• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2004

The United States has a unique health care system, which is unlikely any other health care systems in the world. The major part of basic functional components of the system -financing, insurance, delivery, and payment- is in private hands. A market-oriented economy invites the participation of numerous private entities that are interested in carrying out the key functions of health systems. Due to this central feature, U.S.health care is not delivered through a network of interrelated components designed to work together coherently. For lack of standardization, the various components of the system fit together only loosely. The involvement of numerous players in the key functions leads to duplication, overlap, inadequacy, inconsistency, and waste, which add to the complexity and also make the system inefficient. Hence, cost containment remains an elusive goals. Moreover, the system falls short of delivering equitable services to all americans, though consumption of health care services is the largest in the world. On the other hand, United States leads the world in the latest and the best in medical technology, medical training, and research. It offers some of the most sophisticated institutions, products, and processes of health care delivery. This article discuss the characteristic features of the U.S. health care system. and its performance, trying to seek its implication on Korean health care system.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.341-353
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• 2016

Papermaking reconstituted tobacco is an important strategy for recycling the waste tobacco residues. To indentify the influences of the inorganic components on harmful components delivery in cigarette smoke, a self-made electrodialysis stack was assembled to desalt the tobacco extract. The influences of the applied current and extract content on the removal rate of the inorganic ions were investigated. Results indicated that the applied current was a dominant impact on the desalination performance. High currents lower than the limiting current density could accelerate the desalting efficiency but cause higher energy consumption. A current of 2 A, or current density of ${\sim}11mA{\cdot}cm^{-2}$, was an optimal choice by considering both the energy consumption and desalting efficiency. A 20% tobacco extract was an appropriate content for the electrodialysis process. More than 90% of inorganic ions could be removed under the optimum condition. The preliminary result indicated that removal of inorganic components was beneficial to decrease the harmful component delivery in cigarette smoke. Naturally, ED is an environmentally friendly and high-effective technology for desalting the tobacco extract.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.189-199
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• 2024

To properly extract the strain components under varying operational conditions is very important in bridge health monitoring. The abnormal sensor readings can be correctly identified and the expected operational performance of the bridge can be better understood if each strain components can be accurately quantified. In this study, strain components under varying load conditions, i.e., temperature variation and live-load variation are evaluated based on field strain measurements collected from a real concrete box-girder bridge. Temperature-induced strain is mainly regarded as the trend variation along with the ambient temperature, thus a smoothing technique based on the wavelet packet decomposition method is proposed to estimate the temperature-induced strain. However, how to effectively extract the vehicle-induced strain is always troublesome because conventional threshold setting-based methods cease to function: if the threshold is set too large, the minor response will be ignored, and if too small, noise will be introduced. Therefore, an autoencoder framework is proposed to evaluate the vehicle-induced strain. After the elimination of temperature and vehicle-induced strain, the left of which, defined as the model error, is used to assess the operational performance of the bridge. As empirical techniques fail to detect the degraded state of the structure, a clustering technique based on Gaussian Mixture Model is employed to identify the damage occurrence and the validity is verified in a simulation study.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.753-756
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• 2011

Recently the construction of railway sections passing the central area of cities and stations under railway lines are increasing, and then it is urgently required to take the countermeasures against the railway vibration and the second-phase noise radiated from it. The most efficient countermeasure, out of technologies developed up to now, is the floating slab track which is the track system isolated from the sub-structure by springs. In other countries, the source technologies for anti-vibration design and vibration isolator - one of key components - have been developed and many installation experiences have been accumulated. However, in Korea, since the system design technology and technologies for key components are not yet developed, the foreign system are being introduced without any adjustment, and the key component, vibration isolator, depends on imports. In this study, analysis on floating slab system installed rubber mat and stopper is carried for the examination on the safety of floating slab system.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.268-272
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• 2010

Recently the construction of railway sections passing the central area of cities and stations under railway lines are increasing, and then it is urgently required to take the countermeasures against the railway vibration and the second-phase noise radiated from it. The most efficient countermeasure, out of technologies developed up to now, is the floating slab track which is the track system isolated from the sub-structure by springs. In other countries, the source technologies for anti-vibration design and vibration isolator - one of key components - have been developed and many installation experiences have been accumulated. However, in Korea, since the system design technology and technologies for key components are not yet developed, the foreign system are being introduced without any adjustment, and the key component, vibration isolator, depends on imports. In this study, floating slab was divided into three spans, $k_{dynamic}$ use by examining reactions and member forces was to ensure safety.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.304-312
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• 2022

Digital images of cultural relics captured using line scan cameras present limitations due to uneven intensity and low contrast. To address this issue, this report proposes a colour linear array image enhancement method that can maintain a constant colour. First, the colour linear array image is converted from the red-green-blue (RGB) colour space into the hue-saturation-intensity colour space, and the three components of hue, saturation, and intensity are separated. Subsequently, the hue and saturation components are held constant while the intensity component is processed using the established intensity compensation model to eliminate the uneven intensity of the image. On this basis, the contrast of the intensity component is enhanced using an improved local contrast enhancement method. Finally, the processed image is converted into the RGB colour space. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can significantly improve the visual effect of colour linear array images. Moreover, the objective quality evaluation parameters are improved compared to those determined using existing methods.

• Journal of Wind Energy
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.61-67
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• 2012

The loading test of wind turbine pitch and yaw bearings have been conducted using special test rig designed for the test of large slewing bearings. Test type was fatigue test that applied fatigue load to each bearing and followed the defined test process. Measurement data during test were rotational torque and raceway temperature, and inspected key components by disassembling the bearing after all test finished. As a results, the raceway temperature during test did not exceed the operational temperature range of lubricant and rotational torque was reduced as the bearing's rotational cycle increased. In the inspection of key components, some plastic deformation and flaking were detected at some raceway sections while other components such as ball, spacer and seal remain indefective conditions.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.279-300
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• 2013

This paper presents a new analysis framework for predicting the internal buffeting forces in bridge components under skew wind. A linear regressive model between the internal buffeting force and deformation under normal wind is derived based on mathematical statistical theory. Applying this regression model under normal wind and the time history of buffeting displacement under skew wind with different yaw angles in wind tunnel tests, internal buffeting forces in bridge components can be obtained directly, without using the complex theory of buffeting analysis under skew wind. A self-anchored suspension bridge with a main span of 260 m and a steel arch bridge with a main span of 450 m are selected as case studies to illustrate the application of this linear regressive framework. The results show that the regressive model between internal buffeting force and displacement may be of high significance and can also be applied in the skew wind case with proper regressands, and the most unfavorable internal buffeting forces often occur under yaw wind.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.465-475
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• 2017

Photovoltaic (PV) panels are used in high-rise buildings to convert solar energy to electricity. Due to the considerable energy consumption of high-rise buildings, applying PV technology is of great significance to energy saving. In the application of PV panels, one of the most important construction issues is the connection of the PV panel with the main structures. One major difficulty of the connection design is that the PV panel connection consists of two separate components with coupling and indeterminate dimension. In this paper, the gap element is employed in these two separated but coupled components, i.e., hook and catch. Topology optimization is applied to optimize and design the cross-section of the PV panel connection. Pareto optimization is conducted to operate the optimization subject to multiple load scenarios. The initial design for the topology optimization is determined by the common design specified by the Technical Code for Glass Curtain Wall Engineering (JGJ 102-2003). Gravity and wind load scenarios are considered for the optimization and numerical analysis. Post analysis is conducted for the optimal design obtained by the topology optimization due to the manufactory requirements. Generally, compared with the conventional design, the optimized connector reduces material use with improved structural characteristics.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.443-465
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• 2014

Hyperbolic thin-shell cooling towers have complicated vibration modes, and are very sensitive to the effects of group towers and wind-induced vibrations. Traditional aero-elastic models of cooling towers are usually designed based on the method of stiffness simulation by continuous medium thin shell materials. However, the method has some shortages in actual engineering applications, so the so-called "equivalent beam-net design method" of aero-elastic models of cooling towers is proposed in the paper and an aero-elastic model with a proportion of 1: 200 based on the method above with integrated pressure measurements and vibration measurements has been designed and carried out in TJ-3 wind tunnel of Tongji university. According to the wind tunnel test, this paper discusses the impacts of self-excited force effect on the surface wind pressure of a large-scale cooling tower and the results show that the impact of self-excited force on the distribution characteristics of average surface wind pressure is very small, but the impact on the form of distribution and numerical value of fluctuating wind pressure is relatively large. Combing with the Complete Quadratic Combination method (hereafter referred to as CQC method), the paper further studies the numerical sizes and distribution characteristics of background components, resonant components, cross-term components and total fluctuating wind-induced vibration responses of some typical nodes which indicate that the resonance response is dominant in the fluctuating wind-induced vibration response and cross-term components are not negligible for wind-induced vibration responses of super-large cooling towers.