• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.473-493
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• 2012

Malaria infection is sensitively influenced by regional meteorological conditions along with global climate change. Remote sensing techniques have become an important tool for extraction of climatic and environmental factors, including rainfall, temperature, surface water, soil moisture, and land use, which are directly linked to the habitat qualities of malaria mosquitoes. Improvement of sensor fidelity with higher spatial and spectral resolution, new multinational sensor development, and decreased data cost have nurtured diverse remote sensing applications in malaria research. In 1984, eradication of endemic malaria was declared in Korea, but reemergence of malaria was reported in mid-1990s. Considering constant changes in malaria cases since 2000, the epidemiological management of the disease needs careful monitoring. Geographically, northmost counties neighboring North Korea have been ranked high in the number of malaria cases. High infection rates in these areas drew special attention and led to a hypothesis that malaria dispersion in these border counties might be caused by north-origin, malaria-bearing adult mosquitoes. Habitat conditions of malaria mosquitoes are important parameters for prediction of the vector abundance. However, it should be realized that malaria infection and transmission is a complex mechanism, where non-environmental factors, including human behavior, demographic structure, landscape structure, and spatial relationships between human residence and the vector habitats, are also significant considerations in the framework of medical geography.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.7-20
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• 1995

Taurine, a ${\beta}-amino$ acid, plays an important role as a neuromodulator and is necessary for the normal development of the brain. Since de novo synthesis of taurine in the brain is minimal and in vivo studies suggest that taurine dose not cross the blood-brain barrier, we examined whether the choroid plexus, the blood-cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) barrier, plays a role in taurine transport in the central nervous system. The uptake of $[^3H]-taurine$ into ATP depleted choroid plexus from rabbit was substantially greater in the presence of an inwardly directed $Na^+$ gradient taurine accumulation was negligible. A transient in side-negative potential gradient enhanced the $Na^+-driven$ uptake of taurine into the tissue slices, suggesting that the transport process is electrogenic, $Na^+-driven$ taurine uptake was saturable with an estimated $V_{max}$ of $111\;{\pm}\;20.2\;nmole/g/15\;min$ and a $K_M\;of\;99.8{\pm}29.9\;{\mu}M$. The estimated coupling ratio of $Na^+$ and taurine was $1.80\;{\pm}\;0.122.$ $Na^+-dependent$ taurine uptake was significantly inhibited by ${\beta}-amino$ acids, but not by ${\alpha}-amino$ acids, indicating that the transporter is selective for ${\beta}-amino$ acids. Since it is known that the physiological concentration of taurine in the CSF is lower than that in the plasma, the active transport system we characterized may face the brush border (i.e., CSF facing) side of the choroid plexus and actively transport taurine out of the CSF. Therefore, we examined in vivo elimination of taurine from the CSF in the rat to determine whether elimination kinetics of taurine from the CSF is consistent with the in vitro study. Using a stereotaxic device, cannulaes were placed into the lateral ventricle and the cisterna magna of the rat. Radio-labelled taurine and inulin (a marker of CSF flow) were injected into the lateral ventricle, and the concentrations of the labelled compounds in the CSF were monitored for upto 3 hrs in the cisterna magna. The apparent clearance of taurine from CSF was greater than the estimated CSF flow (p<0.005) indicating that there is a clearance process in addition to the CSF flow. Taurine distribution into the choroid plexus was at least 10 fold higher than that found in other brain areas (e. g., cerebellum, olfactory bulb and cortex). When unlabelled taurine was co-administered with radio-labelled taurine, the apparent clearance of taurine was reduced (p<0.0l), suggesting a saturable disposition of taurine from CSF. Distribution of taurine into the choroid plexus, cerebellum, olfactory bulb and cortex was similarly diminished, indicating that the saturable uptake of taurine into these tissues is responsible for the non-linear disposition. A pharmacokinetic model involving first order elimination and saturable distribution described these data adequately. The Michaelis-Menten rate constant estimated from in vivo elimination study is similar to that obtained in the in vitro uptake experiment. Collectively, our results demonstrate that taurine is transported in the choroid plexus via a $Na^+-dependent,saturable$ and apparently ${\beta}-amino$ acid selective mechanism. This process may be functionally relevant to taurine homeostasis in the brain.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.29 no.11
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• pp.809-817
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• 2002

This paper describes a new face detection method that is a pre-processing algorithm for on-line face recognition. To complement the weakness of using only edge or rotor features from previous face detection method, we propose the two types of face detection method. The one is a combined method with edge and color features and the other is a center area color sampling method. To prevent connecting the people's face area and the background area, which have same colors, we propose a new adaptive edge detection algorithm firstly. The adaptive edge detection algorithm is robust to illumination variance so that it extracts lots of edges and breakouts edges steadily in border between background and face areas. Because of strong edge detection, face area appears one or multi regions. We can merge these isolated regions using color information and get the final face area as a MBR (Minimum Bounding Rectangle) form. If the size of final face area is under or upper threshold, color sampling method in center area from input image is used to detect new face area. To evaluate the proposed method, we have experimented with 2,100 face images. A high face detection rate of 96.3% has been obtained.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.45-71
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• 1991

The landscape systems in Korean island settlements can be recognized as results of ingabitants' ecological adptation to the isolated environment with the limited natural resources. Both the fishery dominant industry in island society and ecological nature of its environments seem to have influenced on inhabitants' environmental cognition as well as the physical landscape of island villages such as its location, spatial pattern in each village, housing form and so on. This study was done mainly by both refering to the related documents and direct observations in case study areas, and results of the study can be summarized as follows. 1. In general, the landscape of an individual island seems to take more innate characteristics of island's own, corresponding to the degree of isolation from mainland. That is, while the landscape of island in neighboring waters takes both inland-like and island-innate landscape character at the same time, the one in the open sea far from land takes more innate landscape character of all island's own in the aspects of village location, land use and housing density etc. 2. The convex landform of most islands brings about more centrifugal village allocation than centripetal allocation in most inland villages. And thus most villages in each island face extremely diverse directions different from the south facing preference in most inland rural villages. 3. Most island villages tend to be located along the ecologically transitional strip between land and sea, so called 'line of life', rather than between hilly slope and flat land as being in most inland village locations. So they are located with marine ecology bounded fishing ground ahead and land ecology bounded agricultural site at the back of them. 4. The settlement pattern of the island fishing villages shows more compact spatial structure than that of inland agricultural villages, due to the absolute limits of usable land resources and the adaptation to the marine environment with severe sea winds and waves or for the easy accessability to the fishing grounds. And also the managerial patterns of public owned sea weed catching ground, which take each family as the unit of usership rather than an individual, seem to make the villagescape more compact and the size of Individual residence smaller than that of inland agricultural village. 5. The folk shrine('Dand') systems, in persrective of villagescape, represent innate environmental cognition of island inhabitants above all other cultural landscape elements in the island. Usually the kinds and the meanings of island's communal shrine and its allocative patternsin island villagescape are composed of set with binary opposition, for example 'Upper shrine(representing 'earth', 'mountain' or 'fire')' and 'Lower Shrine(representing 'sea', 'dragon' or 'water') are those. They are usually located at contrary positions in villagescape each other. That is, they are located at 'the virtical center or visual terminus(Upper shrine at hillside behind the village)' and 'the border or entrance(Lower Shrine at seashore in front of the village)'. Each of these shirines' divinity coincides with each subsystem of island's natural eco-system(earth sphere vs marine sphere) and they also contribute to ecological conservation, bonded with the 'Sacred Forest(usually with another function of windbreak)' or 'Sacred Natural Fountain' nearby them, which are representatives of island's natural resources.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.41
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• pp.33.1-33.7
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• 2019

Background: The concept of the ideal morphology for the alveolar bone form is an important element to reconstruct or restore the in maximizing esthetic profile and functional alveolar bone restoration. The purpose of this preliminary study is to evaluate the normal alveolar bone structure to provide the standard reference and guide template for use in diagnosing for implant placement, determining the correct amount of bone augmentation in actual clinical practice and producing prostheses based on three-dimensional imaging assessment of alveolar bone. Methods: This study was included 11 men and 11 women (average age, 22.6 and 24.5 years, respectively) selected from among 127 patients. The horizontal widths of alveolar bone of maxilla and mandible were measured at the crestal, mid-root, and root apex level on MDCT (multi-detector computed tomography) images reconstructed by medical imaging software. In addition, tooth dimensions of the central incisors, canines, second premolars, and first molars of maxilla and mandible, including the horizontal width of the interdental alveolar bone crest, were also measured and statistically analyzed. Results: The horizontal alveolar bone width of the palatal side of maxilla showed a distinct increment from the alveolar bone crest to the apical region in both anterior and posterior areas. The average widths of the maxillary alveolar ridge were as follows: central incisor, 7.43 mm; canine, 8.91 mm; second premolar, 9.57 mm; and first molar, 12.38 mm. The average widths of the mandibular alveolar ridge were as follows: central incisor, 6.21 mm; canine, 8.55 mm; second premolar, 8.45 mm; and first molar, 10.02 mm. In the buccal side, the alveolar bone width was not increased from the crest to the apical region. The horizontal alveolar bone width of an apical and mandibular border region was thinner than at the mid-root level. Conclusions: The results of the preliminary study are useful as a clinical guideline when determining dental implant diameter and position. And also, these measurements can also be useful during the production of prefabricated membranes and customized alveolar bone scaffolds.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.301-307
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• 2012

50-year-old female and 50-year-old male were referred to the department of the oral and maxillofacial surgery of Kyungpook national university dental hospital with asymptomatic lesions on their posterior mandibular body areas. They were discovered incidentally on panoramic radiographs during routine dental examination. Physical examination revealed no remarkable findings. Each panoramic radiograph showed well defined radiolucent lesions without hyperostotic border on their posterior mandibular body area. At first they were diagnosed as benign tumors because they looked like multilocular pattern and one of the patient showed discontinuity of mandibular canal within the lesion. CT scans demonstrated well demarcated and irregular lingual depression filled with fat tissue and they were diagnosed as developmental salivary gland defects. One of the lesion showed no change on follow-up panoramic radiograph after 4 months. Developmental salivary gland defects resembling benign tumor are atypical cases and it is suggested that confirmatory imaging using CT or MRI should be taken.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.458-471
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• 2019

DMSP-OLS nighttime satellite imagery could be used to derive the sum of lights (SOL) and built-up area, and the two indices have been widely employed to make the estimation of socio-economic variables and the dynamics of urban developments. Considering it, this research investigated the spatiotemporal patterns of economic growth and urbanized area in Jilin Province, China, using DMSP-OLS data for a time span between 1992 and 2012. This study found the SOLs of both the province and most cities to tend to grow during the period. While SOL-weighted centroids' means moved towards northwestern direction, urban-area centroids' means followed the trend of south-eastern migration. These directional patterns could be associated with the Northeast Revitalization Plan of Chinese governments. Nonetheless, a future study will need to consider SNPP VIIRS DNB imagery in order to overcome temporal limitation of DMSP-OLS data. In addition, it is also necessary to estimate socio-economic indices, e.g., growth regional domestic product, using a regression model developed with correlation relationship between economic statistics ad SOL.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.13A no.5 s.102
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• pp.465-472
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• 2006

Recently, many suggestions have been made in image segmentation methods for extracting human organs or disease affected area from huge amounts of medical image datasets. However, images from some areas, such as brain, which have multiple structures with ambiruous structural borders, have limitations in their structural segmentation. To address this problem, clustering technique which classifies voxels into finite number of clusters is often employed. This, however, has its drawback, the influence from noise, which is caused from voxel by voxel operations. Therefore, applying image enhancing method to minimize the influence from noise and to make clearer image borders would allow more robust structural segmentation. This research proposes an efficient structural segmentation method by filtering based clustering to extract detail structures such as white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid from brain MR. First, coherence enhancing diffusion filtering is adopted to make clearer borders between structures and to reduce the noises in them. To the enhanced images from this process, fuzzy c-means clustering method was applied, conducting structural segmentation by assigning corresponding cluster index to the structure containing each voxel. The suggested structural segmentation method, in comparison with existing ones with clustering using Gaussian or general anisotropic diffusion filtering, showed enhanced accuracy which was determined by how much it agreed with the manual segmentation results. Moreover, by suggesting fine segmentation method on the border area with reproducible results and minimized manual task, it provides efficient diagnostic support for morphological abnormalities in brain.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.277-286
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• 2017

Mt. Baekdu which located the border of North Korea and China, is known as a potentially active volcano in a typical mountainous terrain. A lahar on the volcanic area is one of the important hazard that can cause the loss of life and property damage. In order to comprehensively address the impact of lahar hazard at Mt. Baekdu, we simulated lahar inundation area using Laharz_py. We assumed 750 m of additional elevation for DEM to draw proximal hazard zone boundary (PHZB) of Mt. Baekdu that H/L ratio are selected 0.10. And lahar volumes for simulation were estimated to $1{\times}10^6$, $5{\times}10^6$, $1{\times}10^7$, $5{\times}10^7$, $1{\times}10^8$, $5{\times}10^8$, $1{\times}10^9m^3$, respectively. In the results, 15 streams are located near a proximal hazard zone boundary, Amnok (Yalu) river (south), Toudaosonghua river, Jinjiang river and Huapi river (west-southwest), Songjiang river, Xiaosha river, Caozi river and Sandaosongjian river (west-northwest), Toudaobai river, Erdaobai river and Sandabai river (north), Wudaobai river-1, -2, -3 (northeast) and Duman (Tumen) river (east). The results of this study can be used as basic data to make a hazard map for reduce the damage that can be caused by volcanic hazards occurred on Mt. Baekdu.

• Journal of the Korean Geophysical Society
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.113-126
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• 2000

We have conducted multiple geophysical surveys to investigate the geoenvironmental change of the Nanjido Landfill due to the stabilization process. Geophyscial surveys are comprized of gravity, magnetic, dipole-dipole electrical and SP methods. Due to the field conditions, surveys were conducted on the top surface of the landfill no.2 and southern border areas in front of landfills. The gravity anomalies obtained on the top surface of the landfill no.2 in 1999 show that the gradient of the anomaly on the central area is decreasing in comparison with that observed four years ago. The complexity of magnetic anomaly pattern it also decreasing. These facts suggest that the stabilization work of the Nanjido landfill makes some progress by compaction process due to repetitive subsidence and refilling. The dipole-dipole electrical resistivity and SP data obtained on the outside of the waterproof wall at the landfill no.1 were severely affected by unsatisfactory surface conditions. On the other hand, the dipole-dipole electrical resistivity profiles obtained on the inside and outside parts of the waterproof wall at the landfill no.2 show the blocking effect of leachate flow by the waterproof wall. Few SP anomalies are observed on the top and side surfaces of the landfill no.2, but SP anomalies obtained on the base area inside the waterproof wall strongly reflect the effect of leachate collecting wells.