• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.349-355
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• 2020

Recently, the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) in respiratory specimens has decreased, and nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) has increased. This study examined the increase in NTM lung disease patients and their age and sex distribution compared to the increase in NTM detection in 132,359 respiratory specimens examined in a Gwangju Secondary Hospital from 2010 to 2019. Furthermore, the prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis infection in NTM positive patients was investigated. The positive rates of the mycobacterial culture were 21.9% (1,624/7,403) in 2010 and 17.4% (1,937/11,161) in 2019. The NTM recovery rate increased from 38.0% (617/1,624) in 2010 to 72.4% (1,403/1,937) in 2019. The average diagnosis rate of NTM lung disease in the NTM positive patients was 27.1%. Among them, cases of current pulmonary tuberculosis infection decreased from 44.9% in 2010 to 23.4% in 2019, and cases of previous diagnosis or treatment decreased from 15.8% to 10.7%. Of all NTM lung diseases, 69.0% were in their 60s or older, with more females than males. In the future, according to aging and tuberculosis management policies, NTM detection is expected to increase while MTBC decreases and laboratories must pay close attention to this phenomenon and constantly monitor the test results.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.283-289
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• 2021

Adsorption characteristics of carbol fuchsin (CF) dye by coal-based activated carbon (CAC) were investigated using pH, initial concentration, temperature and contact time as adsorption variables. CF dissociates in water to have a cation, NH₂⁺, which is bonded to the negatively charged surface of the activated carbon in the basic region by electrostatic attraction. Under the optimum condition of pH 11, 96.6% of the initial concentration was adsorbed. Isothermal adsorption behavior was analyzed using Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin-Radushkevich models. Langmuir's equation was the best fit for the experimental results. Therefore, the adsorption mechanism was expected to be adsorbed as a monolayer on the surface of activated carbon with a uniform energy distribution. From the evaluated Langmuir's dimensionless separation coefficients (R_L = 0.503~0.672), it was found that CF can be effectively treated by activated carbon. The adsorption energies determined by Temkin and Dubinin-Radushkevich models were E = 15.31~7.12 J/mol and B = 0.223~0.365 kJ/mol, respectively. Therefore, the adsorption process was physical (E < 20 J/mol, B < 8 kJ/mol). The experimental result of adsorption kinetics fit better the pseudo second order model. In the adsorption reaction of CF dye to CAC, the negative free energy change increased as the temperature increased. It was found that the spontaneity also increased with increasing temperature. The positive enthalpy change (40.09 kJ/mol) indicated an endothermic reaction.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.77-84
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• 2021

In this study, flexural tests of prestressed high strength spun concrete (PHC) piles reinforced with infilled concrete and longitudinal rebars were conducted, where the longitudinal rebar ratio and the presence of sludge formed on the inner surface of PHC pile were set as key test variables. A total of six PHC pile specimens were manufactured, and their flexural behaviors including failure mode, crack pattern, longitudinal strain distribution in a section and end slip between external PHC pile and infilled concrete were measured and discussed in detail. The test results revealed that the flexural stiffness and strength increased as the longitudinal rebar ratio became larger, and that the sludge formed on the inner surface of PHC pile did not show any detrimental effect on the flexural performance. In addition to the experimental approach, this study presents a nonlinear flexural analysis model considering compatibility conditions and strain and stress distributions of the PHC piles and infilled concrete. The rationality of the nonlinear flexural analysis model was verified by comparing it with test results, and it appeared that the proposed model well evaluated the flexural behavior of PHC piles reinforced with infilled concrete and longitudinal rebars with a good accuracy.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.599-616
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• 2020

Sea-surface temperature (SST) is one of the most important oceanic variables for understanding air-sea interactions, heat flux variations, and oceanic circulation in the global ocean. Extremely low SSTs from 0℃ down to -2℃ should be more important than other normal temperatures because of their notable roles in inducing and regulating global climate and environmental changes. To understand the temporal and spatial variability of such extremely low SSTs in the global ocean, the long-term SST climatology was calculated using the daily SST database of satellites observed for the period from 1982 to 2018. In addition, the locations of regions with extremely low surface temperatures of less than 0℃ and monthly variations of isothermal lines of 0℃ were investigated using World Ocean Atlas (WOA) climatology based on in-situ oceanic measurements. As a result, extremely low temperatures occupied considerable areas in polar regions such as the Arctic Ocean and Antarctic Ocean, and marginal seas at high latitudes. Six earth science textbooks were analyzed to investigate how these extremely low temperatures were visualized. In most textbooks, illustrations of SSTs began not from extremely low temperatures below 0℃ but from a relatively high temperature of 0℃ or higher, which prevented students from understanding of concepts and roles of the low SSTs. As data visualization is one of the key elements of data literacy, illustrations of the textbooks should be improved to ensure that SST data are adequately visualized in the textbooks. This study emphasized that oceanic literacy and data literacy could be cultivated and strengthened simultaneously through visualizations of oceanic big data by using satellite SST data and oceanic in-situ measurements.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.502-510
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• 2021

This study examines gender inequality in the Utopian literature through Bellamy's novelLooking Backward: 2000-1887. Boston, USA, in 2000 is an equal society in which production and distribution are performed efficiently, and everyone can work with an equal opportunity without discrimination. But a closer look at the social structure shows that housework and parenting are predominantly women's duties, and the jobs that women and men can have are differentiating. Therefore, it is hard to say that true gender equality has been achieved. In addition, we could see that there were still remnants of gender inequality, such as showing the notion of beauty judged by male standards. However, Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is meaningful in that it improved women's status and suggested the direction and hope of social development in the 19th century. This study further examined whether these gender inequality factors have disappeared in modern society and confirmed that there remain many gender inequality factors. Therefore, we should all work together to improve the perception of members of society and make changes in social policies so that there is no discrimination between women and men so that we can truly become a gender-equal society.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.6_1
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• pp.1367-1377
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to assess the seismic vulnerability of buildings in Gyeongju city starting with the earthquake that occurred in the city on September 12, 2016, and produce a seismic vulnerability map. 11 influence factors related to geotechnical, physical, and structural indicators were selected to assess the seismic vulnerability, and these were applied as independent variables. For a dependent variable, location data of the buildings that were actually damaged in the 9.12 Gyeongju Earthquake was used. The assessment model was constructed based on random forest (RF) as a mechanic study method and support vector machine (SVM), and the training and test dataset were randomly selected with a ratio of 70:30. For accuracy verification, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to select an optimum model, and the accuracy of each model appeared to be 1.000 for RF and 0.998 for SVM, respectively. In addition, the prediction accuracy was shown as 0.947 and 0.926 for RF and SVM, respectively. The prediction values of the entire buildings in Gyeongju were derived on the basis of the RF model, and these were graded and used to produce the seismic vulnerability map. As a result of reviewing the distribution of building classes as an administrative unit, Hwangnam, Wolseong, Seondo, and Naenam turned out to be highly vulnerable regions, and Yangbuk, Gangdong, Yangnam, and Gampo turned out to be relatively safer regions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.43-55
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• 2020

The effect of cutted pin in front of pin-fin array was analyzed for increasing the cooling performance of gas turbine blade. The numerical simulations were conducted to figure out the flow and thermal characteristics. The base case which is staggered pin-fin array, cut pin case 1 which has X₂/D_p=1.25 cut pin and cut pin case 2 which has X₃/D_p=1.75 cut pin were compared. The results showed that cut pin increases the strength of the horseshoe vortex which occurred at the leading edge of pin-fin array. Furthermore, the wake effect is reduced at the trailing edge of pin-fin array. As a result, the heat transfer distribution on the endwall increases. However, the friction factor increases owing to the installation of cut pin, but the thermal performance factor is increased maximum 23.8% in cut pin case 2. Therefore, installation of cut pin will be helpful for increasing the cooling performance of pin-fin array of gas turbine blade.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.222-234
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• 2021

Airborne-pests can be introduced into Korea from overseas areas by wind, which can cause considerable damage to major crops. Meteorological models have been used to estimate the wind trajectories of airborne insects. The objective of this study is to analyze the effect of input settings on the prediction of areas where airborne pests arrive by wind. The wind trajectories were predicted using the HYbrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model. The HYSPLIT model was used to track the wind dispersal path of particles under the assumption that brown plant hopper (Nilaparvata lugens) was introduced into Korea from sites where the pest was reported in China. Meteorological input data including instantaneous and average wind speed were generated using meso-scale numerical weather model outputs for the domain where China, Korea, and Japan were included. In addition, the calculation time intervals were set to 1, 30, and 60 minutes for the wind trajectory calculation during early June in 2019 and 2020. It was found that the use of instantaneous and average wind speed data resulted in a considerably large difference between the arrival areas of airborne pests. In contrast, the spatial distribution of arrival areas had a relatively high degree of similarity when the time intervals were set to be 1 minute. Furthermore, these dispersal patterns predicted using the instantaneous wind speed were similar to the regions where the given pest was observed in Korea. These results suggest that the impact assessment of input settings on wind trajectory prediction would be needed to improve the reliability of an approach to predict regions where airborne-pest could be introduced.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.307-332
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• 2022

One of the most intensively conducted research areas in business application study is a bankruptcy prediction model, a representative classification problem related to loan lending, investment decision making, and profitability to financial institutions. Many research demonstrated outstanding performance for bankruptcy prediction models using artificial intelligence techniques. However, since most machine learning algorithms are "black-box," AI has been identified as a prominent research topic for providing users with an explanation. Although there are many different approaches for explanations, this study focuses on explaining a bankruptcy prediction model using a counterfactual example. Users can obtain desired output from the model by using a counterfactual-based explanation, which provides an alternative case. This study introduces a counterfactual generation technique based on a genetic algorithm (GA) that leverages both domain knowledge (i.e., causal feasibility) and feature importance from a black-box model along with other critical counterfactual variables, including proximity, distribution, and sparsity. The proposed method was evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively to measure the quality and the validity.

• Korean Journal of Plant Taxonomy
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.85-96
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• 2022

The plant "Hong-do-go-deul-ppae-gi" has been considered as Crepidiastrum × muratagenii, a hybrid between C. denticulatum and C. lanceolatum, based on its morphological traits and geographical distribution. To reveal the hybrid origin of Hong-do-go-deul-ppae-gi, we examined additional morphological traits of this plant and its putative parents (C. denticulatum, C. lanceolatum, C. platyphyllum) and analyzed one nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and four chloroplast regions (trnT-L, trnL-F, rpl16 intron, and rps16 intron). As a result of examining the morphological traits, putative hybrid individuals were classified into three types based on the habit, cauline leaf, outer phyllary, and achene beak traits. A molecular analysis found that the ITS sequences of Type 1 and Type 2 individuals showed additive species-specific sites of C. denticulatum and C. lanceolatum. Plastid sequences of Type 1 and Type 2 individuals showed C. denticulatum and C. lanceolatum sequences, respectively. However, Type 3 individuals had ITS and plastid sequences corresponding to C. denticulatum. Accordingly, Type 1 and Type 2 individuals not only share morphological traits with C. denticulatum and C. lanceolatum but also show additive species-specific sites for C. denticulatum and C. lanceolatum, and not C. platyphyllum, supporting its origin as a hybrid between C. denticulatum and C. lanceolatum. Type 3 had morphological traits similar to other hybrid types but was distinguished with respect to outer phyllaries and demonstrated some resemblance to C. denticulatum. In a molecular analysis, Type 3 was found to be identical with regard to the sequence of C. denticulatum and was judged to be an ecological variation of C. denticulatum.