• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.361-367
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• 2024

Ultrasound in the air is widely used in industry as a measurement technique to prevent abnormalities in the machinery. Recently, the use of airborne ultrasound imaging techniques, which can find the location of abnormalities using an array transducers, is increasing. A beamforming method that uses the phase difference for each sensor is used to visualize the location of the ultrasonic sound source. We exploit a random sparse ultrasonic array and obtain beamforming power distribution on the source in a certain distance away from the array. Conventional beamforming methods inevitably have limited spatial resolution depending on the number of sensors used and the aperture size. A high-resolution ultrasound imaging technique was implemented by applying functional beamforming as a method to overcome the geometric constraints of the array. The functional beamforming method can be expressed as a generalized beam forming method mathematically, and has the advantage of being able to obtain high-resolution imaging by reducing main-lobe width and side lobes. As a result of observation through computer simulation, it was verified that the resolution of the ultrasonic source in the air was successfully increased by functional beamforming using the ultrasonic sparse array.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.119-128
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• 2024

Marine magnetic surveys provide a rapid and cost-effective method for pioneer geophysical survey for many purposes. Sea-surface magnetometers offer high accuracy but are limited to measuring the scalar total magnetic field and require dedicated cruise missions. Shipboard three-component magnetometers, on the other hand, can collect vector three components and applicable to any cruise missions. However, correcting for the ship's magnetic field, particularly viscous magnetization, still remains a challenge. This study proposes a new additional correction method for ship's viscous magnetization effect in vector data acquired by shipboard three-component magnetometer. This method utilizes magnetic data collected simultaneously with a sea-surface magnetometer providing total magnetic field measurements. Our method significantly reduces deviations between the two datasets, resulting in corrected vector anomalies with errors as low as 7-25 nT. These tiny errors are possibly caused by the vector magnetic anomaly and its related viscous magnetization. This method is expected to significantly improve the accuracy of shipborne magnetic surveys by providing corrected vector components. This will enhance magnetic interpretations and might be useful for understanding plate tectonics, geological structures, hydrothermal deposits, and more.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.56-62
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• 2024

In this study, LiDAR-detectable black hollow-structured materials are synthesized using different reducing agents to evaluate their applicability to LiDAR sensor. Initially, white SiO₂/TiO₂ core/shell (WST) materials are fabricated via a sol-gel method, followed by a reduction using ascorbic acid (AA) and sodium borohydride (SB). After the reduction, subsequent etching of the SiO₂ core leads to the formation of two different black hollow-structured materials (AA-BHT and SB-BHT). The lightness (L^*) and near-infrared (NIR) reflectance (R%) of AA-BHT are measured as ca. 19.1 and 34.5 R%, and SB-BHT shows values of ca. 11.5 and 31.8 R%, respectively. While AA-BHT exhibits higher NIR reflectance compared to SB-BHT, it displays slightly lower blackness. Compared with core/shell structured materials, improved NIR reflectance of both AA-BHT and SB-BHT is attributed to the morphology of hollow- structured materials, which increase light reflection at the interface between air and black TiO₂ according to the Fresnel's reflection principle. Consequently, both AA-BHT and SB-BHT are effectively detected by the commercially available LiDAR sensors, validating their suitability as black materials for autonomous vehicle and environment.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.15-21
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• 2024

A hiking stick is generally one of the walking aids that allow hikers to walk while relying on their own bodies when walking. A rechargeable battery must be built into the hiking stick, which is an auxiliary device, in order to perform various functions. A separate power supply is required to charge the rechargeable battery. This study is about a self-generated power supply and develops a power generation device using a screw with higher power generation efficiency than the existing method. It is differentiated from the method suggested in this study by comparing and analyzing it with the existing power generation method, and identifying problems therewith. The screw-type power generation device generates power when the climbing stick comes into contact with the ground and when it is separated from the ground. The built-in power generation device does not require a separate power supply, and it can be used by attaching the role of a mobile phone auxiliary battery and a lighting lamp, and it has the effect of being able to find it through location tracking by embedding a GPS sensor, etc., and using lighting to keep the user safe in emergency situations such as distress. The existing generator with built-in mountain climbing stick is difficult to charge due to very weak current and low practicality, but the generator developed in this research could achieve high efficiency to obtain a sufficient current, so it is possible to charge a battery and practicality.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.400-405
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• 2024

When cavitation noise occurs in ship propellers, the level of underwater radiated noise abruptly increases, which can be a critical threat factor as it increases the probability of detection, particularly in the case of naval vessels. Therefore, accurately and promptly assessing cavitation signals is crucial for improving the survivability of submarines. Traditionally, techniques for determining cavitation occurrence have mainly relied on assessing acoustic/vibration levels measured by sensors above a certain threshold, or using the Detection of Envelop Modulation On Noise (DEMON) method. However, technologies related to this rely on a physical understanding of cavitation phenomena and subjective criteria based on user experience, involving multiple procedures, thus necessitating the development of techniques for early automatic recognition of cavitation signals. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that automatically detects cavitation occurrence based on simple statistical features reflecting cavitation characteristics extracted from acoustic signals measured by sensors attached to the hull. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated depending on the number of sensors and model test conditions. It was confirmed that by sufficiently training the characteristics of cavitation reflected in signals measured by a single sensor, the occurrence of cavitation signals can be determined.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.63-86
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• 2010

Personalized services directly and indirectly acquire personal data, in part, to provide customers with higher-value services that are specifically context-relevant (such as place and time). Information technologies continue to mature and develop, providing greatly improved performance. Sensory networks and intelligent software can now obtain context data, and that is the cornerstone for providing personalized, context-specific services. Yet, the danger of overflowing personal information is increasing because the data retrieved by the sensors usually contains privacy information. Various technical characteristics of context-aware applications have more troubling implications for information privacy. In parallel with increasing use of context for service personalization, information privacy concerns have also increased such as an unrestricted availability of context information. Those privacy concerns are consistently regarded as a critical issue facing context-aware personalized service success. The entire field of information privacy is growing as an important area of research, with many new definitions and terminologies, because of a need for a better understanding of information privacy concepts. Especially, it requires that the factors of information privacy should be revised according to the characteristics of new technologies. However, previous information privacy factors of context-aware applications have at least two shortcomings. First, there has been little overview of the technology characteristics of context-aware computing. Existing studies have only focused on a small subset of the technical characteristics of context-aware computing. Therefore, there has not been a mutually exclusive set of factors that uniquely and completely describe information privacy on context-aware applications. Second, user survey has been widely used to identify factors of information privacy in most studies despite the limitation of users' knowledge and experiences about context-aware computing technology. To date, since context-aware services have not been widely deployed on a commercial scale yet, only very few people have prior experiences with context-aware personalized services. It is difficult to build users' knowledge about context-aware technology even by increasing their understanding in various ways: scenarios, pictures, flash animation, etc. Nevertheless, conducting a survey, assuming that the participants have sufficient experience or understanding about the technologies shown in the survey, may not be absolutely valid. Moreover, some surveys are based solely on simplifying and hence unrealistic assumptions (e.g., they only consider location information as a context data). A better understanding of information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services is highly needed. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify a generic set of factors for elemental information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services and to develop a rank-order list of information privacy concern factors. We consider overall technology characteristics to establish a mutually exclusive set of factors. A Delphi survey, a rigorous data collection method, was deployed to obtain a reliable opinion from the experts and to produce a rank-order list. It, therefore, lends itself well to obtaining a set of universal factors of information privacy concern and its priority. An international panel of researchers and practitioners who have the expertise in privacy and context-aware system fields were involved in our research. Delphi rounds formatting will faithfully follow the procedure for the Delphi study proposed by Okoli and Pawlowski. This will involve three general rounds: (1) brainstorming for important factors; (2) narrowing down the original list to the most important ones; and (3) ranking the list of important factors. For this round only, experts were treated as individuals, not panels. Adapted from Okoli and Pawlowski, we outlined the process of administrating the study. We performed three rounds. In the first and second rounds of the Delphi questionnaire, we gathered a set of exclusive factors for information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services. The respondents were asked to provide at least five main factors for the most appropriate understanding of the information privacy concern in the first round. To do so, some of the main factors found in the literature were presented to the participants. The second round of the questionnaire discussed the main factor provided in the first round, fleshed out with relevant sub-factors. Respondents were then requested to evaluate each sub factor's suitability against the corresponding main factors to determine the final sub-factors from the candidate factors. The sub-factors were found from the literature survey. Final factors selected by over 50% of experts. In the third round, a list of factors with corresponding questions was provided, and the respondents were requested to assess the importance of each main factor and its corresponding sub factors. Finally, we calculated the mean rank of each item to make a final result. While analyzing the data, we focused on group consensus rather than individual insistence. To do so, a concordance analysis, which measures the consistency of the experts' responses over successive rounds of the Delphi, was adopted during the survey process. As a result, experts reported that context data collection and high identifiable level of identical data are the most important factor in the main factors and sub factors, respectively. Additional important sub-factors included diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionalities, and embedded and disappeared sensor devices. The average score of each factor is very useful for future context-aware personalized service development in the view of the information privacy. The final factors have the following differences comparing to those proposed in other studies. First, the concern factors differ from existing studies, which are based on privacy issues that may occur during the lifecycle of acquired user information. However, our study helped to clarify these sometimes vague issues by determining which privacy concern issues are viable based on specific technical characteristics in context-aware personalized services. Since a context-aware service differs in its technical characteristics compared to other services, we selected specific characteristics that had a higher potential to increase user's privacy concerns. Secondly, this study considered privacy issues in terms of service delivery and display that were almost overlooked in existing studies by introducing IPOS as the factor division. Lastly, in each factor, it correlated the level of importance with professionals' opinions as to what extent users have privacy concerns. The reason that it did not select the traditional method questionnaire at that time is that context-aware personalized service considered the absolute lack in understanding and experience of users with new technology. For understanding users' privacy concerns, professionals in the Delphi questionnaire process selected context data collection, tracking and recording, and sensory network as the most important factors among technological characteristics of context-aware personalized services. In the creation of a context-aware personalized services, this study demonstrates the importance and relevance of determining an optimal methodology, and which technologies and in what sequence are needed, to acquire what types of users' context information. Most studies focus on which services and systems should be provided and developed by utilizing context information on the supposition, along with the development of context-aware technology. However, the results in this study show that, in terms of users' privacy, it is necessary to pay greater attention to the activities that acquire context information. To inspect the results in the evaluation of sub factor, additional studies would be necessary for approaches on reducing users' privacy concerns toward technological characteristics such as highly identifiable level of identical data, diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionality, embedded and disappearing sensor devices. The factor ranked the next highest level of importance after input is a context-aware service delivery that is related to output. The results show that delivery and display showing services to users in a context-aware personalized services toward the anywhere-anytime-any device concept have been regarded as even more important than in previous computing environment. Considering the concern factors to develop context aware personalized services will help to increase service success rate and hopefully user acceptance for those services. Our future work will be to adopt these factors for qualifying context aware service development projects such as u-city development projects in terms of service quality and hence user acceptance.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.513-521
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• 2009

The primary goal of this research was to develop an optimized analytical procedure for soil analysis based on ion-selective microelectrodes for agricultural purposes, which can perform on-site measurement of various ions in soil easily and rapidly. For the simple and rapid on-site diagnosis, an analysis of soil chemicals was performed employing a multicomponent-in-situ-extractant and an evaluation of ionselective microelectrodes were conducted through the regressive correlation method with a standard analytical approach widely employed in this area. Examination of sensor responses between various soil nutrient extractants revealed that 0.01M HCl and 1M LiCl provided the most ideal Nernstian response. However, 1M LiCl deteriorated the selective response for analytes due to high concentration (1M) of lithium cation. Thus, employing either 0.1M HCl as an extractant followed by 10 times dilution, or 0.01M HCl as an extractant without further dilution was chosen as the optimal extractant composition. A study of regressive correlation between results from ion-selective microelectrodes and those from the standard analytical procedure showed that analyses of $K^+$, $Na^+$, $Ca^{2+}$, and $NO_3{^-}$ showed the excellent consistency between two methods. However, the response for $NH_4{^+}$ suffered the severe interference from $K^+$. In addition, the selectivity for $Mg^{2+}$ over $Ca^{2+}$ was not sufficient enough since available ionophores developed so far do not provide such a high selectivity for $Mg^{2+}$. Therefore, as an agricultural on-site diagnostic instrument, the device in development requires further research on $NH_4{^+}$ analysis in the soil sample, development of $Mg^{2+}$-selective ionophore, and more detailed study focused on potassium, one of the most important plant nutrients.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.423-428
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• 2009

Selenium was investigated using human origin preadipocytes to see whether it possesses preventive or therapeutic effects for obesity. Unveiling the potential of selenium in the reduction of adipogenesis can help predict the therapeutic capabilities of selenium in obesity. In the present study, the molecular mechanism of the inhibition of adipogenesis by selenium was explored to unravel the involvement of the AMP-activated protein kinase. There is emerging evidence that AMPK, a sensor of cellular energy status, is a possible molecular target of controlling adipocyte differentiation on the basis of discovery that AMPK is responsible for the major metabolic responses to exercise, and integration of nutritional and hormonal signals to modulate feeding behavior or energy expenditure in the hypothalamus. Treatment of selenium resulted in inhibition of the adipocyte differentiation process and induction of mature apoptosis in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. We hypothesized that selenium may exert anti-adipogenic potential though modulating AMPK. We have found that selenium significantly activated AMPK and phosphorylated its substrate acetyl-CoA carboxylase ($ACC-serine^{79}$) during the inhibitory process of adipocytes. Also, the inhibition process of adipocyte differentiation by selenium was comparable to either reveratrol or a synthetic AMPK activator, AICAR (5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide-1-${\beta}$-D-ribofuranoside). To evaluate the involvement of AMPK in anti-lipogensis, we applied AICAR and Compound C, an AMPK inhibitor, to 3T3-L1-adipocytes and found that AMPK is required for the adipocyte differentiation blocking process. These results suggest that selenium has a potential to control adipogenesis and that this effect is mediated by AMPK, an essential kinase for both inhibition of adipocyte differentiation and apoptosis of mature adipocytes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.10
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• pp.656-663
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• 2012

After the construction of waterworks automatic meter reading with 15 mm diameter digital water mater with magnetoresistance sensor developed in this study at 96 households of apartment complexes located in Incheon-City B-Gu S-Dong, the feasibility of field application of waterworks automatic meter reading was evaluated. The field application of waterworks automatic meter reading was performed from July to December in 2011, and average reception rate was as low as 84.6% due to the instable wibro networks, the existence of communication blackout and temporary malfunction of router. After the extraction of 10 households with one to five residents out of 96 households by using stratified random sampling method and analysis of domestic water use, it was found that domestic water use was significant at August and showed a decreasing trend at September, followed by increase in domestic water use at November and decrease in domestic water use at December. This phenomenon should be attributed to weather factors (temperature, humidity, etc.), which significantly affected domestic water use. Similar trend in domestic water use in terms of weather factors was obtained in case of Liter per capita day of water use after the extraction of 30 households out of 96 households by using stratified random sampling method. After analysis of Liter per capita day for 96 households, single residents increases resulted in reduction of domestic water usage by about 14% of Liter per capita day. These results might be due to the fact that domestic water usage such as laundry, beverages, catering, cleaning, etc. should be required for even the household with one resident, whereas domestic water usage for those common utilization can be significantly saved for the household with more than one resident.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.303-308
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• 2015

The consumption of leaf vegetables has been steadily increasing in Korea. Leaf vegetables are used for "Ssam (vegetable wrap-up), eaf vegetables has been steadily increasing in Korea. Leaf vegetables are used for asoned condiments inside several layers of young vegetable leaves. This study investigated the effect of air temperature on the growth and phytochemical contents of beet (Beta vulgaris L.) and Ssamchoo (Brassica lee L. ssp. namai) grown in a closed-type plant factory system where fluorescent lamps were used as an artificial light source. Seeds of beet and Ssamchoo were sown in a peat-lite germination mix. The roots of 20-day-old seedlings were washed, and the seedlings were planted on a styrofoam board and grown in hydroponic beds for 25 days under fluorescent light. Plants were exposed to one of three different air temperature regimes (20, 25 and $30^{\circ}C$ during the day combined with $18^{\circ}C$ during the night), which were monitored with a sensor at 30 cm above the plant canopy. Increased plant height and leaf area were observed in beet at $25^{\circ}C$ and $30^{\circ}C$ compared to $20^{\circ}C$. For Ssamchoo, the greatest plant height, leaf area, fresh weight and dry weight were obtained at $20^{\circ}C$. Ascorbic acid content of beet and Ssamchoo leaves were highest at $30^{\circ}C$. In beet, total polyphenol and flavonoid contents were higher at $20^{\circ}C$ (42.4, $197.0mg{\cdot}g^{-1}DW$) and $25^{\circ}C$ (46.9, $217.0mg{\cdot}g^{-1}DW$) than $30^{\circ}C$ (22.4, $88.0mg{\cdot}g^{-1}DW$). In Ssamchoo, total polyphenol and flavonoid contents were also higher at $20^{\circ}C$ (79.2, $268.2mg{\cdot}g^{-1}DW$) and $25^{\circ}C$ (66.3, $258.3mg{\cdot}g^{-1}DW$), respectively, than $30^{\circ}C$ (53.7, $134.7mg{\cdot}g^{-1}DW$). Hence, the optimum temperature appears to be $20^{\circ}C$ for growing both beet and Ssamchoo in a closed-type plant factory system with fluorescent light.