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Sea areas where need special attention for the protection of the marine environment from various pollutants are widely distributed throughout the European Regions. In the meantime, the EU has adopted various directives to implement International Maritime Organization (IMO) instruments effectively and uniformly over foreign vessels in European waters so as to ensure ships’ safety and prevent vessel-source pollution. These EU regulatory regimes are conducive to maximizing the legal effect for the implementation of IMO instruments. In addition, the EU has exerted a great influence on the decision-making process of the IMO in adopting regulatory instruments for the prevention of vessel-source marine pollution due to the region’s strong commercial leverage in the global shipping industry. The study of the EU regulatory instruments over the prevention of vessel-source marine pollution will give the states that needs regional cooperative regimes a good example such as how they can establish regional cooperation to effectively prevent vessel-source pollution in sharing sea areas.

Humans have constructed the offshore installations to acquire oil and gas resources in oceans around the world. However, their life cycles have 30 years and approximately 30% of the offshore installations still remains a waste after their life cycles are over. Developed countries have long discussed to deal with decommission installations issues whether these decommissioned installations may be scrapped on shore or converted to another use. For instance, the United States and European countries have dismantled drilling installations through the ‘rig to reefs’ policy. The global market for offshore decommissioning is expected to increase over approximately 5% of compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2025. Of these, the Chinese offshore decommissioning market, which is one of the fastest growing offshore installation decommissioning industries in the world, is predicted to grow to an estimated 1.6 billion dollars by 2027. Against these backgrounds, this research aims to explore in-depth the international legal framework that attempts to regulate the decommissioning of offshore installations and its problems, along with Chinese laws and regulations.

The Serious Accidents Punishment Act (SAPA) of South Korea mandates that chief executives secure operational safety and health to prevent industrial and civil disasters. The SAPA imposes civil and criminal responsibilities on chief executive officers, including business owners, for fatal accidents due to safety and health measures violations. We examine the SAPA’s challenges to the shipping industry and the measures taken by ship owners and ship management companies to address them. In the modern shipping industry, ships and crew often have different nationalities; hence, it may be difficult to determine which law applies or where liability lies. Business activities are mostly overseas. Ship management is performed by third parties, and the introduction of autonomous systems is leading to crew reductions and other changes; these factors create uncertainty about the SAPA’s applicability. Therefore, legal requirements and measures must be established to ensure that South Korean shipping companies do not take on excessive responsibilities internationally while still protecting workers and others. This study suggests measures to ensure safety and stability in the South Korean shipping industry following the SAPA through a horizontal comparative analysis with the UK’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, which served as a model for the SAPA.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the thermal deformations that degrade the quality of assembled products through the stamping process. Special attention was paid to the ambient temperature change in the manufacturing process of automotive body part. First, we found that ambient temperature, which is the external condition and difficult to control, can be varied significantly due to seasonal change thus it can be an important factor for the deviation from thermal deformation. Important controlling factors for thermal deformation were identified and their effects on final dimensional changes were carefully analyzed by the design of experiments (DOE) procedure. Based on DOE result, we found that the influence of each controlling factor was non-uniform across the target surface. To understand the local variation clearly, vectorized plot of the thermal deformation was introduced for visualization. Locations vulnerable to thermal deformation have been identified and it was confirmed that ambient temperature change has significant effect especially on those weak spots. Finally, we tried to reduce the deviation from thermal deformation by controlling the initial temperature of the mold and the blank. We found that controlling the initial blank temperature was more effective.

In this study, a thermo-mechanical finite element model was developed to investigate the thermal deformation during a stamping process of an automotive body part. The stamping process was decomposed into the 6 sub-steps to reflect the physical boundary conditions found in an actual stamping equipment. The temperature distributions of the actual stamping process were measured by two thermography cameras. The developed numerical procedure was then validated against the measured temperature distributions. Due to the limited accessibility to the actual equipment and high reflectivity of the involved material, the reflectivity index for the thermal imaging device (i.e., emissivity) was experimentally determined. A sample specimen made of the same material with the die material was built. The thermocouples were placed underneath the specimen surface through holes and used to directly measure the surface temperature distribution. The emissivity for the sample specimen was then determined by comparing the temperature measured by the thermocouples to the temperature measured by the thermographic camera. When the lubrication oils were spread on the sample specimen, the emissivity was set to a value 0.7. The thermal images were corrected based on the emissivity experimentally obtained and used to validate the finite element model simulation for the stamping process. With the validated finite element model, the investigation on the variation in the temperature and stress during each sub-step was performed. With the zero thermal expansion rate, the pure thermal effect on the temperature distribution was simulated. The pure thermal deformation in the Blank (i.e., target surface) was similar to the spring back distance after the blank was released from the molds. During the stamping process, the heat generation was obtained due to either friction between surfaces and plastic deformation of the target surface. We found that the plastic deformation played a critical role in the final temperature rise.

Limited knowledge is available on the regeneration of Korean fir ( Abies koreana Wilson), an endemic plant species, growing on the upper part of Mt. Hallasan, a volcanic mountain, located in the central part of Jeju Island, Korea. A forest stand with the size of 1 ha dominated by Korean fir trees was established and all the trees with DBH 2 cm or larger were mapped and surveyed. Initial analysis indicated that the numbers of saplings with their DBHs between 2 cm and 10 cm were very small and that there was a big gap in the frequency of the number of saplings regenerated from the forest stand. It seems clear that the regeneration of the Korean fir trees was disturbed for longer than the last two decades, potentially by the browsing of the seedlings by ungulate including Siberian roe deer and by the physical hindrance of the dwarf bamboo to the development of the saplings of the Korean fir. Urgent measures and extensive studies are needed to promote the natural regeneration of the tree species on the dynamics of the forest regeneration and the mechanism of forest development of the forests on the Mt. Hallasan, Jeju Island, Korea.

In 2013, the epidemics of pine wilt disease caused by the pine wood nematodes (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus) resulted in damages to the forests of black pine (Pinus thunbergii Parl.) trees in Jeju Island, Korea. Among the affected trees, an old black pine tree at Cave Temple on Mt. Sanbangsan was included and died due to the prevalence of pine wilt disease. The tree was on Mt. Sanbangsan, which was designated as a National Scenic Place with the Number 77 and was believed to be more than 400 years old in age. By examining the disc of the tree stem obtained from the height of 2 m, we counted the tree rings from 4 different directions and cross-dated the readings by comparing the records of drought simulated from the BROOK Model. Our analysis indicates that the tree seems to have grown since late 1860s. Contrary to the belief of the general public, we can conclude that the age of the tree was estimated to be at maximum 150 years, which means that it was not the same old tree as was shown in the painting of the Tam-Ra-Sun-Ryeok-Do (an old painting book for the Inspection Tour of Jeju Island) published in 1702. Discussion was extended to the life history of the tree in growth and leaning and the measures to protect the tree species from the damages of the pine wilt disease caused by pine wood nematodes.

Natural regeneration of seedlings as well as saplings of Korean fir has been significantly impacted by the browsing from the early stages of their development, potentially, by roe deer for the last two to three decades at the study site since late 1980s. This study was carried out to investigate current status of the disturbance in the seedling development of Korean fir (Abies koreana) on Mt. Hallasan, Jeju Island, Korea. Field survey was carried out during June and August in 2016 to measure the characteristics of study site and understory vegetation by applying systematic sampling to 125 plots of 5 m × 5 m quadrat located on eastern slope of the mountain. Correlation and regression analyses were applied to the variables quantified from the data sets using the SAS software. No saplings with their diameters at breast heights smaller than 5.0 cm were found at the study site indicating the serious disturbance in the natural regeneration of Korean fir at the study site. No seedlings with their heights taller than 36.0 cm were found at the study site indicating even more serious disturbance during earlier stage of the natural regeneration of Korean fir at the study site. A total of 616 individuals of the seedlings of Korean fir were found at 54 out of 125 sampling plots. One hundred thirty-eight seedlings (22.4%) out of 616 individual seedlings have the vestiges for being grazed, potentially, by roe deer. Due considerations should be given to the effects of browsing of the seedlings by roe deer to promote the natural regeneration of Korean fir, ultimately to restore Korean fir. It is needed for the managers of the forest to install fences around the forest area. Exclosure experiments as well as enclosure experiments of different densities of browsing should be carried out. In addition, treatment with different densities of Jeju dwarf bamboo should also be included in the experiment on Mt. Hallasan National Park, Jeju Island, Korea.

Auto exposure (AE) in image signal processor (ISP) controls brightness of input image to the proper brightness when it is too dark or bright. But conventional AEs often fail to get proper brightness since AE controls only average brightness of image. Especially in applications that require object recognition, it cannot be solved the problem by AE of ISP. In this paper proposes Histogram Equalization (HE) processes that is the alternative of AE. It also proposes proper method to realize hardware and compensate HE problems conventional by using simple calculation.

This experiment created a mobile 2D/3D switchable laser projection system which uses a 2D MEMS scanner. This system can display a two-dimensional (2D) or a three-dimensional (3D) image in only one optical engine. In particular, we propose the use of a mobile Color Separation 3D laser projection system that uses different wavelengths of laser diodes. This projection system can display the left and right stereoscopic images simultaneously in one optical engine without using other components such as an alternate color wheel. In this study, the 0.35% and 0.53% crosstalk for left and right has been achieved by separating the wavelengths using filter glasses in a laser projection system consisting of a 2D MEMS scanner and two sets of Red, Green and Blue laser diodes.

The market sizes of each IoT application are relatively smaller than the PC and smartphone, although the development and production cost of the LSIs are becoming high. The LSI designers should find the ways to get funding of their development. One way is to get funding from providing system solution or service applications with expanding business models from supplying devices, as well as reducing the LSI costs and making the production volume larger. The pressure to expand the device supplying model depends on each application market, so such status of each application is to be discussed and also whether the expansion of the model is really necessary and practical or not.

Histogram equalization is often used in image enhancement, but it can be also used in auto exposure. However, conventional histogram equalization does not work well when many pixels are concentrated in a narrow luminance range.This paper proposes an auto exposure method based on 2-way histogram equalization. Two cumulative distribution functions are used, where one is from dark to bright and the other is from bright to dark. In this paper, the proposed auto exposure method is also designed and implemented for image signal processors with full-HD images., {"references":["","Y. Kim, \"Contrast Enhancement Using Brightness Preserving Bi-Histogram Equalization,\"IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 1-8, Feb. 1997","Y. Wan, Q. Chen, and B.M. Zhang, area dualistic sub-image histogram equalization method Transactions on Consumer Electronics 1999.","S. D. Chen and A. R.Ramli, Mean-Separate Histogram Equalization for Scalable Brightness Preservation,\"IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics 4, pp. 1301-1309, Dec. 2003","T. Arici, S. Dikbas, and Y. Altunbasak, Framework and Its Application for Image Contrast Enhan Transactions on Image Processing 2009."]}

A new simulation methodology capable of estimating the effects of powdground noise due to non-ideal interconnect design on high-speed device performance and system signal integrity was developed. The simulation technique combines the transistor-level SPICE model of on-chip U0 huf€ers and the S-parameter model of packages having the non-ideal powedground design. In this paper, the simulation technique was applied to investigate the effects of package split-ground on the input-level of a Rambus DRAM. The simulation results agreed well with the measurement results, demonstrating the usefulness of the method for the evaluation of interconnects design on device performance. Also, the effects of power/ground network design were analyzed in detail to establish a design guidelie for high-speed DRAM packages.

This paper deals with power minimization problem for data-dominated applications based on a novel concept called partially guarded computation. We divide a functional unit into two parts: MSP (Most Significant Part) and LSP (Least Significant Part) and allow the functional unit to perform only the LSP computation if the range of output data can be covered by LSP. We dynamically disable MSP computation to remove unnecessary transitions thereby reducing power consumption. We also propose a systematic approach for determining optimal location of the boundary between the two parts during high-level synthesis. Experimental results show about 10/spl sim/44% power reduction with about 30/spl sim/36% area overhead and less than 3% delay overhead in functional units.

Dismembered pyeloplasty is a well accepted corrective surgical procedure for symptomatic ureteropelvic junction obstruction. A recognized complication of dismembered pyeloplasty is the development of a stricture at the anastomosis, which is mostly due to scarring. However, obstruction is rarely caused by the development of an intrinsic tumor at this site. We report a case of primary transitional cell carcinoma at the anastomotic site 12 years aRer elective pyeloplasty.