• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.33 no.8
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• pp.1091-1100
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• 2023

Human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18 are the major causes of cervical lesions and are associated with 71% of cervical cancer cases globally. However, public health infrastructures to support cervical cancer screening may be unavailable to women in low-resource areas. Therefore, sensitive, convenient, and cost-efficient diagnostic methods are required for the detection of HPV16/18. Here, we designed two novel methods, real-time ERA and ERA-LFD, based on enzymatic recombinase amplification (ERA) for quick point-of-care identification of the HPV E6/E7 genes. The entire detection process could be completed within 25 min at a constant low temperature (35-43℃), and the results of the combined methods could be present as the amplification curves or the bands presented on dipsticks and directly interpreted with the naked eye. The ERA assays evaluated using standard plasmids carrying the E6/E7 genes and clinical samples exhibited excellent specificity, as no cross-reaction with other common HPV types was observed. The detection limits of our ERA assays were 10⁰ and 10¹ copies/µl for HPV16 and 18 respectively, which were comparable to those of the real-time PCR assay. Assessment of the clinical performance of the ERA assays using 114 cervical tissue samples demonstrated that they are highly consistent with real-time PCR, the gold standard for HPV detection. This study demonstrated that ERA-based assays possess excellent sensitivity, specificity, and repeatability for HPV16 and HPV18 detection with great potential to become robust diagnostic tools in local hospitals and field studies.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.153-162
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• 2024

Objectives: Among OECD countries, South Korea has been having the highest suicide rate since 2018, with 24.1 deaths per 100,000 people reported in 2020. The objectie of this study was to examine the use of generative artificial intellicence (AI) chatbots to train third-year Korean medicine (KM) students in conducting suicide risk assessments for patients with depressive disorders to train students for their clinical practice skills. Methods: The Claude 3 Sonnet model was utilized for chatbot simulations. Students performed mock consultations using standardized suicide risk assessment tools including Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) tool and ASQ Brief Suicide Safety Assessment. Experiences and attitudes were collected through an anonymous online survey. Responses were rated on a 1~5 Likert scale. Results: Thirty-six students aged 22~30 years participated in this study. Their scores for interest and appropriateness (4.66±0.57), usefulness (4.60±0.61), and overall experience (4.63±0.60) were high. Their evaluation of the usability of artificial intelligence chatbot was also high at 4.58±0.70 points. However, their trust in chatbot responses (Q12) was lower (3.86±0.99). Common issues related to dissatisfaction included conversation disruptions due to token limits and inadequate chatbot responses. Conclusions: This is the first study investigating generative AI chatbots for suicide risk assessment training in KM education. Students reported high satisfaction, although their trust in chatbot accuracy was moderate. Technical limitations affected their experience. These preliminary findings suggest that generative AI chatbots hold promise for clinical training, particularly for education in psychiatry. However, improvements in response accuracy and conversation continuity are needed.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.774-784
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to present management guidelines for critical control points by analyzing microbiological hazardous elements through screening Potentially Hazardous Foods (PHF) menus in an effort improve the microbiological quality of foods prepared by restaurant operations. Steamed spinach with seasoning left at room temperature presents a range of risk temperatures which microorganisms could flourish, and it exceeded all microbiological safety limits in our study. On the other hand, steamed spinach with seasoning stored in a refrigerator had Aerobic Plate Counts of $2.86{\pm}0.5{\log}\;CFU/g$ and all other microbiological tests showed that their levels were below the limit. The standard plate counts of raw materials of lettuce and tomato were $4.66{\pm}0.4{\log}\;CFU/g$ and $3.08{\pm}0.4{\log}\;CFU/g$, respectively. Upon washing, the standard plate counts were $3.12{\pm}0.6{\log}\;CFU/g$ and $2.10{\pm}0.3{\log}\;CFU/g$, respectively, but upon washing after chlorination, those were $2.23{\pm}0.3{\log}\;CFU/g$ and $0.72{\pm}0.7{\log}\;CFU/g$, respectively. The standard plate counts of baby greens, radicchio and leek were $6.02{\pm}0.5{\log}\;CFU/g$, $5.76{\pm}0.1{\log}\;CFU/g$ and $6.83{\pm}0.5{\log}\;CFU/g$, respectively. After 5 minutes of chlorination, the standard plate counts were $4.10{\pm}0.6{\log}\;CFU/g$, $5.14{\pm}0.1{\log}\;CFU/g$ and $5.30{\pm}0.3{\log}\;CFU/g$, respectively. After 10 minutes of chlorination treatment, the standard plate counts were $2.58{\pm}0.3{\log}\;CFU/g$, $4.27{\pm}0.6{\log}\;CFU/g$, and $4.18{\pm}0.5{\log}\;CFU/g$, respectively. The microbial levels decreased as the time of chlorination increased. This study showed that the microbiological quality of foods was improved with the proper practices of time-temperature control, sanitization control, seasoning control, and personal and surface sanitization control. It also presents management guidelines for the control of potentially hazardous foods at the critical control points in the process of restaurant operations.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.399-405
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• 2011

Recently, the navigation risk is increasing significantly with growth of marine traffic volume and construction of marine facilities, water bridges, port development and marine wind farm etc. To reduce this kinds of risk, Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs enacted a new law called MSA(Maritime Safety Audit) as a comprehensive maritime traffic safety management scheme in order to ensure safety improvements from the early planning stage to post managing of the development which affect the maritime traffic environment. MSA as a tool for improving maritime traffic safety is a formal safety assessment in the existing or future ship's fairway by an independent audit team. It examines the potential hazards of maritime traffic safety, if necessary, and is to ensure the implementation of appropriate safety measures. The object of this paper is to comprehensively evaluate the achievements and implementation problems of MSA about the 2 years, to define the fundamental problems of MSA by conceptualizing and analyzing MSA limits. MSA requires further examination about the introduction of screening and scoping in order to increase the efficiency and objectivity. It will be required the measures concerning policies directions as a tool for planning process for project owner. It will lead to right understanding concerning audit scheme and used in various ways such as amendments to related law.

• 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.273-280
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• 2005

Robust magneto-telluric (MT) response function estimators are now in standard use in electromagnetic induction research. Properly devised and applied, these methods can reduce the influence of unusual data (outlier) in the response (electric field) variable, but often not sensitive to exceptional predictor (magnetic field) data, which are termed leverage points. A bounded influence estimator is described which simultaneously limits the influence of both outlier and leverage point, and has proven to consistently yield more reliable MT response function estimates than conventional robust approach. The bounded influence estimator combines a standard robust M-estimator with leverage weighting based on the statistics of the hat matrix diagonal, which is a standard statistical measure of unusual predictors. Further extensions to MT data analysis are proposed, including a establishment of data rejection criterion which minimize the influence of both electric and magnetic outlier in frequency domain based on statistical distribution of electromagnetic field. The rejection scheme made in this study seems to have an effective performance on eliminating extreme data, which is even not removed by BI estimator, in frequency domain. The effectiveness and advantage of these developments are illustrated using real MT data.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.61-86
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• 2001

All cancers are caused by abnormalities in DNA sequence. Throughout life, the DNA in human cells is exposed to mutagens and suffers mistakes in replication, resulting in progressive, subtle changes in the DNA sequence in each cell. Since the development of conventional and molecular cytogenetic methods to the analysis of chromosomal aberrations in cancers, more than 1,800 recurring chromosomal breakpoints have been identified. These breakpoints and regions of nonrandom copy number changes typically point to the location of genes involved in cancer initiation and progression. With the introduction of molecular cytogenetic methodologies based on fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), namely, comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and multicolor FISH (m-FISH) in carcinomas become susceptible to analysis. Conventional CGH has been widely applied for the detection of genomic imbalances in tumor cells, and used normal metaphase chromosomes as targets for the mapping of copy number changes. However, this limits the mapping of such imbalances to the resolution limit of metaphase chromosomes (usually 10 to 20 Mb). Efforts to increase this resolution have led to the "new"concept of genomic DNA chip (1 to 2 Mb), whereby the chromosomal target is replaced with cloned DNA immobilized on such as glass slides. The resulting resolution then depends on the size of the immobilized DNA fragments. We have completed the first draft of its Korean Genome Project. The project proceeded by end sequencing inserts from a library of 96,768 bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) containing genomic DNA fragments from Korean ethnicity. The sequenced BAC ends were then compared to the Human Genome Project′s publicly available sequence database and aligned according to known cancer gene sequences. These BAC clones were biotinylated by nick translation, hybridized to cytogenetic preparations of metaphase cells, and detected with fluorescein-conjugated avidin. Only locations of unique or low-copy Portions of the clone are identified, because high-copy interspersed repetitive sequences in the probe were suppressed by the addition of unlabelled Cotl DNA. Banding patterns were produced using DAPI. By this means, every BAC fragment has been matched to its appropriate chromosomal location. We have placed 86 (156 BAC clones) cytogenetically defined landmarks to help with the characterization of known cancer genes. Microarray techniques would be applied in CGH by replacement of metaphase chromosome to arrayed BAC confirming in oncogene and tumor suppressor gene: and an array BAC clones from the collection is used to perform a genome-wide scan for segmental aneuploidy by array-CGH. Therefore, the genomic DNA chip (arrayed BAC) will be undoubtedly provide accurate diagnosis of deletions, duplication, insertions and rearrangements of genomic material related to various human phenotypes, including neoplasias. And our tumor markers based on genetic abnormalities of cancer would be identified and contribute to the screening of the stage of cancers and/or hereditary diseases

• Resources Recycling
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.3-9
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• 2008

The total amount of fluidized bed incinerator ash, i.e. incombustion materials generated from the municipal solid waste incineration(MSWI) in Korea was approximately 14,000 tons in 2006. Most of the ash after ferrous metal separation is finally discard to the landfill sites. In the present work, possibility for recycling of the ash is studied to utilize the ash as raw materials for ceramic products. Incombustion materials obtained from the two different incinerators were used to recover the raw materials by applying the magnetic separation and screening process to remove metallic particles. The raw materials show relatively low heavy metals content obtained from the KSLP leaching tests. The ceramic products were prepared by mixing the clay with the various amounts of the raw material. The physical properties, i.e. shrinkage rate, absorbancy and compressive strength of the ceramic products sintered at $1,000^{\circ}C$ and $1,050^{\circ}C$, respectively were improved by increasing the addition amounts of the incinerator ash. Based on the leaching tests the ceramic products also be satisfied with the standard limits on the leachability of heavy metals because most of the metallic materials are effectively removed from the incombustion materials by appling the separation processes.

• The Journal of Korean Society of Virology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 1997

To develop the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the detection of type D simian retrovirus (SRV) infection, an oligonucleotide primer pair was designed to hybridize to the sequences within env gene of SRV subtype 1 (SRV-1). The 3' proximal env sequences annealing to the primers had been rather conserved among three different subtypes of SRV, SRV-1, SRV-2, and SRV-3 (Mason-Pfizer Monkey Virus: MPMV). The PCR using the primer pair targeting an env region successfully detected and amplified all three subtypes of SRV with excellent specificity after single round of reaction. The tests with peripheral blood mononuclear cells infected either with simian immunodeficiency virus or simian T-Iymphotropic virus type 1, major immunosuppressive viral agents together with SRV in simian, verified the specificity of the PCR by excluding any cross reactivity. Semiquantitative titration PCR, amplifying serially diluted plasmid DNA of each subtype, was performed to evaluate sensitivity limits of the reaction. Based on molecular weight of each cloned SRV genome, the PCR should be able to detect one SRV-infected cell per more than $5-7{\times}10^4$ uninfected cells after simple ethidium bromide staining of resulting products. The PCR must be very efficient screening system with its quickness, certainty, and sensitivity for SRV-infected animals used in human AIDS research model. Second round amplification of the reaction products from the first PCR, or Southern hybridization by radiolabeled probes shall render to compete its efficacy to ELISA which has been the most sensitive technique to screen SRV infection but with frequent ambiguity problem.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.110-118
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• 2018

Due to recent earthquakes, there is a growing awareness that Korea is not a safe zone for earthquakes any more. Therefore, the review of various aspects of the seismic safety of the infrastructures are being carried out. Because of the characteristics of the underground structure buried in the ground, the electric power utility tunnels must be considered not only for the inertia and load capacity of the structure itself but also the characteristics of the surrounding soils. An extensive and accurate numerical analysis is inevitably required in order to consider the interaction with the ground, but it is difficult to apply the soil-structure interaction analyses, which generally requires high cost and extensive time, to all electric power utility tunnel structures. In this study, the major design variables including soil characteristics are considered as independent variables, and the seismic safety factor, which is the result of the numerical analysis, is considered as a dependent variable. Thus, a method is proposed to select vulnerable electric power utility tunnels with low seismic safety factor while excluding costly and time-consuming numerical analyses through the direct correlation analysis between independent and dependent variables. Equations of boundary limits were derived based on the distribution of the seismic safety factor and the cover depth and rebar amounts with high correlation relationship. Consequently, a very efficient and simple approach is proposed to select vulnerable electric power utility tunnels without intensive numerical analyses. Among the 108 electric power utility tunnels that were investigated in this paper, 30% were screened as fragile structures, and it is confirmed that the screening method is valid by checking the safety factors of the fragile structure. The approach is relatively very simple to use and easy to expand, and can be conveniently applied to additional data to be obtained in the future.

• Clean Technology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.96-105
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• 2016

VOCs emissions from industries cause the air pollution and odor. In the industrial facilities, the existing odor treatment techniques have limits and problems. In this study, the optimum essential oil and metal oxide selected by screening test. lavender oil, cypress oil and TiO₂ were determined by deodorant materials and those were blended by 5%, 45%, 10%, respectively. In addition, the result of batch type experiments depending on the dilution rate, injection, rate, temperature showed that the optimum condition of deodorant is 6 mL of injection rate, and 200 times of dilution rate and the removal efficiency increased in proportion with temperature. In addition, the activation energy was calculated from the rate equation, which appeared in the 3-4 times lower than conventional deodorants.