• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.67-75
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• 2012

Different from other natural hazards including floods, drought advances slowly and spreads widely, so that the preparedness is quite important and effective to mitigate the impacts from drought. Evaluation and forecast the status of drought for the present and future utilizing the meteorological scenario for agricultural drought can be useful to set a plan for agricultural drought mitigation in agriculture water resource management. In this study, drought climate scenario model on the basis of historical drought records for preparing agricultural drought mitigation was developed. To consider dependency and correlation between various climate variables, this model was utilized the historical climate pattern using reference year setting of four drought levels. The reference year for drought level was determined based on the frequency analysis result of monthly effective rainfall. On the basis of this model, drought climate scenarios at Suwon and Icheon station were set up and these scenarios were applied on the water balance simulation of reservoir water storage for Madun reservoir as well as the soil moisture model for Gosam reservoir watershed. The results showed that drought climate scenarios in this study could be more useful for long-term forecast of longer than 2~3 months period rather than short-term forecast of below one month.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.25-36
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• 1996

The purposes of the present study were: (1) to investigate aeromedical dissorders prevalent among ROK air force pilots and (2) to evaluate their detrimental effects on flight performance. The study examined the eight flight-induced disorders primarily responsible for permanent grounding and flying restrictions. According to the survey of 600 randomly selected pilots, 80.2% of the respondents have experienced low back pain, which was 20% higher than the lifetime prevalence in Swedish male workers. Bradyacusia ranked second (56.0%) resulting from continuous exposure to high aircraft noise. The cardiovascular disorders, the most common cause for permanent grounding of Canadian forces pilots, were found in 16.0% of the Korean pilots. Due to the high prevalence of the disorders, in 1993 the Korean pilots received medical treatments 10 times as many as factory workdes. Compared to the flight performance of Israeli and British pilots in wars, the flight performance of the Korean pilots was found to be inferior. Such poor performance can be attributable to the high incidence rates of disorders. Statistical analyses revealed that the aeromedical disorders were related to personal variables such as age, flight career- related factors, and fatigue. Cigarette smoking and drinking habit contributed to worsening back pain, barotitis media, and pulmonary disorders. More comprehensive research was recommended to identify health hazards, combined with intervention to minimize disorders that could lead to early termination of flight careers or excessive loss of flight time. This study further suggests that aeromedical institutions in Korean air force should be fostered more professionally and financially.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 2006

Purpose: The goals of this research are to find out factors influencing the duration of work-related disability and to present implications for policies to prevent delayed recovery. Method: The subjects of this study were 238 workers who had been proved to be industrial disaster victims for occupational low back pain between January 1 2000 and December 31 2003. Kaplan-Meier method was used to estimate the proportion of duration of disability associated with low back pain, and Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to identify factors predicting it. The model distinguished main symptom variables affecting acute(${\leq}90\;days$) and chronic phase of disability (>90 days). Result: Fifty percent of the workers had not recovered in 408 days. The results of Cox regression show that delayed duration of disability was predicted by diagnosis, pain radiation (in chronic phase), sex, the size and labor union of the workplace, scheduled rest, compensation from the company, and operation. Conclusion: Duration of disability associated with compensated low back pain is influenced not only by factors related to the company and compensation system but also by individual factors. Thus, future efforts to reduce duration of disability may need to take into account all these factors.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.257-269
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• 2018

Analysis of slope stability failures, as one of the complex natural hazards, is one of the important research issues in the field of civil engineering. Present paper adopts and investigates four soft computing-based techniques for this problem: Patient Rule-Induction Method (PRIM), M5' algorithm, Group Method of data Handling (GMDH) and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS). A comprehensive database consisting of 168 case histories is used to calibrate and test the developed models. Six predictive variables including slope height, slope angle, bulk density, cohesion, angle of internal friction, and pore water pressure ratio were considered to generate new models. The results of test studies are used for feasibility, effectiveness and practicality comparison of techniques with each other, and with the other available well-known methods in the literature. Results show that all methods not only are feasible but also result in better performance than previously developed soft computing based predictive models and tools. It is shown that M5' and PRIM algorithms are the most effective and practical prediction models.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.61-68
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• 2015

The performance enhancement of various structural building systems from natural hazards has become an inctreasingly important issue in engineering field. In this paper, visco-elastic(VE) CST30 damping systems were tested under cyclic loadings to evaluate their performance in terms of ductility and energy dissipation. Main test variables are relative shear stiffness, rate of loading frequency, and thickness of specimens to evaluate the seismic capacity based on the performance criteria. This experiment was performed using a total of 12 specimens, subjected to cyclic loadings up to a shear deformation of 500%. All the CST30 dampers provided a ductile and stable hysterestic behavior when subjected to the demands of large shear stiffness and different loading frequencies. The test results showed that the CST30 dampers are an effective damping systems to enhance the buildings performance for remodeling and retrofit of buildings.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.59-65
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• 2015

Background: After the Fukushima accident, the importance of hazard analysis for extreme external events was raised. Methods: To analyze typhoon-induced hazards, which are one of the significant disasters of East Asian countries, a statistical analysis using the extreme value theory, which is a method for estimating the annual exceedance frequency of a rare event, was conducted for an estimation of the occurrence intervals or hazard levels. For the four meteorological variables, maximum wind speed, instantaneous wind speed, hourly precipitation, and daily precipitation, the parameters of the predictive extreme value theory models were estimated. Results: The 100-year return levels for each variable were predicted using the developed models and compared with previously reported values. It was also found that there exist significant long-term climate changes of wind speed and precipitation. Conclusion: A fragility analysis should be conducted to ensure the safety levels of a nuclear power plant for high levels of wind speed and precipitation, which exceed the results of a previous analysis.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.79-90
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• 1996

A research project was conducted to assess the levels of noise exposed to "Noraebang" users and potential hazards to noise-induced hearing loss due to commercial Noraebang noise. A two-way, mixed-factors factorial design was employed for the experiment using independent variables of "noise source" (no- singer, 1-singer, and 2-singer conditions) and "music type" (Trot, Ballad, and Rock music) with 18 normal hearing subjects. Each singer group sang 5 popular songs of each music type in each signing condition, whereas background music was just played for the no-singer condition. For each music played/sung, equivalent continuous sound pressure levels and maximum sound pressure levels were measured for data analysis purposes. Pure-tone audiometry was applied for measuring subjects' hearing threshold levels before and after exposure to Noraebgang noise. The statistical analyses indicate that average continuous noise levels due to Noraebang leisure environment were very serious, especially when two people were singing (higher than 95 dBA). Furthermore, maximum noise levels often exceeded the OSHA's non-premissible 115 dBA level. Worse yet, hearing loss assessment implies that Noraebang facilities may pose a serious threat to noise-induced hearing loss, based on 6-8 dB loss at 125 Hz and 8 dB loss at 4000 Hz after about 1-hour Noraebang noise exposure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.303-315
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• 2022

The degradation of wheel tread may result in serious hazards in the railway operation system. Therefore, timely wheel defect diagnosis of in-service trains to avoid tragic events is of particular importance. The focus of this study is to develop a novel wheel defect detection approach based on the relevance vector machine (RVM) which enables online detection of potentially defective wheels with trackside monitoring data acquired under different running-speed conditions. With the dynamic strain responses collected by a trackside monitoring system, the cumulative Fourier amplitudes (CFA) characterizing the effect of individual wheels are extracted to formulate multiple probabilistic regression models (MPRMs) in terms of multi-kernel RVM, which accommodate both variables of vibration frequency and running speed. Compared with the general single-kernel RVM-based model, the proposed multi-kernel MPRM approach bears better local and global representation ability and generalization performance, which are prerequisite for reliable wheel defect detection by means of data acquired under different running-speed conditions. After formulating the MPRMs, we adopt a Bayesian null hypothesis indicator for wheel defect identification and quantification, and the proposed method is demonstrated by utilizing real-world monitoring data acquired by an FBG-based trackside monitoring system deployed on a high-speed trial railway. The results testify the validity of the proposed method for wheel defect detection under different running-speed conditions.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.355-362
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• 2023

This study aimed to determine whether smoking affects the metabolic syndrome and its components through long-term follow-up. Of the 10,030 cohort subjects in the community-based Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study (KoGES) from 2001 to 2018, 2,848 people with metabolic syndrome and 4,854 people with insufficient data for analysis were excluded for this study. The study population comprised 2,328 individuals (1,123 men, 1,205 women) who were eligible for inclusion. The mean age of the participants was 49.2±7.5 years, and 21.9% were current smoker. In log rank test, current smoker had a significantly higher cumulative incidence of metabolic syndrome compared with non smoker (P<0.001). In the Cox proportional hazards model adjusted for key variables, metabolic syndrome (hazard ratio [HR] 1.57, P<0.001), high fasting glucose (HR 1.40, P<0.01), hypertriglyceridemia (HR 1.60, P<0.001), low HDL-cholesterol (HR, 1.30, P<0.01), and abdominal obesity (HR 1.32, P<0.01) in current smoker compared with non smoker were statistically significant, respectively, but not hypertension (HR 1.00, P>0.05). After adjustment for confounders, the time (P-time<0.001) and group (P-group<0.001) effects on metabolic syndrome score change were statistically significant. Furthermore, the interaction analysis of time and smoking group on the change in metabolic syndrome score was statistically significant (P-interaction<0.001). In long-term follow-up, smoking worsens metabolic syndrome.

• Journal of Urban Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.53-64
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• 2023

With the development of the plant industry, there has been an increasing frequency of major accidents both domestically and internationally, emphasizing the importance of plant safety. Therefore, this study aims to investigate measures to enhance the stability of piping, a key component within the plant. Upon examining the piping, erosion, buckling, and fatigue emerged as significant risk factors among various potential hazards, leading to their selection as the primary risk factors in this study. Identifying variables that can collectively mitigate these factors, the study focuses on the material, thickness, and elbow angle of the piping. The reference piping model is established as the pipeline connecting the Skim Tank and IGF within a 300BPD oil sands modular plant in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi-do. Utilizing the FEA analysis program ANSYS, the study conducts a variable analysis for the identified risk factors. The results of the analysis, through comparison and evaluation, provide evidence of the effectiveness of enhancing stability. It is observed that reducing the elbow angle significantly improves erosion and buckling, while changing to a material with high yield stress most significantly enhances stability when considering fatigue.