• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.85 no.4
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• pp.605-618
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• 1996

Namsan area supposed to be a disturbed ecosystem and Kwangneung area considered to be a natural ecosystem were selected for the study. On the basis of the plant species composition, the study was planned to examine structural plant species diversity so as to provide basic ecological information to restore more stable and healthy ecosystem for Namsan. The stratified sample plot method was employed for collecting vegetation data, establishing $20m{\times}20m$ square plots for overstory trees, $4m{\times}4m$ plots for mid-story woody plants, and $1m{\times}1m$ plots for ground vegetation. The herbaceous plants were periodically investigated by taking into account for seasonal(spring, summer, and autumn) variation in presence. Ecological attributes were evaluated through analyzing species composition, species diversity, life forms, interspecies association, and growing habitat for various forest types, vertical layers, life forms, and seasonal variation. Even though the species diversity index of canopy trees in the deciduous forest of Namsan was estimated higher than that of the natural forest of Kwangneung, overall species diversity of plants in Kwangneung area was greater than that in Namsan area. Herbaceous plants presented in Kwangneung but not in Namsan were Aconitum pseudo-proliferum, Botrychium virginianum, Dryopteris tokyoensis, Scutellaria insignis, Tricyrtis dilatata, and Viola kamibayashii, most of them were endemic species of Kwangneung. Elaeagnus umbellata, and Prunes padus var. seoulensis were found only in Namsan. Such species typically composed of the natural deciduous forest as Acer mono, Acer triflorum, Carpinus laxiflora, Cornus controversa, Fraxinus mandshurica, and Phellodendron amurertse were limited growing in a small size of area in Namsan. The future project should be made for encouraging the growth and expansion of the distribution of such species to restore biodiversity in Namsan area.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.5 no.3 s.19
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• pp.191-199
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• 2005

Background: Though infections of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) are closely associated with activation of host angiogenesis, the underlying mechanisms, as well as the strategy for its prevention, have not been identified. Here, we investigated a causal role of H. pylori infection in angiogenesis of gastric mucosa and a potent inhibitory effect of a gastric proton pump inhibitor (PPI) on the gastropathy. Materials and Methods: A comparative analysis of CD 34 expression in tissues obtained from 20 H. pylori-associated gastritis and 18 H. pylori-negative gastritis patients was performed. Expression of $HIF-1{\alpha}$ and VEGF were tested by using RT-PCR. To evaluate the direct effect of H. pylori infection on differentiation of endothelial HUVEC cells, we carried out an in vitro angiogenesis assay. Results: H. pyfori-associated gastritis tissues showed significantly higher density of $CD34^+$ blood vessels than did H. pylori-negative gastritis tissues, and the levels were well correlated with expressions of $HIF-1{\alpha}$. Conditioned media from H. pylori-infected gastric mucosal cells stimulated a tubular formation of HUVEC cells. We also found a significant inhibitory effect of PPI, an agent frequently used for H. pylori eradication, on H. pylori-induced angiogenesis. This drug effectively inhibited the phosphorylation of MAP kinase ERK1/2, which is a principal signal for H. pylori-induced angiogenesis. Conclusion: The fact that PPls can down-regulate H. pylori-induced angiogenesis suggest that anti-angiogenic treatment using PPI may be a preventive approach for H. pylori-associated carcinogenesis.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.119-142
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• 2015

With the explosive growth in the volume of information, Internet users are experiencing considerable difficulties in obtaining necessary information online. Against this backdrop, ever-greater importance is being placed on a recommender system that provides information catered to user preferences and tastes in an attempt to address issues associated with information overload. To this end, a number of techniques have been proposed, including content-based filtering (CBF), demographic filtering (DF) and collaborative filtering (CF). Among them, CBF and DF require external information and thus cannot be applied to a variety of domains. CF, on the other hand, is widely used since it is relatively free from the domain constraint. The CF technique is broadly classified into memory-based CF, model-based CF and hybrid CF. Model-based CF addresses the drawbacks of CF by considering the Bayesian model, clustering model or dependency network model. This filtering technique not only improves the sparsity and scalability issues but also boosts predictive performance. However, it involves expensive model-building and results in a tradeoff between performance and scalability. Such tradeoff is attributed to reduced coverage, which is a type of sparsity issues. In addition, expensive model-building may lead to performance instability since changes in the domain environment cannot be immediately incorporated into the model due to high costs involved. Cumulative changes in the domain environment that have failed to be reflected eventually undermine system performance. This study incorporates the Markov model of transition probabilities and the concept of fuzzy clustering with CBCF to propose predictive clustering-based CF (PCCF) that solves the issues of reduced coverage and of unstable performance. The method improves performance instability by tracking the changes in user preferences and bridging the gap between the static model and dynamic users. Furthermore, the issue of reduced coverage also improves by expanding the coverage based on transition probabilities and clustering probabilities. The proposed method consists of four processes. First, user preferences are normalized in preference clustering. Second, changes in user preferences are detected from review score entries during preference transition detection. Third, user propensities are normalized using patterns of changes (propensities) in user preferences in propensity clustering. Lastly, the preference prediction model is developed to predict user preferences for items during preference prediction. The proposed method has been validated by testing the robustness of performance instability and scalability-performance tradeoff. The initial test compared and analyzed the performance of individual recommender systems each enabled by IBCF, CBCF, ICFEC and PCCF under an environment where data sparsity had been minimized. The following test adjusted the optimal number of clusters in CBCF, ICFEC and PCCF for a comparative analysis of subsequent changes in the system performance. The test results revealed that the suggested method produced insignificant improvement in performance in comparison with the existing techniques. In addition, it failed to achieve significant improvement in the standard deviation that indicates the degree of data fluctuation. Notwithstanding, it resulted in marked improvement over the existing techniques in terms of range that indicates the level of performance fluctuation. The level of performance fluctuation before and after the model generation improved by 51.31% in the initial test. Then in the following test, there has been 36.05% improvement in the level of performance fluctuation driven by the changes in the number of clusters. This signifies that the proposed method, despite the slight performance improvement, clearly offers better performance stability compared to the existing techniques. Further research on this study will be directed toward enhancing the recommendation performance that failed to demonstrate significant improvement over the existing techniques. The future research will consider the introduction of a high-dimensional parameter-free clustering algorithm or deep learning-based model in order to improve performance in recommendations.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.31-42
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• 2006

Drought indices, such as PDSI (palmer Drought Severity Index), SWSI (Surface Water Supply Index) and SPI (Standardized Precipitation Index), have been developed to assess and forecast an intensity of drought. To find the applicability of groundwater level data to a drought assessment, a correlation analysis between SPI and groundwater levels was conducted for each time series at a drought season in 2001. The comparative results between SPI and groundwater levels of shallow wells of three national groundwater monitoring stations, Chungju Gageum, Yangpyung Gaegun, and Yeongju Munjeong, show that these two factors are highly correlated. In case of SPI with a duration of 1 month, cross-correlation coefficients between two factors are 0.843 at Chungju Gageum, 0.825 at Yangpyung Gaegun, and 0.737 at Yeongju Munjeong. The time lag between peak values of two factors is nearly zero in case of SPI with a duration of 1 month, which means that groundwater level fluctuation is similar to SPI values. Moreover, in case of SPI with a duration of 3 month, it is found that groundwater level can be a leading indicator to predict the SPI values I week later. Some of the national groundwater monitoring stations can be designated as DIW (Drought Index Well) based on the detailed survey of site characteristics and also new DIWs need to be drilled to assess and forecast the drought in this country.

• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.26
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• pp.55-62
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• 2008

To obtain food materials of high isoflavone content from soy-sprouts, 8 soy-sprout varieties, Aga 1, Aga 2, Aga 3, Aga 4, Pungsannamulkong, Eunhakong, Jangkikong and Bosugkong, were grown into soy-sprouts for 7 days under light condition and stored for 5 days at 6 different temperatures; 3, 6, 9, 20, 30, and $40^{\circ}C$ in the dark. The isoflavone content of 7 days grown sprout varieties were highest in the order of Aga 3>Aga 1>Aga 2>Aga 4>Jangkikong>Bosugkong>Eunhakong>Pungsannamulkong. The highest isoflavone content of Aga 3 was $4,619{\mu}g/g$. The isoflavone content of soy-sprouts showed much varietal differences depending on the storage temperatures. Comparative high isoflavone content was obtained at storage temperatures of $6^{\circ}C$ and $20^{\circ}C$ while most of varieties showed low isoflavone content at $9^{\circ}C$ and $30^{\circ}C$. No constant trend in isoflavone content for the tested varieties along with the days to storage but most of varieties showed the highest isoflavone content in 3 days of storage. On the contrary, Aga 4 and Jangkikong showed high isoflavone content even at 5 days of storage. The comparatively high isoflavone content for 4 varieties including of Aga 3 out of 8 varieties was obtained from the treatment of one day storage at $20^{\circ}C$. Out of all treatments, the highest isoflavone content was obtained from one day storage at $20^{\circ}C$ for Aga 3 and the content was as high as $11,705{\mu}g/g$. In this experiment, soy-sprouts were believed to be made continuous growth during the storage because the sprouts were being dipped in water during the temperature treatment to protect soy-sprouts from drying. Thus, it is inferred that additional researches should be made to establish better method to increase isoflavone content in soy-sprouts during the storage.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.27-37
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• 2012

Many studies have focused on the importance of organizational integration when companies try to achieve growth through mergers and acquisitions (M&A). However, there has been little research that focuses on the new branding or customer base integration of the M&A process, despite the fact that this integration is very important for achieving M&A goals and business performance in industries such as retail. The purpose of this study is to provide an M&A case study of the retail industry, focused especially on the new branding and customer integration of two department stores. This study examined key integration processes in terms of brand name and membership systems of both companies by examining how the merged company achieved its new branding and the integration of its membership systems. The methodology of this research is the case study, which is used in both normative and empirical studies for distribution research in Korea. This research analyzes the case of both new branding and customer membership systems of the two companies. The new branding initiatives of this case centered on decision making including brand extension and brand naming. The customer membership integration of the two companies is analyzed on the basis of the customer reward programs that include both financial and service rewards. This study shows the success factors of new branding and customer integration in the M&A process in terms of achieving marketing goals and business performance as follows: First, companies should identify the integration areas by analyzing the brand and membership of both companies and make a balanced decision for both the customer and company. Second, the goals of new branding and membership integration in the M&A process should not emphasize business efficiency from a short-term perspective but rather should consider brand power and business synergy from a long-term perspective. Third, the post-merger integration process of the brand or customer areas requires not only the organized execution of integration tasks but also follow-up programs for changes in business strategy and marketing-related programs to realize the synergy effects of integrated organization. Although this study provides a detailed review and analysis of the new branding and customer integration processes in post-merger integration and in identifying the primary decision-making areas of these processes, there are some limitations requiring further research that may overcome or compensate for these limitations. The suggested future research areas are as follows: First, since this research is a case study of only one M&A, it makes few theoretical contributions such as new propositions or theories or possibilities for generalization. This limitation can be overcome through further research using multiple cases, which may lead to new propositions. Second, the methodology of this study lacks sufficient rigor in terms of its analytic approach because this case study was developed and analyzed descriptively. Further research is needed to compensate for these limitations, such as using a theory-based approach or comparative analysis approach that makes case analysis more systematic.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.320-327
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• 2021

Freezing damage to fruit trees is frequently occurring due to cold in winter and low temperature in spring to abnormal weather caused by global warming. In particular, the freezing injury of deciduous fruit trees is highly dependent on the developmental stages of the flower buds. And the cold resistance is weakened as the growth progresses, so it is most vulnerable period from flowering to petal fall(post-bloom). Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze the cause of the freezing injury caused by severe low temperature to 'Fuji', which has a late flowering period more than 'Hongro' in April 2020. We investigated freezing injury rate in 'Fuji' and 'Hongro' apple trees damaged by natural low temperature at Boeun-gun, Chungbuk province in Korea. In addition, flower buds in the same developmental stage (tight cluster) were treated artificially low temperature to investigate the injury rate for accurate comparative analysis between varieties, and to analyze the soluble sugar and hormone contents in the flower buds. As a result of survey in natural low temperature, 'Fuji' had a higher injury rate than 'Hongro' in both orchards, and in particular, B orchard 'Fuji' had the highest injury rate of 60.5%. Also there were significantly difference in the freezing injury rate between 'Fuji' and 'Hongro' in artificially low temperature treatments. As a result of analyzing the soluble sugar contents in 'Hongro' was higher than 'Fuji'. Also ABA, IAA and SA contents were more increased in the damaged tissue than in the normal flower buds by low temperature treatments. Consequently, it was assumed that the freezing injury was closely related to soluble sugar contents in the flower buds. In particular, the freezing injury rate was negatively correlated with the sorbitol contents.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1079-1087
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• 2021

To analyze gut microbiota of livestock in Korea and compare taxonomic differences, we conducted 16S rRNA metagenomic analysis through next-generation sequencing. Fecal samples from broiler chickens, pigs, and cattle were collected from domestic feedlots randomly. α-diversity results showed that significant differences in estimated species richness estimates (Chao1 and ACE, Abundance-based coverage estimators) and species richness index (OUTs, Operational taxonomic units) were identified among the three groups. However, NPShannon, Shannon, and Simpson indices revealed that abundance and evenness of the species were statistically significant only for poultry (broiler chickens) and mammals (pigs and cattle). Firmicutes was the most predominant phylum in the three groups of fecal samples. Linear discriminant (LDA) effect size (LEfSe) analysis was conducted to reveal the ranking order of abundant taxa in each of the fecal samples. A size-effect over 2.0 on the logarithmic LDA score was used as a discriminative functional biomarker. As shown by the fecal analysis at the genus level, broiler chickens were characterized by the presence of Weissella and Lactobacillus, as well as pigs were characterized by the presence of provetella and cattele were characterized by the presence of Acinetobacter. A permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) showed that differences of microbial clusters among three groups were significant at the confidence level. (p=0.001). This study provides basic data that could be useful in future research on microorganisms associated with performance growth, as well as in studies on the livestock gut microbiome to increase productivity in the domestic livestock industry.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.337-357
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• 2021

Because the growth of paddy rice is affected by meteorological factors, the selection of appropriate meteorological variables is essential to build a rice yield prediction model. This paper examines the suitability of multiple meteorological datasets for the rice yield modeling in South Korea, 1996-2019, and a hindcast experiment for rice yield using a machine learning method by considering the nonlinear relationships between meteorological variables and the rice yield. In addition to the ASOS in-situ observations, we used CRU-JRA ver. 2.1 and ERA5 reanalysis. From the multiple meteorological datasets, we extracted the four common variables (air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, and precipitation) and analyzed the characteristics of each data and the associations with rice yields. CRU-JRA ver. 2.1 showed an overall agreement with the other datasets. While relative humidity had a rare relationship with rice yields, solar radiation showed a somewhat high correlation with rice yields. Using the air temperature, solar radiation, and precipitation of July, August, and September, we built a random forest model for the hindcast experiments of rice yields. The model with CRU-JRA ver. 2.1 showed the best performance with a correlation coefficient of 0.772. The solar radiation in the prediction model had the most significant importance among the variables, which is in accordance with the generic agricultural knowledge. This paper has an implication for selecting from multiple meteorological datasets for rice yield modeling.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.394-406
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• 2019

The cellular senescence may be due to damage by the reactive oxygen species (ROS). This study has compared the antioxidant activity in the human cell lines of various origins, including 10S and 50S-derived normal skin fibroblasts, and 10S bone marrow, dental tissue and adipose-derived adult stem cells. After being exposed to $H_2O_2$, half inhibitory concentration ($IC_{50}$) values by cytotoxicity assay was significantly (P<0.05) lower in 50S-derived skin fibroblasts, than in 10S-derived skin fibroblasts and various adult stem cell lines. The cell population doubling time (PDT) and the cell frequency with high senescence associated-${\beta}$-galactose activity were remarkably increased in 50S-derived fibroblasts exposed to 50 ppm $H_2O_2$ for 7 days, than those of 10S-derived fibroblasts and various adult stem cell lines. Further, the expression level of antioxidant-related genes, glutathione peroxidase (GPX) and catalase (CAT), was investigated in 10S and 50S-derived skin fibroblasts, and 10S-derived various adult stem cells by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The expression level of GPX was higher in most of cell lines, compared to CAT, and a significantly (P<0.05) higher expression level of GPX was observed in 10S-derived skin fibroblasts and adult stem cell lines, compared to 50S-derived skin fibroblasts. We concluded that old-aged skin fibroblasts seemed to be less resistant against ROS than young-aged skin fibroblasts and adult stem cells.