• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.207-214
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• 2013

A concerted effort to develop alternative forms of energy is underway due to fossil fuel shortages and its deleterious effects. Recently, bioenergy from microalgae has gained prominence and the use of municipal wastewater as a low cost alternative for a nutrient source has significant advantages. In this study, we have employed municipal wastewater directly after primary treatment (primary settling basin) in a small scale raceway pond (SSRP) for microalgal growth. Indigenous microalgae in the wastewater were encouraged to grow in the SSRP under optimal conditions. The mean removal efficiencies of TN, TP, and $NH_3-N$ after 6 days were 77.77%, 63.55%, and 89.02%, respectively. The average lipid content of the microalgae was 19.51% of dry cell weight, and linolenate and linoleate (18:n) were the predominant fatty acids. The 18S rRNA gene analysis and microscopic observations of the indigenous microalgae community revealed the presence of Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus obliquus as the dominant microalgae. These results indicate that untreated municipal wastewater, serving as an excellent nitrogen and phosphate source for microalgal growth, could be treated using microalgae in open raceway ponds. Moreover, microalgal biomass could be further profitable by the extraction of biodiesel.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.102-111
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• 2010

This study was conducted to investigate the optimal conditions of collagen extraction from scales of yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) using surface response methodology. Four independent variables of NaOH concentration and pretreatment fime in alkali pretreatment and enzyme concentration and treatment time in enzyme hydrolysis were used to predict a model equation for the collagen yield. The determinant coefficient ($R^2$) for the equation was 0.906. The values of the independent variables for the maximum yield were 0.32 N NaOH, 16.38 h alkali pretreatment time, 0.18% enzyme concentration, and 31.02 h enzyme treatment time. In the physicochemical properties of tuna scale collagen, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of tuna scale collagen showed the same migration distances as that of calf skin collagen. The amide A, I, II, and III regions of tuna scale collagen in Fourier transform infrared measurements were shown in the peaks of 3,414 $cm^{-1}$, 1,645 $cm^{-1}$, 1,553 $cm^{-1}$, and 1,247 $cm^{-1}$, respectively. The amount of imino acids in tuna scale collagen was 18.97% and the collagen denaturation temperature was $33^{\circ}C$. The collagen solubility as a function of NaCl concentration decreased to 4% NaCl (w/v) and the collagen solubility as a function of pH was high at pH 2-4 and sharply decreased from pH 4 to pH 7. Viscosity of the collagen solution decreased continuously until $30^{\circ}C$ and this decreasing rate slowed in the temperature range of $35-50^{\circ}C$.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.744-750
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• 2012

In this study, the optimal conditions for phenolic-compound extraction from medicinal plants were found to be 24 h and about 50% ethanol. The electron-donating scavenging activities (DPPH), ABTS radical-cation decolorization (ABTS), antioxidant protection factor (PF), and thiobarbituric acid reaction substance (TBAR) were measured to determine the antioxidant activities of the extracts of Sanguisorba officinalis Linn., Citrus unshiu Markovich, Melia azedarach L., Asparagus cochinchinensis Merr., Citrus unshiu S., Polygonum aviculare L., and Leonurus sibiricus L. The total phenolic contents of the extracts of medical plants were determined to be 0.45-3.00 mg/g in the water extracts and 0.33-3.15 mg/g in the 50% ethanol extracts. The electron-donating abilities (EDA) of the water and ethanol extracts were both above 85% at the $50{\mu}g/ml$ concentration. The ABTS radical-cation decolorization was above 80% at the $100{\mu}g/ml$ concentration in all the extracts of various medicinal plants. The antioxidant protection factor (PF) of the Melia azedarach L. extracts was found to be $1.65{\pm}0.40$ PF in the water extracts at the $100{\mu}g/ml$ concentration, and was higher than those of the other medicinal-plant extracts. The TBAR inhibition rates of all the medicinal-plant extracts, except Asparagus cochinchinensis Merr., were above 85% at the $100{\mu}g/ml$ concentration. These results confirmed that the various oriental medicinal plants (Sanguisorba officinalis Linn., Citrus unshiu Markovich, Melia azedarach L., Asparagus cochinchinensis Merr., Citrus unshiu S., Polygonum aviculare L., and Leonurus sibiricus L.) that were included in this study are useful functional-food sources.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.121-131
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• 2017

We evaluated the antioxidant properties of Lentinula edodes upon sawdust bag cultivation with 5 oak substrates: Quercus acutissima, Q. mongolica, Q. serrata, Q. aliena, and Q. variabilis. We found that the optimal extraction conditions were 70% (v/v) methanol shaken at 150 rpm at $25^{\circ}C$ and 150 rpm for 24 h. The methanolic extracts from L. edodes contained high phenolic and flavonoid contents, they also exhibited stronger antioxidant activities. The total phenolic contents and total flavonoid contents of the mushroom extracts ranged from 2.37 to 3.12 milligrams of gallic acid equivalents per gram of dried mushroom (mg GAE/g) and 0.48 to 0.48 milligrams of quercetin equivalents per gram of dried mushroom (mg QE/g), respectively. In addition, the mushroom extracts exhibited 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging activity (15.8% to 89.4%) at 2 to 10 mg/mL, ferric reducing antioxidant power (0.153 to 0.425) at 5 to 20 mg/mL, and reducing power (0.078 to 0.359) at 5 to 20 mg/mL, respectively. Q. aliena more effectively increased total phenolic contents, total flavonoid contents, and antioxidant activities than the other oak substrates.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.319-325
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• 1985

Agar was prepared from domestic agarophyte (Gelidium amansii) by a process of acid extraction. Optimal conditions in the acid treatment of the seaweed and the gelling properties of the agar thus prepared were investigated. The yield and gel strength of the control (the agar extracted with distilled water) showed 13,3% and 306g/$cm^2$, respectively. The yield of 38.7% was obtained when agar was extracted with 0.007N Hydorchloric acid while the gel strength of agar,511g/$cm^2$ was observed with the agar extracted with 0.005N Hydorchloric acid solution. The agar extracted with hydrochloric acid solution showed excellent properties of agar at the acid concentration range 0.005N-0.01N The cooking time of 60 min. was found to be effective to the yield and also to the gelling property of the agar and the cooking longer than 60 min. was proved to be destructive to agar. In general, yield and gelling properties of the agar obtained showed a close relation to the acid concentration and cooking time, but no consistent influence on the contents of ash and sulfur trioxide.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.40-48
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• 2010

It was investigated that effects of NaOH concentration on synthesis of mesoporous materials using municipal solid waste incinerator ash slag (MSWI-ash slag). In order to increase the purity and maximize the amount of extracted Si content the raw MSWI-ash slag was mechanically activated. Extraction of Si from the MSWI-ash slag was carried out by alkali treatment using concentrated NaOH solution, which varied from 1M to 4M. Physical properties (i.e., pore size, specific surface area and total pore volume) of the synthesized mesoporous silica were also evaluated as a function of NaOH concentration via BET, SEM, TEM and small-angle X-ray scattering analyses. Over the entire range of NaOH concentration investigated (i.e., 1-4M), the synthesized mesoporous materials were determined to be SBA-15, which exhibited a hexagonal structure with the pore size of approximately 7 nm. On the other hand, specific surface area and total pore volume increased with NaOH concentration up to 3M while the values decreased at 4M, indicating that the optimal NaOH concentration for the synthesized mesoporous silica was approximately 3M. Further comparison analysis between two conditions (3M versus 4M) showed that the decrease in two physical properties at 4M NaOH concentration was likely due to the potential inhibition by excess Na ions on the formation of mesophase and the consequent increase of pore wall thickness by remaining Si ions.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.115-125
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• 2022

Flavonoids are bioactive plant metabolites that have a range of beneficial effects on human health. Quercetin 4'-glycoside (Q4'G), quercetin 3,4'-diglycoside (Q3,4'G), and quercetin aglycone (QA) are the main flavonoids found in onions. QA, in particular, is likely to have a greater biological effect than glycosides. To develop an onion extract with high quercetin content, the optimal extraction conditions for red onion powder containing the outer layer of the onion were determined. The effects of acid treatment on the concentration of quercetin glycosides and QA were evaluated. The flavonoids of red onion powder were optimally extracted under 60-70% ethanol at 70℃ for 2 h. The deglycosylation of Q3,4'G and an increase in Q4'G content occurred within 6 h of 0.2% acetic acid treatment. The QA content and deglycosylation of Q4'G eventually peaked at 24 h. In addition, QA content and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity were highly correlated, with a correlation coefficient of 0.90.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.143-151
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• 2010

Fingerprint classification is a step to increase the efficiency of an 1:N fingerprint recognition system and plays a role to reduce the matching time of fingerprint and to increase accuracy of recognition. It is difficult to classify fingerprints, because the ridge pattern of each fingerprint class has an overlapping characteristic with more than one class, fingerprint images may include a lot of noise and an input condition is an exceptional case. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to design a stochastic model and to accomplish fingerprint classification using a directional characteristic of fingerprints for an effective classification of various qualities. We compute the directional value by searching a fingerprint ridge pixel by pixel and extract a directional characteristic by merging a computed directional value by fixed pixels unit. The modified Markov model of each fingerprint class is generated using Markov model which is a stochastic information extraction and a recognition method by extracted directional characteristic. The weight list of classification model of each class is decided by analyzing the state transition matrixes of the generated Markov model of each class and the optimized value which improves the performance of fingerprint classification using GA (Genetic Algorithm) is estimated. The performance of the optimized classification model by GA is superior to the model before the optimization by the experiment result of applying the fingerprint database of various qualities to the optimized model by GA. And the proposed method effectively achieved fingerprint classification to exceptional input conditions because this approach is independent of the existence and nonexistence of singular points by the result of analyzing the fingerprint database which is used to the experiments.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.199-208
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• 2021

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is effective method with high detection sensitivity for evaluating fish biodiversity and detecting endangered fish from natural water samples. We compared the richness of operational taxonomic units(OTUs) and composition of freshwater fishes according to filters(cellulose nitrate filter vs. glass fiber filter), extraction kits(DNeasy2^® Blood & Tissue Kit vs. DNeasy2^® PowerWater Kit), primer sets (12S rDNA vs. 16S rDNA), and PCR methods (conventional PCR vs. touchdown PCR) to determine the optimal conditions for metabarcoding analysis of Korean freshwater fish. The glass fiber filter and DNeasy2^® Blood & Tissue Kit combination showed the highest number of freshwater fish OTUs in both 12S and 16S rDNA. Among the four types, the primer sets only showed statistically significant difference in the average number of OTUs in class Actinopterygii (non-parametric Wilcoxon signed ranks test, p=0.005). However, there was no difference in the average number of OTUs in freshwater fish. The species composition also showed significant difference according to primer sets (PERMANOVA, Pseudo-F=6.9489, p=0.006), but no differences were observed in the other three types. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) results revealed that species composition clustered together according to primer sets based on similarity of 65%; 16S rDNA primer set was mainly attributed to endangered species such as Microphysogobio koreensis and Pseudogobio brevicorpus. In contrast, the 12S rDNA primer set was mainly attributed to common species such as Zacco platypus and Coreoperca herzi. This study provides essential information on species diversity analysis using metabarcoding for environmental water samples obtained from rivers in Korea.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.66
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• pp.416-423
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• 2023

Figs has known to have antioxidant, whitening, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial effects in their leaves, roots, stems, latex, and fruits. In order to develop cosmetic materials based on natural products, we have studied on the skin activity of the ficin in latex as well as the whitening function of the fruit extract with 70% ethanol, and used it as a raw material for released cosmetic product. However, there is little research on the demand for the development of new eutectic solvent extraction methods and its ability to control skin inflammation and psoriasis regulation. Thus, in this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of fig fruit extracts and fractions using eutectic solvent extraction for skin inflammation control and psoriasis. First, fig fruits were extracted under optimal eutectic solvent conditions and fractionated with n-hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate, and butanol. First, the antioxidant activity and inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) production were confirmed in mouse macrophage RAW264.7 cells. In addition, as a result of observing the mRNA expression through RT-PCR, pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α, IL1α, and IL-1β were suppressed significantly in the hexane, dichloromethane, and ethyl acetate fractions. In addition, it was confirmed in TNF-α stimulated HaCaT keratinocyte model. Finally, chemokine CC motif ligand 20 (CCL20), marker gene of human psoriasis skin disease, was significantly suppressed in the hexane, dichloromethane, and ethyl acetate fractions. These results suggested its anti-inflammatory and skin soothing effect and the possibility of development as an excellent skin soothing natural cosmetic material in the future through future clinical trials.