• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.264-271
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate contamination sources of baby leafy vegetables by assessing microbial loads on baby leafy vegetables and agricultural inputs contacted with the vegetables. To estimate microbial loads, fecal indicators (coliform and Escherichia coli) and foodborne pathogens (E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, and Bacillus cereus) were examined. A total of 126 samples including eleven kinds of leafy vegetables, irrigation water, media, and tools were tested, resulting in coliform contamination observed from most of samples. For E. coli, 10.3% (13/126) of the samples were positive including irrigation water, knife, handler, media, tools, and three kinds of leafy vegetables. B. cereus was detected from 38% (48/126) of the samples including media, tools and three kinds of leafy vegetables. No E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., and L. monocytogenes was detected. This result implies that contacting with agricultural inputs could explain microbial load of baby leafy vegetables.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.1125-1125
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• 2001

Micro-scale test methods are producing small-sample size where the conventional physical and chemical tests can not be used (high standard deviation, uncertain sampling conditions, low repeatability). Different small-scale test methods were developed recently for determination of physico-chemical, functional, rheological properties of wheat or wheat dough using miniaturized instruments with sophisticated sample preparation/handling and mechanics (RVA, 2 g mixograph, micro-Z-arm mixer, small-scale noodle maker, micro-baking method etc.). The small-scale methodologies can be used as basic research tools or as technology supported measurements and can be also essential in the early selection for quality traits in breeding programs. The milling as a sample preparation step is essential procedure providing good quality flour or semolina samples from small amount of grain (5-10 g) in a reproducible and reliable way. The aim of present study was to use NIR as quality control tool, and to evaluate the recently developed and manufactured micro-scale lab mill (FQC-2000) produced by Inter-Labor Co. Ltd., Hungary. The milling characteristics of the new instrument were compared to other laboratory mills and the effects of milling action on the chemical composition of fractions were analysed. The fractions were tested with both chemical and near infrared spectroscopic methods. The micro-scale milling resulted significantly different yields, particle size distributions and different fractions from compositional point of view. The near infrared spectra were sensitive enough to distinguish the fractions obtained by different milling procedures. Quantitative NIR calibration equations were developed and tested in order to measure the chemical composition of characteristic milling fractions. Special qualification procedure the PQS (Polar Qualification System) method was used for detecting the differences between fractions obtained by macro and micro-milling procedures. The results and the limitations of PQS method in this application will be discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.251-257
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• 2003

Metabolic engineering has become a new paradigm for the more efficient production of desired bioproducts. Metabolic engineering can be defined as directed modification of cellular metabolism and properties through the introduction, deletion, and modification of metabolic pathways by using recombinant DNA and other molecular biological tools. During the last decade, metabolic flux analysis(MFA) has become an essential tool fur metabolic engineering. By MFA, the intracellular metabolic fluxes can be quantified by the measurement of extracellular metabolite concentrations in combination with the stoichiometry of intracellular reactions and mass balances. The usefulness and functionality of MFA are demonstrated by applying to metabolic pathways in E. coli. First, a large-scale in silico E. coli model is constructed, and then the effects of carbon sources on intracellular flux distributions and succinic acid production were investigated on the basis of the uptake and secretion rates of the relevant metabolites. The results indicated that succinic acid yields increased in order of gluconate, glucose and sorbitol. Acetic acid and lactic acid were produced as major products rather than when gluconate and glucose were used carbon sources. The results indicated that among three carbon sources available, the most reduced substrate is sorbitol which yields efficient succinic acid production.

• Clean Technology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.51-59
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• 1996

Billions of tons of industrial waste are generated annually in industrialized countries. Managing and legally disposing of these wastes costs tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and these costs have been increasing rapidly. The escalation is likely to continue as emission standards become even more stringent around the world. In the face of these rapidly rising costs and rapidly increasing performance standards, traditional end-of-pipe approaches to waste management have become less attractive. The most economical waste management alternatives in many cases have become recycling of the waste or the redesign of chemical processes and products so that wastes are prevented or put to productive use. These strategies of recycling or reducing waste at the source have collectively come to be known as pollution prevention. The engineering challenges associated with pollution prevention are substantial. This presentation will categorize the challenges in three levels. At the most macroscopic level, the flow of materials in our industrial economy, from natural resource extraction to consumer product disposal, can be redesigned. Currently, most of our raw materials are virgin natural resources that are used once, then discarded. Studies in what has come to be called industrial ecology examine the material efficiency of large-scale industrial systems and attempt to improve that efficiency. A second level of engineering challenges is found at the scale of individual industrial facilities, where chemical processes and products can be redesigned so that waste is reduced. Finally, on a molecular level, chemical synthesis pathways, combustion reaction pathways, and other material fabrication procedures can be redesigned to reduce emissions of pollution and unwanted by-products. All of these design activities, shown in Figure 1, have the potential to prevent pollution. All involve the tools of engineering, and in particular, chemical engineering.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.30 no.11
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• pp.2535-2541
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• 2009

Prebiotic isomaltooligosaccharide preparations contain $\alpha$-D-glucooligosaccharides comprising isomaltooligosaccharides (IMOs) and non-prebiotic maltooligosaccharides (MOs). They are both glucose oligosaccharides characterized by their degree of polymerization (DP) value (from 2 to $\sim$10), linkages types and positions (IMOs: $\alpha$-(1$\rightarrow$2, 3, 6 and in a lower proportion internal 1$\rightarrow$4) linkages, MOs: α-(1$\rightarrow$4) linkages). Their structure is the key factor for their prebiotic potential. In order to determine and elucidate the exact structure of unknown IMOs and MOs, unambiguous assignments of $^{13}C$ and $^1H$ chemical shifts of commercial standards, representative of IMOs and MOs diversity, have been determined using optimized standard one and two-dimensional experiments such as $^1H$ NMR, $^{13}C$ NMR, APT and ${^1}H-{^1}H$ COSY, TOCSY, NOESY and <$^1H-{^{13}}C$ heteronuclear HSQC, HSQC-TOCSY, and HMBC. Here we point out the differential effect of substitution by a glucose residue at different positions on chemical shifts of anomeric as well as ring carbons together with the effect of the reducing end configuration for low DP oligosaccharides and diasteroisotopic effect for H-6 protons. From this study, structural $^{13}C$ specific spectral features can be identified as tools for structural analysis of isomaltooligosaccharides.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.9
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• pp.1430-1435
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• 2020

Bacterial cellulose (BC) has outstanding physical and chemical properties, including high crystallinity, moisture retention, and tensile strength. Currently, the major producer of BC is Komagataeibacter xylinus. However, due to limited tools of expression, this host is difficult to engineer metabolically to improve BC productivity. In this study, a regulated expression system for K. xylinus with synthetic ribosome binding site (RBS) was developed and used to engineer a BC biosynthesis pathway. A synthetic RBS library was constructed using green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a reporter, and three synthetic RBSs (R4, R15, and R6) with different strengths were successfully isolated by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). Using synthetic RBS, we optimized the expression of three homologous genes responsible for BC production, pgm, galU, and ndp, and thereby greatly increased it under both static and shaking culture conditions. The final titer of BC under static and shaking conditions was 5.28 and 3.67 g/l, respectively. Our findings demonstrate that reinforced metabolic flux towards BC through quantitative gene expression represents a practical strategy for the improvement of BC productivity.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Crystal Growth Conference
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• 2000.06a
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• pp.195-214
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• 2000

The high-speed steel (shorten as HSS) consists of Fe and several kinds of transition metal carbides. The cutting tools or wear-resistant materials made from HSS experience relatively high thermal shock because a coolant such as water or oil is flowed over the surface of heated HSS. The purpose of this research is to increase the hardness, strength, fracture toughness and thermal shock resistance of HSS. A possible strategy is to incorporate a hard ceramic material with high strength in HSS matrix. This paper describes the processing, microstructure and mechanical properties of the oriented unidirectional mullite fiber/HSS composite. The unidirectional mullite fibers of 10${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ diameter were dispersed by the ultrasonic irradiation of 38 kHz in an ethylenglycol suspension containing HSS powder of 11${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ median size. The dried green composites with 4-68 vol% fibers were hot-pressed for 2h at 100$0^{\circ}C$ in Ar atmosphere under a pressure of 39 MPa. The higher density was achieved in the composite with a lower content of fibers. The oriented unidirectional fibers were well dispersed in the HSS matrix. The average distance between the center of fibers in the cross section was close to the value calculated from the fiber fraction. No reaction occurred at the interfaces between HSS and mullite fibers in the composites. The composite with 13.6 vol% fibers showed 100 MPa of four point flexural strength at room temperature. The thermal expansion of composite with heating was influenced by the orientation of mullite fibers.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 2005

There are some critical drawbacks in the use of biomarkers for a global assessment of the toxicological impacts many chemicals and environmental pollutants have, primarily due to an individual biomarker's specificity for an explicit chemical or toxicant. In other words, the biomarker-based assessment methodology used to analyze toxicological effects lacks a high-throughput capability. Therefore, eco-toxicogenomics, or the study of toxicogenomics with organisms present within a given environmental locale, has recently been introduced with the advent of the so-called "-omics" era, which began with the creation of microarray technologies. Fish are comparable with humans in their toxicological responses and thus data from toxicogenomic studies performed with fish could be applied, with appropriate tools and implementation protocols, to the evaluation of environments where human or animal health is of concern. At present, there have been very active research streams for developing expression sequence tag (EST) databases (DBs) for zebra fish and rainbow trout. Even though few reports involve toxicogenomic studies with fish, a few groups have successfully fabricated and used cDNA microarrays or oligo DNA chips when studying the toxicological impacts of hypoxia or some toxicants with fish. Furthermore, it is strongly believed that this technology can also be implemented with non-model fish. With the standardization of DNA microarray technologies and ample progress in bioinformatics and proteomic technologies, data obtained from DNA microarray technologies offer not only multiple biomarker assays or an analysis of gene expression profiles, but also a means of elucidating gene networking, gene-gene relations, chemical-gene interactions, and chemical-chemical relationships. Accordingly, the ultimate target of eco-toxicogenomics should be to predict and map the pathways of stress propagation within an organism and to analyze stress networking.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.243-248
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• 2014

Silicon-carbon composite was prepared by the magnesiothermic reduction of mesoporous silica and subsequent impregnation with a carbon precursor. This was applied for use as an anode material for high-performance lithium-ion batteries. Well-ordered mesoporous silica(SBA-15) was employed as a starting material for the mesoporous silicon, and sucrose was used as a carbon source. It was found that complete removal of by-products ($Mg_2Si$ and $Mg_2SiO_4$) formed by side reactions of silica and magnesium during the magnesiothermic reduction, was a crucial factor for successful formation of mesoporous silicon. Successful formation of the silicon-carbon composite was well confirmed by appropriate characterization tools (e.g., $N_2$ adsorption-desorption, small-angle X-ray scattering, X-ray diffraction, and thermogravimetric analyses). A lithium-ion battery was fabricated using the prepared silicon-carbon composite as the anode, and lithium foil as the counter-electrode. Electrochemical analysis revealed that the silicon-carbon composite showed better cycling stability than graphite, when used as the anode in the lithium-ion battery. This improvement could be due to the fact that carbon efficiently suppressed the change in volume of the silicon material caused by the charge-discharge cycle. This indicates that silicon-carbon composite, prepared via the magnesiothermic reduction and impregnation methods, could be an efficient anode material for lithium ion batteries.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.15-29
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• 2016

A low cost environmentally benign surface coating binder is highly desirable in the field of material science. In this report, castor oil based hyperbranched polyester/bitumen modified fly ash nanocomposites were fabricated to achieve the desired performance. The hyperbranched polyester resin was synthesized by a three-step one pot condensation reaction using monoglyceride of castor oil based carboxyl terminated pre-polymer and 2,2-bis (hydroxymethyl) propionic acid. Also, the bulk fly ash of paper industry waste was converted to hydrophilic nano fly ash by ultrasonication followed by transforming it to an organonano fly ash by the modification with bitumen. The synthesized polyester resin and its nanocomposites were characterized by different analytical and spectroscopic tools. The nanocomposite obtained in presence of 20 wt% styrene (with respect to polyester) was found to be more homogeneous and stable compared to nanocomposite without styrene. The performance in terms of tensile strength, impact resistance, scratch hardness, chemical resistance and thermal stability was found to be improved significantly after formation of nanocomposite compared to the pristine system after curing with bisphenol-A based epoxy and poly(amido amine). The overall results of transmission electron microscopic (TEM) analysis and performance showed good exfoliation of the nano fly ash in the polyester matrix. Thus the studied nanocomposites would open up a new avenue on development of low cost high performing surface coating materials.