• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.74-79
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• 1995

Sequence analysis of a DNA region encompassing the site of hybridization to actl, the gene for type II minimal polyketide synthase (PKS) for actinorhodin biosynthesis, from Streptomyces ablus revealed three more complete open reading frames additional to the already found two genes, plausibly encoding ${\beta}-ketoacyl$ synthase/acyl transferase (KS/AT) and chain length determining factor (ClF). The open reading frames (ORFs) were named salA, salD, and salE, from the upstream. In the homology analysis of the deduced amino acid sequences, SalA resembles the Streptomyces glaucescens Tcml, decaketide cyclase, SalD resembles acyl carrier protein in type II PKS, and SalE resembles the Actlll ketoreductase, The whole 4.4 kb of DNA sequence obeys the same conservation pattern as other type II PKSs. Therefore, we suggest that the 4.4 kb DNA from Streptomyces albus encompasses genes encoding enzymes for polyketide biogenesis in the organism and its organization is type II. The exsitence of SaIA, an analogue of the aromatic cyclase, revealed a relatedness of the 4.4 kb DNA with the aromatic PKS.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.1510-1518
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• 2015

In this work, we wanted to develop a probiotic from famous longevity villages in Korea. We visited eight longevity villages in Korea to collect fecal samples from healthy adults who were aged above 80 years and had regular bowel movements, and isolated lactic-acid-producing bacteria from the samples. Isolated colonies that appeared on MRS agar containing bromophenol blue were identified by means of 16S rRNA sequencing, and 102 of the isolates were identified as lactic-acid-producing bacteria (18 species). Lactobacillus fermentum was the most frequently found species. Eight isolates were selected on the basis of their ability to inhibit the growth of six intestinal pathogens (Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica Typhimurium, Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica Enteritidis, Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Listeria monocytogenes) and their susceptibility to 15 antimicrobial agents. Among these eight isolates, four Lactobacillus fermentum isolates were found not to produce any harmful enzymes or metabolites. Among them, Lactobacillus fermentum isolate no. 24 showed the strongest binding to intestinal epithelial cells, the highest immune-enhancing activity, anti-inflammation activity, and anti-oxidation activity as well as the highest survival rates in the presence of artificial gastric juice and bile solution. This isolate, designated Lactobacillus fermentum PL9988, has all the characteristics for a good probiotic.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.10-18
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• 2013

The increasing suicide rate is a serious problem in Korea. Because of increased awareness of suicidality as a problem and because completed suicide is the fourth leading cause of death, it is very important to assess the risk of suicide. The purpose of this review is to provide a systematic examination of predictive validity of measures of suicidal ideation and behavior. A number of instruments are described as useful for identifying individuals "at high risk" for suicidal behavior. However, the predictive validity for most suicide measures has not been established. The present review only includes suicide assessment instruments with published predictive validity. In addition to evaluating the suicide assessment with respect to predictive validity, the present review describes and summarizes the psychometric properties of each measure. In conclusion, because of the complexity of studying the risk of suicide and the paucity of well-designed studies, it is extremely difficult to compare and generalize these findings. In addition, only a few instruments, such as the Scale for Suicide Ideation, Suicide Intent Scale and the Beck Hopelessness Scale, have been found to be significant risk factors for completed suicide. Another problem in the field involves that there have been few suicide measures designed for elderly populations. Clearly, future research is needed to investigate the predictive validity of standardized measures for completed suicide, especially targeting elderly populations.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.9
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• pp.2503-2508
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• 2010

ZnO thin films were grown on Si or $SiO_2$/Si substrates, at growth temperatures ranging from 150 to $400^{\circ}C$, by atomic layer deposition (ALD) using diethylzinc and water. Despite the large band gap of 3.3 eV, the ALD ZnO films show high n-type conductivity, i.e. low resistivity in the order of $10^{-3}\;{\Omega}cm$. In order to understand the high conductivity of ALD ZnO films, the films were characterized with X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, elastic recoil detection, Rutherford backscattering, Photoluminescence, and Raman spectroscopy. In addition, the various analytical data of the ZnO films were compared with those of ZnO single crystal. According to our analytical data, metallic zinc plays an important role for the high conductivity in ALD ZnO films. Therefore when the metallic zinc was additionally oxidized with ozone by a modified ALD sequence, the resistivity of ZnO films could be adjusted in a range of $3.8{\times}10^{-3}\;{\sim}\;19.0\;{\Omega}cm$ depending on the exposure time of ozone.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.256-266
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• 2016

Concurrently detected and annotated abnormal events can have a significant impact on surveillance systems. By considering the specific domain of pedestrian trajectories, this paper presents two main contributions. First, as introduced in much of the work on trajectory-based anomaly detection in the literature, only information about pedestrian paths, such as direction and speed, is considered. Differing from previous work, this paper proposes a framework that deals with additional types of trajectory-based anomalies. These abnormal events take places when a person enters prohibited areas. Those restricted regions are constructed by an online learning algorithm that uses surrounding information, including detected pedestrians and background scenes. Second, a simple data-boosting technique is introduced to overcome a lack of training data; such a problem particularly challenges all previous work, owing to the significantly low frequency of abnormal events. This technique only requires normal trajectories and fundamental information about scenes to increase the amount of training data for both normal and abnormal trajectories. With the increased amount of training data, the conventional abnormal trajectory classifier is able to achieve better prediction accuracy without falling into the over-fitting problem caused by complex learning models. Finally, the proposed framework (which annotates tracks that enter prohibited areas) and a conventional abnormal trajectory detector (using the data-boosting technique) are integrated to form a united detector. Such a detector deals with different types of anomalous trajectories in a hierarchical order. The experimental results show that all proposed detectors can effectively detect anomalous trajectories in the test phase.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.513-516
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• 2012

Objective : It is rare that the medial loop in the V2 segment of the vertebral artery (VA) causes compression of the proximal cervical root of the spinal cord without leading to bony erosion and an enlarged foramen. We evaluated the clinical significance and incidence of the medial loop in the V2 segment of the VA. Methods : We reviewed the records from 1000 consecutive patients who had undergone magnetic resonance imaging evaluation of the cervical spine between January 2005 and January 2008. The inclusion criteria were that over a third of the axial aspect of the VA located in the intervertebral foramen was inside the line between the most ventral points of the bilateral lateral mass, and that the ipsilateral proximal root deviated dorsally because of the medial loop of the VA. We excluded cases of bone erosion, a widened foramen at the medial loop of the VA, any bony abnormalities, tumors displacing VA, or vertebral fractures. The medical records were reviewed retrospectively to search for factors of clinical significance. Results : In six patients (0.6%), the VA formed a medial loop that caused compression of the proximal cervical root. One of these patients had the cervical radiculopathy that developed after minor trauma but the others did not present with cervical radiculopathy related to the medial loop of the VA. Conclusion : The medial loop of the VA might have a direct effect on cervical radiculopathy. Therefore, this feature should be of critical consideration in preoperative planning and during surgery.

• Atmosphere
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.115-124
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• 2020

The Northern Hemisphere extratropical prediction skill of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) Global Data Assimilation and Prediction System (GDAPS) is examined for January 2019. The real-time prediction skill, evaluated with mean squared skill score (MSSS) of 30-90°N geopotential height field at 500 hPa (Z500), is ~8 days in the troposphere. The MSSS of Z500 considerably decreases after 3 days mainly due to the increasing eddy errors. The eddy errors are largely explained by the eddy-phased errors with minor contribution of amplitude errors. In particular, planetary-scale eddy errors are considered as a main reason of rapidly increasing errors. It turns out that such errors are associated with the blocking highs over North Pacific (NP) and Euro-Atlantic (EA) regions. The model overestimates the blocking highs over NP and EA regions in time, showing dependence of blocking predictability on blocking initializations. This result suggests that the extratropical prediction skill could be improved by better representing blocking in the model.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.708-712
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• 2003

This study was carried out to examine the effects of fermentation conditions on the production of erythritol by osmophilic yeast Candida magnoliae. It was found that sucrose was superior to glucose as carbon source and 109 g/L erythritol was produced from 400 g/L sucrose. When yeast extract was used as nitrogen source, maximum values of yield and productivity for erythritol were obtained at 15 and 20 g/L of yeast extract, respectively. A mixture of 15 g/L yeast extract and 3 g/L ammonium phosphate allowed more efficient utilization of sucrose and hence resulted in 149 g/L of erythritol, 0.37 g erythritol/g sucrose of erythritol yield and $0.78\;g/L{\cdot}hr$ of erythritol productivity. A batch fermentation supplemented with 40 g/L KCl resulted in an erythritol concentration of 167 g/L and an erythritol yield of 0.42 g erythritol/g sucrose.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.439-446
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• 2011

Yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) coating was formed on AA1050 Al alloys by aerosol deposition (AD), and its electrochemical corrosion properties were investigated in 3.5 wt% NaCl and 0.5M $H_2SO_4$ solutions. The crack-free, dense, and ~5 ${\mu}m$ thick YSZ coating was successfully obtained by AD. The as-deposited coating was composed of cubic-YSZ nanocrystallites of ~10 nm size. The potentiodynamic test indicated that the YSZ coated Al alloy had much lower corrosion current densities (2 nA/$cm^2$) by comparison to uncoated sample and exhibited a passive behavior in anodic branch. Particularly, a pitting breakdown potential could not be identified in $H_2SO_4$. EIS tests revealed that the impedance of YSZ coated sample was ${\sim}10^6{\Omega}cm^2$ in NaCl and ${\sim}10^7{\Omega}cm^2$ in $H_2SO_4$, which was about 3 or 4 orders of magnitude higher than that of uncoated sample. Consequently, the corrosion resistance of Al alloy had been significantly enhanced by the YSZ coating.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.15-25
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• 2013

In this study, two kinds of soil-based proficiency testing materials (PTMs), NICE-012L and NICE-012R were prepared and certified for Benzen, Toluene, Etylbenzene and Xylene with evaluation of uncertainties. In order to analyse BTEX (Benzen Toluene Etylbenzene Xylene) for the candidate materials, GC/MS was used after pretreatment according to methods of soil analysis by Ministry of Environment. For the homogeneity test among bottles in terms of candidate materials, ISO 13528 and IUPAC Protocol were used and according to the result, both candidate materials showed sufficient homogeneity. Also, the stability test over the candidate materials was accessed according to the ISO Guide 35 by classifying short-term and long-term stability and the result showed that both candidate materials showed decent stability. The reference values of the two candidate materials depending on BTEX components were derived from the average of the 11 samples that were used for verification of the samples' homogeneity. Uncertainty of measurement was combined by uchar that was caused by a characteristic value, $u_{bb}$ that was caused by between-bottle homogeneity, and $u_{stab}$ that was caused by stability, and then combined uncertainty ($u_{PTM}$) was multiplied to the coverage factor (k) derived from the effective degree of freedom from each factor that leads to expanded uncertainty (U) in about 95% of confidence level. The proficiency testing materials developed through this study were supplied to National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) and utilized as an external proficiency testing materials for evaluating analysis capacity of soil agencies with specialty in terms of soil analysis approved by Minister of Environment.