• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.1837-1846
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• 2016

Background: Colon cancer screening (CRCS) uptake is markedly affected by public awareness of the disease. This study was conducted to assess levels of knowledge of CRC, to explore the pattern of CRCS uptake and identify possible barriers to screening among Saudis older than 50 years of age and primary care providers (PCPs) in Al Hassa region, Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in randomly selected primary health care (PHC) centers, 884 Saudis and 39 PCPs being enrolled for data collection. Structured interviews were conducted to obtain information regarding socio-demographic characteristics, personal information relevant to CRC, awareness about early signs/symptoms and risk factors, and barriers to CRCS. Also, a self- administered data collection form was used to assess barriers to CRCS from the physicians' perspectives. Results: More than 66% of participants were lacking knowledge about CRC. Participants with higher educational levels, having ever heard about CRC, and having relatives with CRC had a significantly higher awareness of the disease. The rate of reported CRCS was low (8.6%). After conducting a logistic regression analysis, it was observed that female gender (OR=0.28; 95% CI=0.14-0.57; P=0.001), being unmarried (OR=0.11; 95% CI=0.10-0.23; P=0.001), lower levels of education (OR=0.36; 95% CI=0.16-0.82; P=0.015), and having no relatives with CRC (OR=0.30; 95% CI=0.17-0.56; P=0.001) were significantly associated with a lower CRCS uptake. There was a significant difference between most of the perceived barriers to CRCS and gender. Exploratory factor analysis showed that personal fear (especially fear of the screening results and shyness) was the major factor that hindered CRCS with high loading Eigen value of 2.951, explaining 34.8% of the barriers of the included sample toward utilization of CRCS, followed by lack of awareness of both person and providers (high Eigen value of 2.132, and explaining 23.7% of the barriers). The most frequently cited barriers to CRCS from the physicians' perspectives were lack of public awareness, lack of symptoms and signs, and fear of painful procedures. Conclusions: Poor levels of knowledge about CRC were found among older Saudis attending PHC centers in Al Hassa, Saudi Arabia. It is crucial to implement an organized national screening program in Saudi Arabia to increase public awareness.

• Journal of Korean Medical classics
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• v.19 no.2 s.33
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• pp.138-162
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• 2006

'On the Morbid Pulse of Abdominal Fullness, Cold Mounting, and Abiding Food' in the Chapter 10 of Synopsis of Golden Chamber that enunciates Abdominal Fullness, Cold Mounting, and Abiding Food is related to the stomach and intestines respectively, and is similar to the region and symptom of disease in the light of both abdominal fullness and symptoms of pain. This chapter was united into one because the formula mentioned in this chapter can be applied to three disease patterns. Abdominal fullness shows the symptoms of distention and unease, but judging from the text as well as a specific formula and symptoms, it follows pain. Accordingly Abdominal fullness dealt with in this chapter is the first consideration and it is a kind of a disease pattern attendant on abdominal pain. Cold Mounting does not mean mounting gi disease but means the abdominal pain. The cause of cold mounting is mainly due to insufficiency of yang gi and oversufficiency of cold evil. And the main symptoms of cold mounting follow the severe pain around the naval and sweating, cold of the extremities, pulse deep and tight. Abiding food is of the same meaning such as damage of food today. Abiding food is now referred to as damage of food. Principles which have set forth in this chapter are put to use of the method of ejection in case that abiding food places in the upper part, precipitation in the lower part. The symptoms of abiding food show that the pulse is slight and slippery and the wrist pulse is both superficial and large and rough in applying the pressure, and the cubit pulse is also slight and superficial as well, and that have diarrhea and have little appetite.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.438-456
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• 2010

Iris recognition uses a unique iris pattern of user to identify person. In order to enhance the performance of iris recognition, it is reported that the diameter of iris region should be greater than 200 pixels in the captured iris image. So, the previous iris system used zoom lens camera, which can increase the size and cost of system. To overcome these problems, we propose a new method of enhancing the accuracy of iris recognition on low-resolution iris images which are captured without a zoom lens. This research is novel in the following two ways compared to previous works. First, this research is the first one to analyze the performance degradation of iris recognition according to the decrease of the image resolution by excluding other factors such as image blurring and the occlusion of eyelid and eyelash. Second, in order to restore a high-resolution iris image from single low-resolution one, we propose a new method based on multiple multi-layered perceptrons (MLPs) which are trained according to the edge direction of iris patterns. From that, the accuracy of iris recognition with the restored images was much enhanced. Experimental results showed that when the iris images down-sampled by 6% compared to the original image were restored into the high resolution ones by using the proposed method, the EER of iris recognition was reduced as much as 0.133% (1.485% - 1.352%) in comparison with that by using bi-linear interpolation

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.454-454
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• 2014

Silicon microwire array is one of the promising platforms as a means for developing highly efficient solar cells thanks to the enhanced light trapping efficiency. Among the various fabrication methods of microstructures, deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process has been extensively used in fabrication of high aspect ratio microwire arrays. In this presentation, we show precisely controlled Si microwire arrays by tuning the DRIE process conditions. A periodic microdisk arrays were patterned on 4-inch Si wafer (p-type, $1{\sim}10{\Omega}cm$) using photolithography. After developing the pattern, 150-nm-thick Al was deposited and lifted-off to leave Al microdisk arrays on the starting Si wafer. Periodic Al microdisk arrays (diameter of $2{\mu}m$ and periodic distance of $2{\mu}m$) were used as an etch mask. A DRIE process (Tegal 200) is used for anisotropic deep silicon etching at room temperature. During the process, $SF_6$ and $C_4F_8$ gases were used for the etching and surface passivation, respectively. The length and shape of microwire arrays were controlled by etching time and $SF_6/C_4F_8$ ratio. By adjusting $SF_6/C_4F_8$ gas ratio, the shape of Si microwire can be controlled, resulting in the formation of tapered or vertical microwires. After DRIE process, the residual polymer and etching damage on the surface of the microwires were removed using piranha solution ($H_2SO_4:H_2O_2=4:1$) followed by thermal oxidation ($900^{\circ}C$, 40 min). The oxide layer formed through the thermal oxidation was etched by diluted hydrofluoric acid (1 wt% HF). The surface morphology of a Si microwire arrays was characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM, Hitachi S-4800). Optical reflection measurements were performed over 300~1100 nm wavelengths using a UV-Vis/NIR spectrophotometer (Cary 5000, Agilent) in which a 60 mm integrating sphere (Labsphere) is equipped to account for total light (diffuse and specular) reflected from the samples. The total reflection by the microwire arrays sample was reduced from 20 % to 10 % of the incident light over the visible region when the length of the microwire was increased from $10{\mu}m$ to $30{\mu}m$.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.19B no.2
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• pp.99-106
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to determine the evaluation parameters' osteoporosis predictability in accordance with measuring regions by analyzing the correlations between bone mineral density and trabecular patterns derived from different measuring regions. Experimental subjects were a total of 40 female patients after menopause aged over 40 years, and were classified into 20 control and 20 osteoporotic groups according to the T-score. Bone mineral density was measured on femoral neck, trochanter and ward's triangle by DEXA(Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry). We designated ROI(Region of Interest) with $50{\times}50$ pixel size on each measuring regions, and extracted trabecular patterns by using existing image processing method. We also selected a total of eight evaluation parameters that are categorized into structural(mean gray level, area, perimeter, thickness and terminal distance), skeletonized parameters(number, length) and fractal dimension. As a result, it was observed that area, perimeter, thickness, terminal distance, number, length and fractal dimension reflected the bone mineral density with high statistical validity(p<0.003). We also confirmed that the evaluation parameters could predict the osteoporosis more efficiently.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.2A
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• pp.123-130
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• 2012

A cooling system is indispensable for the fossil and nuclear power plants which produce electricity by rotating the turbines with hot steam. A cycle of the typical cooling system includes pumping of seawater at the intake pump house, exchange of heat at the condenser, and discharge of hot water to the sea. The cooling type of the nuclear power plants in Korea recently evolves from the conventional surface intake/discharge systems to the submerged intake/discharge systems that minimize effectively an intake temperature rise of the existing plants and that are beneficial to the marine environment by reducing the high temperature region with an intensive dilution due to a high velocity jet and density differential at the mixing zone. It is highly anticipated that the future nuclear power plants in Korea will accommodate the submerged cooling system in credit of supplying the lower temperature water in the summer season. This study investigates the approach flow patterns at the velocity caps and discharge flow patterns from diffusers using the 3-D computational fluid dynamics code of $FLOW-3D^{(R)}$. The approach flow test has been conducted at the velocity caps with and without a cap. The discharge flow from the diffuser was simulated for the single-port diffuser and multi-ports diffuser. The flow characteristics to the velocity cap with a cap demonstrate that fish entrainment can significantly be minimized on account of the low vertical flow component around the cap. The flow pattern around the diffuser is well agreed with the schematic diagram by Jirka and Harleman.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.170-174
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• 2009

In this paper, we report a characterization of Prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV) isolate. The virus was identified from 'Yumyeong' peach showing mild mosaic on leaves in commercial orchard of 'Umsung', Chungbuk province in Korea. The virus isolate produced ringspot symptom on the inoculated cotyledons and systemic mosaic and malformation on the upper leaves of Cucumis sativus. Systemic mottles were appeared in Chenopodium quinoa. When the buds of the virus infected stem were grafted on the healthy young Prunus persica GF305 seedlings, line pattern with mosaic appeared within 3 months. Isometric virus-like particles were found in parenchyma cells and plasmodesmata of C. sativus leaves inoculated mechanically with the virus. The cDNA fragments of PNRSV coat protein (CP) region, approximately 675bp, were synthesized from genomic RNA extracted from virus-infected leaves by RT-PCR using specific primer pairs. Partial nucleotide sequences of the CP regions were determined and analyzed with the known PNRSV. The CP gene of PNRSVKorea isolates showed 93.9~94.7% similarity to the 4 known PNRSV isolates.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.235-258
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to investigate climatological variations from the temporal and spatial surface particulate organic carbon (POC) estimates based on SeaWiFS spectral radiance, and to determine the physical mechanisms that affect the distribution of pac in the Gulf of Mexico. 7-year monthly mean values of surface pac concentration (Sept. 1997 - Dec. 2004) were estimated from Maximum Normalized Difference Carbon Index (MNDCI) algorithm using SeaWiFS data. Synchronous 7-year monthly mean values of remote sensing data (sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface wind (SSW), sea surface height anomaly (SSHA), precipitation rate (PR)) and recorded river discharge data were used to determine physical forcing factors. The spatial pattern of POC was related to one or more factors such as river runoff, wind-derived current, and stratification of the water column, the energetic Loop Current/Eddies, and buoyancy forcing. The observed seasonal change in the POC plume's response to wind speed in the western delta region resulted from seasonal changes in the upper ocean stratification. During late spring and summer, the low-density river water is heated rapidly at the surface by incoming solar radiation. This lowers the density of the fresh-water plume and increases the near-surface stratification of the water column. In the absence of significant wind forcing, the plume undergoes buoyant spreading and the sediment is maintained at the surface by the shallow pycnocline. However, when the wind speed increases substantially, wind-wave action increases vertical motion, reducing stratification, and the sediment were mixed downward rather than spreading laterally. Maximum particle concentrations over the outer shelf and the upper slope during lower runoff seasons were related to the Loop Current/eddies and buoyancy forcing. Inter-annual differences of POC concentration were related to ENSO cycles. During the El Nino events (1997-1998 and 2002-2004), the higher pac concentrations existed and were related to high runoffs in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but the opposite conditions in the western Gulf of Mexico. During La Nina conditions (1999-2001), low Poe concentration was related to normal or low river discharge, and low PM/nutrient waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but the opposite conditions in the western Gulf of Mexico.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.102-109
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• 2010

Fructan has been found to accumulate in various tissues during periods when light levels increased carbon fixation where low temperatures reduced growth rates while photosynthesis continued. In this study, we have cloned 1-sucrose:sucrose fructosyl transferase(1-sst) and 1-fructan: fructan fructosyl transferase (1-fft, a key enzyme for the synthesis of fuctan) from Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus L.). The recombinant vector with 1-sst and 1-fft has been constructed under the control of 35S promoter of KJGV-B2 vector and transgenic plants obtained by Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA4404. PCR analysis carried out on the putative transgenic plants for amplification of the coding region of specific gene (1-sst, 1-fft), and HPT genes. Transgenic lines carrying of 1-sst and 1-fft were confirmed for integration into the rice genome using Southern blot hybridization and RT-PCR. The transgenic plants in $T_2$ generation were selected and expression pattern analysis revealed that 1-sst and 1-fft were stable. This analysis confirmed the presence of low-molecular-weight fructan in the seedling of the transgenic rices. Therefore, cold tolerance and carbohydrate metabolism will be possible to develop resistant plants using the transgenic rice.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.45-54
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• 2002

This paper proposes a video compression algorithm using characteristics of wavelet coefficients. The proposed algorithm can provide lowed bit rate and faster running time while guaranteeing the reconstructed image qualify by the human virtual system. In this approach, each video sequence is decomposed into a pyramid structure of subimages with various resolution to use multiresolution capability of discrete wavelet transform. Then similarities between two neighboring frames are obtained from a low-frequency subband which Includes an important information of an image and motion informations are extracted from the similarity criteria. Four legion selection filters are designed according to the similarity criteria and compression processes are carried out by encoding the coefficients In preservation legions and replacement regions of high-frequency subbands. Region selection filters classify the high-frequency subbands Into preservation regions and replacement regions based on the similarity criteria and the coefficients In replacement regions are replaced by that of a reference frame or reduced to zero according to block-based similarities between a reference frame and successive frames. Encoding is carried out by quantizing and arithmetic encoding the wavelet coefficients in preservation regions and replacement regions separately. A reference frame is updated at the bottom point If the curve of similarity rates looks like concave pattern. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides high compression ratio with proper Image quality. It also outperforms the previous Milton's algorithm in an Image quality, compression ratio and running time, leading to compression ratio less than 0.2bpp. PSNR of 32 dB and running tome of 10ms for a standard video image of size 352${\times}$240 pixels.