• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.191-199
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• 2019

Purpose: To compare the diagnostic ability of undergraduate dental students to detect maxillary sinus abnormalities in panoramic radiographs(PR) and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective study based on the evaluation of PR and CBCT images. A pilot study was conducted to determine the number of students eligible to participate in the study. The images were evaluated by 2 students, and 280 maxillary sinuses were assessed using the following categories: normal, mucosal thickening, sinus polyp, antral pseudocyst, nonspecific opacification, periostitis, antrolith, and antrolith associated with mucosal thickening. The reference standard was established by the consensus of 2 oral radiologists based on the CBCT images. The kappa test, receiver operating characteristic curves, and 1-way analysis of variance with the Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test were employed. Results: Intraobserver and interobserver reliability showed agreement ranging from substantial (0.809) to almost perfect (0.922). The agreement between the students' evaluations and the reference standard was reasonable (0.258) for PR and substantial(0.692) for CBCT. Comparisons of values of sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy showed that CBCT was significantly better(P<0.05). Conclusion: CBCT was better than PR for the detection of maxillary sinus abnormalities by dental students. However, CBCT should only be requested after a careful analysis of PR by students and more experienced professionals.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.228-234
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• 2019

Background The management of flexor tendon injuries has evolved in recent years through industrial improvements in suture materials, refinements of repair methods, and early rehabilitation protocols. However, there is no consensus on the ideal suture material and technique. This study was conducted to compare the tensile strength, repair time, and characteristics of 4-strand cruciate, modified Kessler, and 4-strand horizontal intrafiber barbed sutures for flexor tenorrhaphy with a 12-mm suture purchase length in an animal model. Methods The right third deep flexors of 60 adult Leghorn chicken feet were isolated and repaired with a 12-mm suture purchase length. The tendons were randomly assigned to three groups of equal number (n=20 each). Groups 1 and 2 received 4-strand cruciate and modified Kessler repair with conventional suture materials, respectively. A 4-strand horizontal intrafiber barbed suture technique was used in group 3. The repaired tendons were biomechanically tested for tensile strength, 2-mm gap resistance, and mode of failure. Repair times were also recorded. Results The maximum tensile strength until failure was $44.6{\pm}4.3N$ in group 1, $35.7{\pm}5.2N$ in group 2, and $56.7{\pm}17.3N$ in group 3. The barbed sutures were superior to the other sutures in terms of the load needed for 2-mm gap formation (P<0.05). Furthermore, the barbed sutures showed the shortest repair time (P<0.05). Conclusions This study found that 4-strand horizontal intrafiber barbed suture repair with a 12-mm purchase length in a chicken flexor tendon injury model showed promising biomechanical properties and took less time to perform than other options.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.261-293
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• 2013

Sweden invited immigrant workers, mainly from Nordic countries and West European countries until the 1960s. But since the 1970s refugees and their family members have become the largest group of immigrants. As the composition of immigrants has changed significantly, and the labor market conditions have been aggravated, immigrants have had much difficulty in finding jobs. This has aroused policy debates concerning the reason why the immigrants are not well integrated into the labor market and how to solve the problem. While there is a broad consensus on micro reform policy alternatives, there are significant opinion gaps concerning major issues such as labor market flexibilization and immigration restrictions. It would seems that the poor results of immigrants' labor market integration may increase the pressure for labor market flexibilization and also bring about significant changes to the Swedish welfare state model designed on the premise of full employment.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.24 no.8
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• pp.1044-1058
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• 2021

Tempered electronic contents have multiplied in last few years, thanks to the emergence of sophisticated artificial intelligence(AI) algorithms. Deepfakes (fake footage, photos, speech, and videos) can be a frightening and destructive phenomenon that has the capacity to distort the facts and hamper reputation by presenting a fake reality. Evidence of ownership or authentication of digital material is crucial for combating the fabricated content influx we are facing today. Current solutions lack the capacity to track digital media's history and provenance. Due to the rise of misrepresentation created by technologies like deepfake, detection algorithms are required to verify the integrity of digital content. Many real-world scenarios have been claimed to benefit from blockchain's authentication capabilities. Despite the scattered efforts surrounding such remedies, relatively little research has been undertaken to discover where blockchain technology can be used to tackle the deepfake problem. Latest blockchain based innovations such as Smart Contract, Hyperledger fabric can play a vital role against the manipulation of digital content. The goal of this paper is to summarize and discuss the ongoing researches related to blockchain's capabilities to protect digital content authentication. We have also suggested a blockchain (smart contract) dependent framework that can keep the data integrity of original content and thus prevent deepfake. This study also aims at discussing how blockchain technology can be used more effectively in deepfake prevention as well as highlight the current state of deepfake video detection research, including the generating process, various detection algorithms, and existing benchmarks.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.589-602
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• 2020

Background and objective: There are many theories related to the development of agrotourism, and each stakeholder has its own role and function. If it is based on organizational functions, stakeholders need to be coordinated, and the state plays a major administrative role. But in the successful case of Yeongdong County, Chungcheongbuk province, the Republic of Korea, the government played an important role in the development of tourism, which grants us another perspective on the role of the government in promotion and development agrotourism activities. Methods: This article aims to examine the development of agrotourism through a cooperative approach, by clarifying the role of the local authorities in the Yeongdong region in the management and operation of the local agrotourism activities. The qualitative research method is based on a field survey conducted in Yeongdong County in 2019. Results: The study's findings show that in situations where conflicts of interest among stakeholders are prone to occur, the development of local tourism has a limited impact on the cooperative culture, and local governments play an important role. Accordingly, the local governments must actively formulate strategies to maintain and develop traditional agricultural industries and at the same time develop agrotourism activities. The government's ability to coordinate, cooperate, and participate reasonably is a key factor for the success of the sustainable development of the tourism industry. Conclusion: Based on coordination between stakeholders and a reasonable strategic direction, Yeongdong's agrotourism is being effectively deployed. The development of Yeongdong's agrotourism industry has achieved impressive results through an effective strategy, highlighting the important role of localgovernment in the consensus of local communities and collaboration with stakeholders. The role of outstanding local governments has been clearly demonstrated, especially in promoting, establishing, and contacting different organizations to effectively deploy agrotourism in the region.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.81.1-81.9
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• 2021

Background: Suid gammaherpesvirus 3, 4, and 5 (porcine lymphotropic herpesvirus - PLHV-1, -2, and -3) are viruses that infect domestic and feral pigs. Objectives: This study examined the presence of PLHV DNA in biological samples from free-living wild boars circulating in a Brazilian geographical region with a high density of commercial domestic pigs. Methods: Lung samples of 50 free-living wild boars were collected by exotic wildlife controller agents between 2017 and 2019 in the state of Paraná, southern Brazil. Lung and spleen fragments were obtained from six fetuses collected by hysterectomy post mortem from a pregnant sow. A polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay using consensus primers (pan-herpesviruses) was performed to detect PLHV DNA. The samples showing positive results for PLHV DNA were submitted to single-round PCR assays with the specific primers for identifying PLHV-1 (213-S/215-As), PLHV-2 (208-S/212-As), and PLHV-3 (886s/886As). The specificity of the species-specific PCR products was assessed by nucleotide sequencing of the amplicons. Results: Forty-eight (96%) of the 50 lung samples analyzed were positive for PLHV by PCR using pan-herpesvirus primers. In 33 (68.75%) of the positive samples, at least two PLHV species were identified simultaneously. The DNA of PLHV-1, -2, and -3 was found in free-living wild boars of all ages, but not in the fetuses, even though they were from a sow that tested positive for all three viruses. Conclusion: These viruses are endemic to the population of feral pigs in the Brazilian region evaluated, as well as in domesticated pigs.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.792-799
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• 2022

Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology is a key component of modern construction engineering and project management workflows. As-is BIM models that represent the spatial reality of a project site can offer crucial information to stakeholders for construction progress monitoring, error checking, and building maintenance purposes. Geometric methods for automatically converting raw scan data into BIM models (Scan-to-BIM) often fail to make use of higher-level semantic information in the data. Whereas, semantic segmentation methods only output labels at the point level without creating object level models that is necessary for BIM. To address these issues, this research proposes a hybrid semantic-geometric approach for clutter-resistant floorplan generation from laser-scanned building point clouds. The input point clouds are first pre-processed by normalizing the coordinate system and removing outliers. Then, a semantic segmentation network based on PointNet++ is used to label each point as ceiling, floor, wall, door, stair, and clutter. The clutter points are removed whereas the wall, door, and stair points are used for 2D floorplan generation. A region-growing segmentation algorithm paired with geometric reasoning rules is applied to group the points together into individual building elements. Finally, a 2-fold Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) algorithm is applied to parameterize the building elements into 2D lines which are used to create the output floorplan. The proposed method is evaluated using the metrics of precision, recall, Intersection-over-Union (IOU), Betti error, and warping error.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.44-64
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• 2017

Russia's push in the Asia-Pacific region stems from its interests that have the national, regional and global dimensions. In their turn, the aims of this policy are civilizational, geopolitical, economic and prospective, with a long-term outlook. In the course of their achievement, cooperation with Northeast Asia's countries will play one of the key roles owing to the factors of geographic proximity, Northeast Asia's economic potential, risk hedging and a growing influence Northeast Asia exerts upon the global development. A new cooperation paradigm between Russia and the states of Northeast Asia should be based upon establishing and cementing self-reproducing ties. This is the central aim of Russian initiatives in relations, with Japan, the Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Mongolia and China. However, numerous obstacles ranging from Russia's absence in the regional free trade agreements and supply-production chains of value-added production to the permanent international instability generated by Pyongyang's missile-nuclear developments hamper the practical implementation of this task. Realizing the necessity to give an additional impetus to this new cooperative paradigm, Russia has to develop directions with an apparent consolidating effect. The most promising may be the establishment of a permanent security forum based upon Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism chaired by the Russian Federation. The urgency of this measure and its expected support stem from the necessity to strengthen security in Northeast Asia, a task neither the US-led hub-and-spoke system nor ASE-AN-led multilateral dialogue venues have been able to resolve. The issues addressed at the security forum must include the unification of approaches to North Korean nuclear issue and producing a document specifying actions of the claimants on the disputed maritime territories in the "direct contact" situations. At the expert level, Russia has elaborated on the idea to establish such a forum outlining the spectrum of the key directions of cooperation. With the urgency in the establishment of this dialogue venue, its agenda has to be coordinated with the agendas of the existing security systems presented by the US alliances and the ASE-AN-led multilateral negotiations. The practical implementation of this initiative will strengthen security in Northeast Asia as its challenges will be resolved in the pre-emptive way based on coordinated approaches. Therefore, Russia as the Eurasian state will be one of the role players in the advent of the Asian century.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.2-12
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• 2017

Research on democratic transitions has relatively ignored the question of why some countries experience a regressive form of political pacts, while others do not. This paper develops a simple game-theoretic model to explain the phenomenon of collusive pacts in the process of democratization. Trasformismo is a term that refers to a system of political exchange based on informal clientelistic politics. The existing studies of the politics of trasformismo have emphasized the timing of industrialization and the tradition of strong state as conditions of the politics of trasformismo. However, not every late industrializers and not every strong states experienced some variants of collusive political pacts in their trajectories of democratization. In this paper, I contend that the politics of trasformismo is rather a generalizable pattern of political elites' behavior under particular circumstances. By developing a simple game theoretic model, this paper suggests the conditions under which political actors are likely to collude to a regressive form of political pacts. The model shows that the likelihood of collusion to a regressive form of political pacts is a function of a set of parameters. First, a higher level of incumbency advantage in electoral competition is likely to be associated with a higher probability of collusive political pacts. Second, a higher degree of the monopoly of political representation of political parties without a close link with a variety of societal forces is likely to induce collusive behavior among politicians. Third, the ruling party leader's expectations about the likelihood of a safe extrication are related to collusive political pacts. This paper then engages in a case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea. The 1990 Korean case is interesting in that the ruling party created a new party after having merged with two opposition parties. This case can be considered a result of political maneuver in a context of democratization. The case study suggests the empirical relevance of the game-theoretic model. As the game of trasformismo and the case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea have shown, the collusive political pact was neither determined by a certain stage of economic development nor by a particular cultural systems. Rather, it was a product of the art of trasformismo based on party leaders' rational calculations of the expected likelihood of taking governing power.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.381-401
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• 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand the perception of medical staff to propose an infected patient transport robot as a means of responding to infectious diseases. Methods: The data collected through the survey was analyzed through AHP analysis. The measurement tools used in this study were derived through the SERVQUAL model and Focus Group Interview(FGI), and consisted of four detailed questions for each of five classes: tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Results: As a result of the study, there are concerns about risk factors that may occur in areas where medical staff intervention is minimized. Above all, we confirmed the consensus that safety should be the top priority during the process of robots to transport patients. In particular, highlighted were the resolution of device errors that may occur during the process for transporting patients and easy provision of the first aid. Additionally, the ability to monitor patients and suppress infection factors turned out to be important, which was directly related to the simplification of the role of medical staff and work efficiency. Conclusion: As one of the means of effectively controlling infectious diseases in a pandemic situation, a robot to transport the infected patient was considered. However, in order to commercialize this, specific verification of the safety of medical staff and patients is needed, and empirical data on providing the first aid, patient monitoring, and infection factor suppression should be presented.