• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 1994

Y-Ra-Cu-0 oxide superconductors were fabricated by the sinter-forging method to make the critical current density improve through controlling of microstructure and crystal texture. The grain alignment of oxide superconductor was formed by the sinter-forging process and it's c-axis orientation was parallel to the press direction.The orientation factor of texture increased with sinking temperature and pressure, and also grain alignment was improved by the addition of Ag. As for the sinterforged Y-Ba-Cu-O/Ag sample, the $T_c$(on-set) was not almost varied with the sinter-forging temperature, but $T_c\;^{zero}$ decreased more or less at high sinter-forging temperatures. In addition, it was observed that added-Ag was mainly distributed along the grain boundar~es in the (123) matrix, resulting in the densification of microstructure. From these results, i t was thought that the improvement of $J_c$ over 2000A/$\textrm{cm}^2$ was attributed to the texture, densification of microstructure, and (123) grain growth due to the Ag addition.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.543-550
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• 2011

Conductive SiC-$ZrB_2$ composites were produced by subjecting a 40:60 (vol%) mixture of zirconium diboride (ZrB2) powder and ${\beta}$-silicon carbide (SiC) matrix to spark plasma sintering (SPS). Sintering was carried out for 5 min in an argon atmosphere at a uniaxial pressure and temperature of 50 MPa and $1500^{\circ}C$, respectively. The composite sintered at a heating speed of $25^{\circ}C$/min and an on/off pulse sequence of 12:2 was denoted as SZ12L. Composites SZ12H, SZ48H, and SZ10H were obtained by sintering at a heating speed of $100^{\circ}C$/min and at on/off pulse sequences of 12:2, 48:8, and 10:9, respectively. The physical, electrical, and mechanical properties of the SiC-$ZrB_2$ composites were examined and thermal image analysis of the composites was performed. The apparent porosities of SZ12L, SZ12H, SZ48H, and SZ10H were 13.35%, 0.60%, 12.28%, and 9.75%, respectively. At room temperature, SZ12L had the lowest flexural strength (286.90 MPa), whereas SZ12H had the highest flexural strength (1011.34 MPa). Between room temperature and $500^{\circ}C$, the SiC-$ZrB_2$ composites had a positive temperature coefficient of resistance (PTCR) and linear V-I characteristics. SZ12H had the lowest PTCR and highest electrical resistivity among all the composites. The optimum SPS conditions for the production of energy-friendly SiC-$ZrB_2$ composites are as follows: 1) an argon atmosphere, 2) a constant pressure of 50 MPa throughout the sintering process, 3) an on/off pulse sequence of 12:2 (pulse duration: 2.78 ms), and 4) a final sintering temperature of $1500^{\circ}C$ at a speed of $100^{\circ}C$/min and sintering for 5 min at $1500^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.346-356
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• 2008

Asbestos is the name of a group of minerals with long and thin fibers that originate naturally in the environment. Asbestos mainly affects lungs and the membrane that surrounds the lungs. In general, PCM (phase contrast microscopy) and PLM (polarized light microscopy) have been used to analyze asbestos fibers. However, these methods have often problems to over-estimate number concentration when counting real asbestos fibers. Moreover, there are many difficulties when separating and identifying various asbestos and non-asbestos fibers. In order to determine quantitative information on fibrous particles, source profiles for asbestos and non-asbestos fibers must be initially developed on the basis of their chemical compositions and physical parameters. In our study, a SEM/EDX was used to develop source profiles from known asbestos samples as reference samples. We could make the source profile matrix consisting of 6 types of asbestos fibers and 2 types of non-asbestos fibers by analyzing 380 fibers. Based on these profiles, a rule building expert system was developed by using the visual basic application (VBA). Various fibers were successfully classified by 2 simple rules in the EXCEL environment based on several visual steps such as inserting data, viewing results, and saving results. For a case study to test the expert system, samples from a construction materials and from various indoor environments such as a residental area, a preschool classroom, and an underground store were collected and analyzed. As a result of the survey, a total of 76 individual test fiber particles was well classified into 5 different types of particle classes; 9.3% of chrysotile, 15.4% of amosite, 0.8 of crocidolite, 4.2% of tremolite, 5.8% glass fiber, 21.1% of other fibers, and 43.5% of unknown fibers in terms of number concentration. Even though unknown portion was high, it will be decreased markedly when expanding fiber source profiles.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.174-183
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• 2015

The major purpose of this study is to construct a retrospective exposure assessment for benzene through a review of literature on Korea. Airborne benzene measurements reported in 34 articles were reviewed. A total of 15,729 individual measurements were compiled. Weighted arithmetic means [AM(w)] and their variance calculated across studies were summarized according to 5-year period intervals (prior to the 1970s through the 2010s) and industry type. Industries were classified according to Korea Standard Industrial Classification (KSIC) using information provided in the literature. We estimated quantitative retrospective exposure to benzene for each cell in the matrix through a combination of time and KSIC. Analysis of the AM(w) indicated reductions in exposure levels over time, regardless of industry, with mean levels prior to the 1980-1984 period of 50.4 ppm (n = 2,289), which dropped to 2.8 ppm (n = 305) in the 1990-1994 period, and to 0.1 ppm (n = 294) in the 1995-1999 period. There has been no improvement since the 2000s, when the AM(w) of 4.3 ppm (n = 6,211) for the 2005-2009 period and 4.5 ppm (n = 3,358) for the 2010-2013 period were estimated. A comparison by industry found no consistent patterns in the measurement results. Our estimated benzene measurements can be used to determine not only the possibility of retrospective exposure to benzene, but also to estimate the level of quantitative or semiquantitative retrospective exposure to benzene.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.46 no.9
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• pp.16-23
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• 2009

In this paper, we propose a new distributed Alamouti space-time block coding scheme using cooperative relay system composed of one source node, three relay nodes and one destination node. The source node is assumed to be equipped with two antennas which respectively use a 2-beam array to communicate with two nodes selected from the three relay nodes. During the first time slot, the two signals which respectively were transmitted by one antenna at the source, are selected by one relay node, added, amplified, and forwarded to the destination. During the second time slot, the other two relay nodes implement the conjugate and minusconjugate operations to the two received signals, respectively, each in turn is amplified and forwarded to the destination node. This transmission scheme represents a new distributed Alamouti space-time block code that can be constructed at the relay-destination channel. Through an equivalent matrix expression of symbols, we analyze the performance of this proposed space-time block code in terms of the chernoff upper bound pairwise error probability (PEP). In addition, we evaluate the effect of the coefficient $\alpha$ ($0{\leq}{\alpha}{\leq}1$) determined by power allocation between the two antennas at the source on the received signal performance. Through computer simulation, we show that the received signals at the three relays have same variance only when the value of $\alpha$ is equal to $\frac{2}{3}$, as a consequence, a better performance is obtained at the destination. These analysis results show that the proposed scheme outperforms conventional proposed schemes in terms of diversity gain, PEP and the complexity of relay nodes.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.395-405
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• 2014

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate 1) somatotopic arrangement of the second and third fingers in SI area 2) difference of neural activation in the SI area produced by stimulation with different frequencies 3) correlation between the intensity of tactile perception by different stimulus intensity and the level of brain activation measurable by means of fMRI. Background: Somatosensory cortex can obtain the information of environmental stimuli about "where" (e.g., on the left palm), "what" (e.g., a book or a dog), and "how" (e.g., scrub gently or scrub roughly) to organism. However, compared to visual sense, the neural mechanism underlying the processing of specific electrotactile stimulus is still unknown. Method: 10 right-handed subjects participated in this study. Non-painful electrotactile stimuli were delivered to two different finger tips of right hand. Functional brain images were collected from 3.0T MRI using the single-shot EPI method. The scanning parameters were as follows: TR and TE were 3000, 35ms, respectively, flip angle 60, FOV $24{\times}24cm$, matrix size $64{\times}64$, slice thickness 4mm (no gap). SPM5 was used to analyze the fMRI data. Results: Significant activations produced by the stimulation were found in the SI, SII, the subcentral gyrus, the precentral gyrus, and the insula. In all participants, statistically significant activation was observed in the contralateral SI area and the bilateral SII areas by the stimulation on the fingers but ipsilaterally dominant. The SI area representing the second finger generally located in the more lateral and inferior side than that of the third finger across all the subjects. But no difference in brain area was found for the stimulation of the fingers by different frequencies. And two typical patterns were observed on the relationship between the perceived psychological intensity and the amount of voxels in the primary sensory cortex during the stimulation. Conclusion: It was possible to discriminate the representation sites in the SI by electrotactile stimulation of digit2 and digit3. But we could not find the differences of the brain areas according to different stimulation frequencies from 3 to 300Hz. Application: The results of the study can provide a deeper understanding of somatosensory cortex and offer the information for tactile display for blinds.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.319-329
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• 2010

Objectives: This study was performed to determine the levels of quality of life (QOL) according to the grade of long-term care service for the elderly people who were admitted from long-term care insurance, and to reveal its association with the physical and mental functioning such as the Activity of Daily Living (ADL), the Instrumental Activity of Daily Living (IADL), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the Mini-Mental State Examination-Korean version (MMSE-K). Methods: The interviews were performed during the period from March 1 to May 31, 2009, for 958 elderly people in urban and rural areas. The questionnaire items included various indices such as the ADL, IADL, CES-D, and MMSE-K, as independent variables and the index of QOL, as the dependent ones. For statistical analysis, t-tests were used for the mean scores of QOL according to gender and the grade of long-term care services, and Spearman's correlation was used for each variable. The effects of physical and mental functioning for QOL were assessed by covariance structure analysis. The statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Results: The mean scores of QOL among all the subjects was $55.4{\pm}15.62$ (Grade I: $49.7{\pm}14.17$, Grade II: $56.8{\pm}14.62$, Grade III: $59.4{\pm}16.36$), and it was lower according to the higher grade of long-term care insurance. In terms of the correlation matrix of the QOL and the physical and mental function factors, the QOL showed positive correlation with the ADL, IADL and MMSE-K, while it had negative correlation with depression. On the analysis of covariance, mental functioning (depression and the MMSE-K) had a greater influence on the level of QOL than the physical functioning (ADL and IADL). Conclusions: The level of the QOL in the elderly people who were admitted from long-term care insurance was lower according to higher the grade of long-term care insurance. Also, the mental functioning (depression and MMSE-K) was more influential on the level of the QOL than the physical functioning (ADL and IADL).

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.1199-1208
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• 2018

Osteoarthritis is a disease that affects the articular cartilage and osseous tissue, and can be worsened by aging, overweight status, and post-traumatic arthritis. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of ID-CBT5101 (tyndallized Clostridium butyricum) on bone metabolism and the inflammatory response in a monosodium iodoacetate-induced rat model of osteoarthritis. ID-CBT5101 was administered orally at doses of $10^8$ or $10^{10}CFU/day$ for 2 weeks before direct injection of monosodium iodoacetate ($3mg/50{\mu}l$ of 0.9% saline) into the intra-articular space of the rats' right knees. The rats subsequently received the same doses of oral ID-CBT5101 for another 4 weeks. We evaluated the treatment effects based on serum biomarkers, mRNA expression, morphological and histopathological analyses of the knee joints, and weight-bearing distribution analysis. Compared with those in control rats, the ID-CBT5101 treatments significantly reduced the serum concentration of inflammation and bone metabolism markers (i.e., COX-2, IL-6, $LTB_4$, and COMP), and significantly increased the concentration of $IFN-{\gamma}$ and glycosaminoglycans. In addition, the ID-CBT5101 treatments inhibited the mRNA expression of matrix metalloproteinases and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (i.e., MMP-2, MMP-3, MMP-9, MMP-13, TIMP-1, and TIMP-2). Furthermore, the ID-CBT5101 treatments effectively preserved the knee cartilage and synovial membrane, and significantly decreased the amount of fibrous tissue. Moreover, compared with that of the negative control group, the ID-CBT5101 treatments increased the weight-bearing distribution by ${\geq}20%$. The results indicate that ID-CBT5101 prevented and alleviated osteoarthritis symptoms. Thus, ID-CBT5101 may be a novel therapeutic option for the management of osteoarthritis.

• Atmosphere
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.173-188
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• 2014

The KMA has cooperated with the Oklahoma University in USA to develop a Polarimetric Radar Data (PRD) simulator to improve the microphysical processes in Korea Local Analysis and Prediction System (KLAPS), which is critical for the utilization of PRD into Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) field. The simulator is like a tool to convert NWP data into PRD, so it enables us to compare NWP data with PRD directly. The simulator can simulate polarimetric radar variables such as reflectivity (Z), differential reflectivity ($Z_{DR}$), specific differential phase ($K_{DP}$), and cross-correlation coefficient (${\rho}_{hv}$) with input of the Drop Size Distribution (DSD) and scattering calculation of the hydrometeors. However, the simulator is being developed based on the foreign observation data, therefore the PRD simulator development reflecting rainfall characteristics of Korea is needed. This study analyzed a potential application of the 2-Dimension Video Disdrometer (2DVD) data by calculating the raindrop axis ratio according to the rain-types to reflect Korea's rainfall characteristics into scattering module in the simulator. The 2DVD instrument measures the precipitation DSD including the fall velocity and the shape of individual raindrops. We calculated raindrop axis ratio for stratiform, convective and mixed rainfall cases after checking the accuracy of 2DVD data, which usually represent the scattering characteristics of precipitation. The raindrop axis ratio obtained from 2DVD data are compared with those from foreign database in the simulator. The calculated the dual-polarimetric radar variables from the simulator using the obtained raindrop axis ratio are also compared with in situ dual-polarimetric observation data at Bislsan (BSL). 2DVD observation data show high accuracies in the range of 0.7~4.8% compared with in situ rain gauge data which represents 2DVD data are sufficient for the use to simulator. There are small differences of axis ratio in the diameter below 1~2 mm and above 4~5 mm, which are more obvious for bigger raindrops especially for a strong convective rainfall case. These differences of raindrop axis ratio between domestic and foreign rainfall data base suggest that the potential use of disdrometer observation can develop of a PRD simulated suitable to the Korea precipitation system.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.381-387
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• 2000

Si3N4/stainless steel 316 joints with Ni buffer layer were fabricated by direct active brazing method (DIB) using Ag-Cu-Ti brazing alloy only and double brazing method (DOB) using Ag-Cu brazing alloy with Si3N4 pretreated with Ag-Cu-Ti brazing alloy. For the joint brazed by DIB method, Ti was segregated at the Si3N4/brazing alloy interface, but was not enough to form a stable joint interface. In addition, large amounts of Ni-Ti inter-metallic compounds were formed in tehbrazing alloy near the joint interface, which could deplete the contents of Ti involved in the interfacial reaction. However, for the joint brazed by DOB method, segregation of Ti at the joint interface were enough to enhance the formation of stable interfacial reaction products such as TiN and Ti-Si-Ni-N-(Cu) multicompounds, which restricted the formation of Ni-Tio inter-metallic compounds in the brazing alloy during brazing with Ni buffer layer. Fracture strength of Si3N4/S.S 316 joints with Ni buffer layer was much improved by using DOB method rather than DIB method. It could be deduced that the differences of fracture strength of the joint with Ni buffer layer depending on brazing process adapted were directly affected by the formation of stable joint interface and the change in microstructure of the brazing alloy near the joint interface. It was found that fracture strength of Si3N4/S.S 316 joints with Ni buffer layer was gradually reduced as the thickness of interface. It was found that fracture strength of Si3N4/S.S 316 joints with Ni buffer layer was gradually reduced as the thickness of Ni buffer layer in the joint was increased from 0.1 mm to 10 mm. It seems to due to the increased residual stress in the joint as the thickness of Ni buffer layer is increased. The maximum fracture strength of Si3N4/S.S 316 joints with Ni buffer layer was 386 MPa, and the fracture of joint was originated at Si3N4/brazing alloy joint interface and propagated into Si3N4 matrix.