• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.82 no.2
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• pp.151-157
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• 2019

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is the most important disease screened for upon patient history review during preimmigration medical examinations as performed in South Korea in prospective immigrants to certain Western countries. In 2007, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changed the TB screening protocol from a smear-based test to the complete Culture and Directly Observed Therapy Tuberculosis Technical Instructions (CDOT TB TI) for reducing the incidence of TB in foreign-born immigrants. Methods: This study evaluated the effect of the revised (as compared with the old) protocol in South Korea. Results: Of the 40,558 visa applicants, 365 exhibited chest radiographic results suggestive of active or inactive TB, and 351 underwent sputum tests (acid-fast bacilli smear and Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture). To this end, using the CDOT TB TI, 36 subjects (88.8 per $10^5$ of the population) were found to have TB, compared with only seven using the older U.S. CDC technical instruction (TI) (p<0.001). In addition, there were six drug-resistant cases which were identified (16.7 per $10^5$ of the population), two of whom had multidrug-resistance (5.6 per $10^5$ of the population). Conclusion: The culture-based 2007 TI identified a great deal of TB cases current to the individuals tested, as compared to older U.S. CDC TI.

• Journal of Trauma and Injury
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.67-71
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• 2012

Purpose: Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) provides an important initial screening examination in adult trauma patients. However, due to its low sensitivity, FAST is not a replacement for computed tomography (CT) in hemodynamically stable trauma patients. The aim of this study was to determine the test characteristics of FAST in adult, hemodynamically stable, blunt abdominal trauma patients by using a critical action as a reference standard. Methods: The medical records for FAST examination at a single hospital from January 2009 to February 2011 were retrospectively reviewed. The inclusion criterion was isolated, hemodynamically stable, blunt abdominal trauma. Hemodynamically unstable patients or patients with penetrating injuries were excluded. The reference standard was the presence of a critical action, which was defined as one of the following: 1) operative intervention for a finding discovered on CT, 2) interventional radiology for bleeding, 3) transfusion of 2 or more packed RBCs, or 4) death at the emergency department. Results: There were 230 patients who met the inclusion criterion. There were 20 true positive, 206 true negative, 0 false positive, and 4 false negative results. The sensitivity and the specificity were 83% and 100%, respectively. Conclusion: Despite its low sensitivity for detecting any abnormal finding discovered on CT, negative FAST could aid to exclude critical action in hemodynamically stable, blunt abdominal trauma patients.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.161-166
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• 2007

To develop a rapid and reliable single-tube-based PCR technique for detection simultaneously the quinolone resistance qnrA, qnrB and qnrS genes. After multiple alignment, primers were designed to detect known qnr variants. I was used for A total of 43 extented-spectrum ${\beta}$-lactamases (ESBLs) producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from university hospital were tested for screening, as with qnr genes. In optimized conditions, all positive controls confirmed the specificity of the PCR primers. Out of 43 isolates, qnrA genes were detected 19 (44.2%), qnrB genes 5 (11.7%), qnrS genes 15 (34.9%) and 8 (18.6%) isolates were not detected. I report here a fast and reliable technique for rapid screening of qnr positive strains to be used for epidemiological surveys.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.104-106
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• 2000

Transient Stability of a power systems is its ability to maintain synchronous operation of machine when subjected to a large disturbance. This paper presents a new methodology for speed-up transient stability evaluation in SIME. SIME is a hybrid direct method including time simulation to enhance flexibility. The First features of the proposed method are that generator grouping can be performed even in very stable cases and that the stability of a contingency can be evaluated from a short period of time simulation results. The second features of the proposed method are that using power-angle trajectory and subdividing contingency classification have improved the screening capability.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.55-57
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• 2013

Growing numbers of studies employ cell line-based systematic short interfering RNA (siRNA) screens to study gene functions and to identify drug targets. As multiple sources of variations that are unique to siRNA screens exist, there is a growing demand for a computational tool that generates normalized values and standardized scores. However, only a few tools have been available so far with limited usability. Here, we present siMacro, a fast and easy-to-use Microsoft Office Excel-based tool with a graphic user interface, designed to process single-condition or two-condition synthetic screen datasets. siMacro normalizes position and batch effects, censors outlier samples, and calculates Z-scores and robust Z-scores, with a spreadsheet output of >120,000 samples in under 1 minute.

• 한국디지털정책학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.289-297
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• 2006

Business operates under the fast pace of large-scale changes. These changes occur in environments including competitors, markets and consumers. To survive under these changes, process innovation is becoming the eminent issue faced by executives. Process innovation is to generate, select, and implement new ideas adopting changes in organizational structure, management pattern, human resource management systems and so on. Examples include restructuring, outsourcing, benchmarking, total quality management, and business process reengineering. This study suggests how to develop process innovation ideas. Related screening and implementation techniques are also presented.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.1441-1448
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• 2017

Antibacterial compounds are widely used in the treatment of human and animal diseases. The overuse of antibiotics has led to a rapid rise in the prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria, making the development of new antibacterial compounds essential. This study focused on developing a fast and easy method for identifying marine bacteria that produce antibiotic compounds. Eight randomly selected marine target bacterial species (Agrococcus terreus, Bacillus algicola, Mesoflavibacter zeaxanthinifaciens, Pseudoalteromonas flavipulchra, P. peptidolytica, P. piscicida, P. rubra, and Zunongwangia atlantica) were tested for production of antibacterial compounds against four strains of test bacteria (B. cereus, B. subtilis, Halomonas smyrnensis, and Vibrio alginolyticus). Colony picking was used as the primary screening method. Clear zones were observed around colonies of P. flavipulchra, P. peptidolytica, P. piscicida, and P. rubra tested against B. cereus, B. subtilis, and H. smyrnensis. The efficiency of colony scraping and broth culture methods for antimicrobial compound extraction was also compared using a disk diffusion assay. P. peptidolytica, P. piscicida, and P. rubra showed antagonistic activity against H. smyrnensis, B. cereus, and B. subtilis, respectively, only in the colony scraping method. Our results show that colony picking and colony scraping are effective, quick, and easy methods of screening for antibacterial compound-producing bacteria.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2010

It is of importance that all countries in worldwide, including EU and China, have adopted the Restrictions on the use of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) for all electronics. IEC62321 document, which was published by the International Electronics Committee (IEC) can have conflicts with the standards in the market. On the contrary Publicly Accessible Specification (PAS) for sampling published by IEC TC111 can be adopted for complementary application. In this work, we tried to find a route to disassemble and disjoint cellular phone sample, based on PAS and compare the screening methods available in the market. For this work, the cellular phone produced in 2001, before the regulation was born, was chosen for better detection. Although X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) showed excellent performance for screening, fast and easy handling, it can give information on the surface, not the bulk, and have some limitations due to significant matrix interference and lack of variety of standards for quantification. It means that screening with XRF sometimes requires supplementary tool. There are several techniques available in the market of analytical instruments. Laser ablation (LA) ICP-MS, energy dispersive (ED) XRF and scanning electron microscope (SEM)-energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) were demonstrated for screening a cellular phone. For quantitative determination, graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS) was employed. Experimental results for Pb in a battery showed large difference in analytical results in between XRF and GF-AAS, i.e., 0.92% and 5.67%, respectively. In addition, the standard deviation of XRF was extremely large in the range of 23-168%, compared with that in the range of 1.9-92.3% for LA-ICP-MS. In conclusion, GF-AAS was required for quantitative analysis although EDX was used for screening. In this work, it was proved that LA-ICP-MS can be used as a screening method for fast analysis to determine hazardous elements in electrical products.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.861-872
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• 2011

Many fast block-matching algorithms (BMAs) in motion estimation field reduce computational complexity by screening the number of checking points. Although many fast BMAs reduce computations, sometimes they should endure matching errors in comparison with full-search algorithm (FSA). In this paper, a novel fast BMA for constrained one-bit transform (C1BT)-based motion estimation is proposed in order to decrease the calculations of the block distortion measure. Unlike the classical fast BMAs, the proposed algorithm shows a new approach to reduce computations. It utilizes the binomial distribution based on the characteristic of binary plane which is composed of only two elements: 0 and 1. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm keeps its peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) performance very close to the FSA-C1BT while the computation complexity is reduced considerably.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.24-28
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• 2016

Tuberculosis (TB) remains an unsolved community health problem since identification of its causing microorganism called Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) by Robert Koch in 1882. Annually, eight million TB cases are newly reported and 2~3 million patients die from TB. Pulmonary TB is highly infectious and untreated pulmonary TB patients are believed to infect >10 people in a year. The conventional methods for diagnosis of TB are chest X-ray and isolation of the causing microorganisms from patient specimens. Screening of TB is conducted with smeared sputum in slides, and TB is confirmed by identification of MTB in cultured specimens. One of the fatal pitfalls of screening detection for smeared sputum is that it is impossible to distinguish MTB and other acid-fast bacilli (AFB) because they are stained equally with Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) stain. Culture of MTB is the most reliable method for diagnosis of TB but it takes 4~8 weeks. In this report, we suggest a fast and highly-reliable MTB detection method that distinguishes AFB in sputum samples. Purified DNA from the AFB stained slide samples offered by The Korean Institute of Tuberculosis were used to detect infected MTB in patients. PCR, real-time PCR and reverse blot hybridization assay (REBA) methods were applied to purified DNA. Conclusively, the real-time PCR method was confirmed to produce high sensitivity and we were able to further detect drug-resistant MTB with REBA.