• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.983-997
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• 2015

This research evaluates the soil conditions for seismic stations situated in Romania using the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (HVSR). The strong ground motion database assembled for this study consists of 179 analogue and digital strong ground motion recordings from four intermediate-depth Vrancea seismic events with $M_w{\geq}6.0$. In the first step of the analysis, the influence of the earthquake magnitude and source-to-site distance on the H/V curves is evaluated. Significant influences from both the earthquake magnitude and hypocentral distance are found especially for soil class A sites. Next, a site classification method proposed in the literature is applied for each seismic station and the soil classes are compared with those obtained from borehole data and from the topographic slope method. In addition, the success and error rates of this method are computed and compared with other studies from the literature. A more in-depth analysis of the H/V results is performed using data from seismic stations in Bucharest and a comparison of the free-field and borehole H/V curves is done for three seismic stations. The results show large differences between the free-field and the borehole curves. As a conclusion, the results from this study represent an intermediary step in the evaluation of the soil conditions for seismic stations in Romania and the need to perform more detailed soil classification analysis is highly emphasized.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2006

Changes in the soil physical property and the topographic condition derived from agricultural activities like as farming activities, land clearance and cutting down resulted in environmental and economic problems including the outflow of nutrient from farms and the water pollution. Several theories on the soil conservation have been developed and reviewed to protect soil erosion in the regions having a high risk of erosion. This study was done using the USLE model developed by Wischmeier and Smith (1978), and model for the slope length and steepness made by Desmet and Govers (1996), and Nearing (1997) to evaluate the potential of the soil erodibility. Therefore, several results were obtained as follows. First, factors affecting the soil erosion based on the USLE could be extracted to examine the erosion potential in farms. Soil erodibility (K), slope length (L), and slope steepness (S) were used as main factors in the USLE in consideration of the soil, not by the land use or land cover. Second, the soil erodibility increased in paddy soils where it is low in soil content, and the very fine sandy loam exists. Analysis of the slope length showed that the value of a flat ground was 1, and the maximum value was 9.17 appearing on the steep mountain. Soil erodibility showed positive relationship to a slope. Third, the potential soil erodibility index (PSEI) showed that it is high in the PSEI of the areas of steep upland and orchard on the slope of mountainous region around Dokjigol mountain, Dunji mountain, and Deummit mountain. And the PSEI in the same land cover was different depending on the slope rather than on the physical properties in soil. Forth, the analysis of land suitability in soil erosion explained that study area had 3,672.35ha showing the suitable land, 390.88ha for the proper land, and 216.54ha for the unsuitable land. For unsuitable land, 8.71ha and 6.29ha were shown in fallow uplands and single cropping uplands, respectively.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.393-404
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to capture the essentials in survey and evaluation scheme which are able to assess the hazard of a rock slope systematically. Statistical analysis are performed on slope instability parameters related to failure of the rock slope. As the slope instability parameters, twelve survey items are considered such as tension crack, surface deformation, deformation of retaining structures, volume of existing failures, angles between strike of discontinuity and strike of cut slope face, angles between dip of discontinuity and dip of cut slope face, discontinuity condition, cut slope angle, rainfall or ground water level, excavation condition, drainage condition, reinforcement. A total of 233 road cut slopes located in Gyeongnam were considered. The stability of the road cut slopes were evaluated by estimating the slope instability index(SII) and corresponding stability rank. 126 rock slopes were selected to analyze statistical relation between SII and slope instability parameters. The multiple regression analysis was applied to derive statistical models which are able to predict the SII and corresponding slope stability rank. Also, its applicability was explored to predict the slope failures using the variables of slope instability parameters. The results obtained in this study clearly show that the methodology given in this paper have strong capabilities to evaluate the failures of the road cut slope effectively.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.327-338
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• 2022

This study aims to empirically and statistically predict soil depths across areas affected by landslides. Using soil depth measurements from a landslide area in Korea, two sets of soil depths are calculated using a Z-model based on terrain elevation and a probabilistic statistical model. Both sets of calculation results are applied to derive landslide risk using the saturated infiltration depth ratio of the soil layer. This facilitates analysis of the infiltration of rainfall into soil layers for a rainfall event. In comparison with the probabilistic statistical model, the Z-model yields soil depths that are closer to measured values in the study area. Landslide risk assessment in the study area based on soil depth predictions from the two models shows that the percentage of first-grade landslide risk assessed using soil depths from the probabilistic statistical model is 2.5 times that calculated using soil depths from the Z-model. This shows that soil depths directly affect landslide risk assessment; therefore, the acquisition and application of local soil depth data are crucial to landslide risk analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.117-127
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• 2008

Korea has a large number of landslides due to localized torrential downpours and typhoons in summer, causing great human damage and economic losses. In particular, most roads in the Gangwon area are located in mountains, making them expose to a great risk of landslide. Therefore, it is urgent to prepare countermeasures to prevent these landslides. Necessary for that are various slope investigation and high-tech observation techniques for slope maintenance. Recently there have been slope observation techniques using optical fiber sensors, GPS, CCD cameras, Total Station and satellite images; however, these are not used much due to poor economic feasibility, low accuracy and efficiency. This study evaluated accuracy of displacement extraction of model slopes using terrestrial LiDAR to determine its application to landslide monitoring. As a result, it can measure several mm of minute displacement with high accuracy and help to rapidly obtain geographical features of slope.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.191-199
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• 2019

Road development is considered an important factor in invasion and dispersion of ailen plants by damaging the natural ecosystems and connecting the detached landscapes into long tubular structures. In this study, vegetation survey was carried out according to the topographical characteristics of cut slope, fill slope, and flat land at the construction site in order to understand the effect of road developemt on the change of the floristic composition of ailen plants. Road developement projects caused a lot of changes in annual and biennial alien plants because of continuous disturbances. Changes in species composition of alien plants decreased in the cut slope. On the other hand, the ailen palnts of the fill slope increased. The increase or decrease alien plants on flat land were identified depending on where it occurred, and no major trend was found. The cause of these change was driven by unintentionally introduced alien plants. In particular, the cut slope with a high occurence of unintentional ailen plants should not be used as a source of high-risk alien plants such as ecosystem disturbances. Since the transplanted species were intentionally planted by the landscape plan, it was possible to identify colonies from early stages and spread to the nearby flat land. Therefore, in order to minimize the impact of road slope vegetation on the surrounding ecosystem during and after road construction, it is suggested to plant high viability plants in the landscape design during the environmental impact assessment consultation.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.331-340
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• 2022

Early afterdepolarization (EAD), a significant cause of fatal ventricular arrhythmias including Torsade de Pointes (TdP) in long QT syndromes, is a depolarizing afterpotential at the plateau or repolarization phase in action potential (AP) profile early before completing one pace. AP duration prolongation is related to EAD but is not necessarily accounted for EAD. Several computational studies suggested EAD can form from an abnormality in the late plateau and/or repolarization phase of AP shape. In this sense, we hypothesized the slope during repolarization has the characteristics to predict TdP risk, mainly focusing on the maximum slope during repolarization (dVm/dt_{max_repol}). This study aimed to predict the sensitivity of dVm/dt_{max_repol} to ion channel conductances as a TdP risk metric through a population simulation considering multiple effects of simultaneous reduction in six ion channel conductances of g_NaL, g_Kr, g_Ks, g_to, g_K1, and g_CaL. Additionally, we verified the availability of dVm/dt_{max_repol} for TdP risk prediction through the correlation analysis with qNet, the representative TdP metric. We performed the population simulations based on the methodology of Gemmel et al. using the human ventricular myocyte model of Dutta et al. Among the sixion channel conductances, dVm/dt_{max_repol} and qNet responded most sensitively to the change in g_Kr, followed by g_NaL. Furthermore, dVm/dt_{max_repol} showed a statistically significant high negative correlation with qNet. The dVm/dt_{max_repol} values were significantly different according to three TdP risk levels of high, intermediate, and low by qNet (p<0.001). In conclusion, we suggested dVm/dt_{max_repol} as a new biomarker metric for TdP risk assessment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.3851-3863
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• 2024

The speed of offsite consequence analysis is highly important due to the extensive calculations required to handle all the scenarios for a single-unit or multi-unit Level 3 PSA (probabilistic safety assessment). To perform an offsite consequence analysis as part of Level 3 PSA, various input parameters are considered, amongst which certain parameters, such as plume segments, spatial grids, and particle size distributions, have flexible input formats. This study describes the development of an effective optimization method to reduce the analysis time as much as possible while maintaining the accuracy of the offsite consequence analysis results. The effect of plume segmentation on offsite consequence analysis was investigated by observing deviations in analysis results and changes in the required analysis times following changes in plume release. Then a plume segmentation optimization method based on the cumulative release fraction slope was developed to intensively analyze the sections with rapid release and to simplify the analysis for the sections with nonsignificant release. As a result of applying this method, the analysis time was reduced by about 54.5 % compared to the base case, while the resulting health effects showed very small deviations of 0.03 % and 1.77 % for early fatality risk and cancer fatality risk, respectively.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.385-394
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• 2001

There are serious damage of people and properties every year due to landslides that are occurred by heavy rain. Because these phenomena repeat and the heavy rain is not an atmospheric anomaly, the counter plan becomes necessary. The study area, Ulsan, is one of the seven metropolitan, and largest cities of Korea and has many large facilities such as petrochemical complex and factories of automobile and shipbuilding. So it is necessary assess the landslide hazard potential. In the study. the three steps of landslide hazard assessment techniques such as susceptibility, possibility, and risk were performed to the study area using GIS. For the analyses, the topographic, geologic, soil, forest, meteorological, and population and facility spatial database were constructed. Landslide susceptibility representing how susceptible to a given area was assessed by overlay of the slope, aspect, curvature of topography from the topographic DB, type, material, drainage and effective thickness of soil from the soil DB, lype age, diameter and density from forest DB and land use. Then landslide possibility representing how possible to landslide was assessed by overlay of the susceptibility and rainfall frequency map, Finally, landslide risk representing how dangerous to people and facility was assessed by overlay of the possibil. ity and the population and facility density maps The assessment results can be used to urban and land use plan for landslide hazard prevention.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.143-147
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• 2010

Chronic exposure to Arsenic (As) causes significant human health effects including various cancers. Total As concentrations from 300 polished rice samples cultivated near the mining areas in Korea were analyzed to estimate a probabilistic assessment of human health risk from As-contaminated rice. The mean of total As concentrations in rice was 0.09 mg/kg and lognormal distribution model was set for total As concentrations. Human health risk for As in rice was estimated using gender-specific rice consumption data and average daily dose (ADD). While cancer risk (CR) and hazard quotient (HQ) were calculated using oral cancer slope factor (OCSF) and Reference dose (RfD) suggested by the U.S. EPA. Mean of CR posed by total As was 2.16 (for male) and 1.83 (for female) per 10,000. The HQ for general population from rice cultivated near the mining areas in Korea was below 1 as the $50^{th}$ percentile of general population. However, less than 10% of general population consuming rice cultivated near the mining areas would exceed 1.0. This result is similar with those from each gender-specific group.