• Animal cells and systems
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.267-274
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• 2009

The dissociative culture technique of Aplysia neuron is one of the key methods that have been used for studies of cellular and molecular mechanisms of neuronal functioning. However, despite the advantages this method offers as an experimental model, its technical efficiency has had room for improvement. In this study, we examined certain putative factors that might affect the culture quality. The effects of neuronal damage induced by physical injuries, heat shock, and surface protein degradation were evaluated along with the correlation between the culture quality and animal behavior. As a result, we found that physical injury can be a critical factor that affects culture quality, whereas the heat shock and surface protein degradation had negligible effect on it. In addition, we discovered that siphon retraction time was not a good measurement for healthy neurons. Based on these findings, we suggest here an improved method in which the degree of physical injury is reduced by means of multiple protease treatment.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.665-670
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• 2005

Nanocomposites of polypropylene with organically modified clays were compounded on a twin-screw extruder by two-step melt compounding of three components, i.e., polypropylene, maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (PP-g-MA), and organically modified clay. The effect of PP-g-MA compatibilizers, including PH-200, Epolene-43, Polybond-3002, Polybond-3200, with a wide range of maleic anhydride (MA) content and molecular weight was examined. Morphologies of nanocomposites and their mechanical properties such as stiffness, strength, and impact resistance were investigated. X-ray diffraction patterns showed that the dispersion morphology of clay particles seemed to be determined in the first compounding step and the further dispersion of clays didn't occur in the second compounding step. As the ratio of PP-g-MA to clay increased, the clay particles were dispersed more uniformly in the matrix resin. As the dispersibility of clays was enhanced, the reinforcement effect of the clays increased, however impact resistance decreased.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.74-81
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• 2007

A series of photoreactive mesogens based on chalcone were prepared and their morphological behavior and reactivity were studied according to a variable number of alkyloxy tail carbons. The linear ester compounds 3a-h comprised two chalcone units connected to a benzene ring through ester linkages. All linear ester compounds showed enantiotropic liquid crystalline phases. The X-ray diffractograms for the mesophases of compounds 3a-h showed a set of reflections in the small-angle region which consisted of more than three sharp diffraction peaks with d spacings in the ratio of 1:1/2:1/3, confirming the well defined smectic A structures of the compounds. Compounds 3a-h were considered to be bifunctional monomers due to the presence of two photoreactive chalcone groups. Upon UV irradiation, its polymerization proceeded through the [2+2] addition reaction between chalcone units in a stepwise manner. An image pattern was obtained by the photopolymerization of the liquid crystal of the compound (3h) with decyloxy tails through a photomask. The irradiated part became dark while the masked part remained birefringent under polarized optical microscopy, which was ascribed to the production via the UV irradiation of a polymer or a dimer having cyclobutane rings by [2+2] addition, which thereby disrupted the alignment of the molecules.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Clinical Toxicology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.122-127
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• 2006

Purpose: It is not easy to detect carbon monoxide (CO) leakage, and CO-intoxicated patients do not show a specific set of symptoms. The aims of this study are to clinically evaluate patients with CO gas intoxication from a CO leak at an underground shopping center, and to discuss the establishment of a disaster prevention plan. Methods: A total of 51 patients intoxicated by CO gas exposure in a gas disaster at a underground shopping center in Seoul on September 8, 2006 were enrolled in this study, and the patients' medical records were retrospectively reviewed. Results: The mean patient age was $29.4{\pm}6.3$. The initial mean COHb level was $14.98{\pm}6.97%$. The number of patients with COHb greater than 25% was three, and six patients experienced a syncopal attack. Only one patient-was treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. However, none of the patients complained of severe neurologic or cardiovascular symptoms. Conclusion: The symptoms of CO intoxication are non-specific and difficult to define, and the detection of CO leak-age is difficult. Thus, workplaces should be equipped with leakage sensors and automatic alarm systems and should have develop disaster prevention plans.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.24-29
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• 2005

TRPV2 is a non-specific cation channel expressed in sensory neurons, and activated by noxious heat. Particularly, TRPV2 has six transmembrane domains and three ankyrin repeats. TRPV2 has been cloned from various species such as human, rat, and mouse. Oocytes of Xenopus laevis - an African clawed frog ­have been widely used for decades in characterization of various receptors and ion channels. The functional property of rat TRPV2 was also identified by this oocyte expression system. However, no TRPV2 orthologue of Xenopus laevis has been reported so far. Hence, we have focused to clone a TRPV2 orthologue of Xenopus laevis with the aid of bioinformatic tools. Because the genome sequence of Xenopus laevis is not available until now, a genome sequence of Xenopus tropicalis - a close relative species of Xenopus laevis - was used. After a number of bioinformatic searches in silico, a predicted full-length sequence of TRPV2 orthologue of Xenopus tropicalis was found. Based on this predicted sequence, various approaches such as RT-PCR and 5' -RACE technique were applied to clone a full length of Xenopus laevis TRV2. Consequently, a full-length Xenopus laevis TRPV2 was cloned from heart cDNA.

• Journal of Information Display
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.63-69
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• 2000

In order to improve both the level and the stability of electron emission, Mo and Co silicides were formed from Mo mono-layer and Ti/Co bi-layers on single crystal silicon field emitter arrays (FEAs), respectively. Using the slope of Fowler-Nordheim curve and tip radius measured from scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the effective work function of Mo and Co silicide FEAs were calculated to be 3.13 eV and 2.56 eV, respectively. Compared with silicon field emitters, Mo and Co silicide exhibited 10 and 34 times higher maximum emission current, 10 V and 46 V higher device failure voltage, and 6.1 and 4.8 times lower current fluctuation, respectively. Moreover, the emission currents of the silicide FEAs depending on vacuum level were almost the same in the range of $10^{-9}{\sim}10^{-6}$ torr. This result shows that silicide is robust in terms of anode current degradation due to the absorption of air molecules.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.858-862
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• 2015

This paper presents a new forward-viewing mono-camera based obstacle detection algorithm for mobile robots. The proposed method extracts the coarse location of an obstacle in an image using inverse perspective mapping technique from sequential images. In the next step, graph-cut based image labeling is conducted for estimating the exact obstacle boundary. The graph-cut based labeling algorithm labels the image pixels as either obstacle or floor as the final outcome. Experiments are performed to verify the obstacle detection performance of the developed algorithm in several examples, including a book, box, towel, and flower pot. The low illumination condition, low color contrast between floor and obstacle, and floor pattern cases are also tested.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.33B no.1
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• pp.153-160
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• 1996

In this paper, we propose an efficient digital architecture for the discrete-time cellular neural networks (DTCNN's). DTCNN's have the locality and the translation invariance in the templates which determine the patterns of the connection between the cells. Using distributed arithmetic (DA) and the characteristics of DTCNN, we propose a simple implementation of DTCNN. The bus width in the cell-to-cell interconnection is reduced to one bit because of DA's bitwise operation. We implemented the reconfigurable architecture of DTCNN using programmable FPGA.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.15 no.E
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• pp.55-64
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• 1999

The CIT(California Institute of Technology) three-dimensional Eulerian photochemical model was applied to the Greater Seoul Area, Korea for July 24, 1994, a day of the 9-day ozone episode to understand the characteristics of photochemical air pollution problems in the area. The modeling domain was 60km$\times$60km with the girl size of 2km$\times$2km. As the base case emissions, air pollutant emission data of the National Institute of Environmental Research, Korea for the year of 1991 were used with modifications based on EKMA(Empirical Kinetic Modeling Approach) resutls. Comparisons between predicted and observed concentrations showed that the model predicted the peak concentration over the domain reasonably. It was found that the location of the peak ozone concentration was mainly decided by metorological conditions. But the model could not resolve the spatial variations of concentration station by station, which was mainly caused by localized variations in emission and meteorology.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.22-27
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• 2013

Detailed study on how the plasma process during the sidewall spacer formation suppresses the formation of silicide is done. In non-patterned wafer test, it is found that both fluorocarbon reactive ion etch (RIE) and TEOS plasma-enhanced deposition processes modify the Si surface so that the silicide reaction is chemically inhibited or suppressed. In order to investigate the cause of the chemical modification, we analyze the elements on the silicon surface through Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES). From the AES result, it is found that the carbon induces chemical modification which blocks the reaction between silicon and nickel. Thus, protecting the surface from the carbon-containing plasma process prior to nickel deposition appears critical in successful silicide formation.