• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.348-354
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• 2008

Segmenting vessels in lower extremity CT images is very difficult because of gray level variation, connection to bones, and their small sizes. Instead of segmenting vessels, we propose an approach that segments bones and subtracts them from the original CT images. The subtracted images can contain not only connected vessel structures but also isolated vessels, which are very difficult to detect using conventional vessel segmentation methods. The proposed method initially grows a 3-dimensional (3D) volume with a seeded region growing (SRG) using an adaptive threshold and then detects junctions and forked branches. The forked branches are classified into either bone branches or vessel branches based on appearance, shape, size change, and moving velocity of the branch. The final volume is re-grown by collecting connected bone branches. The algorithm has produced promising results for segmenting bone structures in several tens of vessel-enhanced CT image data sets of lower extremities.

• BMB Reports
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2015

Tight junction protein 1 (TJP1), a component of tight junction, has been reported to play a role in protein networks as an adaptor protein, and TJP1 expression is altered during tumor development. Here, we found that TJP1 expression was increased at the RNA and protein levels in TGF-${\beta}$-stimulated lung cancer cells, A549. SB431542, a type-I TGF-${\beta}$ receptor inhibitor, as well as SB203580, a p38 kinase inhibitor, significantly abrogated the effect of TGF-${\beta}$ on TJP1 expression. Diphenyleneiodonium, an NADPH oxidase inhibitor, also attenuated TJP1 expression in response to TGF-${\beta}$ in lung cancer cells. When TJP1 expression was reduced by shRNA lentiviral particles in A549 cells (A549-sh TJP1), wound healing was much lower than in cells infected with control viral particles. Taken together, these data suggest that TGF-${\beta}$ enhances TJP1 expression, which may play a role beyond structural support in tight junctions during cancer development.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.104-108
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• 2003

We have measured the transport properties of $Bi_2$$Sr_2$$CaCu_2$$O_{8+d}$ (BSCCO) intrinsic Josephson junction mesa. Transport measurements with current flow along the c-axis, perpendicular to the layer of mesa showed multi-branch structures on the current-voltage characteristics. For single intrinsic junctions, the microwave radiation appears in the form of three different modes of oscillations, which include Josephson emission, nonequilibrium broad emission and sharp coherent microwave emission. Mutual phase interactions between two-mesas structures of BSCCO intrinsic Josephson junctions were studied. The results were explained within the framework of the Josephson plasma excitation model due to quasiparticle injection.n.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.499-505
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• 2017

In this study, the limit loads calculated by the $m_{\alpha}-tangent$ method based on the linear finite element analysis are compared with the closed form solutions that are proposed by various authors. The objects of the analysis is to select the elbow and the branch pipe which are representative structure of piping system. The applicability of the $m_{\alpha}-tangent$ method are investigated by applying it to cases with various geometries. The internal pressure and the in-plane bending moment are considered and the $m_{\alpha}-tangent$ method is in good agreement with the existing solutions in case of elbows. However, the limit loads calculated by the $m_{\alpha}-tangent$ method for branch junctions do not agree well with the existing solutions and do not show any tendency. The reason is a biased result due to the stress concentration of the discontinuous parts.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.386-395
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• 2005

With the development of a living standard, the importance of indoor air conditioning system in all kinds of buildings and vehicles has increased. A lot of researches on energy losses in a duct and various kinds of flow pattern in branches or junctions have been carried out over many years, because the primary object of a duct system used in HVAC is to provide equal flow rate in the interior of each room by minimizing pressure drop. In this study, to get equal flow distribution in each branch, a blockage is applied to the rectangular duct system. The flow analysis for flow distribution of a rectangular duct with two branches was performed by CFD. By using SIMPLE algorithm and finite volume method, flow analysis is performed in the case of 3-D, incompressible, turbulent flow. Also, the standard $k-{\varepsilon}$ model and wall function method were used for analysis of turbulent fluid flow. The distribution diagrams of static pressure, velocity vector, turbulent energy and kinetic energy in accordance with variation of Reynolds number and blockages location in a rectangular duct show that flow distribution at duct outlets is improved by a blockage. In this rectangular duct system, mean velocity and flow rate distribution in two branch outlets are nearly constant regardless of variation of Reynolds number, and a flow pattern of the internal duct has a same tendency as well.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.117-128
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• 2015

An organization must restructure itself once it makes outsourcing decisions. Outsourcing is a strategy that a company adopts to direct internal efforts into strengthening its core business processes while contracting other companies for strategically less critical tasks thereby improving organizational production efficiency, and the strategy inevitably involves organizational restructuring. While public service organizations have increasingly embraced outsourcing as well, only a handful of studies analyze the change in efficiency from organizational restructuring. Therefore, this study uses Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to test whether efficiency improved in Korea Expressway Corporation's restructured branch offices. Korea Expressway Corporation evaluated and grouped its branches based on road extensions management, traffic volume, the number of snow days, road deterioration, and the number of junctions to differentially allocate its personnel and budget. The extent of efficiency improvement in each group was compared, and results show that inefficiency did not exist in any of the groups. The efficiency index among the three group categories was similar across the board; 9 offices in the A-group with its expanded personnel and budget had an efficiency index of 0.954, 12 offices in the B-group with unchanged personnel and budget conditions had an index of 0.950, and 12 offices in the C-group with reduced personnel and budget had an index of 0.937. SFA facilitates efficiency analyses because it does not require pre-restructuring data. This study is easy to apply in practice and empirically tests efficiency improvement in organizational restructuring based on data collected from all the branch offices in Korea Expressway Corporation.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2011

The objective of the present study is to investigate the dividing two-phase flow in a horizontal micro T-junction with the same rectangular cross section, $800\;{\mu}m{\times}800\;{\mu}m$, experimentally. Air and water were used as the test fluids. The superficial velocity ranges of air and water were 15~20 m/s and 0.11~0.2 m/s, respectively. Dividing flow characteristics at the micro T-junction are different from those at the larger T-junctions (5~10 mm in hydraulic diameter). Compared with the results of previous works related with the T-junction with mini cross sections (about 5 mm), for lower range of gas separation, the fraction of the liquid separated through the branch decreases for the fixed fraction of the gas separation. But for higher range of gas separation, higher liquid separation could be found.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.118-122
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• 2010

Electrical transport properties were measured on $SmFeAsO_{0.85}$ single crystals along the c-axis for various temperatures and magnetic fields. For the measurements a mesa structure was fabricated on the surface of the single crystals. Samples showed a metallic temperature dependence of resistance and current-voltage curves without hysteretic multiple branch splitting that is usually observed in tunneling Josephson junctions. In addition, in ab-planar magnetic fields, samples did not show the Fraunhofer-type field modulation of the critical current. All these features indicate that the c-axis transport characteristics of $SmFeAsO_{0.85}$ single crystals are explained by the anisotropic bulk superconductivity rather than Josephson tunneling.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.557-570
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• 2019

In this study, a novel hierarchical approach is investigated to extract coronary vessel from X-ray angiogram. First, we propose to combine Decimation-free Directional Filter Bank (DDFB) and Homographic Filtering (HF) in order to enhance X-ray coronary angiographic image for segmentation purposes. Because the blood vessel ensures that blood flows in only one direction on vessel branch, the DDFB filter is suitable to be used to enhance the vessels at different orientations and radius. In the combination with HF filter, our method can simultaneously normalize the brightness across the image and increases contrast. Next, a coarse-to-fine strategy for iterative segmentation based on Otsu algorithm is applied to extract the main coronary vessels in different sizes. Furthermore, we also propose a new approach to segment very small vessels. Specifically, based on information of the main extracted vessels, we introduce a new method to extract junctions on the vascular tree and level of nodes on the tree. Then, the window based segmentation is applied to locate and extract the small vessels. Experimental results on our coronary X-ray angiography dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach can outperform standard method and attain the accuracy of 71.34%.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.85 no.1
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• pp.120-129
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• 1996

This study was carried out to investigate the hydraulic architecture such as relative hydraulic conductivity, Leaf specific conductivity(LSC), Huber value, Specific conductivity of the stem, branch and Junctions of stem-to-branch in Quercus mongolica trees. The hydraulic architecture of various hydraulic conductivities of stem and branch was described. The results obtained were summarized as follows : 1. The range of relative hydraulic conductivity was $2.5526{\times}10^{-12}$ to $1.2260{\times}10^{-10}m^2$ in stems, $1.6279{\times}10^{-11}$ to $6.8378{\times}10^{-11}m^2$ in branches. The relative hydraulic conductivities increased with decreasing diameter of stem and branch. The relative hydraulic conductivity of one-year-old terminal shoots were two times greater than that of the lateral shoots. 2. LSC value was larger at the top than at the base in stem. LSC is much smaller in branches than in stem ; especially smallest at branching part. 3. Hydraulic conductivities of the branching part appeared the different values with the 4 type and 4 type. Relative hydraulic conductivity, LSC, Specific conductivity and mean vessel diameter in type branching part were larger in stem than in branch part, but not found in the branching part of Y type. 4. LSC and Specific conductivity of stem increased with decreasing diameter, but Huber value slowly increased with decreasing diameter ; especially highest at less than 1cm diameter. 5. LSC, Huber value, and mean diameter of vessels were larger at 1-year-old leader shoots than at lateral shoots. 6. The mean vessel diameter in various parts of a tree decreased with decreasing diameter of stem, but the number of vessels per unit area($mm^{-2}$) increased reversely. Mean vessel diameter in stem decreased sharply at earlywood and slowly at latewood with decreasing diameter of stem.