• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.195-207
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• 2016

Because the high latitude region in the North Pacific is characterized by high primary production in the surface water enriched with nutrients, it is important to understand the variation of surface water productivity and associated nutrient variability in terms of global carbon cycle. Surface water productivity change or its related nutrient utilization rate during the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation (NHG; ca. 2.73 Ma) has been reported, but little is known about such circumstances under gradual climate cooling since the NHG. Bulk nitrogen isotope (${\delta}^{15}N_{bulk}$) of sedimentary organic matter has been used for the reconstruction of nutrient utilization rate in the surface water. However, sedimentary organic matter experiences diagenesis incessantly during sinking through the water column and after burial within the sediments. Thus, in this study we examine the degree of nitrate utilization rate during the early Pleistocene (2.4-1.25 Ma) since the NHG, using the diatom-bound nitrogen isotope (${\delta}^{15}N_{db}$), which is known to be little influenced by diagenesis, from Site U1343 in the Bering slope area. ${\delta}^{15}N_{db}$ values range from ~0.5 to 5.5‰, which is lower than ${\delta}^{15}N_{bulk}$ values, but they vary with larger amplitude. Variation patterns between ${\delta}^{15}N_{db}$ values and biogenic opal concentration are generally consistent, which indicates that the nitrate utilization rate is closely related to opal productivity change in the surface water. A positive correlation between opal productivity and nitrate utilization rate was observed, which is different from the other high latitude regions in the North Pacific. The main reason for this contrasting relationship is that the primary production in the surface water at Site U1343 is influenced mostly by the degree of sea ice formation. Still, although concerns about diagenetic alteration have been avoided by using ${\delta}^{15}N_{db}$, the effects of the preservation state of biogenic opal and the species-dependent isotopic fractionation on ${\delta}^{15}N_{db}$ should be assessed in the future studies.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.211-220
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• 1998

The stochiometric composition of $AgGaS_2$polycrystal source materials for the single crystal thin films were prepared from horizontal furnace. From the extrapolation method of X-ray diffraction patterns, it was found that the polycrystal $AgGaS_2$has tetragonal structure of which lattice constant $a_0\;and \;c_0$ were 5.756 $\AA$ and 10.305 $\AA$, respectively. $AgGaS_2$single crystal thin film was deposited on throughly etched GaAs(100) substrate from mixed crystal $AgGaS_2$by the Hot Wall Epitaxy (HWE) system. The source and substrate temperature were $590^{\circ}C$ and $440^{\circ}C$ respectively, and the growth rate of the single crystal thin films was about 0.5 $mu \textrm{m}$/h. The crystallinity of the grown single crystal thin films was investigated by the DCRC (double crystal X-ray diffraction rocking curve). The optical energy gaps were found to be 2.61 eV for $AgGaS_2$single crystal thin films at room temperature. The temperature dependence of the photocurrent peak energy is well explained by the Varshni equation, then the constants in the Varshni equation are given by${\Alpha};=;8.695{\times}10^{-4};eV/K,and;{\beta};=;332;K$. from the photocurrent spectra by illumination of polarized light of the $AgGaS_2$single crystal thin film, we have found that crystal field splitting $\Delta$Cr was 0.28 eV at 20 K. From the PL spectra at 20 K, the peaks corresponding to free and bound excitons and a broad emission band due to D-A pairs are identified. The binding energy of the free excitons are determined to be 0.2676 eV and 0.2430 eV and the dissociation energy of the bound excitons to be 0.4695 eV.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.83-93
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• 2013

By comparing Wiener's MMSE on stochastic signal transmission with Shannon's mutual information first proved by C.E. Shannon in terms of information theory, connections between two approaches were investigated. What Wiener wanted to see in signal transmission in noisy channel is to try to capture fundamental limits for signal quality in signal estimation. On the other hands, Shannon was interested in finding fundamental limits of signal quantity that maximize the uncertainty in mutual information using the entropy concept in noisy channel. First concern of this paper is to show that in deriving limits of Shannon's point to point fundamental channel capacity, Shannon's mutual information obtained by exploiting MMSE combiner and Wiener filter's MMSE are interelated by integro-differential equantion. Then, At the meeting point of Wiener's MMSE and Shannon's mutual information the upper bound of spectral efficiency and the lower bound of energy efficiency were computed. Choosing a proper lattice-type code of a mod-${\Lambda}$AWGN channel model and MMSE estimation of ${\alpha}$ confirmed to lead to the fundamental Shannon capacity limits.

• Elastomers and Composites
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.103-113
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• 2013

The properties of the rubber composites containing a silane and silica were evaluated by changing the mixing time and temperature, in order to find the optimum mixing conditions. Characteristics of the compounds were evaluated after mixing at $120^{\circ}C$, $140^{\circ}C$, and $160^{\circ}C$ with various mixing time. With increasing of mixing time, mooney viscosity decreased while the bound rubber contents of the compounds increased. Viscosity rise by increased mixing time was bigger at low temperature and the higher the mixing temperature the faster in the formation of bound rubber. With lower mixing temperature of $120^{\circ}C$, cross-linking rate was almost constant. Dynamic viscoelastic properties and dispersity of the compound showed that dispersion of ingredients and reaction was not sufficient with the mixing time of less than 10min. On the contrary, with high temperature, it was obvious that good dynamic and physical properties could be obtained due to sufficient coupling reaction, however it was thought this high temperature is not optimum because of sensitive cross-linking rate and physical properties and excessive formation of bound rubber. Consequently, it was confirmed that the mixing condition of 10min at $140^{\circ}C$ was optimum for the silane coupling reaction and dispersion of functionalized S-SBR containing silica and silane.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.18-38
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• 2002

A previous study on the model coatings based on latex-bound plastic pigment coatings (1) has been extended to latex-bound No. 1 clay, ultra-fine ground calcium carbonate (UFGCC), and clay-carbonate pigment mixture coatings, which are being widely used in the paper industry. The latex binder used was a good film-forming, monodisperse S/B latex or 0.15$\mu\textrm{m}$. No. 1 clay was representative of plate-like pigment particles, whereas UFGCC was of somewhat rounded rhombohedral pigment particlel. Both of them had negatively skewed triangular particle size distributions having the mean particle suet of 0.7${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ and 0.6$\mu\textrm{m}$, respectively. Their packing volumes were found to be 62.5% and 657%, respectively. while their critical pigment volume concentrations (CPVC's) were determined to be 52.7% and 50.5% ( average of 45% caused by the incompatibility and 55.9% extrapolated) by coating porosity, respectively. Each pigment/latex coating system has shown its unique relationship between coating properties and pigment concentrations, especially above its CPVC. Notably, the clay/latex coating system hat shown higher coating porosity than the UFGCC/latex system at high pigment concentrations above their respective CPVC's. It was also found that their coating porosity and gloss were inter-related to each other above the CPVC's, as predicted by the theory. More interestingly, the blends of these two pigments have shown unique rheological and coating properties which may explain why such pigment blends are widely used in the industry. These findings have suggested that the unique structure of clay coatings and the unique high-shear rheology of ground calcium carbonate coatings can be judiciously combined to achieve superior coatings. Importantly, the low-shear viscosity of the blends was indicative of their unique packing and coating structure, whereas their high-shear rheology was represented by a common mixing rule, i.e., a viscosity-averaging. Transmission and scanning electron and atomic force microscopes were used to probe the state of pigment / latex dispersions, coating surfaces, freeze fractured coating cross-sections, and coating surface topography. These microscopic studies complemented the above observations. In addition, the ratio, R, of CPVC/(Pigment Packing Volume) has been proposed as a measure of the binder efficiency for a given pigment or pigment mixtures or as a measure of binder-pigment interactions. Also, a mathematical model has been proposed to estimate the packing volumes of clay and ground calcium carbonate pigments with their respective particle size distributions. As well known in the particle packing, the narrower the particle size distributions, the lower the packing volumes and the greater the coating porosity, regardless of particle shapes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.737-745
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• 2011

A concrete-filled tube is a concrete-filled steel tube structure. The steel tube confines the concrete to increase the compressive strength, and the concrete contains the buckling of the tube. CFT structures require a diaphragm to prevent buckling of steel at connections. An outer diaphragm has better concrete filling than a through diaphragm due to a large bore, but being larger than the through diagram, it has poorer constructability and cooperation with building equipment. In this study, a CFT structure that uses different types of diaphragms in its upper and lower connections to improve the concrete filling was tested and analyzed via the FEM program. The building structure had a floor slab that was unified with the upper diaphragm, so the outer diaphragm was placed at the upper bound. Moreover, the through diaphragm was placed at the lower connection to avoid obstruction from building equipment. The CFT structure with the improved concrete filling showed the same structural behavior as the CFT structure with the use of the same type of diaphragms at the upper and lower connections.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.730-736
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• 2007

The interaction of a polyoxometal (POM), K6SiW11Co(H2O)O39.10H2O (K6) as a Keggin, with human serum albumin (HSA) was studied by different methods and techniques. Binding studies show two sets of binding sites for interaction of POM to HSA. Binding analysis and isothermal calorimetery revealed that, the first set of binding site has lower number of bound ligand per mole of protein (ν), lower Hill constant (n), higher binding constant (K), more negative entropy (ΔS) and more electrostatic interaction in comparison to the second set of binding site. In addition, differential scanning calorimetery (DSC) and spectrophotometery data showed that, there are two energetic domains. The first domain is less stable (lower Tm and Cp) which corresponds to the tail segment of HSA and another with more stability is related to the head segment of HSA. Polyoxometal also decreases the stability of protein as Tm, secondary and tertiary structure as well as quenching of the fluorescence decrease. On other hand, perturbations in tertiary structure are more than secondary structure.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.182-189
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• 2016

The focus in this paper is on obtaining tight, simple algebraic-form bounds and invertible expressions for the average symbol error probability (ASEP) of M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) in a class of composite fading channels. We employ the mixture gamma (MG) distribution to approximate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) distributions of fading models, which include Nakagami-m, Generalized-K ($K_G$), and Nakagami-lognormal fading as specific examples. Our approach involves using the tight upper and lower bounds that we recently derived on the Gaussian Q-function, which can easily be averaged over the general MG distribution. First, algebraic-form upper bounds are derived on the ASEP of MPSK for M > 2, based on the union upper bound on the symbol error probability (SEP) of MPSK in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) given by a single Gaussian Q-function. By comparison with the exact ASEP results obtained by numerical integration, we show that these upper bounds are extremely tight for all SNR values of practical interest. These bounds can be employed as accurate approximations that are invertible for high SNR. For the special case of binary phase shift keying (BPSK) (M = 2), where the exact SEP in the AWGN channel is given as one Gaussian Q-function, upper and lower bounds on the exact ASEP are obtained. The bounds can be made arbitrarily tight by adjusting the parameters in our Gaussian bounds. The average of the upper and lower bounds gives a very accurate approximation of the exact ASEP. Moreover, the arbitrarily accurate approximations for all three of the fading models we consider become invertible for reasonably high SNR.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.2321-2326
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• 2011

Cervical vertebrae are a complex structure and an important part of human body connecting the head and the trunk. In this paper, we propose a method to extract sternocleidomastoid muscle from ultrasonography images of cervical vertabrae automatically. In our method, Region of Interests(ROI) is extracted first from an ultrasonography image after removing unnecessary auxiliary information such as metrics. Then we apply Ends-in search stretching algorithm in order to enhance the contrast of brightness. Average binarization is then applied to those pixels which its brightness is sufficiently large. The noise part is removed by image processing algorithms. After extracting fascia encloses sternocleidomastoid muscle, target muscle object is extracted using the location information of fascia according to the number of objects in the fascia. When only one object is to be extracted, we search downward first to extract the target muscle area and then search from right to left to extract the area and merge them. If there are two target objects, we extract first from the upper-bound of higher object to the lower-bound of lower object and then remove the fascia of the target object area. Smearing technique is used to restore possible loss of the fat area in the process. The thickness of sternocleidomastoid muscle is then calculated as the maximum thickness of those extracted objects. In this experiment with 30 real world ultrasonography images, the proposed method verified its efficacy and accuracy by health professionals.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.863-870
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• 2012

Rhodopsin, a dim light photoreceptor, has been regarded as one of the model systems for the structural and functional study of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Constitutively active mutant GPCRs leading to the activation of heterotrimeric GDP/GTP-binding protein signaling in the absence of ligand binding are of interest for the study of the activation mechanism in GPCRs. The present study focused on the opsin mutant E134Q/M257Y, which showed a moderate level of constitutive activity and the formation of two distinct rhodopsin chromophores with absorption maxima of 500 nm and 380 nm, depending on the presence of an inverse agonist, 11-cis-retinal, and an agonist, all-trans-retinal, respectively. Reconstitution of the mutant rhodopsin upon incubation with different ratios of 11-cis-retinal and the all-trans-retinal, as well as upon sequential binding of the two retinals, indicated its preferential binding to 11-cis-retinal. The thermal stability of the 11-cis-retinal-bound form of the E134Q/M257Y mutant was lower than that of the mutants containing a single replacement but higher than that of the all-trans-retinal-bound forms. The mutant also showed a lower stability in its opsin state as compared with that of the wild-type opsin but had little effects on the binding affinity to 11-cis-retinal. Information obtained in this study will be helpful for analyzing the structural changes associated with the activation of rhodopsin and GPCRs.