• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.24-30
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• 2012

This study investigated the effects of bifidus enhancer yogurt (BEY) on loperamide-induced constipation in rats. The bifidus enhancer, made of rice-DDGS (Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles), improved proliferation of bifidobacteria (BB-12). Male SD rats were induced with constipation using loperamide and were then used to test the effectiveness of BEY in relieving constipation. The rats were divided into four groups: normal group (NOR), loperamide-treated group (LOP), bifidus enhancer yogurt and loperamide-treated group (L-BEY), and commercial yogurt and loperamide-treated group (L-CY). Treatment of loperamide reduced the wet weight and water content of fecal pellets, but increased the number of fecal pellets in the distal colon. Meanwhile, the fecal weight of the L-BEY group showed an increase of 43% and 23% versus the LOP and L-CY group, respectively. Also, the fecal water content in the L-BEY group was 14.5% and 6.8% higher than that in the LOP and L-CY group, respectively. In addition, the L-BEY group had the fewest fecal pellets in the distal colon. In the serum lipid parameters, the LOP group had a HDL/total cholesterol ratio that was 43% lower than the NOR group, but the L-BEY group had 27% lower than NOR group. These results suggest that bifidus enhancer yogurt has superior effects when it comes to relieving loperamide-induced constipation in rats.

• Atmosphere
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.187-194
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• 2010

We estimate the economic benefit of weather modification (precipitation enhancement and fog dissipation) by assuming its operation for the considered regions. Based on the statistical data, the economic benefit of the virtually operational precipitation enhancement experiments for the Andong and Imha basins, where the natural precipitation is relatively lack in South Korea, is calculated 348 for the water resources, 22,458 for forest fire prevention, and 28,458 million won/year for the drought relief. The benefit of the fog dissipation operation for the Incheon International Airport is estimated 7,365 million won/year for the flight delay due to fog. The calculated ratio of benefit to cost for precipitation enhancement operation for the basins is 14.07, which is comparable to that conducted in other countries.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.196-207
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• 2009

For the estimation of prevalence state of major chronic adult disease and their relationships with drinking and smoking habits in the Korean employees, we analyzed a medical check-up data of 155,799 subjects that was accumulated during the year of 2008. In age and sex distribution of the sample, male subjects were 106,229 and female 51,827 showing the ratio of 2:1 and the majorities were 30s and 40s covering 70.7% of the total. The prevalence rates of major chronic diseases were obesity 29.8% (male 38.3%, female 12.3%), hypertension 4.1%, HBV carrier inactive 3.3%, diabetes mellitus 2.9%, hypothyroidism 1.7% (male 1.3%, female 2.4%), hyperlipidemia 1.1%, hyperthyroidism 1.4% (male 1.1%, female 2.1%), osteoporosis 1.4% (male 1.4%, female 1.4%), anemia 0.9% (male 0.3%, female 2.0%) and renal disease 0.9%. The frequency of and volume of drinking in male group were 4.6 times and 7.5 times higher than female group respectively. The 33.8% of the workers were smoking currently. In the serological tests, all the items such as AST, ALT, ${\gamma}-GTP$, LDH for liver function, Cholesterol, TG, uric acid for hyperlipidemia and BP systolic, Fasting blood sugar, BMI for metabolic syndrome were significantly higher in the more drinking and more smoking groups than other groups (p<0.001). The higher prevalence rates in male group in the liver disease seems to be strongly related with the drinking and smoking habits in male employees. We suggest that employees should rather relying on leisure or hobbies than drinking and smoking for the stress relief.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.139-144
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• 2014

Background: To manage intractable cancer pain, an alternative to systemic analgesics is neuraxial analgesia. In long-term treatment, intrathecal administration could provide a more satisfactory pain relief with lower doses of analgesics and fewer side-effects than that of epidural administration. However, implantable drug delivery systems using intrathecal pumps in Korea are very expensive. Considering cost-effectiveness, we performed epidural analgesia as an alternative to intrathecal analgesia. Methods: We retrospectively investigated the efficacy, side effects, and complications of epidural morphine and local anesthetic administration through epidural catheters connected to a subcutaneous injection port in 29 Korean terminal cancer patients. Patient demographic data, the duration of epidural administration, preoperative numerical pain rating scales (NRS), side effects and complications related to the epidural catheterization and the drugs, and the numerical pain rating scales on the 1st, 3rd, 7th and 30th postoperative days were determined from the medical records. Results: The average score for the numerical pain rating scales for the 29 patients decreased from $7{\pm}1.0$ at baseline to $3.6{\pm}1.4$ on postoperative day 1 (P < 0.001). A similar decrease in pain intensity was maintained for 30 days (P < 0.001). Nausea and vomiting were the most frequently reported side effects of the epidural analgesia and two patients (6.9%) experienced paresthesia. Conclusions: Epidural morphine and local anesthetic infusion with a subcutaneous pump seems to have an acceptable risk-benefit ratio and allows a high degree of autonomy to patients with cancer pain.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.369-374
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• 2009

Objective : Percutaneous vertebroplasty (VP) can provide immediate stabilization in pathologic fractures of spinal tumors. However, long term follow-up data in cases of pathologic fractures are lacking. The authors report follow-up results of VP in 185 pathologic fractures of 102 spinal tumor patients. Methods : Percutaneous VP was performed at 185 vertebral bodies of 102 patients from 2001 to 2007. Retrospective analysis was done with medical records and radiological data. The change of visual analogue score (VAS), vertebral body (VB) height and kyphotic angle were measured preoperatively and on postoperative one day and at 3, 6, and 12 months. Results : The patients were composed of metastatic spine tumors (81%) and multiple myeloma (19%). Involved spinal segments were between T6 and L5. Mean follow-up period was 12.2 months. VAS for back pain was 8.24 preoperatively, 3.59 (postoperative one day), 4.08 (three months) and 5.22 (one year). VB compression ratio changed from 21.33% preoperatively to 13.82% (postoperative one day), 14.36% (three month), and 16.04% (one year). Kyphotic angle changed from $15.35^{\circ}$ preoperatively to $12.03^{\circ}$ (postoperative one day), $13.64^{\circ}$ (three month), and $15.61^{\circ}$ (one year). Conclusion : Immediate pain relief was definite after VP in pathologic compression fracture of osteolytic spinal disease. Although VAS was slightly increased on one year follow-up, VP effect was maintained without significant change. These results indicate that VP could be a safe and effective procedure as a palliative treatment of the spinal tumor patients.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.347-359
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• 2010

Ortho-photos provide valuable spatial and spectral information for various Geographic Information System (GIS) and mapping applications. The absence of relief displacement and the uniform scale in ortho-photos enable interested users to measure distances, compute areas, derive geographic locations, and quantify changes. Differential rectification has traditionally been used for ortho-photo generation. However, differential rectification produces serious problems (in the form of ghost images) when dealing with large scale imagery over urban areas. To avoid these artifacts, true ortho-photo generation techniques have been devised to remove ghost images through visibility analysis and occlusion detection. So far, the Z-buffer method has been one of the most popular methods for true ortho-photo generation. However, it is quite sensitive to the relationship between the cell size of the Digital Surface Model (DSM) and the Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) of the imaging sensor. Another critical issue of true ortho-photo generation using high resolution satellite imagery is the scan line search. In other words, the perspective center corresponding to each ground point should be identified since we are dealing with a line camera. This paper introduces alternative methodology for true ortho-photo generation that circumvents the drawbacks of the Z-buffer technique and the existing scan line search methods. The experiments using real data are carried out while comparing the performance of the proposed and the existing methods through qualitative and quantitative evaluations and computational efficiency. The experimental analysis proved that the proposed method provided the best success ratio of the occlusion detection and had reasonable processing time compared to all other true ortho-photo generation methods tested in this paper.

• Stress
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.239-245
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• 2017

Background: A quasi-experimental study with non-equivalent control groups was performed to determine an effect of aromatherapy foot bath on stress and autonomic nervous activity. Methods: To confirm the effect of aromatherapy foot bath, aromatherapy foot bath group was asked to have a bathing by dropping 0.5 cc in 18 L water after blending with a ratio of 6:3:1 with essential oil lavender, lemon, and tea tree and a foot bath group was asked for bathing only by water. Results: Aromatherapy foot bath group showed significant decrease in subjective stress score (t=3.465, p=0.001) and stress index (t=3.021, p=0.004) in addition to simultaneous increase in sympathetic nervous activity (t=-2.913, p=0.005). However, no significant stimulation of parasympathetic nervous system was observed (t=-1.831, p=0.072). Conclusions: As aromatherapy foot bath is a possible effective intervention for stress relief, it can be applied as an effective method to relieve the stress for healthy adults and patients.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.385-402
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• 2021

Objective: This study confirms the safety and efficacy of Banhasasim-tang (BST) against cough through systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: PubMed, Cochrane, ScienceDirect, Wiley online library, OASIS, KISS, NDSL, RISS, Science and Technology Society Village, DBpia, CNKI, J-STAGE, and CiNii were used as search engines. The search period was from the start of search engine support to June 30. 2020. And search language was not limited. Cochrane's risk of bias (RoB) tool was used to evaluate the quality of the studies. A meta-analysis of the total effective rate (TER), cough symptom score, and spirometry results was performed using the Review Manager program. Results: 6 studies were finally selected. The group using BST showed significant symptom relief, as the odds ratio (OR) value of TER was 5.56 times higher (95% CI: 3.50, 8.82, P<0.0001) compared to the control groups. The reported adverse effects did not occur in the intervention group. In addition, the cough symptom score and spirometry results showed that BST was more effective than Western medicine alone. Conclusion: BST can be expected to relieve cough, and it can be applied to chronic cough that is not treated with existing treatments. However, due to the low quality of the selected articles, additional high-quality RCTs will be required in the future.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.301-307
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• 2020

This study aimed to determine the association between stress recognition and oral symptom experiences among adolescents. We analyzed it, based on the 14th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey (2018), using the chi-square test and logistic regression. The distribution rate of stress recognition and oral symptom experience within one year were 81.7% and 48.9%, respectively. The group with stress recognition had a higher rate (52.2%) of oral symptom experience than the group that did not recognize stress (p<0.001). In the stress recognition group, the odds ratio for oral symptom experience was 1.86 (95% CI: 1.78-1.95). We suggest that stress is associated with oral health in adolescents. In the future, it will be necessary to study stress relief and oral health education in adolescents.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.75-82
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• 2018

Green roof in Korea has been recognized as part of landscape area and local governments enacted municipal ordinance for supporting green roof thereby assisting part of expenses spent for green roof within a range of budget for buildings which are eligible for the green roof support of existing buildings. However, it is necessary to enforce a regulation of mandatory green roof for new buildings in order to expand green roof application and provide a variety of assistances such as subsidy payment, tax relief, and mitigation of floor area ratio-related regulation as done in other advanced nations. In particular, LEED(Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) in the USA applies additional point directly for green roof in terms of the reduction in heat island effects. For example, the following items are beneficial to have additional points: habitat preservation or restoration, external space, rainwater management, reduction in outdoor water usage, minimum energy performance, and optimum energy performance. In addition, the BREEAM(Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) in the UK specifies green roof as one of assessment items to be complied in terms of diversity of species. As such, LEED and BREEAM reflect direct and indirect effects of green roof on assessment criteria, which suggest a direction to green building certification criteria in Korea where only additional points are given for green roof according to soil depth.