• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.274-282
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• 2014

The Korean government is considering the implementation of the marine debris pollution abatement technology program (MDPATP) to mitigate the negative impacts of marine debris and systematically manage marine debris through scientific researches such as monitoring and environmental impact assessment of marine debris. In this regard, this study attempts to analyze the economic feasibility of the MDPATP in order to provide policy-maker with useful information. To this end, the indices for economic feasibility such as net present value (NPV), benefit/cost (B/C) ratio, and internal rate of return (IRR) are presented. The results show that NPV, B/C ratio, and IRR are computed to be 45.7 billion won, 2.72, and 17.12%, respectively, which are bigger than 0, 1.0, and 5.5%, and that the MDPATP passes the cost-benefit analysis. Thus, it is concluded that it is socially profitable to conduct the MDPATP.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.167-176
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• 2009

Cobalt-rich manganese crusts on seamounts have received an increasing amount of attention as future resources for Co, Ni, Cu, and Mn. A dearth of detailed information regarding the relevant distribution characteristics, mining technologies, and ore processing technologies, however, has precluded potential evaluations of the technical and economic advantages of these crusts. In the past 4 years, Korea has undertaken a survey of the cobalt-rich manganese crusts in and around the Magellan Seamount and Mid-Pacific Mountains. This paper introduces the preliminary feasibility study of the distribution features and R&D results centered around the development of the cobalt-rich manganese crusts. The evaluation model was developed by modifying the model for the manganese nodules. In addition to considering the geological and geophysical differences between the manganese nodules and the cobalt-rich manganese crusts, an ore dressing subsystem was installed in the model. The mining subsystem is composed of a self-propelled collector--a pipeline with submersible hydraulic pumps for crust lifting. The smelting and chlorine leach method was selected for metallurgical processing. The production scales were established at 2,500t/y of cobalt metal. The production of three metals--cobalt, nickel, and copper--was considered in terms of metallurgical processing. The economic feasibility analyses demonstrated that the payback period was 11.4 years, the NPV was 36M$, and the IRR was 9.6% with the economic factors in the case of a cobalt price of US$ 25/lb. It was also demonstrated in this study that the payback period was 8.6 years, the NPV was 154M$, and the IRR was 14.0% in the case of a cobalt price of US$ 30/lb. This indicates that the approach under consideration appears to offer greater potential given the predicted metal prices.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.612-623
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• 2021

Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of a deep learning algorithm for the automated detection of developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) on anteroposterior (AP) radiographs. Materials and Methods: Of 2601 hip AP radiographs, 5076 cropped unilateral hip joint images were used to construct a dataset that was further divided into training (80%), validation (10%), or test sets (10%). Three radiologists were asked to label the hip images as normal or DDH. To investigate the diagnostic performance of the deep learning algorithm, we calculated the receiver operating characteristics (ROC), precision-recall curve (PRC) plots, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) and compared them with the performance of radiologists with different levels of experience. Results: The area under the ROC plot generated by the deep learning algorithm and radiologists was 0.988 and 0.988-0.919, respectively. The area under the PRC plot generated by the deep learning algorithm and radiologists was 0.973 and 0.618-0.958, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV of the proposed deep learning algorithm were 98.0, 98.1, 84.5, and 99.8%, respectively. There was no significant difference in the diagnosis of DDH by the algorithm and the radiologist with experience in pediatric radiology (p = 0.180). However, the proposed model showed higher sensitivity, specificity, and PPV, compared to the radiologist without experience in pediatric radiology (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The proposed deep learning algorithm provided an accurate diagnosis of DDH on hip radiographs, which was comparable to the diagnosis by an experienced radiologist.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.21-28
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• 2018

In recent years, payability of shale gas production has worsened due to oil and gas price declines resulting from sharply increasing shale gas production. Reliable economic evaluation in shale gas development has become important. In this study, Monte Carlo simulation of probabilistic analysis technique was applied to analyze the economic feasibility considering the uncertainty involved in shale gas development. For this, the range of major variables is set and a random number is generated to derive the probability distribution of Net Present Value(NPV) and Internal Rate of Return(IRR). Consequently, we estimated the probability that the feasibility of the project is evaluated to be positive when developing shale gas in the study area. In addition, sensitivity analysis of major parameters affecting economic efficiency in shale gas development was carried out, and the effect of major variables in economic evaluation for commercial production was identified. In the future, this study could be used to make decision for shale gas production by presenting the range of variation of economic index and probability value.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.110-116
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• 2009

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the usefulness of positron emission tomography (PET)-computed tomography (CT) in the pre-operative staging of gastric cancer. Materials and Methods: Between February 2006 and August 2008, PET-CT and CT were performed on 70 patients diagnosed with gastric cancer by gastrofiberscopic biopsy. The sensitivities, specificities, Positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of PET-CT and CT imaging for the detection of gastric cancer TNM staging were compared. Results: The detection rates for the primary tumor were as follows: PET-CT, 81.4% (57/70); and CT, 42.9% (30/70). For both early gastric cancer (EGC) and advanced gastric cancer (AGC), PET-CT was more accurate than CT in detecting the lesions. As the size of the tumor exceeded 3 cm, the detection rate increased. The sensitivities, specificities, PPV, and NPV of PET-CT for lymph node staging were 55.6%, 81%, 86.2%, and 45.9%, while the sensitivities, specificities, PPV, and NPV of CT were 40.0%, 85.7%, 85.7% and 40%, respectively. One case of multiple liver metastasis and two cases of dual primary cancer (rectal and pancreatic cancers) were detected by PET-CT. PET-CT also had a higher detection rate for all histologic types of primary tumors. PET-CT was more accurate than CT in detecting primary gastric cancer lesions. The detection of nodal metastasis by PET-CT was similar to CT; small-sized tumors or EGC detection rates were not high. However, PET-CT provided additional information to detect distant metastases and dual primary cancers and reduced unnecessary laparotomies to detect peritoneal seeding or carcinomatosis. Conclusion: It would be useful to make a pre-operative diagnosis of gastric cancer and determine treatment if PET-CT were added to other routine pre-operative studies.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.225-234
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• 2016

This project sought to conduct an economic feasibility study regarding the commercial production of bio-hydrogen by the marine hyperthermophilic archaeon, Thermococcus onnurineus NA1 using carbon monoxide-containing industrial off-gas. We carried out the economic evaluation of the bio-hydrogen production process using the raw material of steel mill by-product gas. The process parameter was as follows: $H_2$ production rate was 5.6 L/L/h; the conversion of carbon monoxide was 60.7%. This project established an evaluation criterion for about 10,000 tonne/year. Inflation factors were considered as 3%. The operating costs were recalculated based on prices in 2014. The total investment required for development was covered 30% by capital and 70% by a loan. The operation cost for the 0.5-year test and integration, and the cost for the first three months in the 50% production period were considered as the working capital in the cost estimation. The costs required for the rental of office space, facilities, and other related costs from the construction through to full-scale production periods were considered as continuing expenses. Materials, energy, waste disposal and other charges were considered as the operating cost of the development system. Depreciation, tax, maintenance and repair, insurance, labor, interest rate charges, general and administrative costs, lubrication and miscellaneous expenses were also calculated. The hydrogen price was set at US$ 4.15/kg for the economic evaluation. As a result, the process was considered to be economical with the payback period of 6.3 years, NPV of 18 billion Won and IRR of 26.7%.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.451-461
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• 2005

The $CO_2$ storage in geologic and oceanic reservoirs is considered to be one of the carbon management strategies for responding to global climate change. Ocean carbon sequestration is purposeful storage acceleration into the ocean of large amounts of carbon that would accumulate in the atmosphere and naturally enter the ocean over a longer timespan. Some technologies for $CO_2$ ocean sequestrations have been developed as a nation project. However, $CO_2$ ocean sequestrations are attractive because they have the advantage of vast capacity sequestration far away from industrial areas, and offer easier monitoring whereas less economic advantage has been indicated as one of the key barriers compared with $CO_2$ geosphere sequestration, which is produced as a byproduct. In this paper, a conceptual design for $CO_2$ ocean sequestration is introduced, and the preliminary examination is described. As a result, the $CO_2$ price, US$ 24/t shows far away from the economics. The causes come from the expensive $CO_2$ recovery cost and the low $CO_2$ price. The expensive $CO_2$ recovery cost is because too much electricity and water are consumed. In order to look for an economic balance point for $CO_2$ ocean sequestration, NPV=0, it is increases the $CO_2$ price. Finally 60.4$ per ton is found to be the balance price.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.40 no.11
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• pp.745-751
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• 2007

Background: Mediastinoscopy is generally performed to confirm mediastinal lymph node metastasis in lung cancer patients. It still remains controversial whether mediastinoscopy should be performed in all patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We studied the clinical value of mediastinoscopy in preoperative staging in NSCLC. Material and Method: We retrospectively studied 90 NSCLC patients who underwent radiological evaluation and mediastinoscopy followed by surgical resection from March 2002 to December 2004. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy of each evaluation method were assessed and compared. Result: Specificity, PPV, NPV, and accuracy of mediastinoscopy were superior to those of radiological evaluation, but there was no significant difference in sensitivity. The sensitivity of mediastinoscopy was 28.6% in 62 patients with radiological N0/1 disease and 72.7% in 28 patients with radiological N2/3 disease. Seven of eight patients in whom positive nodes were not detected by the mediastinoscopy had subcarinal lymph node metastasis. Conclusion: Considering its invasiveness, the difficulty to reach certain node stations, and its low sensitivity in radiological N0/1 disease, mediastinoscopy should be selectively performed in radiological N2/3 disease rather than in all radiological cancer stages.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.25-29
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• 2009

Purpose: Several radioactive agents were used for lymphoscintigraphy in breast cancer. But recently, due to the change of local radiopharmaceutical licensing policy and discontinuation of supplies from manufacturer, we could not use many radiocolloids such as $^{99m}Tc$-Antimony Trisulfide Colloid, $^{99m}Tc$-Tin Colloid, $^{99m}Tc$-Human Serum Albumin. So it is necessary to use the substitution radiopharmaceutical. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the performance of substitution radiopharmaceutical ($^{99m}Tc$-Phytate) including the existing radiocolloids and to set up of the appropriate protocol in lymphoscintigraphy. Materials and Methods: For each radiocolloids ($^{99m}Tc$-Antimony Trisulfide Colloid (ASC), $^{99m}Tc$-Tin Colloid (TC), $^{99m}Tc$-Human Serum Albumin (HSA), $^{99m}Tc$-Phytate) were performed the particle size by Zeta Sizer (Nano-ZS) and we compared the radiolabeling time, procedure and acquisition time for each of the radiocolloids (total 200 patients). For the last time, we made an analysis of image for each of the radiocolloids with our previous report (SJ Jang et al, Korean Nucl Med Mol imaging Vol.41, No.6, Dec 2007). Results: The particle size of each radiocolloids showed A.S.C (50 nm), T.C (310 nm), H.S.A (10.8 nm), $^{99m}Tc$-Phytate (499 nm). The labeling and acquisition time for each of the radiocolloids showed no substantial difference. But there is difference of the labeling time for the A.S.C. because the ASC procedure need to boiling process. There were no significant differences among those radiocolloids (p>0.005) in the identification rate (IR), false negative rate (FNR), and negative predictive value (NPV). Conclusions: $^{99m}Tc$-labeled radiocolloids showed equivalent results in lymphoscintigraphy. Therefore, in this exam of each radiocolloids could be applied appropriate protocol in lymphoscintigraphy.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.105-110
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• 2006

A three-layer, feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) with sixteen input neurons, three hidden neurons, and one output neuron was developed to identify the presence of infectious bronchitis (IB) infection as early as possible in laying hen flocks. Retrospective data from flocks that enrolled IB surveillance program between May 2003 and November 2005 were used to build the ANN. Data set of 86 flocks was divided randomly into two sets: 77 cases for training set and 9 cases for testing set. Input factors were 16 epidemiological findings including characteristics of the layer house, management practice, flock size, and the output was either presence or absence of IB. ANN was trained using training set with a back-propagation algorithm and test set was used to determine the network's capability to predict outcomes that it has never seen. Diagnostic performance of the trained network was evaluated by constructing receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve with the area under the curve (AUC), which were also used to determine the best positivity criterion for the model. Several different ANNs with different structures were created. The best-fitted trained network, IBV_D1, was able to predict IB in 73 cases out of 77 (diagnostic accuracy 94.8%) in the training set. Sensitivity and specificity of the trained neural network was 95.5% (42/44, 95% CI, 84.5-99.4) and 93.9% (31/33, 95% CI, 79.8-99.3), respectively. For testing set, AVC of the ROC curve for the IBV_D1 network was 0.948 (SE=0.086, 95% CI 0.592-0.961) in recognizing IB infection status accurately. At a criterion of 0.7149, the diagnostic accuracy was the highest with a 88.9% with the highest sensitivity of 100%. With this value of sensitivity and specificity together with assumed 44% of IB prevalence, IBV_D1 network showed a PPV of 80% and an NPV of 100%. Based on these findings, the authors conclude that neural network can be successfully applied to the development of a screening model for identifying IB infection in laying hen flocks.