• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.22
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• pp.9773-9779
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• 2014

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the prime causes of mortality around the globe, with a significantly rising incidence in the Middle East region in recent decades. Since detection of CRC in the early stages is an important issue, and also since to date there are no comprehensive epidemiologic studies depicting the Middle East region with special attention to the average risk group, further investigation is of significant necessity in this regard. Aim: Our aim was to investigate the prevalence of preneoplastic and neoplastic lesions of the colon in an average risk population. Materials and Methods: A total of 1,208 eligible asymptomatic, average- risk adults older than 40 years of age, referred to Firuzgar Hospotal in the years 2008-2012, were enrolled. They underwent colonoscopy screening and all polypoid lesions were removed and examined by an expert gastrointestinal pathologist. The lesions were classified by size, location, numbers and pathologic findings. Size of lesions was measured objectively by endoscopists. Results: The mean age of participants was $56.5{\pm}9.59$ and 51.6% were male. The overall polyp detection rate was 199/1208 (16.5 %), 26 subjects having non-neoplastic polyps, including hyperplastic lesions, and 173/1208 (14.3%) having neoplastic polyps, of which 26 (2.15%) were advanced neoplasms. The prevalence of colorectal neoplasia was more common among the 50-59 age group. Advanced adenoma was more frequent among the 60-69 age group. The majority of adenomas were detected in the distal colon, but a quarter of advanced adenomas were found in the proximal colon; advance age and male gender was associated with the presence of adenoma. Conclusions: It seems that CRC screening among average-risk population might be recommended in countries such as Iran. However, sigmioidoscopy alone would miss many colorectal adenomas. Furthermore, the 50-59 age group could be considered as an appropriate target population for this purpose in Iran.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.715-719
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• 2009

The phase change electrode board for the bio-information detection through electrical property response of phase change material was developed in this study. We manufactured the electrode board using Aluminum first that is widely used in conventional semiconductor device process. Without further treatment, these aluminum electrodes tend to contain voids in PETEOS(plasma enhanced tetraethyoxysilane) material that are easily detected by cross-sectional SEM(Scanning Electron Microscope). The voids can be easily attacked and transformed into holes in between PETEOS and electrodes after etch back and washing process. In order to resolve this issue of Al electrode board, we developed a electrode board manufacturing method using low resistivity TiN, which has advantages in terms of the step-coverage of phase change($Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$, GST) thin film as well as thermodynamic stability, without etch back and washing process. This TiN material serves as the top and bottom electrode in PRAM(Phase-change Random Access Memory). The good connection between the TiN electrode and GST thin film was confirmed by observing the cross-section of TiN electrode board using SEM. The resistances of amorphous and crystalline GST thin film on TiN electrodes were also measured, and 1000 times difference between the amorphous and crystalline resistance of GST thin film was obtained, which is well enough for the signal detection.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.4265-4269
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• 2014

Purpose: This study aimed at summarizing epidemiological evidence of the association between gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and subsequent risk of cancer. Materials and Methods: We searched Medline, Embase, Cancer Lit and CINAHL for epidemiological studies published by February 1, 2014 examining the risk of cancer in patients with history of GDM using highly inclusive algorithms. Information about first author, year of publication, country of study, study design, cancer sites, sample sizes, attained age of subjects and methods used for determining GDM status were extracted by two researchers and Stata version 11.0 was used to perform the meta-analysis and estimate the pooled effects. Results: A total of 9 articles documented 5 cohort and 4 case-control studies containing 10,630 cancer cases and 14,608 women with a history of GDM were included in this review. Taken together, the pooled odds ratio (OR) between GDM and breast cancer risk was 1.01 (0.87-1.17); yet the same pooled ORs of case-control and cohort studies were 0.87 (0.71-1.06) and 1.25 (1.00-1.56) respectively. There are indications that GDM is strongly associated with higher risk of pancreatic cancer (HR=8.68) and hematologic malignancies (HR=4.53), but no relationships were detected between GDM and other types of cancer. Conclusions: Although GDM increases the risk of certain types of cancer, these results should be interpreted with caution becuase of some methodological flaws. The issue merits added investigation and coordinated efforts between researchers, antenatal clinics and cancer treatment and registration agencies to help attain better understanding.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.65-75
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• 2017

As a 360-degree image carries information of all directions, it often has too much information. Moreover, in order to investigate a 360-degree image on a 2D display, a user has to either click and drag the image with a mouse, or project it to a 2D panorama image, which inevitably introduces severe distortions. In consequence, investigating a 360-degree image and finding an object of interest in such a 360-degree image could be a tedious task. To resolve this issue, this paper proposes a method to find a region of interest and produces a 2D naturally looking image from a given 360-degree image that best matches a description given by a user in a natural language sentence. Our method also considers photo composition so that the resulting image is aesthetically pleasing. Our method first converts a 360-degree image to a 2D cubemap. As objects in a 360-degree image may appear distorted or split into multiple pieces in a typical cubemap, leading to failure of detection of such objects, we introduce a modified cubemap. Then our method applies a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) network based object detection method to find a region of interest with a given natural language sentence. Finally, our method produces an image that contains the detected region, and also has aesthetically pleasing composition.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.30 no.11
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• pp.1643-1650
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• 2017

Objective: The control of psychrotrophic bacteria causing milk spoilage and illness due to toxic compounds is an important issue in the dairy industry. In South Korea, Gangwon-do province is one of the coldest terrains in which eighty percent of the area is mountainous regions, and mainly plays an important role in the agriculture and dairy industries. The purposes of this study were to analyze the indigenous microbiota of raw milk in Gangwon-do and accurately investigate a putative microbial group causing deterioration in milk quality. Methods: We collected raw milk from the bulk tank of 18 dairy farms in the Hoengseong and Pyeongchang regions of Gangwon-do. Milk components were analyzed and the number of viable bacteria was confirmed. The V3 and V4 regions of 16S rRNA gene were amplified and sequenced on an Illumina Miseq platform. Sequences were then assigned to operational taxonomic units, followed by the selection of representative sequences using the QIIME software package. Results: The milk samples from Pyeongchang were higher in fat, protein, lactose, total solid, and solid non-fat, and bacterial cell counts were observed only for the Hoengseong samples. The phylum Proteobacteria was detected most frequently in both the Hoengseong and Pyeongchang samples, followed by the phyla Firmicutes and Actinobacteria. Notably, Corynebacterium, Pediococcus, Macrococcus, and Acinetobacter were significantly different from two regions. Conclusion: Although the predominant phylum in raw milk is same, the abundances of major genera in milk samples were different between Hoengseong and Pyeongchang. We assumed that these differences are caused by regional dissimilar farming environments such as soil, forage, and dairy farming equipment so that the quality of milk raw milk from Pyeongchang is higher than that of Hoengseong. These results could provide the crucial information for identifying the microbiota in raw milk of South Korea.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.337-366
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• 2004

Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), as non-market valuation approach, has been criticized on that respondents may not realistically reflect their budget constraints in answering willingness to pay (WTP) for hypothetical CV questions. This paper empirically estimates the income calibration factor associated with CV responses through combining travel cost method and contingent valuation method in a utility-theoretic framework. The joint model of recreation demand function and contingent WTP function was applied to an important case study on the Man Kyoung River system, whose water quality is at issue because of the Sae Alan Kum reclamation project. Relevant economic variables such as price, income and water quality had significant influence as anticipated by the economic theory. Equally important, the income calibration factor was not significantly different from one, suggesting that the systematic discrepancies of CV responses relative to the actual behavior was not detected at least in terms of budget exaggeration. Overall, this study supports the notion that carefully designed CVM studies can provide informative data on individuals' willingness to pay for environmental quality changes.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.533-544
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• 2015

Unlike the concrete structure built on land, that exposed to the marine environment is greatly degraded in durability due to the exposure to not only the physical action caused by sea wind, tide, and wave, but also the harsh conditions, including the chemical erosion and freeze-thaw which result from $SO_4{^{2-}}$, $Cl^-$ and $Mg^{2+}$ ions in seawater. In the process of the large scaled construction of submerged concrete structures, of course environmental hazardous substance, such as alkaline (pH) and heavy metals, may be leached. Thus, this issue needs to be adequately reviewed and studied. Therefore, this study attempted to develop a CSA (Calcium Sulfo Aluminate) activator using electric arc furnace reducing slags, as well as the eco-friendly concrete for artificial reefs using electric arc furnace oxidizing slag as aggregate for concrete. The strength properties of the eco-friendly concrete exposed to the marine environment were lower than those of the normal concrete by curing 28 days. This suggest that additional studies are needed to improve the early strength of the eco-friendly concrete. With respect to seawater resistance of the eco-friendly concrete, the average strength loss against 1 year of curing days reached 8-9%. the eco-friendly concrete using high volume of ground granulated blast furnace slags and high specific gravity of electronic arc furnace oxidizing slag demonstrated the sufficient usability as a freeze-thaw resistant material. With respect to heavy metal leaching properties of the eco-friendly concrete, heavy metal substances were immobilized by chemical bonding in the curing process through the hydration of concrete. Thus, heavy metal substances were neither identified at or below environmental hazard criteria nor detected, suggesting that the eco-friendly concrete is safe in terms of leaching of hazardous substances.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.267-274
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• 2016

Increasing sugar intake of population has become a nutritional issue in Korea. Sweet taste perception may be related to behaviors such as eating sweet food including high sugars and total sugar intake. This study aimed to evaluate objective and subjective sweet taste perception and the association among objective sweet taste perception, dietary behaviors related to eating sweet snack food including high sugar, and total sugar intake from the snacks. Participants were 261 healthy female college students (mean age: $21.0{\pm}1.6years$), who were divided into three subgroups based on oral sweet taste evaluation using a sweet taste assessment tool provided by Ministry of Food and Drug Safety: sweet-seeker group (n=139), medium sweet-seeker group (n=54), and unsweet-seeker group (n=68). There was no significant difference in weight and body mass index (BMI) among the three groups; however, the sweet-seeker group had significantly higher sweet taste preference than that of the other groups. Though more people in the sweet-seeker group thought they tended to eat sweet foods than the medium sweet-seeker and unsweet-seeker groups, over half of the sweet-seekers did not think they tended to eat sweet foods. The sweet-seeker group was more likely to eat sweet snacks such as breads, chocolate products, sugar-sweetened milk, and so on than the unsweet-seeker group. Total sugar intake from the selected sweet snacks was 44.4 g for the sweet-seeker group, 34.4 g for the medium sweet-seeker group, and 28.0 g for the unsweet-seeker group with a significant difference. These results indicated the absence of relationship between objective sweet taste perception and the obesity index; however, significant associations were detected among objective sweet taste perception, eating sweet snacks and total sugar intake from the snacks. We also found high disagreement between objective and subjective sweet taste perception of the subjects. The present study provided the novel insight that measuring objective sweet taste perception may be useful for assessing the risk of high sugar consumption and undesirable dietary behaviors.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.38-47
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• 2018

Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) is a next generation energy production technology that converts coal into syngas with enhanced power generation efficiency and environmental performance. IGCC produces almost coal gasification slag as the solid by-product. IGCC slag is generated about 140,000 tons for a year although recycling of it is still in the early stages. We evaluated the potential of IGCC slag which is generated from a pilot plant in South Korea as an alkali-activated cement. Samples which were activated with the combined activator of sodium silicate solution and caustic soda had an average compressive strength of 4.5 MPa, showing expansion. Expansion of the alkali-activated slag was presumed to be caused by free CaO in the slag, although it was not detected by the ethylene glycol method. Samples that were activated with the combined activator of sodium aluminate and caustic soda had an average compressive strength of 10 MPa. Hydroxy sodalite and $C_3AH_6$ were found to be the new crystalline phases. IGCC slag can be used as an alkali-activated material, but the strength performance should be improved with proper mix design approach to calculate optimum proportions which can alleviate the expansion issue at the same time.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.5 no.7
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• pp.319-326
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• 2016

Given the attributes of mobile apps that shorten the time to make purchase decisions while enabling easy purchase cancellations, usability can be regarded to be a highly prioritized quality attribute among the diverse quality attributes that must be provided by mobile apps. With that backdrop, mobile app developers have been making great effort to minimize usability hampering elements that degrade the merchantability of apps in many ways. Most elements that hamper the convenience in use of mobile apps stem from those potential errors that occur when GUIs are designed. In our previous study, we have proposed a technique to analyze the usability of mobile apps using user behavior logs. We proposes a technique to detect usability hampering elements lying dormant in mobile apps' GUI models by expressing user behavior logs with finite state models, combining user behavior models extracted from multiple users, and comparing the combined user behavior model with the expected behavior model on which the designer's intention is reflected. In addition, to reduce the burden of the repeated test operations that have been conducted by existing developers to detect usability errors, the present paper also proposes a mobile usability error detection automation tool that enables automatic application of the proposed technique. The utility of the proposed technique and tool is being discussed through comparison between the GUI issue reports presented by actual open source app developers and the symptoms detected by the proposed technique.