• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.67 no.5
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• pp.430-435
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• 2009

Background: Thus far, research studies on community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) have focused on its clinical severity. Recently, it has been determined that procalcitonin (PCT) level is correlated with severity of CAP. A retrospective study conducted at our hospital used risk predictability and PCT to determine whether or no PCT is useful in assessing the severity of CAP. Methods: This study covered 92 CAP cases that were admitted to the respiratory department at Changwon Fatima Hospital between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. All enrolled subjects were measured for infection markers and risk predictability. Results: Based on hospital admission data, enrolled subjects had Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) scores serving as risk predictors showed that both PCT and white blood cell (WBC) were statistically significant as infection markers (p=0.001, 0.037). Thus, this study used ROC curves in PSI for data analysis. As a result, it was determined that the area under curve (AUC) of PCT and WBC was 0.694 and 0.593 respectively, indicating that PCT has a higher test value for WBC, when PCT was higher than 0.745 ng/mL. In addition, it was found that PCT levels higher than 0.745 ng/mL had higher PSI scores than the group with PCT lower than 0.745 ng/mL (p=0.032). Conclusion: In order to predict risk of pneumonia cases admitted due to symptoms of CAP, it is important to consider PCT as well as PSI, and follow-up monitoring of PCT cases.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.43 no.11 s.294
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• pp.688-692
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• 2006

Ferroelectric lanthanides-substituted $Bi_4Ti_3O_{12}$ $(Bi_{4-x}Ln_xTi_3O_{12}, BLnT)$ thin films approximately 200 nm in thickness were deposited by metal organic chemical vapor deposition onto Pt(111)/Ti/SiO$_2$/Si(100) substrates. Many researchers reported that the lanthanides substitution for Bi in the pseudo-perovskite layer caused the distortion of TiO$_6$ octahedron in the a-b plane accompanied with a shift of the octahedron along the a-axis. In this study, the effect of lanthanides (Ln=Pr, Eu, Gd, Dy)-substitution and crystallization temperature on their ferroelectric properties of bismuth titanate $(Bi_4Ti_3O_{12}, BIT)$ thin films were investigated. As BLnT thin films were substituted to lanthanide elements (Pr, Eu, Gd, Dy) with a smaller ionic radius, the remnant polarization (2P$_r$) values had a tendency to increase and made an exception of the Eu-substituted case because $Bi_{4-x}Eu_xTi_3O_{12}$ (BET) thin films had the smaller grain sizes than the others. In this study, we confirmed that better ferroelectric properties can be expected for films composed of larger grains in bismuth layered peroskite materials. The crystallinity of the thin films was improved and the average grain size increased as the crystallization temperature,increased from 600 to 720$^{\circ}C$. Moreover, the BLnT thin film capacitor is characterized by well-saturated polarization-electric field (P-E) curves with an increase in annealing temperature. The BLnT thin films exhibited no significant degradation of switching charge for at least up to $1.0\times10^{11}$ switching cycles at a frequency of 1 MHz. From these results, we can suggest that the BLnT thin films are the suitable dielectric materials for ferroelectric random access memory applications.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.225-229
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• 1993

The stability of omeprazole in the aqueous solutions containing arginine or sodium phosphate dibasic(SPD) was examined at 30, 40 and $50^{\circ}C$. Arginine or anhydrous SPD was added to omeprazoie solution ($200{\mu}g/\;ml$ in distilled water) to yield $100{\mu}g/\;ml$ concentration of each. Then, the solution was kept at 30, 40 or $50^{\circ}C$ for 90 hrs. Aliquots of the solution were withdrawn at specified time intervals and assayed by HPLC for intact omeprazole. The remaining percentage-time curves revealed that omeprazole was degraded rapidly as funtions of time and temperature following pseudo first-order kinetics. The rate constant in the SPD solution was much higher than in the arginine solution. In other words. the degradation half-lives of omeprazole at $30^{\circ}C$, for example, was 148 and 76 hr in arginine and SPD solutions respectively. The initial pH of the solution containing $100{\mu}g/\;ml$ of arginine or SPD was 9.7 or 8.7, respectively. Since omeprazole is more stable as the pH of its solution becomes more alkaline, the longer half-life of omeprazole in arginine solution could be explained by the more alkaline characteristics of arginine than SPD in the solution. The activation energy necessary for the degradation reaction was almost identical in both solutions, indicating similar degradation mechanisms of omeprazole in the solutions. In conclusion, omprazole was more stable in the presence of arginine than of SPD.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.27-33
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• 2000

Simultaneous separation and analysis of Ni(II), Pd(II), Co(II), Cu(II) and Hg(II) in peperidinedithiocarbamate (PDTC) chelates were investigated by reversed phase liquid chromatography. The optimum conditions for the separation of PDTC metal chelates were examined with respect to the pH, extraction solvent, and mobile phase strength on Novapak $C_{18}$ column using methanol/water mixture as mobile phase. All metal PDTC chelates were eluted in an acceptable range of capacity factor value ($0{\leq}log\;k^{\prime}{\leq}1$). The linear calibration curves were obtained in the concentration range of $0{\sim}1.2{\mu}g/mL$ for five metal ions, and also good precision in the range of 1.96~3.41% RSD was obseved. Under the optimum conditions, trace metat ions in the composite water sample were successfully separated and determined with relative error of ${\pm}2.0%$.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2004

Determination of some PAHs in sediments at Ulsan bay has been carried out by extraction of the components into n-hexane followed by synchronous spectrofluorimetric technique. 11 PAHs, such as acenaphthene (Ace), anthracene (Anth), benz(a)anthracene (BaA), benzo(b)fluoranthene (BbFt), benzo(k)fluoranthene (BkFt) benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), chrysene (Chry), phenanthrene (Phen), fluoranthene(Ft), perlyrene (Per), and pyrene (Pyr) in sediment samples were able to determine separately by synchronous spectrofluorimetry. Calibration curves for those components were linear for the concentration range of 0.15~166 ppb PAHs with the correlation factor of 0.9985~0.9999. The total amount of PAHs in sediments varied from 68.8 to 324.4 ng/g. The PAHs concentration was shown a tendency to increase from the outer bay to the inner basin as well the predominant contributors to the aromatic ring groups of the PAHs was 4-ring group.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.435-440
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• 1994

Qualitative and quantitative analysis for the anionic surfactants used in the metal washing fluid (brand names are BFA and BCA) was performed by the capillary electrophoresis. Acetonitrile and sodium benzoate were mixed with the buffer solution which controlled at pH 10. Under the 18kV applied voltage, the electropherograms have shown the theoretical plates more than $10^4$. Determined as the concentration at the S/N~3, the typical detection limit was ~5 ppm and the calibration curves have shown the correlation coefficients higher than ~0.99. Based on these results, it was concluded that each components were octanoate, decanoate, dodecanoate, tetradecanoate, hexadecanoate and the relative ratio was 1.0 : 1.0 : 6.5 : 2.1 : 0.8 for the BFA.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 1985

The inhibitory action of oxymetazoline on the spontaneous movements of isolated intestinal strips of the rabbit and the effects of antagonists upon the oxymetazoline actions were assessed with recordings through both isometric and isotonic transducers, and comparisons were made between both methods of recording. There were significant differences between the slopes of regression equations calculated from log dose response curves of oxymetazoline obtained from jejunum and those from ileum. But no difference was noted between both recordings either through isotonic transducer or through isometric transducer. The $ID_{50}$ of oxymetazoline obtained from the recording through isotonic transducer was $6.31{\times}10^{-7}M$ in jejunum and $3.16{\times}10^{-8}M$ in ileum. The recording through isometric transducer gave the values of $5.01{\times}10^{-7}M$ in jejunum and $1.07{\times}10^{-8}M$ in ileum. The $pA_2$-values of prazosin to oxymetazoline calculated from the recording through isotonic transducer were 8.13 in jejunum and 8.31 in ileum and the recording through isometric transducer gave the values of 7.29 and 8.26 in jejunum and ileum, respectively. The $pA_2$-values of phentolamine to oxymetazoline obtained from the recording through isotonic transducer were 8.18 in Jejunum and 9.31 in ileum and those from the recording through isometric transducer were 7.75 and 8.13 in jejunum and ileum, respectively. These results indicate that there are no significant differences between recordings either through isotonic transducer or through isometric transducer in assessing inhibitory responses of intestinal movement to certain drugs.

• Journal of Information Technology Application
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.91-106
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• 2001

We propose a software-reliability growth model incoporating the amount of uniform and Weibull testing efforts during the software testing phase in this paper. The time-dependent behavior of testing effort is described by uniform and Weibull curves. Assuming that the error detection rate to the amount of testing effort spent during the testing phase is proportional to the current error content, the model is formulated by a nonhomogeneous Poisson process. Using this model the method the data analysis for software reliability measurement is developed. The optimum release time is determined by considering how the initial reliability R($\chi$ 0) would be. The conditions are ($R\chi$ 0)＞$R_{o}$ , $P_{o}$ ＞R($\chi$ 0)＞ $R_{o}$ $^{d}$ and R($\chi$ 0)＜$R_{o}$ $^{d}$ for uniform testing efforts. deal case is $P_{o}$ ＞($R\chi$ 0)＞ $R_{o}$ $^{d}$ Likewise, it is ($R\chi$ 0)$\geq$$R_{o}$ , $R_{o}$ ＞($R\chi$ 0)＞R(eqation omitted) and ($R\chi$ 0)＜R(eqation omitted)for Weibull testing efforts. Ideal case is $R_{o}$ ＞ R($\chi$ 0)＞ R(eqation omitted).

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.540-549
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• 2017

Objective : To evaluate the diagnostic value of computed tomography-myelography (CTM) compared to that of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with lumbar radiculopathy. Methods : The study included 91 patients presenting with radicular leg pain caused by herniated nucleus pulposus or lateral recess stenosis in the lumbar spine. The degree of nerve root compression on MRI and CTM was classified into four grades. The results of each imaging modality as assessed by two different observers were compared. Visual analog scale score for pain and electromyography result were the clinical parameters used to evaluate the relationships between clinical features and nerve root compression grades on both MRI and CTM. These relationships were quantified by calculating the receiver-operating characteristic curves, and the degree of relationship was compared between MRI and CTM. Results : McNemar's test revealed that the two diagnostic modalities did not show diagnostic concurrence (p<0.0001). Electromyography results did not correlate with grades on either MRI or CTM. The visual analog pain scale score results were correlated better with changes of the grades on CTM than those on MRI (p=0.0007). Conclusion : The present study demonstrates that CTM could better define the pathology of degenerative lumbar spine diseases with radiculopathy than MRI. CTM can be considered as a useful confirmative diagnostic tool when the exact cause of radicular pain in a patient with lumbar radiculopathy cannot be identified by using MRI. However, the invasiveness and potential complications of CTM are still considered to be pending questions to settle.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.95-101
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• 2014

When voltage is applied on the metal layer of a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor, electric field excitation causes charge accumulation on the metal surface. This alters not only the optical properties of the metal but also the SPR angle. In this study we investigate this effectby performing experiments using solutions of various pH values, and we obtain the relation between total surface charge and SPR angle. The curves for the various pH conditions become coincident. We compare our results to those from an earlier space charge layer (SCL) model, and suggest a modified SCL model which explains our result well. This result will be useful in applications of SPR sensors, and in studying the optical properties of thin metal layers.