• Journal of Embryo Transfer
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.239-253
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• 2005

Serum concentrations of Hanwoo steers and bulls as possible indicators of beef quality were analyzed to estimate their correlations with carcass traits. Blood samples were taken 2 months and right before shipping to abattoir and at the time of slaughter. And phenotypic correlation coefficients between serum concentrations and carcass traits were estimated. Beef yield index of steers was positively correlated with serum concentrations of total Protein (0.23), albumin (0.26), and calcium (0.31). But it was negatively co..elated with BUN (-0.30). Loin eye area was positively correlated with BUN (0.17) or with globulin (0.16). Back fat thickness was positively correlated with BUN (0.42) and inorganic phosphorus (0.20) being negatively correlated with total protein (-0.23), albumin (-0.33) and calcium (-0.33). Marbling score in the scale of 1 (scarcely marbled) through 9 (extremely marbled) was positively correlated with BUN (0.28) and negatively with IGF-I and calcium concentrations. Phenotype correlation coefficient of loin eye area with total protein concentration in the serum taken from steers right before shipment was estimated to be -0.16 and that with BUN was estimated to be -0.15. Serum concentrations of IGF, glucose, creatinine and on organic phosphorus from steers measured right before shipment were negatively correlated with respective correlation coefficient estimates as -0.21, -0.21, -0.19 and -0.18. Marbling score was negatively co..elated with serum creatinine (-0.16) measured at that time. Beef yield index of steers was positively correlated (0.31) with age adjusted calcium concentration in the serum taken at the time of slaughter. Correlation between body weight and BUN at slaughter was 0.17 At slaughter, loin eye area was negatively correlated with albumin (-0.19) and back fat thickness was also negatively correlated with age adjusted calcium concentration (-0.38). Marbling was negatively correlated with age adjusted calcium concentration(-0.17). Serum concentrations of testosterone, calcium and inorganic phosphorus taken in 2 months before slaughter were negatively but highly correlated with yield index(0.71, 0.67 and -0.71), respectively. Body weight at slaughter was positively was negatively correlated (0.67) with calcium level while dressing percentage was negatively (-0.69) correlated with serum glucose concentration, 2 months prior to slaughter. Correlation coefficients between back fat thickness and cortisol, between back fat thickness and inorganic phosphate were both positive (0.29 and 0.69). Marbling score was negatively correlated with creatinine (-0.81) and positively with BUN (0.87). Body weight loss during shipping was positively correlated with albumin and inorganic phosphate (0.77, 0.83). Yield index of bulls was positively correlated with serum testosterone concentration (0.66). Dressing percentage was positively and highly correlated with globulin (0.73). Back fat thickness of bulls, however, was negatively correlated with testosterone (-0.60). Loin eye area of bull carcasses was positively correlated with testosterone (0.40). Mar-blaine was negatively co..elated with creatinine (-0.55). Yield index of bulls and age adjusted HDLC concentration at slaughter was negatively correlated (-0.71). Dressing percentage of bulls was positively and highly correlated with globulin concentration (0.70). Back fat thickness was also positively correlated with HDLC (0.69) in the serum taken at slaughter. Correlation coefficients between carcass weight and triglyceride, between loin eye are and testosterone and between marbling score and creatinine or glucose were 0.51, -0.91 and -0.58, respectively.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-67
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• 2017

Steel plate faults is one of important factors to affect the quality and price of the steel plates. So far many steelmakers generally have used visual inspection method that could be based on an inspector's intuition or experience. Specifically, the inspector checks the steel plate faults by looking the surface of the steel plates. However, the accuracy of this method is critically low that it can cause errors above 30% in judgment. Therefore, accurate steel plate faults diagnosis system has been continuously required in the industry. In order to meet the needs, this study proposed a new steel plate faults diagnosis system using Simultaneous MTS (S-MTS), which is an advanced Mahalanobis Taguchi System (MTS) algorithm, to classify various surface defects of the steel plates. MTS has generally been used to solve binary classification problems in various fields, but MTS was not used for multiclass classification due to its low accuracy. The reason is that only one mahalanobis space is established in the MTS. In contrast, S-MTS is suitable for multi-class classification. That is, S-MTS establishes individual mahalanobis space for each class. 'Simultaneous' implies comparing mahalanobis distances at the same time. The proposed steel plate faults diagnosis system was developed in four main stages. In the first stage, after various reference groups and related variables are defined, data of the steel plate faults is collected and used to establish the individual mahalanobis space per the reference groups and construct the full measurement scale. In the second stage, the mahalanobis distances of test groups is calculated based on the established mahalanobis spaces of the reference groups. Then, appropriateness of the spaces is verified by examining the separability of the mahalanobis diatances. In the third stage, orthogonal arrays and Signal-to-Noise (SN) ratio of dynamic type are applied for variable optimization. Also, Overall SN ratio gain is derived from the SN ratio and SN ratio gain. If the derived overall SN ratio gain is negative, it means that the variable should be removed. However, the variable with the positive gain may be considered as worth keeping. Finally, in the fourth stage, the measurement scale that is composed of selected useful variables is reconstructed. Next, an experimental test should be implemented to verify the ability of multi-class classification and thus the accuracy of the classification is acquired. If the accuracy is acceptable, this diagnosis system can be used for future applications. Also, this study compared the accuracy of the proposed steel plate faults diagnosis system with that of other popular classification algorithms including Decision Tree, Multi Perception Neural Network (MLPNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Tree Bagger Random Forest, Grid Search (GS), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The steel plates faults dataset used in the study is taken from the University of California at Irvine (UCI) machine learning repository. As a result, the proposed steel plate faults diagnosis system based on S-MTS shows 90.79% of classification accuracy. The accuracy of the proposed diagnosis system is 6-27% higher than MLPNN, LR, GS, GA and PSO. Based on the fact that the accuracy of commercial systems is only about 75-80%, it means that the proposed system has enough classification performance to be applied in the industry. In addition, the proposed system can reduce the number of measurement sensors that are installed in the fields because of variable optimization process. These results show that the proposed system not only can have a good ability on the steel plate faults diagnosis but also reduce operation and maintenance cost. For our future work, it will be applied in the fields to validate actual effectiveness of the proposed system and plan to improve the accuracy based on the results.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.247-269
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• 2007

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.359-368
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• 2007

Holstein cows(n=12) were assigned to one of three diets containing control diet and diets containing a microbial culture, 50ml(T1) and 100ml(T2) SDN(R)(amicrobial culture), per day. The basal diet containing concentrate mixture, corn silage and timothy hay were fed midlactating cows for 12 weeks. Milk production tended to be higher for cows fed T2 diet (20.8kg/day) than fed T1(19.7kg/d) and control diet (19.2kg/day).  There was a tendency of an increase in 4% FCM for cows fed T2 diet(19.6kg/day) than T1(18.8kg/d) and control diet(18.4kg/day). Milk components were not found to be different between cows fed control diet and SDN(R) diets. There was a tendency an increase in milk protein for cows fed control diet(3.43%) compared with microbial diets, T1 and T2(3.08% and 3.20%). However, milk protein production was not significantly different between control diet(0.65kg/d) and T1(0.61kg/d) or T2(0.67kg/d). Somatic cell counts for cows fed T1(72,000) and T2(60,000/ml) were lower than cows fed control diet (108,000/ml) (P<0.05). In conclusion, the cows that were fed diets containing SDN(R) as a microbial culture resulted a tendency of an increase in milk production and a reduction of somatic cell counts which indicates improved milk quality and hygiene.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.103-110
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• 2015

In this study, we evaluated the fatty acid composition and physiological activities of oils extracted from eight types of seeds, pepper (Capsicum annuum L.), green tea (Camellia sinensis L.), perilla (Perilla frutescens var. japonica Hara), peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.), cotton (Gossypium indicum LAM.), sesame (Sesamum indicum L.), walnut (Juglans regia L.), and safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.). The composition and quality analysis showed that the oils were potentially suitable for foo-grade applications. The composition analysis showed that the oils were mostly composed of unsaturated fatty acids including linoleic acid and oleic acid. In 3T3-L1 adipocytes, green pepper, perilla, and peanut seed oils inhibited lipid accumulation, and green pepper, perilla, peanut, sesame, walnut, and safflower seed oils induced leptin secretion. These results show that the inhibitory effect of edible seed oils on lipid accumulation, and induction of leptin secretion may be useful for obesity management.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.238-244
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• 2003

Purpose: The Planning of High-Dose-Rate (HDR) brachytherapy treatments are becoming individualized and more dependent on the treatment planning system. Therefore, computer software has been developed to perform independent point dose calculations with the integration of an isodose distribution curve display into the patient anatomy images. Meterials and Methods: As primary input data, the program takes patients'planning data including the source dwell positions, dwell times and the doses at reference points, computed by an HDR treatment planning system (TPS). Dosimetric calculations were peformed in a $10\times12\times10\;Cm^3$ grid space using the Interstitial Collaborative Working Group (ICWG) formalism and an anisotropy table for the HDR Iridium-192 source. The computed doses at the reference points were automatically compared with the relevant results of the TPS. The MR and simulation film images were then imported and the isodose distributions on the axial, sagittal and coronal planes intersecting the point selected by a user were superimposed on the imported images and then displayed. The accuracy of the software was tested in three benchmark plans peformed by Gamma-Med 12i TPS (MDS Nordion, Germany). Nine patients'plans generated by Plato (Nucletron Corporation, The Netherlands) were verified by the developed software. Results: The absolute doses computed by the developed software agreed with the commercial TPS results within an accuracy of $2.8\%$ in the benchmark plans. The isodose distribution plots showed excellent agreements with the exception of the tip legion of the source's longitudinal axis where a slight deviation was observed. In clinical plans, the secondary dose calculations had, on average, about a $3.4\%$ deviation from the TPS plans. Conclusion: The accurate validation of complicate treatment plans is possible with the developed software and the qualify of the HDR treatment plan can be improved with the isodose display integrated into the patient anatomy information.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.65 no.4
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• pp.485-495
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• 2020

Melon (Cucumis melo L.), one of the most important fruit crop species, is cultivated worldwide. In this study, a total of 206 melon accessions conserved at the National Agrobiodiversity Center (NAC) in RDA were characterized for nine morphological characteristics according to the NAC descriptor list. In addition, to confirm the genetic composition of each melon accession, genetic profiling was performed using 20 SSR markers. Among the 206 melon accessions, 159 (77.2%) were collected from Asia. The color of fruit flesh and skin were mostly 'white' (56.0%) and 'green' (49%), respectively. Days to female flowering (FD) and maturity (MD) of the accessions ranged from 58 to 72 and 17 to 63, respectively. The fruit length and width of the accessions ranged from 6.0 to 29.3 and 3.6 to 17.2 cm, respectively. The sugar content (SU) ranged from 2.5% to 13.2% with an average of 7.0%. In correlation analysis, SU showed positive and negative correlations with MD and FD, respectively. The accessions were classified into four clusters by cluster analysis. From the results of genetic profiling using 20 SSR markers, three accessions (K189118, K100486, and K190292) were expected to be inbred lines among 206 melon accessions. These results could expand the knowledge of the melon germplasm, providing valuable material for the development of new melon varieties to suit consumer tastes.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.833-847
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• 2016

Drought stress is a major agricultural limitation to crop productivity worldwide, especially by which leafy vegetables, plant leaves eaten as vegetable, could be more lethal. The study was carried out to know the effect of drought tolerance plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) on water stress of kale seedlings. A total of 146 morphologically distinct bacterial colonies were isolated from bulk soil and rhizosphere soil of leafy vegetables and screened for plant growth promoting microbioassay in greenhouse. Out of them the isolate SB19 significantly promoted the growth of kale seedlings in increasement of about 42% of plant height (14.1 cm), 148% of leaf area ($19.0cm^2$) and 138% of shoot fresh weight (1662.5 mg) attained by the bacterially treated plants compared to distilled water treated control (9.9 cm, $7.7cm^2$, 698.8 mg). Shoot water content of SB19 treated kale seedlings (1393.8 mg) was also increased about 152% compared with control (552.5 mg). The SB19 isolated from bulk soil of kale plant in Iksan, Korea, was identified as species of Bacillus based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing analysis. We evaluated the effect of drought tolerance by the Bacillus sp. SB19 on kale seedlings at 7th and 14th days following the onset of the water stress and watering was only at 7th day in the middle of test. In the survey of 7th and 14th day, there were mitigation effect of drought stress in kale seedlings treated with $10^6$ and $10^7cell\;mL^{-1}$ of SB19 compared to distilled water treated control. Especially, there were more effective mitigation of drought damage in kale seedlings treated with $10^7cell\;mL^{-1}$ than $10^6cell\;mL^{-1}$. Further, although drought injury of bacterially treated kale seedlings were not improved at 14th day compared with 7th day, drought injury of $10^7cell\;mL^{-1}$ of SB19 treated kale seedlings were not happen rapidly but developed over a longer period of time than $10^6cell\;mL^{-1}$ of SB19 or control. The diffidence of results might be caused by the concentration of bacterial suspension. This study suggests that beneficial plant-microbe interaction could be a important role of enhancement of water availability and also provide a good method for improving quality of leafy vegetables under water stress conditions.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.265-271
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• 2004

A feeding trial was conducted to investigate the influence of feeding Lactobacillus reuteri culture (LR) on productive performance, intestinal microflora and availability in laying hens. Four hundred and eighty, Isa-Brown layers, 49 weeks of age, were fed diets supplemented with LR at the level of 0 (control), 0.1, 0.2, and $0.4\%$ of the diets for eight weeks. Egg production and egg weight were measured daily. Feed intake was weighed every two weeks. Egg quality was measured three times at the start, mid-term, and end of the experiment. Intestinal microflora were examined for Lactobacillus spp., E. coli and Salmonella at the end of the experiment. Overall egg production was the highest in $0.2\%$ LR (P<0.05), but that of $0.1\%$ or $0.4\%$ LR treatments did not significantly differ from that of control. Egg weight was significantly higher in LR feeding group than the control (P<0.05). Daily egg mass was significantly higher in $0.2\%$ and $0.4\%$ LR treatments compared to the control and $0.1\%$ LR (P<0.05). The number of jumbo and extra large eggs were increased in LR supplemented groups, especially in $0.1\%$ LR. Feed intake of layers fed LR supplemented diets tended to be lower than the control. However, feed conversion ratio significantly improved in LR supplemented groups (P<0.05). Availability of dry matter and crude protein improved significantly in $0.4\%$ LR treatment (P<0.05). But, those of ether extract and crude ash were not significantly different among treatments. Eggshell breaking strength and eggshell thickness were not significantly influenced by LR supplementation, and Haugh unit and yolk index were also similar to the control. Total number of Lactobacillus spp. in ileum and cecum fed LR supplemented diets were significantly higher than those of the control (P<0.05). There were no significant differences in intestinal E. coli and Salmonella in all treatments. Therefore, it is concluded that dietary supplementation of Lactobacillus reuteri culture can improve the laying performance, feed efficiency and intestinal Lactobacillus.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.5_1
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• pp.763-774
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• 2020

Wind data forecasted from the numerical weather prediction (NWP) model is generally used as the first-guess of the target tracking process to obtain the atmospheric motion vectors(AMVs) because it increases tracking accuracy and reduce computational time. However, there is a contradiction that the NWP model used as the first-guess is used again as the reference in the AMVs verification process. To overcome this problem, model-independent first guesses are required. In this study, we propose the AMVs derivation from Lucas and Kanade optical flow method and then using it as the first guess. To retrieve AMVs, Himawari-8/AHI geostationary satellite level-1B data were used at 00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC from August 19 to September 5, 2015. To evaluate the impact of applying the optical flow method on the AMV derivation, cross-validation has been conducted in three ways as follows. (1) Without the first-guess, (2) NWP (KMA/UM) forecasted wind as the first-guess, and (3) Optical flow method based wind as the first-guess. As the results of verification using ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis data, the highest precision (RMSVD: 5.296-5.804 ms^-1) was obtained using optical flow based winds as the first-guess. In addition, the computation speed for AMVs derivation was the slowest without the first-guess test, but the other two had similar performance. Thus, applying the optical flow method in the target tracking process of AMVs algorithm, this study showed that the optical flow method is very effective as a first guess for model-independent AMVs derivation.