may be concluded that the incubation of MS with 60 percent moisture for 21 days at $35^{\circ}C$ with 0.25 percent SSP was most suitable for MS treatment with Ganoderma lucidum. Maximum delignification, enrichment in the protein content and improvement in in vitro DM digestibility were achieved by adopting this protocol of bioprocessing of MS.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.39 no.8
• /
• pp.478-488
• /
• 2017

Stormwater filtration is widely used for the urban runoff treatment. However, intensive maintenance and lack of information about the performance have resulted in an increased need of proper evaluation. In this study, the performance of an upflow stormwater runoff filtration system, consisting of a supporting unit and a filtration unit filled with a ceramic media, was investigated. The maximum head loss increase was about 3 cm under the suspended solid (SS) load of $30kg/m^2$ and the SS removal was more than 96%, when the filtration velocity was 20-40 m/h. The head loss and the porosity of the media can successfully be described by a power model. It was confirmed that the a significant amount of SS can effectively be removed at supporting unit, minimizing SS load to the filter media bed. Several backwashing strategies have been tested to establish the optimum condition. It was found that the stagnant water discharge is important to minimize the SS release immediately after backwashing. Also, the filter bed loaded with $400-450kg/m^2$ SS can almost completely be washed to reduce the head loss to the that of empty bed. The results in this study indicate that the upflow ceramic media filter is an excellent alternative to stormwater treatment, with high SS removal and long lifespan.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.38 no.9
• /
• pp.521-527
• /
• 2016

Nanoscale zero valent iron (nZVI) has been intensively studied for the treatment of a plethora of pollutants through reductive reaction, however, the nano size should be of concern when nZVI is considered for water treatment, due to difficulties in recovery. The loss of nZVI causes not only economical loss, but also potential risk to human health and environment. Thus, the immobilization onto coarse or structured support is essential. In this study, two representative processes for nZVI immobilization on granular activated carbon (GAC) were evaluated, and optimized conditions for synthesizing Fe/GAC composite were suggested. Both total iron content and $Fe_0$ content can be significantly affected by preparation processes, therefore, it was important to avoid oxidation during preparation to achieve higher reduction capacity. Synthesis conditions such as reduction time and existence of intermediate drying step were investigated to improve $Fe_0$ content of Fe/GAC composites. The optimal condition was two hours of $NaBH_4$ reduction without intermediate drying process. The prepared Fe/GAC composite showed synergistic effect of the adsorption capability of the GAC and the degradation capability of the nZVI, which make this composite a very effective material for environmental remediation.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.46 no.3
• /
• pp.585-597
• /
• 2008

The aim of this study was to find an analytic solution to the problem of determining the optimal capacity (lot-size) of a batch-storage network to meet demand for a finished product in a system undergoing random failures of operating time and/or batch material. The superstructure of the plant considered here consists of a network of serially and/or parallel interlinked batch processes and storage units. The production processes transform a set of feedstock materials into another set of products with constant conversion factors. The final product demand flow is susceptible to short-term random variations in the cycle time and batch size as well as long-term variations in the average trend. Some of the production processes have random variations in product quantity. The spoiled materials are treated through regeneration or waste disposal processes. All other processes have random variations only in the cycle time. The objective function of the optimization is minimizing the total cost, which is composed of setup and inventory holding costs as well as the capital costs of constructing processes and storage units. A novel production and inventory analysis, the PSW (Periodic Square Wave) model, provides a judicious graphical method to find the upper and lower bounds of random flows. The advantage of this model is that it provides a set of simple analytic solutions while also maintaining a realistic description of the random material flows between processes and storage units; as a consequence of these analytic solutions, the computation burden is significantly reduced.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
• /
• v.39 no.6
• /
• pp.582-588
• /
• 2002

IrO$_2$-RuO$_2$ films were deposited on plasma sprayed TiO$_2$ buffer layer above Ti metal by sol-gel and dip-coating method. Organic vehicle (ethyl cellulose and $\alpha$-terpineol) and glass frit were added to improve adherence of the coatings. Taguchi method and L$_{18}$ (2$^1$$\times$3$^{7}$ ) orthogonal arrays were evalvated in terms of current density to determine the optimal combination of levels of factors that best satisfy the bigger is better quality characteristic. The observed conditions were as fellows: ethyl cellulose (100 cp), drying temperature and time (17$0^{\circ}C$,20 min), heat treatment temperature and time (75$0^{\circ}C$,10 min), the weight ratio of IrO$_2$-RuO/powders to glass frit (99:5), final heat treatment time (120 min) and flow rate of air (5 sccm), respectively. ANOVA analysis suggested that the influence of the factors within $\alpha$= 0.1 was significant with a 90% confidence level.

• Journal of IKEEE
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.1440-1447
• /
• 2019

Currently, the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in children is reported to be higher and shows various types of disorders. In particular, they are having difficulty in communication due to communication impairment in the area of social communication and need to be improved through training. Thus, this study proposes a method of acquiring voice information through a microphone mounted on a robot designed through preliminary research and using this information to make intelligent motions. An ANN(Artificial Neural Network) was used to classify the speech data into robot motions, and we tried to improve the accuracy by combining the Recurrent Neural Network based on Convolutional Neural Network. The preprocessing of input speech data was analyzed using MFCC(Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient), and the motion of the robot was estimated using various data normalization and neural network optimization techniques. In addition, the designed ANN showed a high accuracy by conducting an experiment comparing the accuracy with the existing architecture and the method of human intervention. In order to design robot motions with higher accuracy in the future and to apply them in the treatment and education environment of children with autism.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.584-588
• /
• 2006

This study was carried out to optimize the conditions for the extraction of antioxidative materials from licorice root, Glycyrrhiz glabra. Chipped licorice roots were extracted with several solvents and their antioxidative activities were tested to determine the optimal extraction solvent. Among the solvents tested, 95% ethanol gave the highest free radical scavenging activity, and was therefore chosen as the optimal extracting solvent. The optimum extraction temperature and time were $20^{\circ}C$ and 12 hr, respectively. Next, the free radical scavenging activity of the ethanol extract was compared with that of other known antioxidants such as ${\alpha}-tocopherol$, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA). Ethanol extract of licorice root had greater antioxidative activity than ${\alpha}-tocopherol$ and a similar level to that of the two synthetic antioxidants (BHA and BHT). Moreover, the antioxidative activity of the ethanol extract was inhibited neither by heat treatment at $180^{\circ}C$ for 30 min nor by treatment at extreme pH. These findings suggest that ethanol extract of G. glabra may be useful as a natural antioxidant.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.291-298
• /
• 2020

ZITO/Ag/ZITO multilayer transparent electrodes at room temperature on glass substrates were prepared using RF/DC magnetron sputtering. Transparent conductive films with a sheet resistance of 9.4 Ω/㎡ and a transmittance of 83.2% at 550 nm were obtained for the multilayer structure comprising ZITO/Ag/ZITO (100/8/42 nm). The sheet resistance and transmittance of ZITO/Ag/ZITO multilayer films meant that they would be highly applicable for use in polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC)-based smart windows due to the ability to effectively block infrared rays (heat rays) and thereby act as an energy-saving smart glass. Effects of the thickness of the PDLC layer and the intensity of ultraviolet light (UV) on electro-optical properties, photopolymerization kinetics, and morphologies of difunctional urethane acrylate-based PDLC systems were investigated using new transparent conducting electrodes. A PDLC cell photo-cured using UV at an intensity of 2.0 mW/c㎡ with a 15 ㎛-thick PDLC layer showed outstanding off-state opacity, good on-state transmittance, and favorable driving voltage. Also, the PDLC-based smart window optimized in this study formed liquid crystal droplets with a favorable microstructure, having an average size range of 2~5 ㎛ for scattering light efficiently, which could contribute to its superior final performance.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.13-29
• /
• 2016

In this study, we analyzed the causes of major faults in the biogas plant through the case of gas engine failure when cogenerating electricity and heat using biogas as a fuel in the actual sewage treatment plant and suggested countermeasures. Hydrogen sulfide in the biogas entering the biogas engine and water caused by intermittent malfunction of the water removal system caused intercooler corrosion in the biogas engine. In addition, the siloxane in the biogas forms a silicate compound with silicon dioxide, which causes scratches and wear of the piston surface and the inner wall of the cylinder liner. The substances attached to the combustion chamber and the exhaust system were analyzed to be combined with hydrogen sulfide and other impurities. It is believed that hydrogen sulfide was supplied to the desulfurization plant for a long period of time because of the high content of hydrogen sulfide (more than 50ppm) in the biogas and the hydrogen sulfide was introduced into the engine due to the decrease of the removal efficiency due to the breakthrough point of the activated carbon in the desulfurization plant. In addition, the hydrogen sulfide degrades the function of the activated carbon for siloxane removal of the adsorption column, which is considered to be caused by the introduction of unremoved siloxane waste into the engine, resulting in various types of engine failure. Therefore, hydrogen sulfide, siloxane, and water can be regarded as the main causes of the failure of the biogas engine. Among them, hydrogen sulfide reacts with other materials causing failure and can be regarded as a substance having a great influence on the pretreatment process. As a result, optimization of $H_2S$ removal method seems to be an essential measure for stable operation of the biogas engine.