• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.32 no.2 s.121
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• pp.109-114
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• 2007

In mass production of seed-potato plantlets, the processes for in vitro propagation and ex vitro acclimatization with a high cost should be improved by a culture system with environmental control using scaled-up culture vessels. The experiment was conducted to design a hydroponic culture system for enhancement of growth and development of seed-potato (Solanum tuberosum) plantlets cultured under photoautotrophic (without sugar in culture medium) conditions with controlled light intensity and ventilation rate. The culture system was consisted of scaled-up culture vessels, ventilation pipes, a multi-cell tray and an environmental control system (ECS) for optimum controlling in temperature, light intensity, ventilation rate, and culture-medium supply. Growth and development of the plantlets was significantly increased under the ECS compared with a conventional culture system (CCS) of photomixotrophic culture (with sugar in culture medium) using small scale vessels. For 21 days, leaf area of the plantlets was expanded more than 2 times, and number of internodes also approximately 4 times greate. under the ECS. In addition, the photoautotrophic growth in sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) and chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) plantlets was greater more than 2 times compared with the CCS.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.8-12
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• 2023

In this work, we investigated the thickness of Ag precursor layer to improve the performance of flexible CIGSe solar cells grown on stainless steel (STS) substrates through three-stage co-evaporation with Ga grading followed by alkali treatments. The small amount of incorporated Ag in CIGSe films showed enhancement in the grain size and device efficiency. With an optimal 6 nm-thick Ag layer, the best cell on the STS substrate yielded more than 16%, which is comparable to the soda-lime glass (SLG) substrate. Thus, the addition of controlled Ag combined with alkali post-deposition treatment (PDT) led to increased open-circuit voltage (VOC), accompanied by the increased built-in potential as confirmed by capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements. It is related to a reduction of charge recombination at the depletion region. The results suggest that Ag alloying and alkali PDT are essential for producing highly efficient flexible CIGSe solar cells.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.710-724
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• 2024

Flavobacterium can synthesize xanthophyll, particularly the pigment zeaxanthin, which has significant economic value in nutrition and pharmaceuticals. Recently, the use of carotenoid biosynthesis by bacteria and yeast fermentation technology has shown to be very efficient and offers significant advantages in large-scale production, cost-effectiveness, and safety. In the present study, JSWR-1 strain capable of producing xanthophyll pigment was isolated from a freshwater reservoir in Wanju-gun, Republic of Korea. Based on the morphological, physiological, and molecular characteristics, JSWR-1 classified as belonging to the Flavobacterium species. The bacterium is strictly aerobic, Gram-negative, rod-shaped, and psychrophilic. The completed genome sequence of the strain Flavobacterium sp. JSWR-1 is predicted to be a single circular 3,425,829-bp chromosome with a G+C content of 35.2% and 2,941 protein-coding genes. The optimization of carotenoid production was achieved by small-scale cultivation, resulting in zeaxanthin being identified as the predominant carotenoid pigment. The enhancement of zeaxanthin biosynthesis by applying different light-irradiation, variations in pH and temperature, and adding carbon and nitrogen supplies to the growth medium. A significant increase in intracellular zeaxanthin concentrations was also recorded during fed-batch fermentation achieving a maximum of 16.69 ± 0.71 mg/l, corresponding to a product yield of 4.05 ± 0.15 mg zeaxanthin per gram cell dry weight. Batch and fed-batch culture extracts exhibit significant antioxidant activity. The results demonstrated that the JSWR-1 strain can potentially serve as a source for zeaxanthin biosynthesis.

• The Journal of the Korean Society for Microbiology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.133-144
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• 1986

This study was undertaken to assess the effect of ginseng administration on T lymphocyte induced local xenogenic graft-versus-host(GVM) reactions which were induced with thymocyte, spleen cell and lymph node cell of ICR mice. Mice received daily 10mg of 70% alcohol ginseng extract oral1y for 100days and control mice remained untreated for the same period of time. The cells from donor mice were injected intradermally into the closely shaven abdominal skin of Sprague-Dawley rats for GVH tests. The thymocyte from control(ginseng-untreated) mice showed a negative local GVH reaction, whereas thymocyte from experimental(ginseng-treated) mice showed a positive reaction with the rate of 17.4%. When spleen cells were injected, the incidence of positive local GVH reaction was 66.7% among ginseng-treated mice, as opposed to incidence of 45.5% of positive local GVH reaction among control mice. The incidence of positive local GVH reaction of the lymph node cells when injected into a recipient was 71.4% among ginseng-treated mice as compared with that of 18.9% among control mice. The relationship between spleen cell inoculum and intensity of the local GVH reaction was assessed in ginseng-untreated mice. The intensity of GVH reaction clearly appears to be dose related. In ginseng-treated mice, a minimum of $1{\times}10^7$ spleen cell was required for production of positive local GVH reaction with almost linear relationship up to an inoculum of $5{\times}10^8$ cells. In control mice, however, a minimum of $1{\times}10^8$ spleen cells was required for positive GVH reaction. These results strongly suggest that the ginseng administration augments significantly the local xenogenic GVH reaction which was used to assess T lymphocyte function and immunocompetence of mice and in addition to this, these results appear to support previous suggestions that the local GVH reaction consitutes a qualitative test of the functional activity of T lymphocytes. These results may be the first to induce local GVH reaction, employing rats as recipient and mice as donor. This study was also desingned to investigate some of the effects of ginseng extract on lymphocyte-macrophage interactions. This was accomplished by in vitro quantification of 1) migratory inhibitory factor(MIF) synthetic capacity of splenic lymphocytes in mice previously primed with ginseng 2) MIF responsiveness of mouse peritoneal macrophages or chicken peripheral leucocytes under the presence of ginseng extract 3) migration ability of chicken peripheral leucocytes by direct stimulation of ginseng extract or ginseng saponin and 4) immunosuppressive effects of immunosuppressants such as cyclophosphamide, cyclosporin A or dexamethasone. Mice divided equally into the ginseng and the saline groups, which received intraperitoneally daily 0.2ml of ginseng absolute alcohol-extract(5mg/ml) and same amount of saline for 15 days, respectively. The cellular immune responsiveness of these mice was assayed 15 days after ginseng pretreatment. Splenic lymphocytes of mice treated with ginseng, when stimulated with sensitized specific-antigen such as sheep red blood cells or toxoplasmin, or with polyclonal activator concanavalin A, produced significantly more MIF than those of control saline group. MIF responsiveness of normal mouse macrophages was significantly augmented when assayed under the presence of ginseng extract (1mg/ml). The migratory ability of normal chicken leucocytes in the absence of MIF was significantly decreased by the stimulation of ginseng extract alone. MIF response was significantly decreased by immunosuppressants and this impaired response was not restored by ginseng pretreatment. This study was additionally performed to evaluate the effect of ginseng on the expulsion of adult Trichinella spiralis in mice. ICR mice were infected experimentally by esophageal incubation of 300 T. spiralis infective muscle larvae prepared by acid-pepsin digestion of infected mice. and received oral administration of 70% alcohol ginseng extract(10mg/mouse/day) for the indicated days plus 4 days before infection. At various times after infection, the number of adult T. spiralis worms in small intestines was determined. Interestingly, ginseng-treatment was accompanied by accelerated expulson of T. spiralis. These results led to the conclusion that Panax ginseng caused some enhancing effect on GVH reaction, macrophage migration inhibition reaction and expulsion of T. spiralis. In addition these results suggested that the mechanisms responsible for this enhancement of ginseng may be chiefly or partially due to nonspecific stimulation of cell-mediated immune response.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.113-119
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• 1998

Purpose : Because adenocarcinomas of the uterine cervix have lower 5-year survival rate than squamous cell carcinomas due to early lymph node metastasis and local extension, scrutiny of lymph node metastasis and local extension by radiologic examination is necessary in case of clinically diagnosed or suspected adenocarcinomas. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether there are specific findings of these tumors, compared with squamous cell carcinomas, through the analysis of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging findings. Materials and Methods : Of 21 pathologically proven cervical adenocarcinomas, MR imaging findings of 18 tumors (histologic staging : two Ib, four IIa, two IIb, one IIIa, and one IIIb) were retrospectively analyzed and compared with those of 40 wquamous cell carcinoma in consecutive patients as a control group. T1-wetighted and fast spin echo T2-weighted images were obtained on the axial and sagittal planes, using a 1.5-T MR scanner. The largest diameter, location, signal intensity and degree of contrast enhancement contour, shape and longitudinal extent of the tumor and associated findings on MR image were analyzed. Results : The largest diameters of cervical adenocarcinomas ranged from 0.8 to 4.1 cm(mean, 2.2 cm). Of 18 adenocarcinomas, nine were of endocervical type. All adenocarcinomas were isointense to surrounding cervical stroma on T1-weighted images and hyperintense(homogeneous in ten, inhomogeneous in eight) on fast spin echo T2-weighted images. Adenocarcinomas enhanced on contrast study in all patients (homogeneous in six, inhomogeneous in 12 with hyperintese enhnacing rim in two). Eight adenocarcinomas had smooth contours and ten had irregular ones. The shape of adenocarcinoma was irregular in eight patients, barrel shape in six, papillary/polypod in three, and nodular in one. All adenocarcinomas involved lower half of the uterine cervix and six tumors extended up to the upper half. Pelvic lymph nodes of more than 1.5cm in diameter in two adenocarcinomas pateints and no detectable small pelvic lymph nodes on MR imaging in one patient were pathologically positive. Hydrometra was associated in two adenocarcinomas patients, and hematometra in one patient. Compared with squamous cell carcinomas, more frequent MR findings of endocervical type and barrel shape in cervical adenocarcinomas were statistically significant. Conclusion : Cervical adenocarcinomas had more frequent MR findings of endocervical type and barrel shape, compared with wquamous cell carcinomas. Adenocarcinoma of the uterine cervix may be suspected on MR imaging, when a cervical carcinoma is of barrel shape along the endocervical canal and tends to involve lymth nodes in earlier stages.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.10
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• pp.96-106
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• 2014

Previous academic research on FPGA tools has relied on simple imaginary models for the targeting architecture. As the first step to overcome such restriction, the issues on analytic placement and legalization which are applied to commercial FPGAs have been brought up, and several techniques to remedy them are presented, and evaluated. First of all, the center of gravity of the placed cells may be far displaced from the center of the chip during analytic placement. A function is proposed to be added to the objective function for minimizing this displacement. And then, the density map is expanded into multiple layers to accurately calculate the density distribution for each of the cell types. Early fixation is also proposed for the memory blocks which can be placed at limited sites in small numbers. Since two flip-flops share control pins in a slice, a compatibility constraint is introduced during legalization. Pre-packing compatible flip-flops is proposed as a proactive step. The proposed techniques are implemented on the K-FPGA fabric evaluation framework in which commercial architectures can be precisely modeled, and modified for enhancement, and validated on twelve industrial strength examples. The placement results show that the proposed techniques have reduced the wire length by 22%, and the slice usage by 5% on average. This research is expected to be a development basis of the optimization CAD tools for new as well as the state-of-the-art FPGA architectures.

• Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.389-397
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• 2010

This work was to improve antimicrobial activities of horseradish by encapsulated with edible biopolymers such as lecithin and gelatin since it has been difficult to directly use horseradish extracts into foods and food containers due to its strong and undesirable flavors. It was shown that most of the nanoparticles containing the extracts were well formed in round shape with below 400 nm diameter as well as fairly stable and less odd flavors in various pH ranges by measuring zeta potentials. The encapsulation efficiencies of nanoparticles were estimated as 66.6% and 53.4% for lecithin and gelatin, respectively. Minimal Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of both nanoparticles against G(+), Listeria monocytogenes and G(-), Salmonella typhimurium were also measured as 79 ppm based on AIT concentrations in the extracts, whose activities were about 65% higher than the case of adding crude extract. It was also found that the nanoparticles efficiently penetrated into the cell membrane and started to destruct the cells after 6 hours cultivation under Transmision Electron Microscopy observation. These results prove that the nano-encapsulation of the horseradish extracts can be employed to directly treat into the foods and food containers for antimicrobial purposes with the aids of aerosolization system, by using small amounts of the extracts and having less flavors due to masking effects of nanoparticles.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.424-430
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• 2002

Vas deferens is a long tube and could be divided into four regions as its morphological characters: a short and slender proximal region, a convoluted region, a straight and more thick distal region, and an ejaculatory duct, It is connected with the posterior outer horns of the testis and runs to the gonopores opened on the coxa of the fifth walking legs, The proximal region consists almost entirely of simple cuboidal epithelial cells, $12\~28{\mu}$m in height, surrounded by a thin basal membrane. A small aggregation of high cuboidal epithelium is obsened from one side of the proximal region. The convoluted and distal region is composed of two kinds of epithelial cells; high cuboidal epithelial cells, $40\~120{\mu}m$ in height located in dorsal portion and simple cuboidal epithelial cells of $12\~28{\mu}$m in height located in ventral and lateral portion. The ejaculatory duct is surrounded with two kinds of muscle layers, inner longitudinal and outer circular muscle fibers, The lumen is lined with high and simple cuboidal epithelium in almost equal proportions. The proximal region contains mature sperm and basophilic substances. The eosinophilic substances appeared newly going toward the convoluted region and are laid along simple cuboidal epithelial cell layer. Tube-like content (spermatophore) of the vas deferens is ejaculated from a pair of genital pores at mating. Two masses of the content fuse together side by side and are usually deposited on the female thorax between the second and fourth or fifth pereiopods, The spermatophore formed measures $2.7\~4.0$ mm in length and $1.5\~2.7$ mm in width.

• The Journal of the Korean Society for Microbiology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.175-184
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• 1987

The use of alkylating agent cyclophosphamide(CY), a widely used antitumor drug is well known as a potent immunosuppressant and has been used as a probe for investigating the functional capabilities of lymphocyte subsets of both T and B cells that play an important role in the regulation of the immune response. The present study was undertaken in an effort to assess the effects of CY on immunological memory in murine model. CY, given as a single dose of CY(250mg/kg) before sensitization with sheep red blood cells(SRBC) enhanced the primary response of Arthus and delayed-type hypersensitivity(DTH), as measured by footpad swelling reaction, but suppressed their tertiary DTH response. The similar CY pretreatment enhanced both the primary and tertiary hemagglutinin(HA) responses to SRBC, and the tertiary antibody response against polyvinylpyrroridone(PVP), a thymus-independent antigen but not the primary response against PVP. CY, given as a single dose of 250mg/kg 2 days before the primary immunization and two doses of 100mg/kg 2 days before the secondary and tertiary immunization, markedly suppressed the tertiary DTH and HA responses to SRBC. However, CY, given as small multiple daily doses(10mg/kg) over 4 days before sensitization but not after sensitization, enhanced the secondary HA response to SRBC. Contact sensitivity to dinitrofluorobenzene(DNFB) was suppressed by the drug, given either as a single large dose(300mg/kg) or as multiple dose(10mg/kg) administered 2 days before, together with or after DNFB sensitization. This suppression was more pronounced and more significant when CY was given as multiple dose. However, the enhancement of the secondary contact sensitivity to DNFB by CY was not clear-cut. The splenectomy appears to increase the enhancing effect of CY on contact sensitivity. These results suggest that CY selectively influences the immune response depending on the time of the drug administration relative to immunization and that the secondary or tertiary immune response involve memory cells with different susceptibilities to CY. Moreover, these results suggest that multiple low doses may sesectivley inhibit suppressor T cell proliferation involving DTH, HA or contact sensitivity without effecting helper T cells, but high doses presumably inhibit helper T cells and suppressor T cells with effecting B cells.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.29-34
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• 1993

Experiments have been carried out with C3H mouse fibrosarcoma (FSa II) to determine the effect of different sequence and time intervals between irradiation and administration of cis-diammihedichloroplatinum (cis-DDP) with gross tumors (6 mm in diameter), microscopic tumors (3 days after transplantation of $10^3$ cells) and cells in culture. The drug was administered either 24, 12, 8, 4, 2, 1, 0.5 hour before irradiation, immediately before irradiation, or 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24 hours after irradiation. In case of in vivo studies, tumor growth delay was used as an end point. Clonogenic cell surviving fraction was used for in vitro studies. Tumor growth delay for gross tumor after 10 Gy radiation plus 10 mg/kg cis-DDP ranged from 6.3 to 10.66 days and the enhancement ratio ranged from 1.37 to 2.23. The most effective combination was when cis-DDP was given 4 hours before irradiation. Tumor growth delay for microscopic tumor after 5 Gy of radiation and 5 mg/kg of cis-DDP ranged from 3.55 to 11.98 days with enhancement ratio from 2.05 to 6.92. Microscopic tumors showed response significantly greater than additive in every time interval and the most effective treatments were when cis-DDP was given 2 and 1 hour before irradiation. In in vitro experiment, the surviving fraction after 6 Gy of radiation and 1 hour exposure to 4 ${\mu}M$ cis-DDP fluctuated as a function of time between treatments, but the difference between maximum and minimum surviving fractions was very small. According to the above results the sequence and time interval between irradiation and chemotherapy is very critical especially for the management of microscopic tumors as in the case of postoperative adjuvant treatment.