• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.362-372
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• 2016

Purpose: This study intended to grasp real context of Cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related factors of Korean blue-collar workers, especially CVD-related knowledge, perception, beliefs, benefits and barriers of behaviors according to the health belief model. Methods: We interviewed twenty two workers working in two small-sized companies and performed two series of focus group interviews. Data were analyzed by deductive content analysis approach based on Elo & $Kyng{\ddot{a}}s$. Results: Excepting participants who have CVD risk factors, most participants had lower level of CVD risk perception. The level of CVD knowledge was low but there was difference by gender. CVD-related beliefs were 'fatal disease', 'caused by lifestyle' and 'difficult to prevent by themselves'. The risk reduction behaviors were motivated by current or family history of hypertension. But there were barriers to interfere practice of preventive behaviors such as poor quality of food provided by cafeteria in the workplace, frequent overtime, victim mentality as one of vulnerable social group, housework and financial burden, lack of facilities for rest and physical activity in the workplace. Conclusion: To develop intervention for reducing CVD risks in Korean blue-collar workers, we need to focus on improving CVD knowledge and perception and modifying work-related environments such as low quality of food and lack of facilities for rest and physical activity in the workplace.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.94-101
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• 2015

When a severe disaster such as a building collapse occurs, a first priority for rapid rescue is to find a location where people are highly expected to be buried but alive. It is, however, very difficult to correctly designate the location of such cavities by conventional geophysical survey due to a pile of debris of building members. In this study, location of possible lifeguard cavities were evaluated through a series of simulations of building collapse by explosion depending on the height of the building, a structure of basement floor and a location of explosion. Three types of building structure: five-story, ten-story and fifteen-story were prepared as a model for the simulation. As a results, in the case of low building, only basement floor partially collapsed. On the other hand, in the case of high building, a collapsed range on the inside of the building increased and lifeguard spaces were formed only in the lateral side or corner of the building. In addition, when a wall exists in the basement floor, the possibility that cavities could be formed increased compared to the cases without wall. However, for the fifteen-story building case, no possible lifeguard cavity was found. It is noted that for a high rise building, the height of building more affect forming of safeguard cavity than the structure of the basement floor.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.823-840
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• 2016

The plastic hinge lengths of beams and columns are a critical demand parameter in the nonlinear analysis of structures using the finite element method. The numerical model of a plastic hinge plays an important role in evaluating the response and damage of a structure to earthquakes or other loads causing the formation of plastic hinges. Previous research demonstrates that the plastic hinge length of reinforced concrete (RC) columns is closely related to section size, reinforcement ratio, reinforcement strength, concrete strength, axial compression ratio, and so on. However, because of the limitations of testing facilities, there is a lack of experimental data on columns with large section sizes and high axial compression ratios. In this work, we conducted a series of quasi-static tests for columns with large section sizes (up to 700 mm) and high axial compression ratios (up to 0.6) to explore the propagation of plastic hinge length during the whole loading process. The experimental results show that besides these parameters mentioned in previous work, the plastic hinge of RC columns is also affected by loading amplitude and size effect. Therefore, an approach toward considering the effect of these two parameters is discussed in this work.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.13-30
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• 2016

This paper concerns the development of an optimized TBM segmental lining design system for a subsea tunnel. The subsea tunnel is normally laid down under the sea water and submarine ground which consists of soil or rock. The design system is the series of process which can predict segmental lining member forces by ANN (artificial neural network system), analyze suitable section for the designated ground, construction and tunnel conditions. Finally, this lining design system aims to be connected with a BIM system for designing the subsea tunnel automatically. The lining member forces are predicted based on the ANN which was calculated by a FEM (finite element analysis) and it helps designers determine its segmental lining dimension easily without any further FE calculations.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.545-553
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• 2017

A pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) can be considered as a passive device, which combines the merits of a traditional tuned mass damper (TMD) and a collision damper. A recent analytical study by the authors demonstrated that the PTMD base on the energy dissipation during impact is able to achieve better control effectiveness over the traditional TMD. In this paper, a PTMD prototype is manufactured and applied for seismic response reduction to examine its efficacy. A series of shaking table tests is conducted in a three-story building frame model under single-dimensional and two-dimensional broadband earthquake excitations with different excitation intensities. The ability of the PTMD to reduce the structural responses is experimentally investigated. The results show that the traditional TMD is sensitive to input excitations, while the PTMD mostly has improved control performance over the TMD to remarkably reduce both the peak and root-mean-square (RMS) structural responses under single-dimensional earthquake excitation. Unlike the TMD, the PTMD is found to have the merit of maintaining a stable performance when subjected to different earthquake loadings. In addition, it is also indicated that the performance of the PTMD can be enhanced by adjusting the initial gap value, and the control effectiveness improves with the increasing excitation intensity. Under two-dimensional earthquake inputs, the PTMD controls remain outperform the TMD controls; however, the oscillation of the added mass is observed during the test, which may induce torsional vibration modes of the structure, and hence, result in poor control performance especially after a strong earthquake period.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.5D
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• pp.705-717
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• 2011

The number of horizontal tower cranes, major hoisting machineries for lifting approximately 50% of entire materials in construction projects, is rapidly increasing, but a number of accidents related to the tower cranes are being continuously occurred in construction sites as well. In particular, telescoping works in the horizontal tower cranes have showed the greatest safety concerns such as falls and collapses. It is due to the fact that tasks inserting a new mast in the space made after raising telescoping cage by fluid pressure and ascending it to the required height in the telescoping works include a series of dangerous factors in safety aspects, and might cause very serious and unexpected accidents in construction sites. The primary objective of this research is to propose two conceptual models for automating the telescoping work in horizontal tower crane and conduct their technical feasibility analyses. In this study, a design concept, a position control system using hydraulic cylinders is suggested as a better alternative for automating the telescoping work. Its potential safety improvement rate compared to the conventional method is also analyzed and presented in this study.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.9
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• pp.855-862
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• 2013

A series of 1/5 scale-down reactor flow distribution tests had been conducted to determine the hydraulic characteristics of an APR+ (Advanced Power Reactor Plus), which were used as the input data for an open core thermal margin analysis code. In this study, to examine the applicability of computational fluid dynamics with the porous model to the analysis of APR+ internal flow, simulations were conducted using the commercial multi-purpose computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS CFX V.14. It was concluded that the porous domain approach for some reactor internal structures could adequately predict the flow characteristics inside a reactor in a qualitative manner. If sufficient computational resources are available, the predicted core inlet flow distribution is expected to be more accurate by considering the real geometry of the internal structures, especially upstream of the core inlet.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.339-349
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• 2020

This study investigates the feasibility of using the results of the UPV (ultrasonic pulse velocity) test to assess the UCS (unconfined compressive strength) of unsaturated soil. A series of laboratory tests was conducted on samples of unsaturated lateritic soils of northern Taiwan. Specifically, the unconfined compressive test was combined with the pressure plate test to obtain the unconfined compressive strength and its matric suction (s) of the samples. Soil samples were first compacted at the designated water content and subsequently subjected to the wetting process for saturation and the following drying process to its target suction using the apparatus developed by the authors. The correlations among the UCS, s and UPV were studied. The test results show that both the UCS and UPV significantly increased with the matric suction regardless of the initial compaction condition, but neither the UCS nor UPV obviously varied when the matric suction was less than the air-entry value. In addition, the UCS approximately linearly increased with increasing UPV. According to the investigation of the test results, simplified methods to estimate the UCS using the UPV or matric suction were established. Furthermore, an empirical formula of the matric suction calculated from the UPV was proposed. From the comparison between the predicted values and the test results, the MAPE values of UCS were 4.52-9.98% and were less than 10%, and the MAPE value of matric suction was 17.3% and in the range of 10-20%. Thus, the established formulas have good forecasting accuracy and may be applied to the stability analysis of the unsaturated soil slope. However, further study is warranted for validation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.303-313
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance efficiency and productivity change of the regional public hospital in Korea. We use DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis) for CCR, BCC model, and MPI(Malmquist Productivity Index). DEA is a useful nonparametric technique for measurement of efficiency of a DMU(Decision Making Unit) and MPI is a evaluation method to measure DMU's productivity change. We utilize 34 regional public hospital's time-series data over 6 years from 2003 to 2008.The results of this study were as follows. First, technical efficiency(TE) shows that approximately 3.6% of inefficiency exists on the regional public hospitals and it reveals that the cause for technical inefficiency is due to scale inefficiency. Second, MPI's results show that regional public hospital made effort to improve total factor productivity change to raise technical efficiency. In order to raise efficiency, the regional public hospitals should deploy internal innovation and the government should support welfare policies.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.366-375
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• 2016

This study aims to investigate the impact of total, native-born, and foreign-born employment rates on the increases of GDP and per capita GDP for 24 OECD countries out of 34 countries depending on data availability. The panel data analysis is formed by a fixed-effects model which allows dummy variable in it to permit the intercept term to vary over time-series and cross-sectional units. Empirical evidences obtained by simple and multiple panel regressions reveal that the contribution to increasing of GDP by foreign-born employment is obviously lower than the one by native-born employment. And, native-born labor is substituted by foreign-born labor. It also has to be mentioned that the labor is playing a key role in increasing in national income. And, therefore, labor-related policy should be concerned on decreasing in labor productivity and segmentation of labor market resulted from inflow of foreign labor. It means that labor-related policy has to take care of not only the magnitude, but also the quality of foreign-born labor.