• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.605-616
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• 2016

In the present study, quids from La Cueva de los Muertos Chiquitos (CMC) were subjected to ELISA tests for 2 protozoan parasites, Toxoplasma gondii (n=45) and Trypanosoma cruzi (n=43). The people who occupied CMC, the Loma San Gabriel, lived throughout much of present-day Durango and Zacatecas in Mexico. The known pathoecology of these people puts them into at-risk categories for the transmission of T. gondii and T. cruzi. Human antibodies created in response to these 2 parasites can be detected in modern saliva using ELISA kits intended for use with human serum. For these reasons, quids were reconstituted and subjected to ELISA testing. All test wells yielded negative results. These results could be a factor of improper methods because there is no precedence for this work in the existing literature. The results could equally be a simple matter of parasite absence among those people who occupied CMC. A final consideration is the taphonomy of human antibodies and whether or not ELISA is a sufficient method for recovering antibodies from archaeological contexts. An additional ELISA test targeting secretory IgA (sIgA) was conducted to further examine the failure to detect parasite-induced antibodies from quids. Herein, the methods used for quid preparation and ELISA procedures are described so that they can be further developed by future researchers. The results are discussed in light of the potential future of quid analysis.

• Textile Coloration and Finishing
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.74-86
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• 1995

Antibacterial and deodorization properties of silk fabrics dyed with Sappan wood are investigated by Halo, Shake flask, Bioassay and Detection column methods.The results are obtained as follows; 1. Although K/S values increase with Al mordant and concentrate concentrations, these are decreased in 10% Al mordant concentration in case of 4mlg dye concentration. 2. Reduction ratios of bacteria increase with K/S values in various tests. 3. When undyed silk fabrics are treated with Al mordant, reduction ratios of bacteria are not varied with Al mordant concentrations. 4. Deodorization property of Al pre-mordanted dyeing silk fabrics is better than one of unmordanted dyeing and raw silk fabrics. 5. Antibacterial properties of Cu and Cr mordanted dyeing fabrics are better than ones of the dyeing fabrics treated with the other mordants. 6. Natural dyes extracted from Sappan wood show the good antibacterial and deodorization properties, and colorant among various components contained in Sappan wood has a excellent antibacterial and deodorization properties.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.111-127
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• 2013

This paper describes effects of infill walls on behavior of RC frame with low strength, including numerical modeling, modal testing and finite-element model updating. For this purpose full scaled, one bay and one story RC frame is produced and tested for plane and brick in-filled conditions. Ambient-vibration testis applied to identify dynamic characteristics under natural excitations. Enhanced Frequency Domain Decomposition and Stochastic Subspace Identification methods are used to obtain experimental dynamic characteristics. A numerical modal analysis is performed on the developed two-dimensional finite element model of the frames using SAP2000 software to provide numerical frequencies and mode shapes. Dynamic characteristics obtained by numerical and experimental are compared with each other and finite element model of the frames are updated by changing some uncertain modeling parameters such as material properties and boundary conditions to reduce the differences between the results. At the end of the study, maximum differences in the natural frequencies are reduced on average from 34% to 9% and a good agreement is found between numerical and experimental dynamic characteristics after finite-element model updating. In addition, it is seen material properties are more effective parameters in the finite element model updating of plane frame. However, for brick in-filled frame changes in boundary conditions determine the model updating process.

• Quantitative Bio-Science
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.23-31
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• 2017

Datasets from DNA microarray experiments, which are in the form of large matrices of expression levels of genes, often have missing values. However, the existing statistical methods including the principle components analysis (PCA) and Hotelling's t-test are not directly applicable for the datasets having missing values due to the fact that they assume the observed dataset is complete in general. Many methods have been proposed in previous literature to impute the missing in the observed data. Troyanskaya et al. [1] study the k-nearest neighbor (kNN) imputation, Kim et al. [2] propose the local least squares (LLS) method and Rubin [3] propose the multiple imputation (MI) for missing values. To identify differentially expressed genes, we propose a new testing procedure when the missing exists in the observed data. The proposed procedure uses the Stouffer's z-scores and combines the test results of individual imputed samples, which are dependent to each other. We numerically show that the proposed test procedure based on MI performs better than the existing test procedures based on single imputation (SI) by comparing their ROC curves. We apply the proposed method to analyzing a public microarray data.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.9-19
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• 2019

This paper describes an experimental investigation on hybrid fiber reinforced concrete (HYFRC) beams. And the main aim of this present paper is to examine the dynamic characteristics and damage evaluation of undamaged and damaged HYFRC beams under free-free constraints. In this experimental work, totally four RC beams were cast and analyzed in order to evaluate the dynamic behavior as well as static load behavior of HYFRCs. Hybrid fiber reinforced concrete beams have been cast by incorporating two different fibers such as steel and polypropylene (PP). Damage of HYFRC beams was obtained by cracking of concrete for one of the beams in each set under four-point bending tests with different percentage variation of damage levels as 50%, 70% and 90% of maximum ultimate load. And the main dynamic characteristics such as damping, fundamental natural frequencies, mode shapes and frequency response function at each and every damage level has been assessed by means of non-destructive technique (NDT) with hammer excitation. The fundamental natural frequency and damping values obtained through dynamic tests for HYFRC beams were compared with control (reference) RC beam at each level of damage which has been acquired through static tests. The static experimental test results emphasize that the HYFRC beam has attained higher ultimate load as compared with control reinforced concrete beam.

• Healthcare Informatics Research
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.335-345
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• 2018

Objectives: The retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) is a site of glaucomatous optic neuropathy whose early changes need to be detected because glaucoma is one of the most common causes of blindness. This paper proposes an automated RNFL detection method based on the texture feature by forming a co-occurrence matrix and a backpropagation neural network as the classifier. Methods: We propose two texture features, namely, correlation and autocorrelation based on a co-occurrence matrix. Those features are selected by using a correlation feature selection method. Then the backpropagation neural network is applied as the classifier to implement RNFL detection in a retinal fundus image. Results: We used 40 retinal fundus images as testing data and 160 sub-images (80 showing a normal RNFL and 80 showing RNFL loss) as training data to evaluate the performance of our proposed method. Overall, this work achieved an accuracy of 94.52%. Conclusions: Our results demonstrated that the proposed method achieved a high accuracy, which indicates good performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

Recently, there has been continuous technological development in the semiconductor industry, and semiconductor manufacturing technologies are being advanced and highly integrated. For this reason, ceramic material having excellent heat resistance, wear resistance, and conductivity are used as components in semiconductor manufacturing. Among them, the probe card's space transformer is used as ceramic material to prevent electronic signal noise during the electrical die sorting of semiconductor function testing. However, implementing a bulk-type space transformer with a thickness of 5.6 mm or more is challenging, and thus it is produced in a structure with a stacked ceramic film. The stacked space transformer has low productivity because it is difficult to ensure hole clogging and a precise shape. In this research, an ultrasonic horn is designed to manufacture a bulk-type ceramic space transformer through ultrasonic drilling. Vibration characteristics were analyzed according to the ultrasonic horn, and the natural frequency was measured.

• KNOM Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.31-39
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• 2019

This paper introduces our research results of SDN/SON-based emergeny communications system for nuclear power plant under extreme natural diaster like Fukusima nuclear power plant incident. In such a extreme situation, nuclear power plant operational staffs which do not have technical knowledge of network provisioning and operations have to deploy the emergency network. Thus our proposed system provides capabilities to provision an emergency network autonomically and enable voice and data services. It also describes our PoC system developed based on the proposed core technology and architecture with the results of system verification testing.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.401-414
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• 2023

Organic clays are ideal habitat for flora and fauna. From a geotechnical perspective, organic clays are soft, weak, variable, heterogeneous and flocculated. Portland cement is a universally common stabiliser. However, some organic acids in soil inhibit full hydration and expose cementation products to rapid dissolution. This paper investigates scopes for use of C₃S cement to enable durable cementation. Prospects of using PP fibre alongside with C₃S cement, scopes for partial replacement of C₃S cement with a plant-based nanosilica and evolution of binders are then investigated. Binding mixtures here mimic the natural functions of rhizoliths, amorphous phases, and calcites. Testing sample population include natural and fibre-reinforced clays, compact mixes of clay - C₃S cement, clay - nanobiosilica, and clay, C₃S cement and nanobiosilica. Benefits and constraints of C₃S cement and fibres for retaining the naturally flocculated structure of organic clays are discussed. Nanobiosilica provides an opportunity to cut the C₃S content, and to transition of highly compressive organic clays into an engineered, open-structured medium with >0.5 MPa compressive strength across the strains spanning from peak to 1.5-times peak.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.633-643
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• 2023

In this study, the natural frequencies of Functional Graded Materials (FGM) plates are predicted using Artificial Neural Network (ANN). A model based on Third-order Shear Deformation Theory (TSDT) and FEM is used to train the ANN model. Different training methods are tested to simulate input and output dependency. As this is a parametric model, several architectures and optimization algorithms were tested. The proposed model allows us to minimize the CPU time to evaluate candidate material properties for FGM plate material selection and demonstrate their influence on dynamic behavior. Consequently, the time required for the FGM design process (candidate materials for material selection) and the geometric optimization of the FGM structure would remain reasonable. The ANN model can help industries to produce FGM plates with good mechanical properties of the selected materials. I addition, this model can be used to directly predict vibration behavior by testing a large number of FGM plates, representing all possible combinations of metals and ceramics in today's industry, without having to solve any eigenvalue problems.