• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1728-1735
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• 2014

Scrub typhus, caused by infection with Orientia tsutsugamushi, is a mite-borne zoonotic disease endemic to the Asian-Pacific region. In Korea, the incidence of this disease has increased with climate changes, and over 10,000 cases of infection were reported in 2013. Although this infection is treatable with antibiotics such as doxycycline and azithromycin, an effective prophylactic vaccine against O. tsutsugamushi would be more desirable for preventing scrub typhus in endemic areas. In this study, we investigated the 56-kDa type-specific antigen (TSA56), which is a major outer membrane protein of O. tsutsugamushi, as a vaccine candidate. Intranasal immunization of recombinant TSA56 (rec56) induced a higher level of TSA56-specific IgG than that induced by intramuscular immunization of tsa56-expressing DNA (p56). Both types of immunization induced a cell-mediated immune response to TSA56, as demonstrated by the splenic cell proliferation assay. Mice immunized with p56, followed by rec56 plus heat-labile enterotoxin B subunit from E. coli, had a stronger protection from a homologous challenge with the O. tsutsugamushi Boryong strain than with other combinations. Our preliminary results suggest that an effective human vaccine for scrub typhus can include either recombinant TSA56 protein or tsa56-expressing DNA, and provide the basis for further studies to optimize vaccine performance using additional antigens or different adjuvants.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.108-114
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• 2015

Curvularia lunata is an important maize foliar fungal pathogen that distributes widely in maize growing area in China, and several key pathogenic factors have been isolated. An yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) library is a very useful platform to further unravel novel pathogenic factors in C. lunata. To construct a high-quality full length-expression cDNA library from the C. lunata for application to pathogenesis-related protein-protein interaction screening, total RNA was extracted. The SMART (Switching Mechanism At 5' end of the RNA Transcript) technique was used for cDNA synthesis. Double-stranded cDNA was ligated into the pGADT7-Rec vector with Herring Testes Carrier DNA using homologous recombination method. The ligation mixture was transformed into competent yeast AH109 cells to construct the primary cDNA library. Eventually, a high qualitative library was successfully established according to an evaluation on quality. The transformation efficiency was about $6.39{\times}10^5$ transformants/$3{\mu}g$ pGADT7-Rec. The titer of the primary cDNA library was $2.5{\times}10^8cfu/mL$. The numbers for the cDNA library was $2.46{\times}10^5$. Randomly picked clones show that the recombination rate was 88.24%. Gel electrophoresis results indicated that the fragments ranged from 0.4 kb to 3.0 kb. Melanin synthesis protein Brn1 (1,3,8-hydroxynaphthalene reductase) was used as a "bait" to test the sufficiency of the Y2H library. As a result, a cDNA clone encoding VelB protein that was known to be involved in the regulation of diverse cellular processes, including control of secondary metabolism containing melanin and toxin production in many filamentous fungi was identified. Further study on the exact role of the VelB gene is underway.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.29-42
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• 2016

This study analyzes the economic efficiency of utilizing hot waste water at a thermoelectric power plant, which is part of recent projects supported by the Korean government to foster new energy industry. The author proposes an institution that provides economic incentives to promote the project. Based on a method of calculating Levelized cost of energy (LCOE), this study finds that the LCOE of using hot waste water at power plants is higher than that of oil boiler, biomass and a power plant's auxiliary steam but similar to that of the geothermal system. Also, according to sensitivity analysis on the LCOE of each element in the system of using hot waste water, a distance of heat supply is most sensitive. Therefore, this study shows that when the government devises an incentive-based institution to expand the project of utilizing hot waste water, it is necessary to establish Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) weights that are differentiated by a distance of heat supply.

• Journal of Periodontal and Implant Science
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.127-135
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• 2012

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the clinical outcome of open flap debridement (OFD) with a biphasic calcium phosphate (BCP) graft to that of OFD without BCP graft for the treatment of intrabony periodontal defects (IBDs). Methods: The study included 25 subjects that had at least one intrabony defect of 2- or 3-wall morphology and an intrabony component ${\geq}4$ mm as detected radiographically. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment with (BCP group, n=14) or without BCP (OFD group, n=11). Clinical parameters were recorded at baseline and 6 months after surgery and included the plaque index, gingival index, probing depth (PD), clinical attachment level (CAL), and gingival recession (REC). A stringent plaque control regimen was enforced for all of the patients during the 6-month observation period. Results: In all of the treatment groups, significant PD reductions and CAL gains occurred during the study period (P<0.01). At 6 months, patients in the BCP group exhibited a mean PD reduction of $3.7{\pm}1.2$ mm and a mean CAL gain of $3.0{\pm}1.1$ mm compared to the baseline. Corresponding values for the patients treated with OFD were $2.5{\pm}0.8$ mm and $1.4{\pm}1.0$ mm, respectively. Compared to OFD group, the additional CAL gain was significantly greater in the patients in BCP group (P=0.028). The additional PD reduction was significant for the BCP group (P=0.048). The REC showed a significant increase in both groups, and the amount of recession was significantly smaller in the BCP group than OFD group (P=0.023). In radiographic evaluation, the height of the bone fill in the BCP group was significantly greater than OFD group. Conclusions: The clinical benefits of BCP found in this study indicate that BCP may be an appropriate alternative to conventional graft materials.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.388-394
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• 2024

Since recommendation systems play a key role in increasing the revenue of companies, various approaches and models have been studied in the past. However, this diversity also leads to a complexity in the types of recommendation systems, which makes it difficult to select a recommendation model. Therefore, this study aims to solve the difficulty of selecting an appropriate recommendation model for recommendation systems by providing a unified criterion for categorizing various recommendation models and comparing their performance in a unified environment. The experiments utilized MovieLens and Coursera datasets, and the performance of linear models(ADMM-SLIM, EASER, LightGCN) and non-linear models(Caser, BERT4Rec) were evaluated using HR@10 and NDCG@10 metrics. This study will provide researchers and practitioners with useful information for selecting the best model based on dataset characteristics and recommendation context.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.159-198
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• 2010

The Korean government is planning to introduce the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) system to replace the currently used Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) system which is a subsidy-based mechanism to foster the renewable energy industry. The RPS system is a market-oriented system in which the power companies are obliged to use renewable energy sources to produce electricity by a certain ratio of their production level. They can either produce for themselves or simply purchase the REC (renewable energy certificate) in the market to implement. The objective of this article is to compare the RPS system with the current FIT system in terms of the implementing cost to achieve the policy goal to expand the share of renewable energy m the total power generation. The analysis is conducted using Linear Programming models. The results of this study imply several policy suggestions to successfully introduce the RPS system.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2011

QoS(Quality of Service) is defined "The collective effect of service performance which determines the degree of satisfaction of a user of the service" by ITU-T Rec. E.800. The final goal of information system is to secure the performance efficiency within the required time. The security QoS framework is the modeling of the QoS measurement metrics, the measurement time schedule, instrument, method of measurement and the series of methodology about analysis of the result of measurement. This paper relates to implementing issue and performance measuring about blended mechanism between networking technology and security technology. We got more effectiveness in overall network security, when applying and composing amalgamated security mechanism between network technology and security technology. In this paper, we suggest techniques being used on infrastructure system and also offers a security QoS methodology as a model of more effective way. Methodology proposed in this research has proven that it is possible to measure response time through the scheduled method.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.7-20
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• 2014

The optimal woodchip production system was developed and the production cost of a forest woodchip fuel was calculated for utilizing the pitch pine, which covers around 480,000ha nationwide. the marginal price of the woodchip fuel considering the factor of supply price, electricity and heat selling price as well as capacity factor were suggested and the economic sensitivity analysis was conducted for various scenario. The most important variable which determine economic feasibility was a fuel cost for the power generation facility. If the electricity price is higher than the current SMP(System Marginal Price) or the capacity factor is higher than 80%, there fully is a benefit to consume the woodchip fuels produced in the suggested production system in this study. In addition, the additional benefit becomes more obvious when considering REC(Renewable Energy Certificate) and CDM(Clean Development Mechanism). Therefore, it is strongly suggested for domestic power generation sector to utilize the forest biomass fuel to achieve the obligatory target of RPS.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 1982

A study was undertaken to examine the effect of curing agents on the stability, curing and segregation of R plasmid pSL100. And also the stability, transfer frequency, and recombination of its segregants obtained from curing agent treatment were studied. Ethidium bromide, acridine orange, and mitomycin-C were used as curing agent. The results obtained were as follows ; 1. The curing agent ethidium bromide, acridine orange, and mitomycin-C were not effective for curing the multiple antibiotic resistant determinant of pSL100 in Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli. However, they induced plasmid segregation with high frequency in S.typhimuruim LT-2strains. TcApSmCm, TcSmCmKm, TcApCm, TcAp, TcKm, Tc segregants were obtained. 2. The resistant markers of the segregents were transferred to S.typhimurium LT-2 strains with high frequencies whereas they were transferred to E.coli K-12 only with low frequencies. 3. The transconjugants obtained from conjugation between two different S.typhimurium segregants were similar to the phenotype of the original R factor pSL100 and the resistant markers were transferred to the S.typhimurium LT-2 or E.coli strain with equal frequencies, indicating that they are recombinants. 4. The transconjugants obtained from conjugation between pSL100 segrgants and pKM101, or pBR322 possessed the resistant markers of the two parental plasmids and they were transferred to both S.typhimurium and E.coli K-12 strains with the same frequencies and maintained stably, suggesting that they are also recombinants. 5. The recombinant pSL100 could be also obtained in rec A-strains of E.coli, suggesting that the gene function of rec A is required for the recombination of pSL100 segregants in E.coli.

• Preventive Nutrition and Food Science
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.139-145
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• 2002

Hen egg-white lysozyme, ovalbumin, egg-yolk phosvitin, acid-precipitated soy protein and $\alpha$$_{sl}$ milk casein were covalently linked with galactomannan through a controlled dry-heating at 6$0^{\circ}C$ under 79% relative humidity without any chemical reagent. Neoglycosylation by the covalent binding of polysaccharide chains brought a significant improvement into the surface functionalities of food proteins. Excellent emulsifying properties and foaming properties were observed in all protein-galactomannan conjugates. Bacterial mutagenesis tests and animal dose test were done to evaluate the food safety of the protein-galactomannan conjugates. The neo-glycoproteins were negative for Ames test using Salmonella typhimurium TA100 (hisG46) and TA98 (hisD3052) strains, and rec-assay using Bacillus subtilis Hl7 (rec) and M45 (re $c^{+}$) strains. All substances were also nontoxic for oral administration to rats. L $D_{50}$ 's of these substances were all more than 7.5 g/kg body-weight of rat. No effect was also observed in the weight increases and the concentrations of total cholesterol, triglyceride and phospholipids in blood serum of the administrated rats with 7.5 g/kg conjugates. Thus, Maillard-type protein-polysaccharide conjugates prepared by covalent attachment of galactomannan to food proteins were proposed to be useful as a safe functional biopolymer in this study.y.