• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.269-280
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• 2018

This paper reports the results of field evaluation to determine the levels of heavy metals in major industrial complexes in Korea over a seven year period (2007~2013). The measurement of heavy metal was conducted using quartz fiber filter sampling and ICP-AES analysis. In order to validate the analytical performance of these methods, studies were also carried out to investigate data quality control(QC) parameters, such as the method detection limit (MDL), repeatability, and recovery efficiencies. The average concentrations of total suspended particulates (TSP) for the nine industrial complexes in Korea were $104{\sim}169{\mu}g/m^3$, which was higher than other industrial complexes and urban areas. The Sihwa and Banwol industrial complexes were shown to be the biggest contributing sources to high TSP emission ($159{\mu}g/m^3$ and $169{\mu}g/m^3$, respectively). The concentrations of heavy metals in TSP were higher in the order of Fe>Cu>Zn, Pb, Mn>Cr, Ni, As and Cd. It was observed that Fe was the highest in the Gwangyang and Pohang steel industrial complexes. The concentrations of Zn and Pb were high in Onsan, Sihwa and Banwol industrial complexes, and this was attributed to the emission from the nonferrous industry. Additionally, Cr and Ni concentrations were high in the Sihwa and Banwol industrial complexes due to plating industry. On the other hand, Ulsan and Onsan industrial complexes showed high Cr and Ni concentrations as a response to the emission of metal industry related to automobile. The correlation analysis revealed the high correlation between Cr and Ni in plating industry from Sihwa and Banwol industrial complexes. Adding to this, components related to coal combustion and road dust showed high correlation in Pohang and Gwangyang industrial complexes. Then Onsan and Ulsan industrial complexes showed high correlation among components related to the nonferrous metals.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.109-126
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• 2018

This paper presents seasonal variation of $PM_{10}$ over five urban sites in Sabah, Malaysia for the period of January through December 2012. The variability of $PM_{10}$ along with the diurnal and weekly cycles of CO, $NO_2$, $SO_2$, and $O_3$ at Kota Kinabalu site were also discussed to investigate the possible sources for increased $PM_{10}$ concentration at the site. This work is crucial to understand the behaviour and possible sources of $PM_{10}$ in the urban atmosphere of Sabah region. In Malaysia, many air pollution studies in the past focused in west Peninsular, but very few local studies were dedicated for Sabah region. This work aims to fill the gap by presenting the descriptive statistics on the variability of $PM_{10}$ concentration in the urban atmosphere of Sabah. To further examine its diurnal and weekly cycle pattern, its responses towards the variations of CO, $NO_2$, $SO_2$, and ozone were also investigated. The highest mean value of $PM_{10}$ for the whole study period is seen from Tawau ($35.7{\pm}17.8{\mu}g\;m^{-3}$), while the lowest is from Keningau ($31.9{\pm}18.6{\mu}g\;m^{-3}$). The concentrations of $PM_{10}$ in all cities exhibited seasonal variations with the peak values occurred during the south-west monsoons. The $PM_{10}$ data consistently exhibited strong correlations with traffic related gaseous pollutants ($NO_2$, and CO), except for $SO_2$ and $O_3$. The analysis of diurnal cycles of $PM_{10}$ levels indicated that two peaks were associated during the morning and evening rush hours. The bimodal distribution of $PM_{10}$, CO, and $NO_2$ in the front and at the back of ozone peak is a representation of urban air pollution pattern. In the weekly cycle, higher $PM_{10}$, CO, and $NO_2$ concentrations were observed during the weekday when compared to weekend. The characteristics of $NO_2$ concentration rationed to CO and $SO_2$ suggests that mobile sources is the dominant factor for the air pollution in Kota Kinabalu; particularly during weekdays.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.152-161
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• 2015

CodY is a highly conserved protein in low G+C gram-positive bacteria that regulates genes involved in sporulation and stationary-phase adaptation. Bacillus thuringiensis is a grampositive bacterium that forms spores and parasporal crystals during the stationary phase. To our knowledge, the regulatory mechanism of CodY in B. thuringiensis is unknown. To study the function of CodY protein in B. thuringiensis, BMB171codY^- was constructed in a BMB171 strain. A shuttle vector containing the ORF of cry1Ac10 was transformed into BMB171 and BMB171codY^-, named BMB171cry1Ac and BMB171codY^-cry1Ac, respectively. Some morphological and physiological changes of codY mutant BMB171codY^-cry1Ac were observed. A comparative proteomic analysis was conducted for both BMB171codY^-cry1Ac and BMB171cry1Ac through two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and MALDI-TOF-MS/MS analysis. The results showed that the proteins regulated by CodY are involved in microbial metabolism, including branched-chain amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, fatty acid metabolism, and energy metabolism. Furthermore, we found CodY to be involved in sporulation, biosynthesis of poly-β-hydroxybutyrate, growth, genetic competence, and translation. According to the analysis of differentially expressed proteins, and physiological characterization of the codY mutant, we performed bacterial one-hybrid and electrophoretic mobility shift assay experiments and confirmed the direct regulation of genes by CodY, specifically those involved in metabolism of branched-chain amino acids, ribosomal recycling factor FRR, and the late competence protein ComER. Our data establish the foundation for in-depth study of the regulation of CodY in B. thuringiensis, and also offer a potential biocatalyst for functions of CodY in other bacteria.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.301-310
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• 2010

Bacillus subtilis strains produce a broad spectrum of bioactive peptides. The lipopeptide surfactin belongs to one well-known class, which includes amphiphilic membrane-active biosurfactants and peptide antibiotics. Both the srfA promoter and the ComP-ComA signal transduction system are an important part of the factor that results in the production of surfactin. Bs-M49, obtained by means of low-energy ion implantation in wild-type Bs-916, produced significantly lower levels of surfactin, and had no obvious effects against R. solani. Occasionally, we found strain Bs-M49 decreased spore formation and the development of competence. Blast comparison of the sequences from Bs-916 and M49 indicate that there is no difference in the srfA operon promoter PsrfA, but there are differences in the coding sequence of the comA gene. These differences result in three missense mutations within the M49 ComA protein. RT-PCR analyses results showed that the expression levels of selected genes involved in competence and sporulation in both the wild-type Bs-916 and mutant M49 strains were significantly different. When we integrated the comA ORF into the chromosome of M49 at the amyE locus, M49 restored hemolytic activity and antifungal activity. Then, HPLC analyses results also showed the comA-complemented strain had a similar ability to produce surf actin with wild-type strain Bs-916. These data suggested that the mutation of three key amino acids in ComA greatly affected the biological activity of Bacillus subtilis. ComA protein 3D structure prediction and motif search prediction indicated that ComA has two obvious motifs common to response regulator proteins, which are the N-terminal response regulator receiver motif and the C-terminal helix-turn-helix motif. The three residues in the ComA N-terminal portion may be involved in phosphorylation activation mechanism. These structural prediction results implicate that three mutated residues in the ComA protein may play an important role in the formation of a salt-bridge to the phosphoryl group keeping active conformation to subsequent regulation of the expression of downstream genes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.714-721
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• 2010

This research was undertaken to evaluate the feasibility of lanthanum hydroxide for fluoride removal from aqueous solutions. A batch sorption experiments were conducted to study the influence of various factors such as pH, contact time, initial fluoride concentration and temperature on the sorption of fluoride on lanthanum hydroxide. The optimum fluoride removal was observed in the $pH_{eq}{\leq}8.8$. Sorption equilibrium of fluoride on lanthanum hydroxide was better described by the Freundlish isotherm model than by the Langmuir isotherm model. The adsorption energy obtained from D-R model was 9.21 kJ/mol indicating an ion-exchange process as primary adsorption mechanism. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model described well the experimental kinetic data. Thermodynamic parameters such as ${\Delta}Go^{\circ}$, ${\Delta}H^{\circ}$ and ${\Delta}S^{\circ}$ indicated that the nature of fluoride sorption is spontaneous and endothermic. The used lanthanum hydroxide could be regenerated by washing with NaOH solution. Also, the results applied to real ground water indicate that fluoride selectivity and removal capacity of lanthanum hydroxide were superior to those of PA anion-exchange resin.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.443-448
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• 2012

As a basic data to build a countermeasures against coastal disaster, the conscious survey of people living around the coastal are is needed. This study performed the conscious survey on 5 islands located at Korean southeast ocean including Youngdo of Busan. Among many respondents, 503 effective answers are got and followings are the analyzed results. Among the various kinds of disasters, especially the typhoon(28%), storm surge(19%), earthquake(15%) are selected as menacing disasters in mind to coastal inhabitants. Typhoon(60%) and storm surge(21%) were the representative disasters that the coastal inhabitants experienced. 67% among the respondents get the disaster-related information from TV and/or commercial medias, and other 21% depend on their own experiences. Although 33% of respondents attended the disaster-related training and the training time was less than 2 hours, they answered the training was very helpful. Over 85% among the respondents answered they will evacuate if a disaster occur, but only 19% know the evacuee shelter(s). Except the foods, various living goods are selected and willing to carry with for living at shelter if they have to evacuate.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.80-87
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• 2010

Lignite of low rank coal and petroleum coke of high sulfur content can be high potential energy sources for coal gasification process because of their plentiful supply. The kinetic study of steam gasification has been performed in an atmospheric thermobalance with wood chip, lignite, bituminous, anthracite, pet-coke. The effects of gasification temperature($600{\sim}850^{\circ}C$) and partial pressure of steam(30~90 kPa) on the gasification rate have been investigated. The modified volumetric reaction model was applied to the experimental data to describe the behavior of carbon conversion and to evaluate the needed kinetic parameters. Lignite and wood chip with high volatile content showed high average gasification rates comparing to other fuel and thus they might be proper fuel for gasification processes. The activation energies for wood chip, lignite, bituminous, anthracite, and pet-coke through Arrhenius plot were found to be 260.3, 167.9, 134.6, 82.2, 168.9 kJ/mol, respectively. The expression of apparent reaction rates for steam gasification of various chars have been proposed as basic information for the design of coal gasification processes.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.31 no.5A
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• pp.459-468
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• 2006

Current routing in sensor networks focuses on finding methods for energy-efficient route setup and reliable relaying of data from the sensors to the sink so that the lifetime of the network is maximized. The existing routing protocols do not have routing tables to determine a path when packets are transferred. A sensor network by a routing table increases a cost of maintaining and updating a path, because sensor nodes have characteristics to be mobile and constrained capacity and resources. This paper proposes a new routing algorithm by broadcasting a bitmap in order to reduce the number of messages transferred when routing paths are established. Each node has a routing table with a bitmap, which contains link information. A bitmap is formed two-dimensional array, which consists of each row and column represented with a bit. The node only updates its own bitmap if it receives a bitmap from another adjacent nodes after the broadcasting. There by, each node has a bitmap with partial links information not total links information on the network. The proposed routing algorithm reduces the number of messages for routing establishment at least 10% compared with the previous algorithms.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.475-482
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• 2007

Mobile nodes in ad-hoc wireless networks play roles of router as well as host. Movement of nodes causes network topology changes, which make existing routing information be modified. Therefore many routing protocols for ad-hoc networks were suggested in the literature. In this paper, we suggest an enhanced automatic route shortening method for dynamic source routing(DSR) protocol. DSR is a request/response based protocol which has low routing overhead owing to node movement. The current automatic route shortening is performed on the only nodes which belong to the source route of packets. On the contrary, our suggested method allows all neighbor nodes hearing the packet to participate in automatic route shortening. It makes all possible route shortenings be performed. So we maintain maximal shortened routes of ongoing data connections. Simulation results with ns2 show that our method pays small extra protocol overhead for ARS, but increases the ratio of successful packet transmissions and the number of ARSs performed in our mechanism is from 2 to 5 times higher than in original ARS mechanism and therefore it will improve the network-wide energy consumption in wireless ad-hoc networks.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.387-393
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• 2010

Background: The aims of the present study were to assess and compare mid-term clinical outcomes including recurrences between endovenous laser therapy (EVLT) and stripping. Material and Method: Between January 2007 and February 2010, 318 limbs in 237 patients with saphenous truncal varicosities were treated by laser energy using a 980 nm diode or were treated with conventional stripping. At the initial visit and at 1, 2, 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months postoperatively, clinical examination and questioning for Venous Clinical Severity Score (VCSS) as well as duplex ultrasonography were done. In order to compare clinical outcomes between the two treatment groups, EVLT versus stripping, all data were processed and analyzed. Result: There were no significant differences between the two treatment groups in the extent of the reflux and the number of insufficient perforating veins. The in EVLT and the stripping group at 12 months were $90.3{\pm}4.5%$ and $93.9{\pm}4.2%$, respectively (p>0.05). Total recurrence rates were 4.4% in the EVLT group and 1.5% in the stripping group (p>0.05). In both groups, the VCSS scores were significantly reduced at week 1, 1 month, and 2 months after EVLT or stripping (p<0.001). Conclusion: Efficiency in eliminating truncal saphenous vein incompetence and reducing venous clinical severity were equal in the two treatment groups.