• Title/Summary/Keyword: Spread range

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Microbe Hunting: A Curious Case of Cryptococcus

  • Bartlett, Karen H.;Kidd, Sarah;Duncan, Colleen;Chow, Yat;Bach, Paxton;Mak, Sunny;MacDougall, Laura;Fyfe, Murray
    • Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Health Society Conference
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    • 2005.06a
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    • pp.45-72
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    • 2005
  • C. neoformans-associated cryptococcosis is primarily a disease of immunocompromised persons, has a world-wide distribution, and is often spread by pigeons in the urban environment. In contrast, C. gattii causes infection in normal hosts, has only been described in tropical and semi-tropical areas of the world, and has a unique niche in river gum Eucalyptus trees. Cryptococcosis is acquired through inhalation of the yeast propagules from the environment. C. gattii has been identified as the cause of an emerging infectious disease centered on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. No cases of C. gattii-disease were diagnosed prior to 1999; the current incidence rate is 36 cases per million population. A search was initiated in 2001 to find the ecological niche of this basidiomycetous yeast. C. gaftii was found in the environment in treed areas of Vancouver Island. The highest percentage of colonized-tree clusters were found around central Vancouver Island, with decreasing rates of colonization to the north and south. Climate, soil and vegetation cover of this area, called the Coastal Douglas fir biogeoclimatic zone, is unique to British Columbia and Canada. The concentration of airborne C. gattii was highest in the dry summer months, and lowest during late fall, winter, and early spring, months which have heavy rainfall. The study of the emerging colonization of this organism and subsequent cases of environmentally acquired disease will be informative in planning public health management of new routes of exposure to exotic agents in areas impacted by changing climate and land use patterns. Cryptococcosis is an infection associated with an encapsulated, basidiomycetous yeast Cryptococcus neoformans. The route of entry for this organism is through the lungs, with possible systemic spread via the circulatory system to the brain and meninges. There are four cryptococcal serogroups associated with disease in humans and animals, distinguished by capsular polysaccharide antigens. Cryptococcus neoformans: variety grubii (serotype A), variety neoformans (serotype D), and variety gattii (serotypes B and C) (Franzot et at. 1999). C. neoformans variety gattii has recently been elevated to species status, C. gattii. C. neoformans val. grubii and var. neoformans have a world-wide distribution, and are particularly associated with soil and weathered bird droppings. In contrast, C. gattii (CG) is not associated with bird excrement, is primarily found in tropical and subtropical climates, and has a restricted environmental niche associated with specific tree species. (Ellis & Pfiffer 1990) Ellis and Pfeiffer theorize that, as a basidiomycete, CG requires an association with a tree in order to become pathogenic to mammals. In Australia, CG has been found to be associated with five species of Eucalypts, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, E. tereticornis, E. blakelyi, E. gomphocephala, and E. rudis. Eucalypts, although originally native to Australia, now have a world-wide distribution. CG has been found associated with imported eucalypts in India, California, Brazil, and Egypt. In addition, in Brazil and Columbia, where eucalypts have been naturalized, native trees have been shown to harbour CG (Callejas et al. 1998; Montenegro et al. 2000). In British Columbia, Canada, since the beginning of 1999, there have been 120 confirmed cases of cryptococcal mycoses associated with CG in humans, including 4 fatalities (data from British Columbia Centre for Disease Control), and over 200 cases in animal pets in BC (data from Central Laboratory for Veterinarians). What is remarkable about the BC outbreak of C. gattii-cryptococcosis is that all of the cases have been residents of, or visitors to, a narrow area along the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, BC, from the tip of the island in the south (Victoria) to Courtenay on the north-central island as illustrated in Figure 1. Of the first 38 human cases, 58% were male with a mean age of 59.7 years (range 20 - 82): 36 cases (95%) were Caucasian. Ten cases (26%) presented with meningitis, the remainder presented with respiratory symptoms. Cultures recovered from cases of cryptococcosis associated with the outbreak were typed as serogroup B, which is specific to CG (Bartlett et al. 2003). This was the first reported outbreak of CVG in Canada, or indeed, the world. Where infection with CG is endemic, for example, Australia, the incidence of cryptococcosis ranges from 1.8 - 4.7 per million between the southern and northern states (Sorrell 2001). However, the overall incidence of cryptococcosis in immunocompenent individuals has been estimated at 0.2 per million population per year (Kwon-Chung et al. 1984). The population of Vancouver Island is approximately 720,000,consequently, even if the organism were endemic, one would expect a maximum of 0.15 cases of cryptococcal disease annually.

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End-use analysis of household water by metering (가정용수의 용도별 사용량 조사 및 원단위 분석)

  • Kim, Hwa-Soo;Lee, Doo-Jin;Kim, Ju-Whan;Kim, Jung-Hyun;Jung, Kwan-Soo
    • Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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    • 2008.05a
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    • pp.869-877
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    • 2008
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate the trends and patterns of variou kind of water uses in a household by metering in Korea. Water use components are classified by toilet, washbowl, bathing, laundry, kitchen, etc. Flow meters are installed in 146 household selected by sampling in all around Korea. The data are gathered by web-based data collection system from the year 2002 to 2006, considering pre-investigated data such as occupation, revenue, family members, housing types, age, floor area, water saving devices, education, etc. Reliable data are selected by upper fence method for each observed water use component and statistical characteristics are estimated for each residential type to determine liter per capita per day. Estimated domestic per capita day show an indoor water use with the range from $150{\ell}pcd$ to $169{\ell}pcd$ for each housing type as the order of high rise apartment, multi-house, and single house. As the order of consuming amount among water use components, it is investigated that toilet($38.5{\ell}pcd$) is the first, and the second is laundry water($30.8{\ell}pcd$), the third is kitchen($28.4{\ell}pcd$), the fourth is bathtub($24.7{\ell}pcd$), the next is washbowl($15.4{\ell}pcd$). The results are compared with water uses in U.K. and U.S. As life style has been changed into western style, pattern of water use in Korea is tend to be similar with the U.S. water use pattern. Compared with the surveying results by Bradley, on 1985. Thirty liter of total use increased with the advancement of economic level, and a little change of water use pattern can be found. Especially, toilet water take almost half part of total water use and laundry water shows lowest as 11% in surveying at the year of 1985. But, this study shows that 39 liter, 28% of toilet water, has been decreased by the spread of saving devices and campaign. It is supposed that the spread large sized laundry machine make by-hand laundry has been decreased and water use increased. Unit water amount of each end-use in household can be applied to design factor for water and wastewater facilities, and it play a role as information in establishing water demand forecasting and conservation policy.

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A digital Audio Watermarking Algorithm using 2D Barcode (2차원 바코드를 이용한 오디오 워터마킹 알고리즘)

  • Bae, Kyoung-Yul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.97-107
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    • 2011
  • Nowadays there are a lot of issues about copyright infringement in the Internet world because the digital content on the network can be copied and delivered easily. Indeed the copied version has same quality with the original one. So, copyright owners and content provider want a powerful solution to protect their content. The popular one of the solutions was DRM (digital rights management) that is based on encryption technology and rights control. However, DRM-free service was launched after Steve Jobs who is CEO of Apple proposed a new music service paradigm without DRM, and the DRM is disappeared at the online music market. Even though the online music service decided to not equip the DRM solution, copyright owners and content providers are still searching a solution to protect their content. A solution to replace the DRM technology is digital audio watermarking technology which can embed copyright information into the music. In this paper, the author proposed a new audio watermarking algorithm with two approaches. First, the watermark information is generated by two dimensional barcode which has error correction code. So, the information can be recovered by itself if the errors fall into the range of the error tolerance. The other one is to use chirp sequence of CDMA (code division multiple access). These make the algorithm robust to the several malicious attacks. There are many 2D barcodes. Especially, QR code which is one of the matrix barcodes can express the information and the expression is freer than that of the other matrix barcodes. QR code has the square patterns with double at the three corners and these indicate the boundary of the symbol. This feature of the QR code is proper to express the watermark information. That is, because the QR code is 2D barcodes, nonlinear code and matrix code, it can be modulated to the spread spectrum and can be used for the watermarking algorithm. The proposed algorithm assigns the different spread spectrum sequences to the individual users respectively. In the case that the assigned code sequences are orthogonal, we can identify the watermark information of the individual user from an audio content. The algorithm used the Walsh code as an orthogonal code. The watermark information is rearranged to the 1D sequence from 2D barcode and modulated by the Walsh code. The modulated watermark information is embedded into the DCT (discrete cosine transform) domain of the original audio content. For the performance evaluation, I used 3 audio samples, "Amazing Grace", "Oh! Carol" and "Take me home country roads", The attacks for the robustness test were MP3 compression, echo attack, and sub woofer boost. The MP3 compression was performed by a tool of Cool Edit Pro 2.0. The specification of MP3 was CBR(Constant Bit Rate) 128kbps, 44,100Hz, and stereo. The echo attack had the echo with initial volume 70%, decay 75%, and delay 100msec. The sub woofer boost attack was a modification attack of low frequency part in the Fourier coefficients. The test results showed the proposed algorithm is robust to the attacks. In the MP3 attack, the strength of the watermark information is not affected, and then the watermark can be detected from all of the sample audios. In the sub woofer boost attack, the watermark was detected when the strength is 0.3. Also, in the case of echo attack, the watermark can be identified if the strength is greater and equal than 0.5.

A Design of PLL and Spread Spectrum Clock Generator for 2.7Gbps/1.62Gbps DisplayPort Transmitter (2.7Gbps/1.62Gbps DisplayPort 송신기용 PLL 및 확산대역 클록 발생기의 설계)

  • Kim, Young-Shin;Kim, Seong-Geun;Pu, Young-Gun;Hur, Jeong;Lee, Kang-Yoon
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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    • v.47 no.2
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    • pp.21-31
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    • 2010
  • This paper presents a design of PLL and SSCG for reducing the EMI effect at the electronic machinery and tools for DisplayPort application. This system is composed of the essential element of PLL and Charge-Pump2 and Reference Clock Divider to implement the SSCG operation. In this paper, 270MHz/162MHz dual-mode PLL that can provide 10-phase and 1.35GHz/810MHz PLL that can reduce the jitter are designed for 2.7Gbps/162Gbps DisplayPort application. The jitter can be reduced drastically by combining 270MHz/162MHz PLL with 2-stage 5 to 1 serializer and 1.35GHz PLL with 2 to 1 serializer. This paper propose the frequency divider topology which can share the divider between modes and guarantee the 50% duty ratio. And, the output current mismatch can be reduced by using the proposed charge-pump topology. It is implemented using 0.13 um CMOS process and die areas of 270MHz/162MHz PLL and 1.35GHz/810MHz PLL are $650um\;{\times}\;500um$ and $600um\;{\times}\;500um$, respectively. The VCO tuning range of 270 MHz/162 MHz PLL is 330 MHz and the phase noise is -114 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The measured SSCG down spread amplitude is 0.5% and modulation frequency is 31kHz. The total power consumption is 48mW.

The Efficiency of Bank Underwriting of Corporate Securities in Korea (국내 자본시장 증권인수기능의 효율성에 관한 연구 : 은행계열과 비은행계열 금융기관 비교 분석)

  • Baek, Jae-Seung;Lim, Chan-Woo
    • The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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    • v.27 no.1
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    • pp.181-208
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    • 2010
  • In July 2007, Korean government has passed "The Capital Market and Financial Investment Services Act" to further develop the capital markets and the Act was to become effective in February 2009. Using a large sample of Korean firms, we have examined (i) the effect of underwriting activities on the firm value (bond spread) comparing commercial bank and investment bank, and (ii) the determinants of the firm value changes following underwriting activities of bank. To test our goal, we collected a wide range of samples of data for bond issuing activities executed by Korean firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) between 2000 and 2003. Our paper is distinguished from previous studies on this subject in a way that we analyzed the effect of corporate bond underwriting activities with regard to commercial banking and investment banking. Initially, we set up a hypothesis that "Certification View" and "Conflict-of-interest View" are major driving forces behind cross-firm differences in performance following bond issuance. We find that, in general, underwriting by investment bank (securities company) brings a positive effect on the firm value (spread between bench mark rate and bond issuing rate). This result indicates that firm value has been negatively affected by the bank underwriting and provides the evidence for "Conflict-of-interest View" in Korea. Our studies have also revealed that any change in firm value following bond issuance is positively related with the firm size (total asset), operating performance, liquidity (cashflow), and equity ownership by foreign investors. Overall, our results support the view that bank underwriting activities can play an important role in determining firm value and financial strategies under "The Capital Market and Financial Investment Services Act" of 2007.

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End-use Analysis of Household Water by Metering (가정용수의 용도별 사용 원단위 분석)

  • Kim, Hwa Soo;Lee, Doo Jin;Kim, Ju Whan;Jung, Kwan Soo
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.28 no.5B
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    • pp.595-601
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    • 2008
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate the trends and patterns of various kind of water uses in a household by metering in Korea. Water use components are classified by toilet, washbowl, bathing, laundry, kitchen, miscellaneous. Flow meters are installed in 140 household selected by sampling in all around Korea. The data are gathered by web-based data collection system from the year 2002 to 2006, considering pre-investigated data such as occupation, revenue, family members, housing types, age, floor area, water saving devices, education, miscellaneous. Reliable data are selected by upper fence method for each observed water use component and statistical characteristics are estimated for each residential type to determine liter per capita per day. Estimated domestic per capita day show an indoor water use with the range from 150 lpcd to 169 lpcd for each housing type as the order of high rise apartment, multi-house, and single house. As the order of consuming amount among water use components, it is investigated that toilet (38.5 lpcd) is the first, and the second is laundry water (30.8 lpcd), the third is kitchen (28.4 lpcd), the fourth is bathtub (24.7 lpcd), the next is washbowl (15.4 lpcd). The results are compared with water uses in U.K. and U.S. As life style has been changed into western style, pattern of water use in Korea is tend to be similar with the U.S. water use pattern. Compared with the surveying results by Bradley, on 1985. Thirty liter of total use increased with the advancement of economic level, and a little change of water use pattern can be found. Especially, toilet water take almost half part of total water use and laundry water shows lowest as 11% in surveying at the year of 1985. But, this study shows that 39 liter, 28% of toilet water, has been decreased by the spread of saving devices and campaign. It is supposed that the spread large sized laundry machine make by-hand laundry has been decreased and water use increased. Unit water amount of each end-use in household can be applied to design factor for water and wastewater facilities, and it play a role as information in establishing water demand forecasting and conservation policy.

Variability in the Effective Spatial Range of the Population Centripetal Force of CBD (도심 인구구심력의 유효범위 변동성 측정)

  • Nam, Kwang-Woo;Kang, In-Joo;Im, Doo-Hyeon
    • Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.120-131
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    • 2009
  • This study measured the centripetal force and effective scope of the population spread from urban center and subcenters in order to diagnose the urban spatial structure of the formation of a multicentric city structure in Busan. The study analyzed the variability of the determination coefficient value (R square) with a negative exponential function derived from the population density model by extending the circular region into 5-km units. The aim of this study was to measure changes in the effective scope of the population centripetal force of the urban center and subcenter in 5-year intervals from 1995 to 2005 using census data. The explanatory adequacy of the population density function was examined with the bias of the function to calculate the distance error between the real location of the urban center and the optimal location, according to the population density function. To summarize the results, the value for the area of Jungangdong showed a continuous reduction, whereas Seomyeon (Bujeondong) maintained explanatory adequacy without a large change. As a whole, Busan was in the process of continuous diversification, in spite of its reduced population. Therefore, it appears necessary to strengthen the function of the urban center and subcenter and to supply adequate dwelling zones close to downtown to form a more efficient urban spatial structure. The results of the present study will be utilized as basic data for the formulation of a political approach to the efficient reorganization of spatial structure by correlating concrete spatial information with the population variability of Busan's urban center and subcenter.

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A Review on the Performance Criteria of Equipment Required for Asbestos Removal (석면 해체.제거 작업에서 사용되는 장비의 성능 기준에 관한 고찰)

  • Lee, Naroo
    • Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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    • v.23 no.3
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    • pp.212-221
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    • 2013
  • Objectives: Asbestos fibers are accumulated in negative pressure unit (NPU) or vacuum cleaner in asbestos removal. Failure of operation or poor use performance of the NPU or vacuum cleaner causes asbestos fibers to spread in the air. Asbestos contractors should have an NPU fitted with a HEPA , vacuum cleaner, decontamination area, respirators, wetting equipment, and differential pressure manometer to register with the Ministry of Employment and Labor. There should be performance criteria of equipment used in asbestos removal. But there are none such criteria used in asbestos removal. This study was performed to investigate international or national performance criteria of equipment used in asbestos removal. Methods: Regulations, approved code of practice, guidance and national standards of the UK, USA and Korea were reviewed. A survey was done to investigate the requirements for equipment used in asbestos removal in Korea. Results: Air flow of NPUs used in Korea usually covers from$500m^3/h$ to over $3000m^3/h$. Some requirements for NPUs used in Korea were missing compared to the requirements of British standards for NPUs. All NPUs have different missing requirements. The UK also has separate British standard for leak tests for NPUs. Highly hazardous class vacuum cleaners should be used in asbestos removal in the UK. It has national standards on the operation of vacuum cleaners used in asbestos removal. There is only a certification system for less than 2.5kw rated voltage vacuum cleaners for home use in Korea. Powered (-assisted) respirators with mask are recommended in asbestos removal. Type 5 coveralls should be used in asbestos removal in the UK. There are international standards for requirements and leak tests of type 5 coveralls. A manometer for measuring differential pressure is needed in asbestos removal. The manometer's measuring range should cover less than ${\pm}125$ Pa and the gradation of manometer should be less than 2.5 Pa. The definition of decontamination area should be corrected. Installation of airlock and minimum area should be considered in decontamination area. Conclusions: Equipment should be used in asbestos removal proper performance and no leaks. There should be a certification system for equipment used in asbestos removal. This study can help to a certification system for equipment used in asbestos removal in Korea.

Reviews in Medical Geography: Spatial Epidemiology of Vector-Borne Diseases (벡터매개 질병(vector-borne diseases) 공간역학을 중심으로 한 보건지리학의 최근 연구)

  • Park, Sunyurp;Han, Daikwon
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.47 no.5
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    • pp.677-699
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    • 2012
  • Climate changes may cause substantial changes in spatial patterns and distribution of vector-borne diseases (VBD's), which will result in a significant threat to humans and emerge as an important public health problem that the international society needs to solve. As global warming becomes widespread and the Korean peninsula characterizes subtropical climate, the potentials of climate-driven disease outbreaks and spread rapidly increase with changes in land use, population distributions, and ecological environments. Vector-borne diseases are typically infected by insects such as mosquitoes and ticks, and infected hosts and vectors increased dramatically as the habitat ranges of the VBD agents have been expanded for the past 20 years. Medical geography integrates and processes a wide range of public health data and indicators at both local and regional levels, and ultimately helps researchers identify spatiotemporal mechanism of the diseases determining interactions and relationships between spatial and non-spatial data. Spatial epidemiology is a new and emerging area of medical geography integrating geospatial sciences, environmental sciences, and epidemiology to further uncover human health-environment relationships. An introduction of GIS-based disease monitoring system to the public health surveillance system is among the important future research agenda that medical geography can significantly contribute to. Particularly, real-time monitoring methods, early-warning systems, and spatial forecasting of VBD factors will be key research fields to understand the dynamics of VBD's.

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A Study on the Ethnic Minimalism Expressed in Modern Fashion - Comparing with Minimalism - (현대 복식에 나타난 에스닉 미니멀리즘에 관한 연구 - 미니멀리즘(minimalism)과의 비교 고찰을 통하여 -)

  • Chae, Hye-Sook;Chae, Keum-Suk
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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    • v.58 no.3
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    • pp.63-78
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    • 2008
  • Since 1960, minimalism has been one of the fashion phenomenon and turned out in many different ways. After postmodernism which contains negotiation and pluralism, appeared in 1980, there was a new wave of post minimalism that inherited 1960's minimalism. Minimal style which come out of 60's fashion, is marked by simplicity, minimal expression, and monochrome color, and it shows up simple style with no decoration. It opened up a young fashion period, and we saw minimal style in sports wear which utilized simplicity and function with spread of sports in the 70's. And also since 1980, Post-Modern widely influenced the idea about modern culture as well as complicated clothes getting rid of fixed concept, seeking to break the boundary between culture and life which were seek in fashion and personality as well as various characteristic, Accordingly in different ages, The style and image were borrowed from different culture and natural environment mixing the image, cultural phenomena like these appearing in complexity and expression, variety and possibility of new vision was expanded. Since 1980, Fashion has become more gradually diversity, high classed, required of each individuality. The phenomenon of fashion reappearance which was influenced by minimalism is continued to 2000. The Oriental style fashion is still attracted, so The new term "Ethic Minimalism" has appeared along with the trends which is put together. Therefore the purpose of this study is to search the concept and the characteristics of ethnic minimalism, to consider the relationship between minimalism and ethnic minimalism, and reveal the characteristic of ethnic minimalism happened to modern fashion. The study method went through literature research and practice research. The range of this study is oriental fashion spanning of from 1960 to current day. Photo records from this period show well the spirit of the oriental and the personality of minimalism. The oriental representative designer and western representative designer are centered Consequently, The formative characteristics of ethnic minimalism are simple, pure, unbalanced free style and representing the phenomena of compromise, blending oriental and western fashion. Structually, Elements of space and plane are emphasized, colors are restricted, and materials are composed mainly of natural fiber. So, minimalism based on simplicity combined with a structure of oriental spiritual depth and space, It could be called ethnic minimalism as a rational fashion.