• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1609-1614
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• 2013

Objective: To evaluate the effect of intravenous contrast on dose calculation in radiation treatment planning for oesophageal cancer. Methods: A total of 22 intravein-contrasted patients with oesophageal cancer were included. The Hounsfield unit (HU) value of the enhanced blood stream in thoracic great vessels and heart was overridden with 45 HU to simulate the non-contrast CT image, and 145 HU, 245 HU, 345 HU, and 445 HU to model the different contrast-enhanced scenarios. 1000 HU and -1000 HU were used to evaluate two non-physiologic extreme scenarios. Variation in dose distribution of the different scenarios was calculated to quantify the effect of contrast enhancement. Results: In the contrast-enhanced scenarios, the mean variation in dose for planning target volume (PTV) was less than 1.0%, and those for the total lung and spinal cord were less than 0.5%. When the HU value of the blood stream exceeded 245 the average variation exceeded 1.0% for the heart V40. In the non-physiologic extreme scenarios, the dose variation of PTV was less than 1.0%, while the dose calculations of the organs at risk were greater than 2.0%. Conclusions: The use of contrast agent does not significantly influence dose calculation of PTV, lung and spinal cord. However, it does have influence on dose accuracy for heart.

• Preventive Nutrition and Food Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.312-316
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• 2004

Sterilized raw ground pork was inoculated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) and Lactobacillus casei (LC) to investigate the relationship between microbial growth and 2-thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) values. The analyses including microbial growth, pH, and TBARS values were performed during 3 weeks of storage at room temperature $(20^{\circ}C)$. The radiation-sterilized control sample did not show any microbial growth, but the samples inoculated at different levels (diluted twice vs non-diluted) exhibited differences until 1 week. However, the difference disappeared at weeks 2 and 3. The pH of raw ground pork inoculated with PA increased, but that of LC decreased. The pH of non-inoculated samples increased slightly after storage. The TBARS values in non-inoculated and LC inoculated with pork increased, but TBARS remained unchanged in samples inoculated with PA after 1 week. Results indicated that the microbial growth level and strains can influence the TBARS value of raw ground pork. Thus, it is important to use samples exposed to the same microbial conditions to compare the oxidation of lipids in meat samples.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.111-117
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• 2013

Purpose: To determine whether the maximum standardized uptake value (SUV) of [$^{18}F$] fluorodeoxyglucose uptake by positron emission tomography (FDG PET) ratio of lymph node to primary tumor (mSUVR) could be a prognostic factor for node positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with definitive radiotherapy (RT). Materials and Methods: A total of 68 NSCLC T1-4, N1-3, M0 patients underwent FDG PET before RT. Optimal cutoff values of mSUVR were chosen based on overall survival (OS). Independent prognosticators were identified by Cox regression analysis. Results: The most significant cutoff value for mSUVR was 0.9 with respect to OS. Two-year OS was 17% for patients with mSUVR > 0.9 and 49% for those with mSUVR ${\leq}0.9$ (p = 0.01). In a multivariate analysis, including age, performance status, stage, use of chemotherapy, and mSUVR, only performance status (p = 0.05) and mSUVR > 0.9 (p = 0.05) were significant predictors of OS. Two-year OS for patients with both good performance (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group [ECOG] ${\leq}1$) and mSUVR ${\leq}0.9$ was significantly better than that for patients with either poor performance (ECOG > 1) or mSUVR > 0.9, 23% (71% vs. 23%, p = 0.04). Conclusion: Our results suggested that the mSUVR was a strong prognostic factor among patients with lymph node positive NSCLC following RT. Addition of mSUVR to performance status identifies a subgroup at highest risk for death after RT.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1018-1021
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• 2007

This paper explores the use of BEM based NAH to reconstruct the surface vibration of a plate in a rectangular finite cavity, in which the distances between sensors and the nearest points on the source surface are not equal. In such circumstances, different degree of information on propagating and non-propagating wave components will be detected by sensors at different positions, as well as the influence of measurement noise will vary significantly from the nearest points of measurement to the farthest ones. On the other hand, the condition number of the vibro-acoustic transfer function matrix relating normal surface velocities and field pressures will becomes high, numerically indicating an increase of linear dependency between rows of transfer function matrix. The combination of poor measurement and high condition number will result inaccurate reconstruction. Therefore, one approach to be investigated in this work is to select the measurement positions in such ways that reduce measurement redundancy, as it indicated by the condition number. The improvement is found to be significant in the numerical simulations utilizing two different criterions, spanning from over-determined to under-determined cases, and in the validation experiment.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.640-648
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• 2004

This paper describes a new magnetization method for non-destructive testing with magneto-optical sensor (denoted as MO sensor) which have the following characteristic : high observation sensitivity, independence of the crack orientation, and precise imaging of a complex crack geometry such as multiple cracks. When a magnetic field is applied normally to the surface of a specimen which is significantly larger than its defects, approximately the same magnetic charge per unit area occurs on the surface of the specimen. If there is a crack in the specimen, magnetic charge per unit area has the same value at the bottom of the crack. The distribution of the vertical component of the magnetic flux density, B$\_$Z/, is almost uniform over the no-crack area (denoted as B$\_$Z,BASE/), while the magnetic flux density is smaller in the surroundings of the crack(denoted as B$\_$Z,CRACK/) If B$\_$Z, BASE/ is a bit larger than the saturated magnetic flux density of the MO sensor (B$\_$s/) , then small magnetic domains occur over the crack area and a large domain over the non-crack area because B$\_$Z,CRACK/ is smaller than B$\_$s/.

• Mycobiology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.79-87
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• 2004

An experiment was carried out to investigate the effects of pre-inoculation with the mycorrhizal fungus Glomus clarum and foliar application of kinetin on the growth of mungbean plant irrigated wht different dilution of seawater. Arbuscular-mycorrhizal(AM) infection significantly increased dry weight, height, chlorophyll, sugar and protein content, nitrogen and phosphorus-use efficiencies, leaf conductivity, transpiration rate, nitrogenase, acid and alkaline phosphates activities of all salinized mungbean plants in comparison with control and non-mycorrhizal plants irrespective of the presence or absence of kinetin. Mycorrrhizal plants showed higher concentrations of N, P, K, Ca and Mg and lower Na/N, Na/P, Na/K, Na/Ca and Na/Mg ratios than non-mycorrhizal plants when irrigated with certain dilution of seawater. Mungbean plants showed 597% and 770% dependency on AM fungus G. clarum in absence and presence of kinetin, respectively, for biomass production under a level of 30% of seawater. The average value of tolerance index for mycorrhizal plants accounted 267% and 364% in absence and presence kinetin respectively. This study provides evidence for the benefits of kinetin which are actually known for mycorrhizal than non-mycorrhzal plants. AM fungus and kinetin protected the host plants against the detrimental effects of salt. However, mycorrhizal infection was much more effective than kinetin applications. Thus management applications of this arbuscular mycorrhizal endophyte(G. clarum) with kinetin could be of importance in using seawater in certain dilution for irrigation in agriculture.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.95-104
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• 2020

In financial economics studies, the autoregressive model has been a workhorse for a long time. However, the model has a fixed value on every parameter and requires the stationarity assumptions. Time-varying coefficient autoregressive model that we use in this paper offers some desirable benefits over the traditional model such as the parameters are allowed to be varied over-time and can be applies to non-stationary financial data. This paper provides the Monte Carlo simulation studies which show that the model can capture the dynamic movement of parameters very well, even though, there are some sudden changes or jumps. For the daily data from January 1, 2015 to February 12, 2020, our paper provides the empirical studies that Thailand, Taiwan and Tokyo Stock market Index can be explained very well by the time-varying coefficient autoregressive model with lag order one while South Korea's stock index can be explained by the model with lag order three. We show that the model can unveil the non-linear shape of the estimated mean. We employ GJR-GARCH in the condition variance equation and found the evidences that the negative shocks have more impact on market's volatility than the positive shock in the case of South Korea and Tokyo.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.199-208
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• 2008

In this paper, to analyze the initial valued non-homogeneous elastic half space by the scaled boundary analysis, the infinite element approach was introduced. The free surface of the initial valued non-homogeneous elastic half space was modeled as a circumferential direction of boundary scaled boundary coordinate. The infinite element was used to represent the infinite length of the free surface. The initial value of material property(elastic modulus) was considered by the combination of the position of the scaling center and the power function of the radial direction. By use of the mapping type infinite element, the consistent elements formulation could be available. The performance and the feasibility of proposed approach are examined by two numerical examples.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.71 no.5
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• pp.545-552
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• 2019

The analysis and design of complex structures like sandwich-panel elements are difficult; the use of finite element method for the analysis is complicated and time consuming when non-linear effects are considered. On the other hand, artificial neural network (ANN) models can capture the non-linear effects and its application requires lesser computational demand. Two ANN models were trained, tested and validated to compute the force for a given displacement of a sandwich-type roof element; 2555 force and element deformation pairs were used for training the ANN models. For the models trained without considering the damping effect, there were two values in the input layer: maximum displacement and current displacement, and for the model considering damping, displacement from the previous step was used as an additional input. Totally, 400 ANN models were trained. Results show that there is a good agreement between the experimental and simulated data, and the models showed a good performance with a mean square error value of 4548.85. Both the ANN models could simulate the inelastic behaviour, loss of rigidity, and evolution of permanent displacements. The models could also interpolate and extrapolate, which enables them to be used as an analysis and design tool for such complex elements.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.87-93
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• 2017

Purpose - This paper investigates whether managerial overconfidence is associated with firm-specific crash risk. Overconfidence leads managers to overestimate the returns of their investment projects, and misperceive negative net present value projects as value creating. They even use voluntary disclosures to convey their optimistic beliefs about the firms' long-term prospects to the stock market. Thus, the overconfidence bias can lead to managerial bad news hoarding behavior. When bad news accumulates and crosses some tipping point, it will come out all at once, resulting in a stock price crash. Research design, data and methodology - 7,385 firm-years used for the main analysis are from the KIS Value database between 2006 and 2013. This database covers KOSPI-listed and KOSDAQ-listed firms in Korea. The proxy for overconfidence is based on excess investment in assets. A residual from the regression of total asset growth on sales growth run by industry-year is used as an independent variable. If a firm has at least one crash week during a year, it is referred to as a high crash risk firm. The dependant variable is a dummy variable that equals 1 if a firm is a high crash risk firm, and zero otherwise. After explaining the relationship between managerial overconfidence and crash risk, the total sample was divided into two sub-samples; chaebol firms and non-chaebol firms. The relation between how I overconfidence and crash risk varies with business group affiliation was investigated. Results - The results showed that managerial overconfidence is positively related to crash risk. Specifically, the coefficient of OVERC is significantly positive, supporting the prediction. The results are strong and robust in non-chaebol firms. Conclusions - The results show that firms with overconfident managers are likely to experience stock price crashes. This study is related to past literature that examines the impact of managerial overconfidence on the stock market. This study contributes to the literature by examining whether overconfidence can explain a firm's future crashes.