• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.185-192
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• 2010

Objectives: We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the relationship between low external doses of ionizing radiation exposure and the risk of cancer mortality among nuclear power plant workers. Methods: We searched MEDLINE using key words related to low dose and cancer risk. The selected articles were restricted to those written in English from 1990 to January 2009. We excluded those studies with no fit to the selection criteria and we included the cited references in published articles to minimize publication bias. Through this process, a total of 11 epidemiologic studies were finally included. A publication bias was tested for using Egger's test. The homogeneity test was performed before the integration of each of the standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) and the result proved that the studies were heterogeneous. Results: We found significant decreased deaths from all cancers (SMR = 0.75, 95% CI = 0.62 - 0.90), all cancers excluding leukemia, solid cancer, mouth and pharynx, esophagus, stomach, rectum, liver and gallbladder, pancreas, lung, prostate, lymphopoietic and hematopoitic cancer. The findings of this meta-analysis were similar with those of the 15 Country Collaborative Study conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. A publication bias was found only for liver and gallbladder cancer (p = 0.015). Heterogeneity was observed for all cancers, all cancers excluding leukemia, solid cancer, esophagus, colon and lung cancer. Conclusions: Our findings of low mortality for stomach, rectum, liver and gallbladder cancers may explained by the health worker effect. Yet further studies are needed to clarify the low SMR of cancers, for which there is no useful screening tool, in nuclear power plant workers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 1996.04a
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• pp.263-270
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• 1996

Noise control of a plate structure with multiple disk shaped piezoelectric actuators is studied. The plate is excited by an acoustic pressure field produced by a noise source located below the plate. Finite element modeling is used for the plate structure that supports a combination of three dimensional solid, flat shell and transition elements. The objective function, in the optimization procedure, is to minimize the sound energy radiated onto a hemispherical surface of given radius and the design parameters are the locations and sizes of the piezoelectric actuators as well as the amplitudes of the voltages applied to them. Automatic mesh generation is addressed as part of the modeling procedure. Numerical results for both resonance and off resonance frequencies show remarkable noise reduction and the optimal locations of the actuators are found to be close to the edges of the plate structure. The optimized result is robust such that when the acoustic pressure pattern is changed, reduction of radiated sound is still maintained. The robustness of an optimally designed structure is also tested by changing the frequency of the noise source using only the actuator voltages as design parameters.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.39-45
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• 2015

Applications of smart sensors have been extended to safety systems in the aerospace, transportation and civil engineering fields. In particular, structural health monitoring techniques using smart sensors have gradually become necessary and have been developed to prevent dangers to human life and damage to assets. Generally, smart sensors are based on electro-magnets and have several weaknesses, including electro-magnetic interference and distortion. Therefore, fiber optic sensors are an outstanding alternative to overcome the weaknesses of electro-magnetic sensors. However, they require expensive devices and complex systems. This paper proposes a new, affordable and simple sensor system that uses a single fiber to monitor pressures at multiple-points. Moreover, a prototype of the sensor system was manufactured and tested for a feasibility study. Based on the results of this experimental test, a relationship was carefully observed between the bend loss conditions and light-intensity. As a result, it was shown that impacts at multiple-points could be monitored.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.665-680
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• 2016

Theoretically, it is said that economies of scope can be realized in the cropelivestock cycling organic farming. Thus, it is also used as the principle of organic farming. However, it is difficult to find the cases of the empirical analysis of it in Korea. In that sense, this study is meaningful in that it analyzed the agricultural data of case farms of obtaining the approval of both organic agricultural products and organic animal products and practicing cycling farming for 4 years and tested the hypothesis. This study measured economies of scope by using the actual measurement value and estimation value farming performance statistics for 4 years of case farms. This farmhouse conducted nutrient cycling in the farm like self-manufacturing and injecting organic agricultural byproduct and wild grass as organic livestock feed and fermenting organic livestock manure to organic compost to return it 100%. The results can be summarized as follows: According to the result of cycling farming of combining and producing organic agriculture and organic livestock, economies of scope were found to be realized in this case farmhouse. That is, although not strong, EOS>0, there were economies of scope. The measurement value appeared as 0.0722, 0.00378, 0.04667 and 0.13127 in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. It was improved as time passes and the scale gets smaller. Therefore, in order to further improve economies of scope, there should be measures of reducing duplication costs between agriculture-livestock as low as possible and lowering the production cost of organic feed. That is, there is a need for the management strategy to adjust the import function and cost function according to the change in management paradigm and cropping system.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1129-1133
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• 2004

For the purpose of developing new anti-HIV agents from natural sources, the extracts of Kalopanax pictus were tested for their inhibitory effects on HIV-1 replication and its essential enzymes as the reverse transcriptase (RT). protease and α-glucosidase. In the assay of HIV-1-infected human T-cell line, water extracts of stem and leafstalk inhibited the HIV-1-induced cytopathic effects with Ie (inhibitory concentration) of 25 and 50㎍/㎖, respectively. Moreover water extracts (100㎍/㎖) of stem and leafstalk showed strong activity of 80% and 90% on anti-HIV-1 RT using Enzyme Linked Oligonucleotide Sorbent Assay (ELOSA) method. In the HIV-1 protease inhibition assay, aqueous stem extract inhibited the activity of the enzyme to cleave an oligopeptide, resembling one of the cleavage sites in the viral polyprotein which can only be processed by HIV-1 protease with 58%, but no glucosidase inhibitory activities. We found out this result, for these samples it is possible that the inhibition of the viral replication in vitro is due to the inhibition at least one of RT and protease. It would be of great interest to identify the compounds which are responsible for this inhibition, since all therapeutically useful agent up to date are RT, PR and α-glucosidase inhibitors.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1427-1432
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• 2003

This study was carried out to investigate the antimicrobial and anticancer effects of Galla Rhois (GR) on pathogens isolated from oral and KB human oral epidermoid carcinoma cells. Their antimicrobial activities were tested against Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans), Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), Enterobacter aerogenes (E. aerogenes), Escherichia coli (E. coil) and Candida albicans (C. albicans). GR powder has the antimicrobial activity against C. albicans, S. mutans and S. aureus. The extracts of water and ethanol have the antimicrobial activity against S. sureus and C. albicans. The water extract showed inhibitory activity against the growth and pH of above mentioned reference microorganisms. The water extract of GR declined cell viability in a dose dependent manner. DNA flow cytometric analysis showed that population of sub-G/sub 0//G₁, phase of cell cycle was increased by GR extract treatment in a dose dependent manner. Western blot analysis revealed that Caspase-3 was reduced by GR extract treatment. These result suggested that GR has the effect of antimicrobial on pathogens isolated from oral, and also, has anticancer effect that associated with the induction of apoptosis in a dose dependent manner in KB human oral epidermoid carcinoma cells. It may be GR-induced apoptosis was mediated via activation of Caspase-3.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.508-513
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• 2017

The complete genome sequence of a Slovak SL-1 isolate of Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV) was determined from the next generation sequencing (NGS) data, further confirming a limited sequence divergence in this tobamovirus species. Tomato genotypes Monalbo, Mobaci and Moperou, respectively carrying the susceptible tm-2 allele or the Tm-1 and Tm-2 resistant alleles, were tested for their susceptibility to ToMV SL-1. Although the three tomato genotypes accumulated ToMV SL-1 to similar amounts as judged by semiquantitative DAS-ELISA, they showed variations in the rate of infection and symptomatology. Possible differences in the intra-isolate variability and polymorphism between viral populations propagating in these tomato genotypes were evaluated by analysis of the capsid protein (CP) encoding region. Irrespective of genotype infected, the intra-isolate haplotype structure showed the presence of the same highly dominant CP sequence and the low level of population diversity (0.08-0.19%). Our results suggest that ToMV CP encoding sequence is relatively stable in the viral population during its replication in vivo and provides further demonstration that RNA viruses may show high sequence stability, probably as a result of purifying selection.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.265-269
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• 1983

A comparison was made of a new serological method, thin layer immunoassay (TIA), and an established method, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), in the detection and quantiacation of antibodies in clonorchiasis. Saline extract of Iyophilized Clonorchis sinensis adult worm was used as antigen, and TIA by the method of Elwing et at. (1976) and ELISA by Voller et at. (1974) were performed. Using sera from known clonorchiasis cases,100% of the sera tested were Positive by TIA and 88.35 by ELISA. TIA produced false positive results in 14 out of 36 cases, which were 10 amoebiasis cases, 16 paragonimiasis cases and 10 healthy controls. ELISA. however, produced a small number of false positives, 7 out of 55 cases. There was correlation between Immunoglobulin G level in sera and ELISA value (correlation coefficient, 0.69), whereas no correlation between Immunoglobulin G level and TIA result. The Performance of TIA and ELISA was not correlated in the results using homologous antigen.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.447-452
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• 2018

Prompt diagnosis of malaria cases with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) has been widely adopted as an effective malaria diagnostic tool in many malaria endemic countries, primarily due to their easy operation, fast result output, and straightforward interpretation. However, there has been controversy about the diagnostic accuracy of RDTs. This study was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic performances of the 2 commercially available malaria RDT kits, RapiGEN Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (pLDH/pLDH) and Asan $EasyTest^{TM}$ Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (HRP-2/pLDH) for their abilities to detect Plasmodium species in blood samples collected from Ugandan patients with malaria. To evaluate the diagnostic performances of these 2 RDT kits, 229 blood samples were tested for malaria infection by microscopic examination and a species-specific nested polymerase chain reaction. The detection sensitivities for P. falciparum of Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (pLDH/pLDH) and Asan $EasyTest^{TM}$ Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (HRP-2/pLDH) were 87.83% and 89.57%, respectively. The specificities of the 2 RDTs were 100% for P. falciparum and mixed P. falciparum/P. vivax infections. These results suggest that the 2 RDT kits showed reasonable levels of diagnostic performances for detection of the malaria parasites from Ugandan patients. However, neither kit could effectively detect P. falciparum infections with low parasitaemia (<$500parasites/{\mu}l$).

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.655-666
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• 2013

PURPOSE: The main objective of this study is observing the effects of the functional postural trunk exercise (FPTE) on deep cranio-cervical flexor (CCF) muscle endurance applied on neck pain patients suffering from the acute whiplash-association disorder (WAD). METHODS: The study was tested with 47 patients with neck pain. All patients were equally treated with the ordinary therapy, only experimental group (n=23) was treated with FPTE: assumption of an upright lumbo-pelvic and spinal postural position, adding a neck lengthening manoeuvre in addition. Patients attended physical therapy for 3 times a week, for 4 weeks. Visual analogue scale (VAS) for pain, neck disability index (NDI), range of motion (ROM), were recorded both before and after the intervention. Also muscle activity in the CCF test was employed to analyze the changes between before and after. RESULT: After 4 weeks of training intervention, a remarkable increase in muscle endurance, rotation, extension ROM (p<.05) and decrease in pain and NDI (p<.05) in both groups. Further, the differences between groups were muscle endurance (F=60.350, p<.01), pain, and the left rotation ROM (p<.05). CONCLUSION: From the results, the experimental group had significant the increase in muscle endurance, and the significant decrease in pain. Whilst further research in this category is necessary, these observations suggest that applying exercise in early diagnosis can be of help to treat the neck pain patients suffering from the WAD.