• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.438-446
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• 2020

Meju and nuruk (respectively soybean and malt) are traditional Korean fermentation starters that are vulnerable to contamination by harmful microorganisms such as aflatoxigenic fungi and their associated aflatoxins (AFs). In this study, Aspergillus spp. were isolated and identified from a total of 57 meju and 18 nuruk samples collected from Korean markets. Their potential aflatoxigenicity was investigated by examining the presence of three aflatoxin biosynthetic genes (aflO, aflP, and aflR) using multiplex polymerase chain reaction (mPCR) assays. Thereafter, aflatoxin production of isolates and the natural occurrence of AFs in meju and nuruk samples were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A total of 177 Aspergillus isolates were identified and 130 isolates were obtained from meju samples. Of these, 25 isolates (19.2%) contained all three aflatoxin biosynthetic genes, and five (20%) of these isolates produced aflatoxins. Forty-seven of the Aspergillus isolates were obtained from nuruk samples, five of which (10.6%) expressed all three AF biosynthetic genes; however, none of these strains produced AFs. HPLC analysis showed that 88% (51/58) of the meju samples and 39% (7/18) of nuruk samples were not contaminated with AFs (below limit of detection). Among the isolates isolated from meju and nuruk, there were aflatoxigenic strains containing all three aflatoxin biosynthetic genes or producing aflatoxin in medium, but the frequency of aflatoxin contamination was low in the meju and nuruk samples.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.29-45
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• 2017

This study explored spatiotemporal variability of water quality in correspondence with hydro-meteorological factors in the four stations of Euiam Reservoir located in the upstream region of the North-Han River from May 2012 to December 2015. Seasonal effect was apparent in the variation of water temperature, DO, electric conductivity and TSS during the study period. Stratification in the water column was observed in the near dam site every year and vanished between August and October. Increase of nitrogen nutrients was observed when inflowing discharge was low, while phosphorus increase was distinct both during the early season with increase of inflowing discharge and the period of severe draught persistent. Duration persisting high concentration of Chl-a (>$25mg\;m^{-3}$: the eutrophic status criterion, OECD, 1982) was 1~2 months of the whole year in 2014~2015, while it was almost 4 months in 2013. Water quality of Euiam Reservoir appeared to be affected basically by geomorphology and source of pollutants, such as longitudinally linked instream islands and Aggregate Island, inflowing urban stream, and wastewater treatment plant discharge. While inflowing discharge from the dams upstream and outflow pattern causing water level change seem to largely govern the variability of water quality in this particular system. In the process of spatiotemporal water quality change, factors related to climate (e.g. flood, typhoon, abruptly high rainfall, scorching heat of summer), hydrology (amount of flow and water level) might be attributed to water pulse, dilution, backflow, uptake, and sedimentation. This study showed that change of water quality in Euiam Reservoir was very dynamic and suggested that its effect could be delivered to downstream (Cheongpyeong and Paldang Reservoirs) through year-round discharge for hydropower generation.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2009

The compost leachate was dark-colored solution that leaches out of the bottom of the compost pile. The compost leachate was rich in nutrients and can potentially used in plant culture. In the organic production, commercial liquid fertilizer was used to insure the availability of nutrients during the formation of the yield. The cost of supplemental liquid fertilizer could be reduced by developing a fertilizer based on animal fertilizer. This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different combination of compost leachate and conventional inorganic solution in hydroponic culture for lettuce growth. Six different treatments were applied. The compost leachate(CL) and nutrient solution(NS) were mixed by six different mixing ratios of 0:100, 20:80, 40:60, 60:40%, 80:20 and 100%:0% based on nitrogen content. The chemical nutrient solution was the solution of National Horticulture Research Station for the growth of leaf lettuce. The concentration of nutrient solution was adjusted 1.5 mS/cm in EC. The compost leachate was low in phosphorus(P), calcium(Ca), magnesium(Mg), but rich in potassium(K). The plant height of lettuce treated with CL 20+NS 80% was similar with 100% NS of control plot. Plant height was highest in the plot of CL 20+NS 80%. The treatment of 100% compost leachate was lowest in the growth characteristics of leaf lettuce. Number of leaf was very low in 100% compost leachate compared with plot of chemical nutrient solution. In the beginning of growth stage, SPAD value was reduced in plot treated with CL100%, but CL20+NS80% plot was higher compared to 100% compost leachate. SPAD value of leaf lettuce leaves was decreased as the amount of CL was increased. The dry weight of lettuce were 107.4, 104.2g in plot of NS 100% and CL 20%+NS80%, respectively. The leaf number and plant weight were decreased at high application plots of compost leachate. The leaf lettuce showed lowest in the plot treated with 100% compost leachate, and the growth of lettuce severely decreased after application of 100% CL treatment. The results showed that compost leachate can be use as liquid fertilizer for the organic hydroponic production. The mixture solution of 20% of compost leachate and 80% of nutrient solution could be used as a nutrition solution in hydroponic culture of leaf lettuce. Our studies have shown that is possible to produce using compost leachate, although growth is slower than when using a conventional inorganic hydroponic solution.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2002

A field experiment was carried out to determine the effect of application level of animal manure on the nitrate nitrogen concentration, sugar content and animal intake of forage sorghum $\times$ sudangrass hybrid (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, cv. Pionee. 988) in 1995. The application amount of animal manure were 50, 100 and 150MT in cattle manure, 20, 40 and 80MT in swine manure, and 10, 20 and 40MT/ha in poultry manure. Non-application plot(control) was involved. The nitrate nitrogen concentration was increased with increasing of application level of animal manure(P<0.05). Average nitrate nitrogen concentration was 397, 512, and 609mg/kg at low, medium and high application level of animal manure. The nitrate nitrogen concentration by plant height was 438mg/kg at 50~60m of plant height, 454mg at 100~120cm, and 418mg at 200~220cm. The nitrate nitrogen concentration of stems was 376mg, and significantly higher than that(135mg) of leaves(P<0.05) regardless of animal manure type, and lower parts of stems and leaves were significantly higher than those of upper parts of plants(P<0.05). Average nitrate nitrogen concentration of leaves was 151mg at lower, and 58mg at upper parts of plants, and the concentration of stems was 357mg at lower, 511mg at middle, and 610mg at upper parts of plants. The sugar contents of sorghum $\times$ sudangrass hybrid was decreased with increasing of application level of animal manure(P<0.05). Average sugar content was 4.9, 4.4, and 4.3。 at low, medium and high application level of animal manure. The sugar content by plant height was 3.9。 at 50~60 and 100~120cm of plant height, and 6.1。 at 200~220cm of plant height. Animal intake of sorghum $\times$ sudangrass hybrid was decreased greatly with increasing of application level of animal manure. Average intake was 73.9, 55.7, and 52.3% at low, medium and high application level of animal manure. The intake by animal manure type was 73.7% in cattle, 59.7% in swine and 62.5% in poultry manure.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.148-153
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• 2005

Malaria is a re-emerging infectious disease that is spreading to areas where it had been eradicated, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia. To avoid the mortality from malaria, early detection of the parasite is a very important issue. The peripheral blood smear has been the gold standard method for the diagnosis of malaria infection. Recently, several other methods have been introduced for quantitative detection of malaria parasites. Real time PCR that employs fluorescent labels to enable the continuous monitoring of PCR product formation throughout the reaction has recently been used to detect several human malaria parasites. 18S rRNA sequences from malaria parasites have been amplified using Taqman real time PCR assay. Here, a SYBR Green-based real time quantitative PCR assay for the detection of malaria parasite-especially, Plasmodium vivax - was applied for the evaluation of 26 blood samples from Korean malaria patients. Even though SYBR Green-based real time PCR is easier and cheaper than Taqman-based assay, SYBR Green-based assay cannot be used because 18S rRNA cannot be specifically amplified using 1 primer set. Therefore, we used DBP gene sequences from Plasmodium vivax, which is specific for the SYBR Green based assays. We amplified the DBP gene from the 26 blood samples of malaria patients using SYBR Green based assay and obtained the copy numbers of DBP genes for each sample. Also, we selected optimal reference gene between ACTB and B2M using real time assay to get the stable genes regardless of Malaria titer. Using selected ACTB reference genes, we successfully converted the copy numbers from samples into titer, ${\sharp}$ of parasites per microliter. Using the resultant titer from DBP based SYBER Green assay with ACTB reference gene, we compared the results from our study with the titer from Taqman-based assay. We found that our results showed identical tendency with the results of 18S rRNA Taqman assay, especially in lower titer range. Thus, our DBP gene-utilized real time assay can detect Plasmodium vivax in Korean patient group semi-quantitatively and easily.

• Korean Journal of Animal Reproduction
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.339-347
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• 2001

Sperm-mediated DNA transfer has a potential to markedly simplify techniques for the generation of transgenic animals. The exogenous DNA transfer by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) procedure has been recently introduced in the production of transgenic animals. In this study, the developmental competence and tile expression rates of transgene were investigated after injection of spermatozoon or sperm head with enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) gene into the mature porcine oocytes. The porcine oocytes were injected with intact sperm, membrane-disrupted sperm or sperm head. After injection. embryos were cultured in NCSU23 medium up to the blastocyst stage, and the developmental competence and expression rates were studied. The developmental rate (67.0%) of sperm injection group was higher than that (59.7%) of sperm head injection group, and the rates of EGFP expression were also significantly different between sperm injection and sperm head injection groups (42.1 vs 20.0%) (F＜0.05). In the porcine oocytes injected with sperm treated with different methods of membrane disruption, the removal of sperm membrane did not alter the developmental competence of embryos. The rate of blastocysts at 7 days after injection with intact and membrane disrupted sperm were 15.0 and 14.2%, respectively. The EGFP expression rates, 38.4% in embryos injected with frozen-thawed sperm was higher than that, 22.4% of embryos injected with the Triton X-100 treated sperm. Prior to injection, sperm were cultured in different EGFP gene concentrations from 0.Ol to 1ng/u${mu}ell$. However, no significant difference in developmental rates of embryos among different concentrations of EGFP gene were observed. The highest expression rate of EGFP gene, 37.4% was obtained from the embryos injected with spermatozoa treated with 0.1 ng/${mu}ell$ EGFP gene. These results suggested that exogenous DNA could be attached to the membrane disrupted sperm, and that these sperm could be used as a vector carrying foreign DNA into embryos.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.703-710
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to detect association between genetic variation and economic trait in the porcine heart type fatty acid-binding protein gene as a candidate gene for the traits related with growth and meat quality in pigs. The H-FABP is a 15-kDa protein expressed in several tissues with high demand for fat metabolism such as cardiac and skeletal muscle and lactating mammary gland. H-FABP is small intracellular protein involved in fatty acid transport from the plasma membrane to the site of $\beta$-oxidation and/or triacylglycerol or phospholipid synthesis. In this study, H-FABP PCR-RFLP was performed in F$_2$ population composed of 214 individuals from an intercross between Korean Native Boars and Landrace sows. PCR products from two primer sets within H-FABP gene were amplified in 850bp and 700bp. Digestion of PCR products with the restriction digestion enzymes HaeⅢ and HinfⅠ, revealed fragment length polymorphisms(RFLPs). The genotype frequencies from H-FABP/HaeⅢ was .29 for genotype DD, .53 for genotype Dd, and .15 for genotype dd, respectively. The genotype frequencies of HH, Hh, and hh from H-FABP/HinfⅠ was .38, .41 and .20, respectively, in the population. Relationships between their genotypes and economic traits were estimated. In H-FABP/HaeⅢ locus, there were specific genotypes(Dd and dd) associated with economic traits such as body weights at 3, 5, 12, and 30 week of age (p〈.05 to .001). The ‘d’ allele was associated with gaining of body weight. In H-FABP/HinfⅠ locus, Genotypes of HH and Hh associated with growth traits such as body weights at 5, 12, and 30 week of age (p〈.05 or p〈.001) and back fat thickness, body fat including abdominal and trimmed fat (p〈.001) and intramuscular fat(p〈.05) The ‘H’ allele was positively associated with gaining of body weight and fatness deposition. In conclusion, a significant association of the H-FABP gene from its genetic variation was found on body weight, intramuscular fat and backfat thickness.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.49-55
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• 2015

According to the statistics of traffic accidents over recent 5 years, traffic accidents during the night times happened more than the day times. There are various causes to occur traffic accidents and the one of the major causes is inappropriate or missing street lights that make driver's sight confused and causes the traffic accidents. In this paper, with smartphones, we designed and implemented a lane luminance measurement application which stores the information of driver's location, driving, and lane luminance into database in real time to figure out the inappropriate street light facilities and the area that does not have any street lights. This application is implemented under Native C/C++ environment using android NDK and it improves the operation speed than code written in Java or other languages. To measure the luminance of road, the input image with RGB color space is converted to image with YCbCr color space and Y value returns the luminance of road. The application detects the road lane and calculates the road lane luminance into the database sever. Also this application receives the road video image using smart phone's camera and improves the computational cost by allocating the ROI(Region of interest) of input images. The ROI of image is converted to Grayscale image and then applied the canny edge detector to extract the outline of lanes. After that, we applied hough line transform method to achieve the candidated lane group. The both sides of lane is selected by lane detection algorithm that utilizes the gradient of candidated lanes. When the both lanes of road are detected, we set up a triangle area with a height 20 pixels down from intersection of lanes and the luminance of road is estimated from this triangle area. Y value is calculated from the extracted each R, G, B value of pixels in the triangle. The average Y value of pixels is ranged between from 0 to 100 value to inform a luminance of road and each pixel values are represented with color between black and green. We store car location using smartphone's GPS sensor into the database server after analyzing the road lane video image with luminance of road about 60 meters ahead by wireless communication every 10 minutes. We expect that those collected road luminance information can warn drivers about safe driving or effectively improve the renovation plans of road luminance management.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-18
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• 2004

This study attempted to survey the present status of the eight students who, 17 years from now, had participated in a special program for 170 days preparing for early entrance to the KAIST. With six students who responded to the questionnaire previously sent, the study focused on each participant's achievement at present, his evaluation on Accelerated Education, his personal opinions on early entrance to university and Gifted Science Education. From the survey, we could find out that three participants had received a doctorate and they are currently working as researchers at research center or professors at university. The other three participants are working as researchers at research center after receiving the M. S. Academic achievements vary according to each participant, but three of them, who ranked high in research achievement, had their articles published in international journals of the SCI level even when they were between 25 and 28 of age. Two of them in particular showed outstanding engineering and developing the commercial modem for IMT 2000 for the first time in Korea. One participant entered Harvard University to major in physics and afterwards studied the law in UCLA. He is now a professor in the law department. Concerning the evaluations on Accelerated Education and early entrance system, four participants answered positively while two participants expressed negative attitudes. When asked their opinions on the Gifted Education in Korea, such problems were pointed out as too much pressure of entering the first-class universities, the tendency to avoid choosing science-related major at universities, the lack of education system that encourages creative thinking, etc. It is necessary that the accelerated education play an important role to maximize their hidden potentials. It remains to be seen in what places these six participants will find themselves and of what ideas they will come up within the next 17 years. It will be worthwhile to wait until then for another survey.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.239-252
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• 1981

The East China Sea is an important region as nursery and spawning grounds for pelagic fishes such as jack mackerel, common mackerel etc. , and thus constitutes a major fishing area for purse-seine fishery. The environment surrounding in this region is under the influence of the Yellow Sea Cold Water, China Coastal Water and Kuroshio Current. The purpose of this study was to clarify the effects of oceanographic conditions and thermal fronts on the formation of the fishing grounds for the mackerels in the East China Sea. Through the analyses of fisheries statistics during 1968-1976 and temperature data, the following facts are found: 1) Approximately $70\%$ of the total mackerel(common) catches appeared to be come from the Tsushima Current region which includes Sakai coast of the Japan Sea, eastern Tsushima and Shirase Island, and Jeju Island of Korea. This area covers only about $8\%$ of the East China Sea. 2) Main fishing grounds for the jack mackerel are also centered around the area of southwestern Goto, Shirase and eastern Tsushima Island where the catches accounted for about $54\%$ of the total jack mackerel catches. 3) Fluctuations in annual catches are relatively small in the Tsushima Current region, compared to other regions such as Yellow Sea, southwestern coast of Kyushu and mid-western part of the East China Sea, where the fisheries yields varied considerably due to unstable fishing conditions. 4) It appears that the fishing grounds for the jack mackerel are mainly distributed along the warmer region ($15-20^{\circ}C$) of the thermal front, and those for the common mackerel are in somewhat colder region ($13-16^{\circ}C$) in the Tsushima Current.