• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.278-284
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• 2015

In general, plant roots accumulate more heavy metals than the above ground organs such as leaf, stem, and fruit. This implies that root medicinal plants would be an issue with excessive heavy metal accumulation. Therefore, the current study was carried out to investigate the distribution of heavy metal (focused on Cd and Pb) concentrations in soils and medicinal plant roots grown in different region of Korea. Total 293 samples for each soil and plant were collected along the national wide. Soil pH, total and phytoavailable metal concentrations (1 M $NH_4NO_3$ extracted) in soils were determined and heavy metal concentrations in root of the medicinal plants were analyzed. Heavy metal concentrations of the soil samples studied were not exceeded standard limits legislated in 'Soil Environmental Conservation Act', except 2 samples for Cu. However, substantial amount of Cd was accumulated in medicinal plant roots with 29% samples exceeding the standard limit legislated in 'Pharmaceutical Affairs Act' while all plant samples were lower than the standard limit value for Pb. Also the current study demonstrated that cadmium concentrations in the roots were governed by the phytoavailable Cd in soils, which decreased as soil pH increased. From this result, application of heavy metal immobilization technique using a pH change-induced immobilizing agents can be suggested for safer root medicinal plant production.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.190-198
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• 2021

Human Aichivirus (Aichivirus A; AiV-A) is a positive-sense single-strand RNA non-enveloped virus that has been detected worldwide in various water environments including sewage, river, surface, and ground over the past decade. To develop a method with excellent sensitivity and specificity for AiV-A diagnosis from water environments such as groundwater, a combination capable of reverse transcription (RT)-nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was developed based on existing reported and newly designed primers. A selective method was applied to evaluate domestic drinking groundwater samples. Thus, a procedure was devised to select and subsequently identify RT-nested PCR primer sets that can successfully detect and identify AiV-A from groundwater samples. The findings will contribute to developing a better monitoring system to detect AiV-A contamination in water environments such as groundwater.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.244-254
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• 2018

The first geophysical technique applied to the agricultural sector in Korea was electrical resistivity sounding and conducted in purpose of groundwater exploitation in the 1970s. According to the diversity of agricultural activities since the 1990s, various geophysical methods including electrical resistivity, electromagnetic induction, and self-potential method were applied to several agricultural fields such as soil characterization with saline concentration in vast reclaimed area, delineation of seawater intrusion regions in costal aquifer, safety inspection of embankment dikes with leakage problem, detection of ground subsidence from overpumping and tracing of groundwater aquifer contamination by leachate from livestock mortality burial or waste burial site. This paper introduces representative geophysical techniques that have been utilized in various agricultural fields and suggests several ways to develop the geophysical methods required for the precision agriculture field in the near future based on the past achievements.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Planning & Design
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• v.34 no.11
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• pp.95-104
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• 2018

Healthcare technology has been growing and fostering cooperation between industry, university and hospitals as growth engines in korea. So, the medibio research institutes in hospital have been constructed to promote research and industrialization centering on healthcare technology. The purpose of this study is to investigate the cases of research institutes in hospitals, and search the characteristics of building organization of medibio research laboratory facilities. Case study is investigated by floor plan, homepage and site visits about five research institutes selected in research-driven hospitals. The facility title and size of research laboratory is originated from site area and research building location. The building function include not only the research lab and business office reflecting on the development platform, and but assembly and meeting room in the ground level. Laboratory floor plans have three types, rectangular, rectangular+linear and linear type, one is traditional and efficient, the others are people and friendly. And building core types are correlated with lab space unit modules, single and double side core are shown in rectangular type. All the laboratories are open lab, composed with laboratory bench and research note writing desk facing the lab service and enclosed lab-support area. And they have communication space looking as warm and cozy common area for the innovation, convergence and collaboration. As the high risk of contamination and high standard for safety and security, equipment and facilities are well managed with biological environment including BSC, fume hood, PCR classification, eye washing and emergency shower.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.67-76
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• 2020

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are organic compounds that tend to persist in environmental media for a long period of time. This work presents a 2-year monitoring study of occurrence of three PAHs (benzo(a)pyrene, naphthalene, and fluoranthene) in groundwater. The groundwater samples were collected from 106 sites of nation's groundwater quality monitoring network and analyzed by simultaneous analysis method to quantify the concentrations of the PAHs. Benzo(a)pyrene was not detected in all samples. Naphthalene and fluoranthene concentrations ranged from not detected to 12.8 ng/L and not detected to 10.5 ng/L with their detection frequency being 57.8 and 4.2%, respectively. The concentrations of PAHs in ground- and drinking waters are not currently regulated in Korea, but the concentration levels of naphthalene and fluoranthene found in this work were lower than the regulatory limits of other countries (naphthalene 0.001~0.07 mg/L, fluoranthene 0.001~1.4 mg/L). The monitoring result of this study revealed that PAHs exist as trace amounts in domestic groundwater, however continuos monitoring is necessary to protect groundwater from PAHs contamination with growing industrialization and urbanization.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2021

Background: Abandoned coal piles after the closure of mines have a potential negative influence on the environment, such as soil acidification and heavy metal contamination. Therefore, revegetation by efficient species is required. For this, we wanted to identify the role of Silene acaulis in the succession of coal piles as a pioneer and a nurse plant. S. acaulis is a well-studied cushion plant living in the Arctic and alpine environments in the northern hemisphere. It has a highly compact cushion-like form and hosts more plant species under its canopy by ameliorating stressful microhabitats. In this research, we surveyed vegetation cover on open plots and co-occurring species within S. acaulis cushions in coal piles with different slope aspects and a control site where no coal was found. The plant cover and the similarity of communities among sites were compared. Also, the interaction effects of S. acaulis were assessed by rarefaction curves. Results: S. acaulis was a dominant species with the highest cover (6.7%) on the coal piles and occurred with other well-known pioneer species. Plant communities on the coal piles were significantly different from the control site. We found that the pioneer species S. acaulis showed facilitation, neutral, and competition effect in the north-east facing slope, the south-east facing slope, and the flat ground, respectively. This result was consistent with the stress gradient hypothesis because the facilitation only occurred on the north-east facing slope, which was the most stressed condition, although all the interactions observed were not statistically significant. Conclusions: S. acaulis was a dominant pioneer plant in the succession of coal piles. The interaction effect of S. acaulis on other species depended on the slope and its direction on the coal piles. Overall, it plays an important role in the succession of coal piles in the High Arctic, Svalbard.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.215-221
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• 2020

Adulterated herbal medicine is intentionally added with undeclared improper or inferior ingredients which should not be in herbal medicine. The contamination with potentially hazardous substances such as heavy metal, pesticides, fungus, and microorganism sometimes can be regarded as one of adulteration in a broad sense. The problem of adulteration is that adulterated herbal medicine shows poor quality and/or can cause adverse events. Therefore, it is important to control adulteration issues for quality assurance and qualitative improvement of herbal medicines. This study aims to summarize and make a reference how to control adulterated herbal medicine. In this process, this study is to investigate studies about adulterated herbal medicine via searching Korean and foreign electronic databases such as PubMed, NDSL and OASIS. Finally eighteen papers were included to this study and analyzed according to the type of study, the category and efficacy of adulterants, the type of analysis methodologies and possible adverse events of adulterants. Phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitors for male sexual enhancement and anorexic, laxative, diuretic agents for weight loss and treating obesity has been used frequently as adulterants. The range of adverse event caused by adulterated herbal medicine were very wide from mild symptoms such as diarrhea, constipation, dizziness and blurred vision to very severe symptoms such as heart failure, hypoglycemia and renal impairment. This study showed the recent trend on the research of adulterated herbal medicine and this will be the ground to develop more detailed systems to control adulterated herbal medicine.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.152-152
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• 2021

The importance of groundwater has long been recognized, but the ground water potential to become contaminated as a result of human activities has only been recognized in recently. Before 1980 it was thought that soils served as filters, preventing harmful substances deposited at the surface from migrating into groundwater. Today it is known that soils have a finite capacity to protect groundwater. It can be contaminated from divers sources. Therefore, Assessment of aquifer vulnerability to pollution is essential for the protection and management of groundwater and land use planning. In this study, we used DRASTIC and AVI for groundwater vulnerability to contamination assessment. the different methods were applied to the southern coastal sedimentary basin of Benin and DRASTIC method was modified in two different steps. First, we modified DRASTIC by adding land use parameter to include the actual pollution sources (DRASTIC_LcLu) and second, classic DRASTIC weights was modified using Shannon's entropy (Entropy weight DRASTIC). The reliability of the applied approaches was verified using nitrate (NO3^-) concentration and by comparing the overall vulnerability maps to the previous researches in the study area and in the world. The results from validation showed that the addition of landcover/land use parameter to the classic DRASTIC helps to improve the method for better definition of the vulnerable areas in the basin and also, the weight modification using entropy improved better the method because Entropy weight DRASTIC_LcLu showed the highest correlation with nitrate concentration in the study basin. In summary the weight modification using entropy approach reduced the uncertainty of the human subjectivity in assigning weights and ratings in the standard DRASTIC.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.81-92
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• 2011

When we bury the infected poultry into the ground, we have many problems such as the difficulty of making sufficient area for burying, environmental contamination by the leachate, unpleasant ordor. Also, in case of burning the carcass of the infected poultry, there are some problems such as high cost, dust, unpleasant odor, etc. It could cause environmental contamination which many peoples and environmental organization complains about. In this study, we develop a treating system which treats the infected poultry carcass in a environmental method preventing the environment contamination. This system is composed of many processes. The euthanasia system uses rigid vinyl to trap and to do a euthanasia the infected poultry with lethal gas, carbon dioxide. And then, with the tractor attached grappler infected poultry carcass could be put into the carcass treating system. The euthanasia system uses rigid vinyl to trap the infected birds and to confine lethal gas, carbon dioxide. Infected poultry carcass are moved to carcass disposal system by collecting device which is attached at tractor. The carcass treatment system (capacity of disposal : 6.3 $m^3$) is installed on a truck and do one pass work, which is input, crush, stir, sterilize, and discharge treated carcass. 1,000 chickens was killed within 9.7min by $CO_2$ (300L/min) in the tent (10 $m^3$). The collecting device could carry 142 chickens at a time, and the movable carcass treatment system could sterilize 2 tons carcass per hour (at one time). This treatment systems was eco-friendly because it reduced the volume of carcass by 31.9% with no wastewater generation.

• Restorative Dentistry and Endodontics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.150-157
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• 2002

One of the latest concepts in bonding are "total etch", in which both enamel and dentin are etched with an acid to remove the smear layers, and "wet dentin" in which the dentin is not dry but left moist before application of the bonding primer Ideally the application of a bonding agent to tooth structure should be insensitive to minor contamination from oral fluids. Clinically, contaminations such as saliva, gingival fluid, blood and handpiece lubricant are often encountered by dentists during cavity preparation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of contamination by hemostatic agents on shear bond strength of compomer restorations. One hundred and ten extracted human maxillary and mandibular molar teeth were collected. The teeth were removed soft tissue remnant and debris and stored in physiologic solution until they were used. Small flat area on dentin of the buccal surface were wet ground serially with 400, 800 and 1200 abrasive papers on automatic polishing machine. The teeth were randomly divided into 11 groups. Each group was conditioned as follows : Group 1: Dentin surface was not etched and not contaminated by hemostatic agents. Group 2: Dentin surface was not etched but was contaminated by Astringedent$^{\circledR}$(Ultradent product Inc., Utah, U.S.A.) Group 3: Dentin surface was not etched but was contaminated by Bosmin$^{\circledR}$(Jeil Pharm, Korea.). Group 4: Dentin surface was not etched but was contaminated by Epri-dent$^{\circledR}$(Epr Industries, NJ, U.S.A.). Group 5: Dentin surface was etched and not contaminated by hemostatic agents. Group 6: Dentin sorface was etched and contaminated by Astringedent$^{\circledR}$. Group 7 : Dentin surface was etched and contaminated by Bosmin$^{\circledR}$. Group 8: Dentin surface was etched and contaminated by Epri-dent$^{\circledR}$. Group 9: Dentin surface was contaminated by Astringedent$^{\circledR}$. The contaminated surface was rinsed by water and dried by compressed air. Group 10: Dentin surface was contaminated by Bosmin$^{\circledR}$. The contaminated surface was rinsed by water and dried by compressed air. Group 11 : Dentin surface was contaminated by Epri-dent$^{\circledR}$. The contaminated surface was rinsed by water and dried by compressed air. After surface conditioning, F2000$^{\circledR}$ was applicated on the conditoned dentin surface The teeth were thermocycled in distilled water at 5$^{\circ}C$ and 55$^{\circ}C$ for 1,000 cycles. The samples were placed on the binder with the bonded compomer-dentin interface parallel to the knife-edge shearing rod of the Universal Testing Machine(Zwick Z020, Zwick Co., Germany) running at a cross head speed or 1.0 mm/min. Group 2 showed significant decrease in shear bond strength compared with group 1 and group 6 showed significant decrease in shear bond strength compared with group 5. There were no significant differences in shear bond strength between group 5 and group 9, 10 and 11.