Jo May 3, 2022
The contests came to an end on April 25, 2022.
The first contest, which was held on April 8 to 11, drew 20 000-odd contestants from tens of countries and regions including our country, China and India. More than 130 participants competed in Division 1, over 600 in Division 2, over 4 600 in Division 3 and over 15 500 in Division 4. Division 1 set forth 5 problems, none of which were challenge problems.
A total of 27 contestants won the first place in Division 1 ― 19 from the DPRK, 3 from China, 2 from India, 2 from Japan and 1 from the US.
10 out of the 19 winners of our country are students at Kim Chaek University of Technology.
As much as 70.37% of the world winners are from the DPRK, and 37.037% are from KUT. KUT students add up to 52.63% of the 19 DPRK winners.
In the meantime, a student from KUT took the first place in Division 2.
Several KUT students who were absent from the Codechef March Long Challenge due to the national coding challenge held in the same period took part in this contest, which bestowed on KUT the honour of having many winners.
The second contest went on from 22 to 25. 18 000-odd contestants from tens of countries and regions including our country, China and India took part. Over 70 contestants competed in Division 1, more than 900 in Division 2, over 3 300 in Division 3 and over 14 000 in Division 4.
4 from our country and 1 from Japan made a total of 5 winners in Division 1.
Half the 4 DPRK winners are students from Kim Chaek University of Technology.
Our country and KUT make up 80% and 40% of the world winners, respectively.
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Jo May 2, 2022
Among the national instruments reflective of national emotion and aesthetic sense that have undergone constant development by the Korean nation is a pipe with a long history.
A pipe with which you make a sound by blowing at one end across a hollow rod with several holes on it is one of the widely-used woodwind instruments.
Having been used for their emotional life by our nation from the earliest period, it served as a popular instrument since it is portable and simple in type and it produces an elegant and clear tone.
Since primitive times Korean people have played pipes made of different materials like animal bones, leaves or stems of trees, reeds, etc.
The Bronze Age cultural stratum of the Sopho Port Site in Rason City was unearthed with a bone pipe recognized as dating from the 3rd millennium B.C. It was made of the bone of a bird’s leg and drilled with 10 holes, which is just enough to demonstrate that Korean nation is a wise and talented nation that made instruments for their cultural life in the earliest days in the world, and that a pipe has a time-honoured tradition.
In Ancient Korea, not only soft-toned pipes made of animal bones and bamboos but also others of a pipe kind such as tophy (a roll of a leaf of a peach tree), ka (a simple kind of a single tone with no holes on the side), etc. made of a variety of materials were devised and used as musical and signal instruments.
In the period of Three Kingdoms, Koryo and Feudal Joson Dynasty, various kinds of pipes with different tone colours and ranges were also made to improve the descriptive power of instrumental music and these pipes took charge of main melodies of music.
Besides, pipes were played in every single piece of folk instrumental music and popular with people of all levels of society over a long period in the Middle Ages, and every part of the country has had fine customs of children playing on willow pipes in early spring.
In summary, a pipe is one of the typical national instruments that have been penetrated deep into the life of the Korean people and have made a great contribution to the development of national music while dominating musical performances.
Today under the scrupulous care of the Party and state, which value the traditions of our nation, pipes are on the way of progress forming the main part of national instruments.
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Jo Apr 29, 2022
In general, knowledge on the mechanical properties of a rock mass is a prerequisite for the numerical simulation and the design of the underground structure, opening-up of mineral deposits and mining processes.
Since the early 1990s, many scholars have proposed a variety of methods to determine the strength and deformation parameters of a rock mass using geological strength index (GSI). The standard GSI chart considers qualitatively the surface condition and blockness of a rock mass, and it is used to estimate values between 0 and 100 representing the overall geotechnical quality of the rock mass. The best outcomes can be achieved only by the collaboration between experienced engineering geologists and geotechnical engineers.
To quantitatively determine the GSI, you have to detect the joints in two-dimensional (2D) photographs of a rock mass surface using image processing technology, then determine the fractal dimension, and finally predict the GSI using artificial neural network (ANN).
The detailed steps for joint detection on the rock mass surface are as follows.
Step 1: Converting the color image of a rock mass into a black and white one
Step 2: Smoothing and sharpening
Step 3: Binary encoding
Step 4: Noise removal
Step 5: Detection of the joints
The fractal dimension of a 2D rock mass surface can be calculated with previous research findings.
A 3-layer BP ANN is used for predicting the GSI of the surface of a jointed rock mass.
On the basis of the GSI chart, an ANN model is established, in which the input neurons are the fractal dimension and surface condition index (i.e. roughness and weathering condition), and the output neuron is a GSI value. And the number of neurons of a hidden layer is first set to three and it is finally determined via learning procedure to establish the most effective ANN structure.
In this way, the GSI of a jointed rock mass can be determined quantitatively and objectively by the interface, coded by using built-in tools of MATLAB 7.0, such as image processing, fractal analysis and ANN.
The details of this can be found in the essay, “Determination of geological strength index of a jointed rock mass based on image processing” by Hong Kun Ui, dean of the Faculty of Mining Engineering, presented to the SCI Journal “Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering”.
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Jo Apr 26, 2022
Materials selection involves a multiattribute decision making whereby materials engineers choose optimal materials among more than two alternatives on the basis of more than two attributes.
Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is a well-known multi attribute decision making (MADM) method and it has been widely used in materials selection.
It is based on the principle that the best alternative must have the shortest distance from the positive ideal solution (PIS) and the farthest distance from the negative ideal solution (NIS).
However, the TOPSIS has a non-negligible drawback: rank reversal. It refers to the change in the ranks of the alternatives when one alternative is removed from or added to the list of alternatives.
Although many works have been conducted, the MADM methods such as TOPSIS still suffer from rank reversal, and it is necessary to give further study to perfectly overcome it.
According to the traditional TOPSIS, when the composition of the alternatives is changed, the normalized decision-matrix is changed. The PIS and the NIS are determined from the maximum or minimum value among the attribute values of the present alternatives. When the alternative with maximum or minimum value is removed or added, the PIS and the NIS are changed. Hence, the distances from the alternatives to the PIS and the NIS are changed, and the relative closeness values are also changed, and therefore, rank reversal may be generated.
To overcome the rank reversal, the normalization method and the determination method of the PIS and the NIS should be irrelevant to the composition of alternatives. Therefore, there is a need to improve the normalization method and the determination method of the PIS and NIS.
The normalization of decision-matrix by the linear max-min normalization method can solve this problem.
The application of the improved TOPSIS without rank reversal to select the best absorbent layer material for thin film solar cells (TFSCs) showed that it could fully overcome rank reversal and that it could be applied to many real materials selection problems in practice.
You can find more information about this in “Materials selection method using improved TOPSIS without rank reversal based on linear max-min normalization with absolute maximum and minimum values” presented by Yang Won Chol, a researcher at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology, to the SCI Journal “Materials Research Express”.
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Jo Apr 23, 2022
A research team led by Hong Yong Jun, a researcher at the Institute of Electric Engineering, has developed and introduced a single-phase grid connected VSI(Voltage Sourced Inverter). It can not only transfer active power to the national power grid by converting the DC power generated by PV(Photovoltaic) modules into AC active power and synchronizing it with the voltage and frequency of the grid, but also control reactive power independently.
They realized the control of reactive power in the grid-connected VSI by applying the IRP (instantaneous reactive power) theory, the base of the FACTS(flexible AC transmission system). For this control, they had to ensure the exact tracking of the frequency of the grid voltage by introducing the fictitious phase by the SOGI(second-order generalized integrator) and FLL(frequency locked loop).
Then, they took control of grid injected current by a PR(proportional resonant) regulator with proper parameters, and added anti-islanding detection by active frequency drift.
The THD(total harmonic distortion) of grid-injected current is 3.6% and the time required for anti-islanding detection is less than 0.1s.
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Jo Apr 21, 2022
A research group led by Jang Ki Ho, a section head at the Faculty of Heat Engineering, has developed a 10kV electric boiler designed to use the electricity from a power system directly, and they are now working hard to make further achievements in their research.
Boilers are largely divided into two types, i.e. a low voltage electric boiler (LVEB) and a high voltage electric boiler (HVEB).
In a LVEB, heat is generated by Joule heating effect in an electrical resistor as an electrical heating element below 380V and is transferred to fluids. Usually, the electrical heating element used in a LVEB produces several kilowatts of thermal power.
However, hundreds or thousands of kilowatts are needed to heat various kinds of liquid for swimming pools, ponds used for aquaculture, sensitive products used in chemical and agro alimentary processes and buildings. The heat power output of boilers used for controlling the load in a wind power station or a nuclear power station is the same. Even if several heating elements below 380V can be used as one, it remains uneconomic, because it needs a transformer that maintains the supply system voltage at 380V, and it also causes a considerable energy loss.
On the contrary, an HVEB(10kV) offers several advantages: it produces thousands of kilowatts of high electro-thermal power, it needs comparatively low investment, it is easy to make, and it can be operated without a transformer from the direct supply from an electric power system.
The problem is the safety of a high-voltage electric boiler. It is difficult to predict the amount of thermal power in the step of its design because it depends on the temperature, velocity and specific resistance of the fluid that are also changed in relation to each other. To solve these problems, they proposed a 10kV electric boiler equipped with a ceramic insulation tube inside and determined its geometrical sizes and operation parameters through a numerical analysis of coupled thermal, hydro mechanical and electrical fields in the water heating process. On the basis of this, they completed it through tests and practices.
The investment of an 10㎸ electric boiler is under ½, and the installation area under ¼, compared to a LVEB of the same capacity. And there is no consumed power due to the operation of a transformer.
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