• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-12
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• 2008

This study explores several donor location strategies and discusses experiment results, which contributes to the saving of time and effort required in designing data fusion processes. In particular, three concepts are introduced. The Mahalanobis distance is applied to locate the nearest neighbors more effectively; which incorporates the covariance structure of attributes. The ideal point helps reduce the dimensionality problem that arises in conjoint-type experiments. The correspondence analysis is used to derive the coordinates from non-metric attributes. The Monte Carlo simulation results show that the proposed donor location strategies provide better fusion performance, compared to the currently-in-use methods.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.401-410
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• 1996

The microwave fixator has recently been introduced in morphological research. The present study was carried out to investigate the ultrastructural effects of microwave fixation of rat brain. kidney, liver and skeletal muscle tissues. The results are as follows: In the case of microwave fixed cerebrum. the cytoplasmic processes of neurons and the various membranous organelles such as nuclear envelope, mitochondria, rough endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus were well preserved, The myelin sheath wrapping neuronal axon was prominent. Microwave fixed hepatocytes showed the microvilli on the free surface of bile canaliculus, the evident nucleolar components, and typical organelles. In nephron, ultrastructures of glomerulus and Bowman's capsule were preserved, and also tubular wall were structurally observed. Among the skeletal muscle cells, plentiful collagen fibers were appeared, myofibrils and mitochondria were typically observed. In conclusion, the microwave fixation procedures result in an good preservation of the tissues and would be time- and reagent-saving.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.21-28
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• 2001

It is a time since sustainable architecture become a main issue of design concept in 21C. However, it is necessary to develope the tool estimating energy loads and uses in our architectural conditions for energy saving design. This study aims to develope the E-Load program to predict heat and cooling loads of houses. The program is developed by modified bin methods derived from ASHRAE TC 4.7. It consists of 4 divisions such as files, data inputs, energy load estimations and output options. The main processes of energy load estimations are based on ASHRAE fundamentals. The developed E-Load program is a easy and valid tool to predict heat and cooling loads of buildings.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.129-141
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• 2002

This paper deals with the collaborative procurement process in a two-echelon supply chain that a manufacturing company and a contractor are connected through the information system. The real time information about inventory and production processing becomes available through this information system. We raise two issues related to the collaborative procurement process. First, we propose a VMI(Vendor-Managed Inventory) type of the procurement policy which focuses on the cost minimization for the total supply chain rather than individual companies. Second, based on the simulation study, we demonstrate that a collaborative procurement process is more cost-effective over classical procurement processes such as (Q, r). The result obtained in this paper can be applied to the quantitative evaluation of the cost saving effect when companies build the information sharing based, collaborative procurement system.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.245-250
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• 2007

Recently, to avoid global warming, reduction of $CO_2$ generation has been demanded. Each car manufacture takes positive actions for improvement in fuel consumption by various kinds of countermeasures, e.g. improving engine efficiency, using alternative fuels, lightening the car body. Regarding lightening of the car body, aluminum alloys and high tensile strength steels has been gradually adopted as lightweight materials. However, such materials are normally not easy to be treated with zinc phosphate system. Focusing the pre-treatment processes, low temperature phosphate system could be demanded for energy saving. This time, new surface conditioning process for lightweight materials and low temperature phosphate system shall be discussed.

• Medical Lasers
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2021

Intravital microscopy is a high-resolution imaging technique based on laser-scanning two-photon and confocal microscopy, which allows dynamic 3D cellular-level imaging of various biological processes in a living animal in vivo. This unique capability allows biomedical researchers to directly verify a hypothesis in a natural in vivo microenvironment at the cellular level in a physiological setting. During the last decade, intravital microscopy has become an indispensable technique in several fields of biomedical sciences such as molecular and cell biology, immunology, neuroscience, developmental, and tumor biology. The most distinct advantage of intravital microscopy is its capability to provide a longitudinal view of disease progression at the cellular-level with repeated intravital imaging of a single animal over time by saving the images after each session.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.79-88
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• 2023

As the number of deteriorated buildings increases, the importance of safety diagnosis, maintenance, and the repair of buildings also increases. Traditionally, building condition assessments are performed by one person or one company and various inspections are needed. This entails a subjective judgment by the inspector, resulting in different assessment results, poor objectivity and a lack of reliability. Therefore, this study proposed a method to bring about accurate grading results of building conditions. The limitations of visual inspection and condition assessment processes previously conducted were identified by reviewing existing studies. Building defect data was collected using the reverse-engineered three-dimensional (3D) model. The accuracy of the results was verified by comparing them with the actual evaluation results. The results show a 50% time-saving to the same area with an accuracy of approximately 90%. Consequently, defect data with high objectivity and reliability were acquired by measuring the length, area, and width. In addition, the proposed method can improve the efficiency of the building diagnosis process.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.330-341
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• 2017

Tropical forests play a key role for functioning of the planet and maintenance of life. These forests support more than half of the world's species, serve as regulators of global and regional climate, act as carbon sinks and provide valuable ecosystem services. Forest floor biomass and litterfall dynamics was measured in different sites influenced by fire in a seasonally dry tropical forest of Bhoramdeo wildlife sanctuary of Chhattisgarh, India. The forest floor biomass was collected randomly placed quadrats while the litterfall measured by placing stone-block lined denuded quadrat technique. The seasonal mean total forest floor biomass across the fire regimes varied from $2.00-3.65t\;ha^{-1}$. The total litterfall of the study sites varied from $4.75-7.56t\;ha^{-1}\;yr^{-1}$. Annual turnover of litter varied from 70-74% and the turnover time between 1.35-1.43 years. Monthly pattern of forest floor biomass indicated that partially decayed litter, wood litter and total forest floor were differed significantly. The seasonal variation showed that leaf fall differed significantly in winter season only among the fire regimes while the wood litter was found non significant in all the season. This study shows that significant variation among the site due to the forest fire. Decomposition is one of the ecological processes critical to the functioning of forest ecosystems. The decomposing wood serves as a saving account of nutrients and organic materials in the forest floor. Across the site, high fire zone was facing much of the deleterious effects on forest floor biomass and litter production. Control on such type of wildfire and anthropogenic ignition could allow the natural recovery processes to enhance biological diversity. Chronic disturbances do not provide time for ecosystem recovery; it needs to be reduced for ecosystem health and maintaining of the high floral and faunal biodiversity.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2015

Microwave assisted biodiesel production from crude Pongamia pinnata oil using homogeneous base catalyst (KOH) was unsuccessful because of considerable soap formation. Therefore, a two step process of biodiesel production from high free fatty acid (FFA) oil was investigated. In first step, crude P. pinnata oil was acid catalyzed using $H_2SO_4$ and acid value of oil was reduced to less than 4 mg KOH/g. Effect of sulfuric acid concentration, alcohol-oil molar ratio and microwave irradiation time on acid value of oil was studied. Result suggested that 1.5% $H_2SO_4$ (w/w), 6:1 methanol oil molar ratio and 3 min microwave irradiation time was sufficient to reduce the acid value of oil from 12 and 22 mg KOH/g to 2.9 and 3.9 mg/KOH/g, respectively. Oil obtained after pretreatment was subsequently used for microwave assisted alkali catalyzed transesterification. A higher biodiesel yield (99.0%) was achieved by adopting two step processes. Microwave energy efficiency during alkali catalyzed transesterification was also investigated. The results suggested a significant energy saving because of reduced reaction time under microwave heating.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.313-323
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• 2024

Deterioration of buildings is one of the biggest problems in modern society, and the importance of a safety diagnosis for old buildings is increasing. Therefore, most countries have legal maintenance and safety diagnosis regulations. However, the reliability of the existing safety diagnostic processes is reduced because they involve subjective judgments in the data collection. In addition, unstructured tasks increase rework rates, which are time-consuming and not cost-effective. Therefore, This paper proposed the method that can calculate the safety grade of deterioration automatically. For this, a DNN structure is generated by using existing precision inspection data and precision safety diagnostic data, and an objective building safety grade is calculated by applying status evaluation data obtained with a UAV, a laser scanner, and reverse engineering 3D models. This automated process is applied to 20 old buildings, taking about 40% less time than needed for a safety diagnosis from the existing manual operation based on the same building area. Subsequently, this study compares the resulting value for the safety grade with the already existing value to verify the accuracy of the grade calculation process, constructing the DNN with high accuracy at about 90%. This is expected to improve the reliability of aging buildings in the future, saving money and time compared to existing technologies, improving economic efficiency.