• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.21-25
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• 2014

In order to develop 2nd generation (2G) high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wires as commercial products, it is necessary to perform a high speed investigation of their superconducting performance. Room-temperature and non-contact optical scanning tools are necessary to verify the microstructure of the superconducting materials, the current flow below the critical temperature, and the critical current density. In this paper, we report our results of an inspection of the electrical transport properties of coated conductors. The samples that we used in our study were highly qualified rare-earth based coated conductors produced via co-evaporation, and $SmBa_2Cu_3O_{7-y}$ (SmBCO) was the superconducting materials used in our studies. A film grown on IBAD-MgO templates shows larger than 400 A/cm at 77 K and a self-field. The local transport properties of the films were investigated by room-temperature imaging by thermal heating. The room-temperature images show structural inhomogeneities on the surface of the films. Bolometric response imaging via low-temperature bolometric microscopy was used to construct the local current mapping at the surface. These results indicate that the non-uniform regions on the surface disturb the current flow, and laser scanning images at room-temperature and at a low-temperature suggest a correlation between the structural properties and transport properties. Thus this method can be effective to evaluate the quality of the coated conductors.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.143-156
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• 2018

Evapotranspiration is a key element in designing and operating agricultural hydraulic structures. The profound effect of climate change to local agro-hydrological systems makes it inevitable to study the potential variability in evapotranspiration rate in order to develop policies on future agricultural water management as well as to evaluate changes in agricultural environment. The APEX-Paddy model was used to simulate local evapotranspiration responses to climate change scenarios. Nine Global Climate Models(GCMs) downscaled using a non-parametric quantile mapping method and a Multi?Model Ensemble method(MME) were used for an uncertainty analysis in the climate scenarios. Results indicate that APEX-Paddy and the downscaled 9 GCMs reproduce evapotranspiration accurately for historical period(1976~2005). For future periods, simulated evapotranspiration rate under the RCP 4.5 scenario showed increasing trends by -1.31%, 2.21% and 4.32% for 2025s(2011~2040), 2055s(2041~2070) and 2085s(2071~2100), respectively, compared with historical(441.6 mm). Similar trends were found under the RCP 8.5 scenario with the rates of increase by 0.00%, 4.67%, and 7.41% for the near?term, mid?term, and long?term periods. Monthly evapotranspiration was predicted to be the highest in August, July was the month having a strong upward trend while. September and October were the months showing downward trends in evapotranspiration are mainly resulted from the shortening of the growth period of paddy rice due to temperature increase and stomatal closer as ambient $CO_2$ concentration increases in the future.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.195-205
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• 2021

Time effect on the deformation and strength characteristics of geogrid reinforced sand retaining wall has become an important issue in geotechnical and transportation engineering. Three physical model tests on geogrid reinforced sand retaining walls performed under various loading conditions were simulated to study their rate-dependent behaviors, using the presented nonlinear finite element method (FEM) analysis procedure. This FEM was based on the dynamic relaxation method and return mapping scheme, in which the combined effects of the rate-dependent behaviors of both the backfill soil and the geosynthetic reinforcement have been included. The rate-dependent behaviors of sands and geogrids should be attributed to the viscous property of materials, which can be described by the unified three-component elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model. By comparing the FEM simulations and the test results, it can be found that the present FEM was able to be successfully extended to the boundary value problems of geosynthetic reinforced soil retaining walls. The deformation and strength characteristics of the geogrid reinforced sand retaining walls can be well reproduced. Loading rate effect, the trends of jump in footing pressure upon the step-changes in the loading rate, occurred not only on sands and geogrids but also on geogrid reinforced sands retaining walls. The lateral earth pressure distributions against the back of retaining wall, the local tensile force in the geogrid arranged in the retaining wall and the local stresses beneath the footing under various loading conditions can also be predicted well in the FEM simulations.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.117-133
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• 2023

This study assessed the ecological health of border areas using the ecological health index and suggested Indicators for maintaining and promoting ecological values. We analyzed the change trends, pressures, and resilience of ecosystems and services in border areas, and identified their current status and sustainability. The main findings were: (1) ecological assets and ecosystem services in border areas could be compared through ecosystem health assessment; (2) it can be used to set priorities for management and conservation by identifying the relative importance and vulnerability of ecosystems and ecosystem services in each border area; and (3) the index presented in this study can be judged to have explanatory power for the characteristics of border areas and ecosystem health when compared to previous studies. Limitations of this study include the lack of literature and statistical data at the local government level and the resulting limited application of evaluation methods, which limited direct regional comparisons. To overcome the research limitations, further studies are needed, such as establishing ecological information in border areas, mapping and assessment of ecosystem services, and developing and applying assessments that reflect the opinions and participation of various stakeholders. This study was the first attempt to assess the health of ecosystems and ecosystem services in border areas and provided an important baseline for future changes in border areas. In the future, it will be helpful in national and local government policies and ecological assetecosystem management by supplementing insufficient information and presenting clear goals.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.287-301
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• 2024

Purpose: This paper aims to verify the difference in production resilience between local clusters and regions without clusters before and after a major crisis. Furthermore, this paper aims to identify the clusters' quality factors that impact clusters' shock vulnerability and resilience. Methods: Utilizing open-source data from the US Cluster Mapping platform, this paper compares regions with industrial clusters to those without using the Differences-in-Differences (DID) estimator. It considers the regions with industrial clusters as a treatment group and others as the control group, comparing the period before and after the pandemic. Additionally, the paper examines which cluster factors make a difference in economic resilience during the crisis using Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD). Results: The study finds that regions with industrial clusters show higher production resilience compared to regions without clusters. Moreover, the number of establishments, annual payrolls, and employment can have a positive impact on resilience during the pandemic shock. Conclusion: Though clusters could be vulnerable during the global crisis, industrial clusters can contribute to regional economic development and production resilience in the long-term aspect. Thus, it is required to construct a high-quality local cluster and support it during the economic crisis in the long-term aspect.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.23-30
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• 2004

Ontologies play an important role in the Semantic Web by providing well-defined meaning to ontology consumers. But as the ontologies are authored in a bottom-up distributed mimer, a large number of overlapping ontologies are created and used for the similar domains. Ontology sharing and reuse have become a distinguished topic, and ontology merging and alignment are the solutions for the problem. Ontology merging and alignment algorithms previously proposed detect conflicts between concepts by making use of only local syntactic information of concept names. And they depend only on a semi-automatic approach, which makes ontology engineers tedious. Consequently, the quality of merging and alignment tends to be unsatisfying. To remedy the defects of the previous algorithms, we propose a new algorithm for ontology merging and alignment which uses local and global semantic set of a concept. We evaluated our algorithm with several pairs of ontologies written in OWL, and achieved around 91% of precision in merging and alignment. We expect that, with the widespread use of web ontology, the need for ontology sharing and reuse ill become higher, and our proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the time required for ontology development. And also, our algorithm can easily be applied to various fields such as ontology mapping where semantic information exchange is a requirement.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.137-146
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• 2002

Purpose : This paper introduces an improved classification approach which adopts a deterministic relaxation method and an agglomerative clustering technique for the classification of MRI using neural network. The proposed approach can solve the problems of convergency to local optima and computational burden caused by a large number of input patterns when a neural network is used for image classification. Materials and methods : Application of Hopfield neural network has been solving various optimization problems. However, major problem of mapping an image classification problem into a neural network is that network is opt to converge to local optima and its convergency toward the global solution with a standard stochastic relaxation spends much time. Therefore, to avoid local solutions and to achieve fast convergency toward a global optimization, we adopt MFA to a Hopfield network during the classification. MFA replaces the stochastic nature of simulated annealing method with a set of deterministic update rules that act on the average value of the variable. By minimizing averages, it is possible to converge to an equilibrium state considerably faster than standard simulated annealing method. Moreover, the proposed agglomerative clustering algorithm which determines the underlying clusters of the image provides initial input values of Hopfield neural network. Results : The proposed approach which uses agglomerative clustering and deterministic relaxation approach resolves the problem of local optimization and achieves fast convergency toward a global optimization when a neural network is used for MRI classification. Conclusion : In this paper, we introduce a new paradigm to classify MRI using clustering analysis and deterministic relaxation for neural network to improve the classification results.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.134-148
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• 2023

Background: The conducting of health effect surveys (HESs) in environmentally contaminated vulnerable areas (ECVAs) by the central and local governments has been increasing apace with the increase in demand for HESs since the Environmental Health Act was enacted in South Korea in 2008. Objectives: This study aimed to review the HESs of residents in ECVAs conducted in South Korea. Methods: An analysis was performed on 125 reports obtained from the Environment Digital Library, PRISM, and local government websites after selecting from 803 projects obtained as ECVAs from the Korea ON-Line E-Procurement System (1997~2021), National Institute Environment Research (2000~2021), and Korea Environmental Industry and Technology Institute (2009~2021). The reports were classified by background (residents' demand, HES, and more), research design (cross-sectional study, cohort, ecological study, and panel), pollution source (abandoned metal mine (AMM), industrial complex (IC), and more), and assessment method of exposure and health effects. The survey area was converted into administrative district codes for geographical mapping. Results: There were 37, 34, 18, and 10 cases associated with AMM, IC, waste incinerators, and coal-fired power plants, respectively. Most of the studies conducted were cross-sectional studies and ecological studies. The proportion of epidemiological investigations by residents' demand showed an increase from 0.0% to 8.9% for the central government while decreasing from 16.7% to 14.3% for local governments after 2008 compared to before 2008. HESs increased at both the central and local government levels since 2014. For the evaluation method, 365 environmental hazards, 319 health outcomes, and 302 biological markers were investigated, with the most commonly investigated items being metals, cancer, and blood metals. Conclusions: HESs of residents in ECVAs in South Korea have been continuously developed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Future improvements are expected, and systematic review and classification of the HESs is warranted.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.78-95
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• 2024

For the establishment and comparison of environmental plans across various domains, considering climate change and urban issues, it is crucial to build spatial data at the regional scale classified with consistent criteria. This study mapping the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) of Changwon City, where active climate and environmental research is being conducted, using the protocol suggested by the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT). Additionally, to address the fragmentation issue where some grids are classified with different climate characteristics despite being in regions with homogeneous climate traits, a filtering technique was applied, and the LCZ classification characteristics were compared according to the filtering radius. Using satellite images, ground reference data, and the supervised classification machine learning technique Random Forest, classification maps without filtering and with filtering radii of 1, 2, and 3 were produced, and their accuracies were compared. Furthermore, to compare the LCZ classification characteristics according to building types in urban areas, an urban form index used in GIS-based classification methodology was created and compared with the ranges suggested in previous studies. As a result, the overall accuracy was highest when the filtering radius was 1. When comparing the urban form index, the differences between LCZ types were minimal, and most satisfied the ranges of previous studies. However, the study identified a limitation in reflecting the height information of buildings, and it is believed that adding data to complement this would yield results with higher accuracy. The findings of this study can be used as reference material for creating fundamental spatial data for environmental research related to urban climates in South Korea.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.42.1-42.1
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• 2015

Accurately estimating black hole (BH) masses at high redshifts is imperative in the current and future era of large-area extragalactic spectroscopic surveys. We present an extension of existing comparisons between rest-frame UV and optical virial BH mass estimators to intermediate redshifts, lower luminosities, and lower BH masses, comparable to the local $H{\beta}$ reverberation-mapping sample. We use data from the AGES survey and also newly acquired near-infrared spectra from the FMOS instrument on Subaru telescope for 89 broad-lined active galaxies at redshifts between 0.5 and 1.6. We focus on the MgII, CIV, and CIII broad emission lines and compare them to both $H{\alpha}$ and $H{\beta}$, using two different prescriptions to describe their emission profile width. We confirm that MgII shows a tight correlation with $H{\alpha}$, with a scatter of ~0.25 dex. The CIV and CIII estimators can be considered viable virial mass estimators, despite large scatter values. We combine our dataset with previous high redshift and high luminosity CIV and CIII measurements from the literature and we calculate a scatter of $\sim0.4$ dex and an offset to the 1:1 relation consistent with 0 for the combined sample. This updated comparison spans a total of 4 decades in BH mass, a much wider range than any previous individual study.