• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.197-204
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• 2009

It bas been hypothesized that foot ulceration might be internally initiated. Current instruments which merely allow superficial estimate of plantar loading acting on the foot, severely limit the scope of many biomechanical/clinical studies on this issue. Recent studies have suggested that peak plantar pressure may be only 65% specific for the development of ulceration. These limitations are at least partially due to surface pressures not being representative of the complex mechanical stress developed inside the subcutaneous plantar soft-tissue, which are potentially more relevant for tissue breakdown. This study established a three-dimensional and nonlinear finite element model of a human foot complex with comprehensive skeletal and soft-tissue components capable of predicting both the external and internal stresses and deformations of the foot. The model was validated by experimental data of subject-specific plantar foot pressure measures. The stress analysis indicated the internal stresses doses were site-dependent and the observation found a change between 1.5 to 4.5 times the external stresses on the foot plantar surface. The results yielded insights into the internal loading conditions of the plantar soft-tissue, which is important in enhancing our knowledge on the causes of foot ulceration and related stress-induced tissue breakdown in diabetic foot.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.27 no.B
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• pp.201-208
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• 2007

This paper is research results of investigating the elastic settlement behavior of the coastal caisson structure built on the sandy deposit by comparing results of centrifuge model experiments and those of existing methods of estimating elastic settlement. Basic soil property tests such as specific gravity test, grain size distribution test and organic content test with disturbed soil sampled from the site were carried out. The centrifuge experiment of model satisfying the required design criteria was performed under 50 of artificial accelerated gravitational force condition. The Centrifuge model experimental results were compared and analyzed with the current methods of estimating settlement based on the elastic modulus obtained from the results of odeometer tests and empirical methods from literature reviews.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.187-194
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• 2016

A single fire event within a fire area can cause multiple initiating events considered in internal events probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). For an example, a fire event in turbine building fire area can cause a loss of the main feed-water and loss of off-site power initiating events. This fire initiating event could result in special plant responses beyond the scope of the internal events PSA model. One approach to address a fire initiating event is to develop a specific fire event tree. However, the development of a specific fire event tree is difficult since the number of fire event trees may be several hundreds or more. Thus, internal fire events PSA model has been generally constructed by modifications of the pre-developed internal events PSA model. New accident sequence logics not covered in the internal events PSA model are separately developed to incorporate them into the fire PSA model. Recently, many fire PSA models have fire induced initiating event fault trees not shown in an internal event PSA model. Up to now, there has been no analytical comparative study on the constructions of fire events PSA model using internal events PSA model with and without fault trees of initiating events. In this study, the changing process of internal events PSA model to fire events PSA model is analytically presented and discussed.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.347-352
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• 2016

Background: This study used receiver operating characteristic curve to analyze Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) adenosquamous carcinoma data to identify predictive models and potential disparities in outcome. Materials and Methods: This study analyzed socio-economic, staging and treatment factors available in the SEER database for adenosquamous carcinoma. For the risk modeling, each factor was fitted by a generalized linear model to predict the cause specific survival. An area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was computed. Similar strata were combined to construct the most parsimonious models. Results: A total of 20,712 patients diagnosed from 1973 to 2009 were included in this study. The mean follow up time (S.D.) was 54.2 (78.4) months. Some 2/3 of the patients were female. The mean (S.D.) age was 63 (13.8) years. SEER stage was the most predictive factor of outcome (ROC area of 0.71). 13.9% of the patients were un-staged and had risk of cause specific death of 61.3% that was higher than the 45.3% risk for the regional disease and lower than the 70.3% for metastatic disease. Sex, site, radiotherapy, and surgery had ROC areas of about 0.55-0.65. Rural residence and race contributed to socioeconomic disparity for treatment outcome. Radiotherapy was underused even with localized and regional stages when the intent was curative. This under use was most pronounced in older patients. Conclusions: Anatomic stage was predictive and useful in treatment selection. Under-staging may have contributed to poor outcome.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.5043-5047
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• 2013

Background: This is a part of a larger effort to characterize the effects on socio-economic factors (SEFs) on cancer outcome. Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Result (SEER) bone and joint sarcoma (BJS) data were used to identify potential disparities in cause specific survival (CSS). Materials and Methods: This study analyzed SEFs in conjunction with biologic and treatment factors. Absolute BJS specific risks were calculated and the areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were computed for predictors. Actuarial survival analysis was performed with Kaplan-Meier method. Kolmogorov-Smirnov's 2-sample test was used to for comparing two survival curves. Cox proportional hazard model was used for multivariate analysis. Results: There were 13501 patients diagnosed BJS from 1973 to 2009. The mean follow up time (SD) was 75.6 (90.1) months. Staging was the highest predictive factor of outcome (ROC area of 0.68). SEER stage, histology, primary site and sex were highly significant pre-treatment predictors of CSS. Under multivariate analysis, patients living in low income neighborhoods and rural areas had a 2% and 5% disadvantage in cause specific survival respectively. Conclusions: This study has found 2-5% decrement of CSS of BJS due to SEFs. These data may be used to generate testable hypothesis for future clinical trials to eliminate BJS outcome disparities.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.109-120
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• 1994

A method for estimating the effectiveness of each protective action against a nuclear accident has been proposed using the fuzzy set theory. In most of the existing countermeasure models in actions under radiological emergencies, the large variety of possible features is simplified by a number of rough assumptions. During this simplification procedure, a lot of information is lost which results in much uncertainty concerning the output of the countermeasure model. Furthermore, different assumptions should be used for different sites to consider the site specific conditions. Tn this study, the diversity of each variable related to protective action has been modelled by the linguistic variable. The effectiveness of sheltering and evacuation has been estimated using the proposed method. The potential advantage of the proposed method is in reducing the loss of information by incorporating the opinions of experts and by introducing the linguistic variables which represent the site specific conditions.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.7-15
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• 2012

A polyguluronate-specific lyase from Streptomyces sp. strain M3 has been previously cloned and characterized. In this study, the M3 alginate lyase gene in the pColdI vector was mutated by site-directed mutagenesis and random mutagenesis to enhance the alginate degrading activity. Six mutants were obtained: Ser25Arg, Phe99Leu, Asp142Asn, Val163Ala, Lys191Glu, and Gly194Cys. Phe99Leu and Lys191Glu mutants completely lost their alginate lyase activity, whereas the alginate degrading activity of Gly194Cys mutant increased by nearly 10 fold. The 3-D protein structure of M3 alginate lyase, which was constructed using the Swiss-Model automodeler, was also compared to the crystal structure of another alginate lyase. A mutated glycine residue was positioned between Gly193 and Tyr195 of the C-terminal conserved sequence, YFKAGXYXQ. A phenylalanine residue (at position 99) and a glycine residue (at position 194) mutated in this study were distant from the active site, but the degrading activity was strongly affected by their mutation.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.133-140
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• 2002

Site-specific minimum temperature forecasts are critical in a short-term decision making procedure for preventive measures as well as a long-term strategy such as site selection in fruits industry. Nocturnal cold air pools frequently termed in mountainous areas under anticyclonic systems are very dangerous to the flowering buds in spring over Korea, but the spatial resolution to detect them exceeds the current weather forecast scale. To supplement the insufficient spatial resolution of official forecasts, we developed a GIS - assisted frost risk assesment scheme for using in mountainous areas. Daily minimum temperature data were obtained from 6 sites located in a 2.1 by 2.1 km area with complex topography near the southern edge of Sobaek mountains during radiative cooling nights in spring 2001. A digital elevation model with a 10 m spatial resolution was prepared for the entire study area and the cold air inflow was simulated for each grid cell by counting the number of surrounding cells coming into the processing cell. Primitive temperature surfaces were prepared for the corresponding dates by interpolating the Korea Meteorological Administration's automated observational data with the lapse rate correction. The cell temperature values corresponding to the 6 observation sites were extracted from the primitive temperature surface, and subtracted from the observed values to obtain the estimation error. The errors were regressed to the flow accumulation at the corresponding cells, delineating a statistically significant relationship. When we applied this relationship to the primitive temperature surfaces of frost nights during April 2002, there was a good agreement with the observations, showing a feasibility of site-specific frost warning system development in mountainous areas.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.321-330
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• 2008

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and methane emissions from landfills have been linked to global warming. In this study, LandGEM (Landfill Gas Emission Model) was applied to predict landfill gas quantity over time, and then this result was compared with the data surveyed on the site, Cheongju Megalo Landfill. LandGEM allows the input of site-specific values for methane generation rate (k) and potential methane generation capacity $L_o$, but in this study, k value of 0.05/yr and $L_o$ value of $170m^3/Mg$ were considered to be most appropriate for reflecting non-arid temperate region conventional landfilling, Cheongju Megalo Landfill. High discrepancies between the surveyed data and the predicted data about landfill gas seems to be derived from insufficient compaction of daily soil-cover, inefficient recovery of landfill gas and banning of direct landfilling of food garbage waste in 2005. This study can be used for dissemination of information and increasing awareness about the benefits of recovering and utilizing LFG (landfill gas) and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.169-177
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• 2010

Ecological risk assessment (ERA) has been used to establish environmental quality standards or evaluate ecological risk in site-specific areas. The scope of ERA was expanded based on regions, and the concept of regional-scale ecological risk assessment was recently introduced in developed countries. In the present study, regional ERA approaches of relative risk model (RRM), contaminants in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems (CATS) model, and procedure for ecological tired assessment of risks (PETAR) in advanced countries were extensively investigated. Regional ERA was compared with traditional ERA process. Stressors, receptor and response in traditional ERA were replaced with sources of stressors, habitats, and ecological impacts, respectively in regional ERA. This study introduces the concept and assessment process of regional ERA, and provides a wide perspective how the relative ERA could be applied in Korean ecosystem.