• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.958-963
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• 2008

A series of experiments were conducted to assess the effectiveness of rhizobacteria containing 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase for growth promotion of peas under drought conditions. Ten rhizobacteria isolated from the rhizosphere of different crops (peas, wheat, and maize) were screened for their growth promoting ability in peas under axenic condition. Three rhizobacterial isolates, Pseudomonas fluorescens biotype G (ACC-5), P. fluorescens (ACC-14), and P. putida biotype A (Q-7), were selected for pot trial on the basis of their source, ACC deaminase activity, root colonization, and growth promoting activity under axenic conditions. Inoculated and uninoculated (control) seeds of pea cultivar 2000 were sown in pots (4 seeds/pot) at different soil moisture levels (25, 50, 75, and 100% of field capacity). Results revealed that decreasing the soil moisture levels from 100 to 25% of field capacity significantly decreased the growth of peas. However, inoculation of peas with rhizobacteria containing ACC deaminase significantly decreased the "drought stress imposed effects" on growth of peas, although with variable efficacy at different moisture levels. At the lowest soil moisture level (25% field capacity), rhizobacterial isolate Pseudomonas fluorescens biotype G (ACC-5) was found to be more promising compared with the other isolates, as it caused maximum increases in fresh weight, dry weight, root length, shoot length, number of leaves per plant, and water use efficiency on fresh and dry weight basis (45, 150, 92, 45, 140, 46, and 147%, respectively) compared with respective uninoculated controls. It is highly likely that rhizobacteria containing ACC deaminase might have decreased the drought-stress induced ethylene in inoculated plants, which resulted in better growth of plants even at low moisture levels. Therefore, inoculation with rhizobacteria containing ACC deaminase could be helpful in eliminating the inhibitory effects of drought stress on the growth of peas.

• Archives of design research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.441-448
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• 2004

Mobile devices such as mobile phones or PDAs are considered as main interlace tools in ubiquitous computing environment. For searching information in mobile device, it should be possible for user to input some text as well as to control cursor for navigation. So, we should find efficient interlace method for text input in limited dimension of mobile devices. This study intends to suggest a new approach to mobile interaction using camera based virtual keyboard for text input in mobile devices. We developed a camera based virtual keyboard prototype using a PC camera and a small size LCD display. User can move the prototype in the air to control the cursor over keyboard layout in screen and input text by pressing a button. The new interaction method in this study is evaluated as competitive compared to mobile phone keypad in left input efficiency. And the new method can be operated by one hand and make it possible to design smaller device by eliminating keyboard part. The new interaction method can be applied to text input method for mobile devices requiring especially small dimension. And this method can be modified to selection and navigation method for wireless internet contents on small screen devices.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.229-239
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• 2009

To solve user authentication problem, many remote user authentication schemes using password and smart card at the same time have been proposed. Due to the increasing of interest in personal privacy, there were some recent researches to provide user anonymity. In 2004, Das et al. firstly proposed an authentication scheme that guarantees user anonymity using a dynamic ID. In 2005, Chien et al. pointed out that Das et al.'s scheme has a vulnerability for guaranteing user anonymity and proposed an improved scheme. However their authentication scheme was found some weaknesses about insider attack, DoS attack, and restricted replay attack. In this paper, we propose an enhanced scheme which can remove vulnerabilities of Chien et al.'s scheme. The proposed authentication protocol prevented insider attack by using user's Nonce value and removed the restricted replay attack by replacing time stamp with random number. Furthermore, we improved computational efficiency by eliminating the exponentiation operation.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.67-76
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• 2017

In order to efficiently recycle waste industrial nickel-cadmium batteries, anodic and cathodic materials were crushed by a cut mill and classified by sieves. We used wet magnetic separation method for eliminating iron components from the crushed powders. In addition, the acid leaching test for the obtained anode and cathode powders was carried out under various conditions by means of the wet process. At the optimum leaching conditions with 2.0 M $H_2SO_4$ at $90^{\circ}C$, 15 wt $H_2O_2$ and L/S=20 for 3 hours, the leaching efficiency of nickel and cadmium was 99%, respectively.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.185-195
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• 2015

During hospital peak times of outpatients, an effective mechanism that informs the newly receipted patient information to corresponding medical departments is lacking in current hospital reception systems. Since every department repeatedly searches entire patient reception database in sequential manner to acquire its reception information, this is a significant performance degradation factor in hospital information system. To improve hospital reception system efficiency, we developed two web socket based systems, a primary key transmitting batch system and a reception information transmitting real time system. The former reduced database access time compared to sequential search system as well as kept search time low regardless of receipted patient number. The latter effectively reduced waiting list updating time in request/response patient reception system by eliminating database access.

• The Journal of Korean Obstetrics and Gynecology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.1-17
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• 2008

Purpose: Scutellaria baicalensis is a herb which has effect of eliminating heat, drying dampness, purging away fire, detoxicating. Clinically, has been used to remove fever and control of inflammation. We have studied in series to investigate the effective traditional oriental medicines of treatment for endometriosis. In this study, the effects of Scutellaria baicalensis administrated orally or rectally on surgically induced endometriosis in rat were investigated. Methods: The endometrial tissues of rats were autografted to their small intestine. Rats with surgically induced endometriosis were administered with Scutellaria baicalensis extracts for 40 days orally or rectally. We observed the tissue size of ectopic uterine implants at the mesenteric with the naked eye and examined the concentration of estradiol, progesterone, $TNF-{\alpha}$ and IL-2, IL-4, IL-6 and IL-10 in serum. Also, we inquired which was more effective between oral administration groups and rectal administration groups. Results: The size of ectopic uterine implants of orally or rectally treated groups was much smaller than those of control groups. The concentrations of estradiol, progesterone, $TNF-{\alpha}$, IL-2 and IL-6 were significantly decreased in oral administration experimental group compared with the control group. The concentrations of progesteron, $TNF-{\alpha}$, IL-2 and IL-6 were significantly decreased in rectal administration experimental group compared with the control group. The efficiency of oral administration group was better than that of rectal administration group at the serum concentration of estradiol and IL-4. Conclusion: Our data suggest that Scutellaria baicalensis inhibit the inflammation induced from ectopic uterine implants at the mesenteric wall and inhibit the growth of ectopic uterine implants. Judging from the above results, it can be suggested that Scutellaria. baicalensis should be a useful agent for inhibiting the inflammation induced from ectopic uterine implants and the proliferation of endometriosis. Maybe, oral administration of Scutellaria baicalensis is more effective than rectal administration.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.175-182
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• 2022

In many engineering problems, the dynamic substructuring can be useful to analyze complex structures which made with many substructures, such as aircrafts and automotive vehicles. It was originally intended as a method to simplify the engineering problem. The powerful advantage to this is that computational efficiency dramatically increases with eliminating unnecessary degrees-of-freedom of the system and the system targets are concurrently satisfied. Craig-Bampton method has been widely used for the linear system reduction. Recently, multi-level optimization (such as target cascading), which propagates the system-level targets to the subsystem-level targets, has been widely utilized. To this concept, the genetic algorithm which one of the global optimization technique has been utilized to the substructure optimization. The number of internal modes for each substructure can be obtained by the genetic algorithm. Simultaneously, the reduced system meets the top-level targets. In this paper, various numerical examples are tested to verify this concept.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.167-184
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• 2023

In this study, a new recentering friction device (RFD) to retrofit steel moment frame structures is introduced. The device provides both self-centering and energy dissipation capabilities for the retrofitted structure. A hybrid performance-based seismic design procedure considering multiple limit states is proposed for designing the device and the retrofitted structure. The design of the RFD is achieved by modifying the conventional performance-based seismic design (PBSD) procedure using computational intelligence techniques, namely, genetic algorithm (GA) and artificial neural network (ANN). Numerous nonlinear time-history response analyses (NLTHAs) are conducted on multi-degree of freedom (MDOF) and single-degree of freedom (SDOF) systems to train and validate the ANN to achieve high prediction accuracy. The proposed procedure and the new RFD are assessed using 2D and 3D models globally and locally. Globally, the effectiveness of the proposed device is assessed by conducting NLTHAs to check the maximum inter-story drift ratio (MIDR). Seismic fragilities of the retrofitted models are investigated by constructing fragility curves of the models for different limit states. After that, seismic life cycle cost (LCC) is estimated for the models with and without the retrofit. Locally, the stress concentration at the contact point of the RFD and the existing steel frame is checked being within acceptable limits using finite element modeling (FEM). The RFD showed its effectiveness in minimizing MIDR and eliminating residual drift for low to mid-rise steel frames models tested. GA and ANN proved to be crucial integrated parts in the modified PBSD to achieve the required seismic performance at different limit states with reasonable computational cost. ANN showed a very high prediction accuracy for transformation between MDOF and SDOF systems. Also, the proposed retrofit showed its efficiency in enhancing the seismic fragility and reducing the LCC significantly compared to the un-retrofitted models.

• International Journal of Stem Cells
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.438-447
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• 2023

Recently, ex-vivo gene therapy has emerged as a promising approach to enhance the therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) by introducing functional genes in vitro. Here, we explored the need of using selection markers to increase the gene delivery efficiency and evaluated the potential risks associated with their use in the manufacturing process. We used MSCs/CD that carry the cytosine deaminase gene (CD) as a therapeutic gene and a puromycin resistance gene (PuroR) as a selection marker. We evaluated the correlation between the therapeutic efficacy and the purity of therapeutic MSCs/CD by examining their anti-cancer effect on co-cultured U87/GFP cells. To simulate in vivo horizontal transfer of the PuroR gene in vivo, we generated a puromycin-resistant E. coli (E. coli/PuroR) by introducing the PuroR gene and assessed its responsiveness to various antibiotics. We found that the anti-cancer effect of MSCs/CD was directly proportional to their purity, suggesting the crucial role of the PuroR gene in eliminating impure unmodified MSCs and enhancing the purity of MSCs/CD during the manufacturing process. Additionally, we found that clinically available antibiotics were effective in inhibiting the growth of hypothetical microorganism, E. coli/PuroR. In summary, our study highlights the potential benefits of using the PuroR gene as a selection marker to enhance the purity and efficacy of therapeutic cells in MSC-based gene therapy. Furthermore, our study suggests that the potential risk of horizontal transfer of antibiotics resistance genes in vivo can be effectively managed by clinically available antibiotics.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.453-463
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• 2012

Steel-concrete composite rigid-frame bridge is a type of integral bridge having advantages in bridge maintenance and structural efficiency from eliminating expansion joints and bridge supports, the main problems in bridge maintenance. The typical steel-concrete composite rigid-frame bridge has the girder-abutment connection where a part of its steel girder is embedded in abutment for integrity. However, the detail of typical girder-abutment connection is complex and increases the construction cost, especially when a part of steel girder is embedded. Recently, a new type of bridge was proposed to compensate for the disadvantages of complex details and cost increase. The compensation are expected to improve efficiency of construction by simplifying the construction detail of the girder-abutment connection. In this study, a static load test has been carried out to examine the behavior of the girder-abutment connection using real-scale specimens. The results of the test showed that the girder-abutment connection of proposed girder bridge has sufficient flexural capacity and rebars to control concrete crack should be placed on the top of abutment.