• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.87-98
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• 1999

The objectives of this study were to evaluate exposures to airborne methylene chloride and postshift carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) in blood of workers engaged in processes using blowing or cleaning agents, and to investigate correlation between methylene chloride concentrations and the blood COHb levels of workers. The geometric mean (GM) of workers' exposures (8 hour-time weighted averages, TWA) to airborne methylene chloride during cleaning molds using rags wetted with the solvent in the manufacture of flexible polyurethane foam (GM = 61.4 ppm), during operating the dip tank for cleaning molds in the manufacture of lens (GM = 61.0 ppm), and during cleaning the blowing nozzles by spraying the solvent in the manufacture of shoes (GM = 117.2 ppm) were exceeded the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) Threshold Limit Value ($TLV^{(R)}$)-Time Weighted Average (TWA) (50 ppm). The COHb levels were significantly different among groups (p<0.05). The average COHh levels in blood of non-smoking workers were 2.0% in. low-level (<50 ppm) exposure group, and 3.9 % in high-level (>50ppm) exposure group. The average COHb levels in smoking workers were 3.1% in low-level exposure group, and 4.8% in high-level exposure group. The blood COHb levels of no-exposed workers to methylene chloride were 1.8% in non-smoking group, and 2.8% in smoking group. It was found that the COHb level dependeds on the methylene chloride concentration and smoking habit, and was highly correlated with methylene chloride concentration in air. The correlation coefficient was 0.81 among non-smoking workers. The estimated COHb level (3.6%) and 95% upper confidence limit (4.0%) corresponding to TLV-TWA of methylene chloride exceeded the current ACGIH Biological Exposure Index (COHb 3.5%) for carbon monoxide. The estimated COHb level (5.4%) at 100 ppm exceeded the standard (5%) recommended by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for preventing adverse cardiovascular effect. The estimated COHb value and 95% upper confidence limit at 25 ppm of the Occupational Safety and Health. Adminstration (OSHA) Permissible Exposure Limit-TWA (PEL-TWA) were 2.6% and 3.0%, respectively. It is suggested that COHb in blood be kept below 3.0% to comply with OSHA PEL-TWA.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.41-55
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• 1999

In order to evaluate the effects of knowledge, attitude and practice on noise-induced hearing loss or hearing threshold level, questionnaire survey was performed and hearing thresholds of 1 kHz and 4 kHz were measured on 1,040 subjects with workers exposed to noise, safety and health officers. industrial hygienists, analysts rind office workers. The results were as follows ; 1. The following 6 factors were obtained by factor analysis and factor rotation of 30 questionnaire of knowledge, attitude and practice about noise; knowledge of noise (F1), concern of hearing protective devices (F2), concern of noise induced hearing loss (F3), concern of noise level and hearing impairment (F4), concern of noise in workplace (F5) and recognition of noised-induced hearing loss (F6). 56.1% of variance was explained by 6 factors. 2. Significant variables influencing knowledge, attitude and practice about noise were education level and age in F1, personal protective devices (PPE) and education level in F2, age and education level in F3, education level, age and sex in F4, PPE, education level, age and work duration in F5, and work duration and PPE in F6. 3. Hearing thresholds of 4 kHz were significantly higher in workers exposed to noise than that of in the other subjects and tended to be higher in industrial hygienists, safety and health officers and analysts than that of the office workers. 4. Significant variables influencing hearing thresholds of 1 kHz were age, education level, F5 and F6 in workers exposed to noise, and F1 in industrial hygienists. 5. Significant variables influencing hearing thresholds of 4 kHz were age, F6, sex, work duration, F1, F5, F2 and F3 in workers exposed to noise, F1 and age in safety and health officers, and F6, sex and F4 in industrial hygienists. With the above results, it suggested that workers exposed to noise be needed the education of knowledge, attitude and practice about noise in hearing conservation program for the prevention of noise induced hearing loss. Also, it suggested that health managers in workplace be needed countermeasures to prevent hearing loss although they are intermittently exposed to noise.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.2_2
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• pp.339-349
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• 2018

The massive green tide occurred every summer in the Yellow Sea since 2008, and many studies are being actively conducted to estimate the coverage of green tide through analysis of satellite imagery. However, there is no satellite images selection criterion for accurate coverage calculation of green tide. Therefore, this study aimed to find a suitable satellite image from for the comparison of the green tide coverage according to the spatial resolution of satellite image. In this study, Landsat ETM+, MODIS and GOCI images were used to coverage estimation and its spatial resolution is 30, 250 and 500 m, respectively. Green tide pixels were classified based on the NDVI algorithm, the difference of the green tide coverage was compared with threshold value. In addition, we estimate the proportion of the green tide in one pixel through the Linear Spectral Unmixing (LSU) method, and the effect of the difference of green tide ratio on the coverage calculation were evaluated. The result of green tide coverage from the calculation of the NDVI value, coverage of green tide usually overestimate with decreasing spatial resolution, maximum difference shows 1.5 times. In addition, most of the pixels were included in the group with less than 0.1 (10%) LSU value, and above 0.5 (50%) LSU value accounted for about 2% in all of three images. Even though classified as green tide from the NDVI result, it is considered to be overestimated because it is regarded as the same coverage even if green tide is not 100% filled in one pixel. Mixed-pixel problem seems to be more severe with spatial resolution decreases.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.471-482
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• 2016

This paper presents an extraction method for water body which uses block-based image partitioning and extension of water body boundaries to improve the performance of supervised classification for water body extraction. The Mahalanobis distance image is created by computing the spectral information of Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Near Infrared (NIR) band images over a training site within the water body in order to extract an initial water body area. To reduce the effect of noise contained in the Mahalanobis distance image, we apply mean curvature diffusion to the image, which controls diffusion coefficients based on connectivity strength between adjacent pixels and then extract the initial water body area. After partitioning the extracted water body image into the non-overlapping blocks of same size, we update the water body area using the information of water body belonging to water body boundaries. The update is performed repeatedly under the condition that the statistical distance between water body area belonging to water body boundaries and the training site is not greater than a threshold value. The accuracy assessment of the proposed algorithm was tested using KOMPSAT-2 images for the various block sizes between $11{\times}11$ and $19{\times}19$. The overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient of the algorithm varied from 99.47% to 99.53% and from 95.07% to 95.80%, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.256-261
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• 2014

This study was conducted to determine the effect of gamma-ray and electron-beam irradiation on dried spices (black pepper, red pepper, parsley, and basil) using the photostimulated luminescence (PSL), thermoluminescence (TL) and electron spin resonance (ESR) methods. The spices were irradiated at 0, 1, 5, and 10 kGy. All non-irradiated spices had photon counts (PCs) less than 700 PCs. The PCs of three irradiated spices (red pepper, parsley, and basil) were clearly distinguishable from those of non-irradiated ones, exhibiting PSL signals higher than 5000 PCs. However, negative PSL counts (<700 PCs) were obtained for most irradiated black pepper, except those irradiated with 5 kGy gamma rays and 10 kGy electron-beams. TL glow curves of the irradiated spices showed a higher peak at $150-250^{\circ}C$. TL ratios were found to be less than 0.1 for non-irradiated spices and higher than 0.1 for irradiated ones. No ESR signal was observed for any irradiated spice except red pepper, which displayed cellulose-based ESR spectra. Therefore, the results suggest that the PSL, TL, and ESR methods are effective detection techniques for dried spices irradiated with electron beams as well as gamma rays.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.323-328
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• 2004

The development of group-specific tissue probability maps (TPM) provides a priori knowledge for better result of cerebral tissue classification with regard to the inter-ethnic differences of inter-subject variability. We present sequential procedures of group-specific TPM and evaluate the age effects in the structural differences of TPM. We investigated 100 healthy volunteers with high resolution MRI scalming. The subjects were classified into young (60, 25.92+4.58) and old groups (40, 58.83${\pm}$8.10) according to the age. To avoid any bias from random selected single subject and improve registration robustness, average atlas as target for TPM was constructed from skull-stripped whole data using linear and nonlinear registration of AIR. Each subject was segmented into binary images of gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid using fuzzy clustering and normalized into the space of average atlas. The probability images were the means of these binary images, and contained values in the range of zero to one. A TPM of a given tissue is a spatial probability distribution representing a certain subject population. In the spatial distribution of tissue probability according to the threshold of probability, the old group exhibited enlarged ventricles and overall GM atrophy as age-specific changes, compared to the young group. Our results are generally consistent with the few published studies on age differences in the brain morphology. The more similar the morphology of the subject is to the average of the population represented by the TPM, the better the entire classification procedure should work. Therefore, we suggest that group-specific TPM should be used as a priori information for the cerebral tissue classification.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-57
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• 2015

Soil moisture is critical for understanding the spatial-temporal variability of hydrologic processes. The distributions of soil moisture have been explored along transect line in hillslope hydrology. In this study, we measured several soil moistures along transect lines during ten-month period at a hillslope located the Cheong-mi catchment. The soil moisture properties were expressed by simple statistical methods (average, standard deviation, and recession slope) and analyzed in terms of soil depths and transects from the seasonal context. Supplementary studies were also performed about the effect of location, topography and soil texture to the soil moisture responses. The spatial distributions of average soil moisture at deep soil layer were distinguished from those at near surface due to the possibility of expected factors such as subsurface lateral flow from upslope, preferential flow and existence of bedrock. The soil moistures in combined line affected from significant contribution of upper transect line were relatively higher(wetter), low variability compared to those in other transect lines and seemed to be under stabilization process. There are confirmed heterogeneity of soil moisture variation related with preferential flow and significant influence of soil texture for soil moisture properties in upslope.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.175-179
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• 2001

To find out the effect of cadmium(Cd) on growth of major vegetables in Korea, phytotoxicity and absorption of Cd were investigated with chinese cabbage, radish, and lettuce grown in upland soils of different Cd concentrations. Cadmium phytotoxicity was shown by growth retardation and leaf chlorosis in chinese cabbage and lettuce at the early growing stage. The threshold concentrations of growth damage resulting from the significant reduction (5%) of growth and yield of chinese cabbage and lettuce were $50{\sim}100$ and $10{\sim}25$ mg/kg soil, respectively. However, there was no significant reduction of radish yield under Cd treatment of 100 mg/kg soil. As Cd concentrations in soils increased, the contents of Cd in products were significantly increased, basically. The contents of Cd in edible part of chinese cabbage, radish, and lettuce grown at the 5 mg/kg Cd treated soils were 0.13, 0.18, and 3.37 mg/kg FW, respectively. Total absorbed Cd in the vegetables tended to occur in the following order, chinese cabbage > radish > lettuce above 25 mg/kg Cd treated soils whereas lettuce absorbed more Cd than chinese cabbage and radish below 10 mg/kg Cd concentration.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.148-152
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• 2005

A novel neuropeptide with a relaxing activity on the dorsal retractor muscle (DRM) was isolated from the whole body extract of the starfish, Asterina pectinifera. The peptide was purified by gel-filtration ion-exchange and $C_{18}$ reversed-phase HPLC. The complete amino acid sequence of this peptide, which was determined by automated Edman degradation and MALDI-TOF mass, was Phe-Gly-Lys-Gly-Gly-Ala-Tyr-Asp-Pro-Leu-Ser-Ala-Gly-Phe-Thr-Asp. A comparison of the amino acid sequence with those of other known neuropeptides revealed that the asteripectin was a novel neuropeptide with smooth muscle-relaxing activity on the starfish DRM. This peptide showed threshold response to relaxing activity on the DRM at $10^{-10}M$ and the maximal relaxing effect was $120{\pn}7.0\%$ at $10^{-5}M$. The relaxing activity of this peptide on the starfish DRM increased in a dose-dependent manner.

• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.77-104
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• 2001

The effects of the oriental herbal medicine Saenghyetang(SHT, 生慧湯), which consists of Rehmanniae Radix (熟地黃 九蒸: was made by 9th steam) 40g, Corni Fructus(山茱黃) 16g, Polygalae Radix(遠志) 8g, Zizyphi Spinosae Semen(酸棗仁) 2g, Biotae Semen(柏子仁 去油: oil ingredient was removed) 20g, Poria Cocos(茯笭) 12g, Ginseng Radix(人蔘) 12g, Acori Graminei Rhizoma(石菖蒲) 2g, Sinapis Semen(白芥子) 8g, on learning ability and memory were investigated. Hot water extract(HWE) and ethanol extract(EE) from SHT were used for the studies. Learning ability and memory are related to modifications of synaptic strength among neurons that interactive. Enhanced synaptic coincidence detection leads to improved learning ability and memory. If the NMDA receptor, a synaptic coincidence detector, acts as a graded switch for memory formations, enhanced signal detection by NMDA receptors should enhance learning ability and memory. It was shown that NR2B was increased in the forebrains of oriental medicine-administrated mice, leading to enhanced activation of NMDA receptors and facilitating synaptic potentiation in response to stimulation at 10-100 Hz. These HWE-SHT treated mice exhibited that superior ability in learning and memory when performing various behavioral tasks, showing that NR2B is enhanced by HWE-SHT treatment and also is critical in gating the age-dependent threshold for plasticity and memory formation. NMDA receptor-dependent modifications, which were mediated in part by HWE administration, of synaptic efficacy, therefore, represent a mechanism for associative learning ability and memory. Results suggest that oriental medical enhancement of NR2B contributes to increase intelligence and memory in mammals On the other hand, to examine the effects of EE-SHT on the learning ability and memory in experimental mice, EE-SHT was tested on passive and active avoidance responses. The EE-SHT ameliorated the memory retrieval deficit induced by ethanol in mice, but not other memory impairments. EE-SHT(10, 20mg/100 g, p.o.) did not affect the passive avoidance responses of normal mice in the step through and step down tests, the conditioned and unconditioned avoidance responses of normal mice in the shuttle box, lever press performance tests and the ambulatory activity of normal mice in a normal condition. However, EE-SHT at 20 mg/kg significantly decrease the spontaneous motor activity during the shuttle box test, and also to extend the sleeping time induced by pentobarbital in mice. These results suggest that SHT has an ameliorating effect on memory retrieval impairments and a weak tranquilizing action.