• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.309-313
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• 2008

To investigate the antibacterial activity of the traditional bronze alloy Yugi, the cultures of Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli O157, Enterobacter sakazakii, and Bacillus cereus were exposed to the metal coupons of bronze, copper, tin, and stainless steel, and the sterilizing activities were analyzed. Antibacterial efficacy of copper coupon toward S. Typhimurium, E. coli, and E. sakazakii were the highest among them and those were followed by bronze, tin, and then stainless steel in the activity order. However, there was little sterilizing activity on Gram-positive B. cereus. Minimal inhibitory concentrations of cupric ion were 25 ppm for S. Typhimurium, E. coli, and E. sakazakii, and 50 ppm for B. cereus. Yugi bronze alloy showed more rigidity and practicality in comparison with copper, and has been used in Korea. Therefore, the bronze alloy may be more effective to reduce the cross-contamination of S. Typhimurium, E. coli, and E. sakazakii than stainless steel in food processing surface.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.272-278
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• 2013

To evaluate the effect of surface contaminated with Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli O157:H7) on the microbiological safety of lettuce, this study was conducted to investigate the attachment, biofilm producing, survival, and cross-contamination of E. coli O157:H7 on stainless steel and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The attachment rate of E. coli O157:H7 on PVC was 10 times higher than that on stainless steel after exposure 1 h in cell suspension. However, there was not a difference between two types of surface after exposure for 6 h and 24h. The biofilm producing of E. coli O157:H7 was TSB > 10% lettuce extracts > 1% lettuce extracts > phosphate buffer. When two kinds of materials were stored at various conditions ($20^{\circ}C$ and $30^{\circ}C$, relative humidity (RH) 43%, 69%, and 100%), the numbers of E. coli O157:H7 at $30^{\circ}C$, RH 43% or RH 69% were reduced by 5.0 log CFU/coupon within 12 h regardless of material type. Conversely, the survival of E. coli O157:H7 at RH 100% was lasted more than 5 days. In addition, the reduction rate of E. coli O157:H7 was decreased in the presence of organic matter. The transfer efficiency of E. coli O157:H7 from the contaminated surface to lettuce was dependent upon the water amount of the surface of lettuce. Especially, the transfer rate of E. coli O157:H7 was increased by 10 times in the presence of water on the lettuce surface. From this study, the retention of E. coli O157:H7 on produce contact surfaces increase the risk cross-contamination of this pathogen to produce. Thus, it is important that the surface in post harvest facility is properly washed and sanitized after working for prevention of cross-contamination from surface.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.227-234
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• 2017

Reference electrodes are generally implemented for the purpose of monitoring the cathodic protection potentials of buried or immersed metallic structures. In the market, many types of reference electrodes are available for this purpose, such as saturated calomel, silver/silver chloride and copper/copper sulfate. These electrodes contain a porous ceramic junction plate situated in the cylindrical body bottom to permit ionic flux between the internal electrolyte (of the reference electrode) and the external electrolyte. In this work, the copper/copper sulfate reference electrode was modified by replacing the porous ceramic junction plate for a metallic platinum wire. The main purpose of this modification was to avoid the ion copper transport from coming from the inner reference electrode solution into the surrounding electrolyte, and to mitigate the copper plating on the coupon surfaces. Lab tests were performed in order to compare the performance of the two mentioned reference electrodes. We verified that the experimental errors associated with the measurements conducted with developed reference electrode would be negligible, as the platinum surface area exposed to the surrounding electrolyte and/or to the reference electrolyte are maintained as small as possible.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.1177-1183
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• 2019

Grapefruit seed extract (GSE) is a safe and effective preservative that is used widely in the food industry. However, there are few studies addressing the anti-biofilm effect of GSE. In this study, the anti-biofilm effect of GSE was investigated against biofilm-forming strains of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The GSE minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for S. aureus and E. coli were $25{\mu}g/ml$ and $250{\mu}g/ml$, respectively. To investigate biofilm inhibition and degradation effect, crystal violet assay and stainless steel were used. Biofilm formation rates of four strains (S. aureus 7, S. aureus 8, E. coli ATCC 25922, and E. coli O157:H4 FRIK 125) were 55.8%, 70.2%, 55.4%, and 20.6% at $1/2{\times}MIC$ of GSE, respectively. The degradation effect of GSE on biofilms attached to stainless steel coupons was observed (${\geq}1$ log CFU/coupon) after exposure to concentrations above the MIC for all strains and $1/2{\times}MIC$ for S. aureus 7. In addition, the specific mechanisms of this anti-biofilm effect were investigated by evaluating hydrophobicity, auto-aggregation, exopolysaccharide (EPS) production rate, and motility. Significant changes in EPS production rate and motility were observed in both S. aureus and E. coli in the presence of GSE, while changes in hydrophobicity were observed only in E. coli. No relationship was seen between auto-aggregation and biofilm formation. Therefore, our results suggest that GSE might be used as an anti-biofilm agent that is effective against S. aureus and E. coli.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.91-101
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• 2019

Tourism or travel business consists of a set of services for people who visit exotic places. Payment is usually marking the end of the series of activities relating to tourism, and it becomes the linkage for the next activity. With the recent advancement of mobile Fintech technologies, we have learned that more convenient and more secure financial transactions are improving the quality of tourism. It should be noted that tourism counts on information technology heavily in terms of mobile Internet and smart devices use, which yields to a wide business opportunities for Fintech startups. However, payment information has not been highlighted for additional marketing promotion activities. The lack of research into information technology-based business models that extend Fintech services related to payment in venture start-up studies hinders the understanding of the possibility of creating new business through the value creation process after payment. This study attempts to investigate this issue based on the theory of smart tourism and service-dominant logic with developing a new information system. More specifically, marketing promotion activities after payment for Chinese tourists visiting Korea are examined. Specifically, WeChat Pay and instant tax refund service were considered while the system was developed by following desing science research methodology. This study is meaningful in that it finds a new possibility of Fintech business model by applying scientific and academic methods, and it reminds the necessity of service automation system centered on instant tax refund.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.645-655
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• 2020

Bacteria are a very common cause of food poisoning. Moreover, bacteria form biofilms to protect themselves from harsh environments. Conventional detection methods for foodborne bacterial pathogens including the plate count method, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA), and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays require a lot of time and effort. Hyperspectral imaging has been used for food safety because of its non-destructive and real-time detection capability. This study assessed the feasibility of using hyperspectral imaging and machine learning techniques to detect biofilms formed by Escherichia coli. E. coli was cultured on a high-density polyethylene (HDPE) coupon, which is a main material of food processing facilities. Hyperspectral fluorescence images were acquired from 420 to 730 nm and analyzed by a single wavelength method and machine learning techniques to determine whether an E. coli culture was present. The prediction accuracy of a biofilm by the single wavelength method was 84.69%. The prediction accuracy by the machine learning techniques were 87.49, 91.16, 86.61, and 86.80% for decision tree (DT), k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), respectively. This result shows the possibility of using machine learning techniques, especially the k-NN model, to effectively detect bacterial pathogens and confirm food poisoning through hyperspectral images.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.23-38
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• 2012

There is a large difference between purchasing patterns in an online shopping mall and in an offline market. This difference may be caused mainly by the difference in accessibility of online and offline markets. It means that an interval between the initial purchasing decision and its realization appears to be relatively short in an online shopping mall, because a customer can make an order immediately. Because of the short interval between a purchasing decision and its realization, an online shopping mall transaction usually contains fewer items than that of an offline market. In an offline market, customers usually keep some items in mind and buy them all at once a few days after deciding to buy them, instead of buying each item individually and immediately. On the contrary, more than 70% of online shopping mall transactions contain only one item. This statistic implies that traditional data mining techniques cannot be directly applied to online market analysis, because hardly any association rules can survive with an acceptable level of Support because of too many Null Transactions. Most market basket analyses on online shopping mall transactions, therefore, have been performed by expanding the co-occurrence criteria of traditional association rule mining. While the traditional co-occurrence criteria defines items purchased in one transaction as concurrently purchased items, the expanded co-occurrence criteria regards items purchased by a customer during some predefined period (e.g., a day) as concurrently purchased items. In studies using expanded co-occurrence criteria, however, the criteria has been defined arbitrarily by researchers without any theoretical grounds or agreement. The lack of clear grounds of adopting a certain co-occurrence criteria degrades the reliability of the analytical results. Moreover, it is hard to derive new meaningful findings by combining the outcomes of previous individual studies. In this paper, we attempt to compare expanded co-occurrence criteria and propose a guideline for selecting an appropriate one. First of all, we compare the accuracy of association rules discovered according to various co-occurrence criteria. By doing this experiment we expect that we can provide a guideline for selecting appropriate co-occurrence criteria that corresponds to the purpose of the analysis. Additionally, we will perform similar experiments with several groups of customers that are segmented by each customer's average duration between orders. By this experiment, we attempt to discover the relationship between the optimal co-occurrence criteria and the customer's average duration between orders. Finally, by a series of experiments, we expect that we can provide basic guidelines for developing customized recommendation systems. Our experiments use a real dataset acquired from one of the largest internet shopping malls in Korea. We use 66,278 transactions of 3,847 customers conducted during the last two years. Overall results show that the accuracy of association rules of frequent shoppers (whose average duration between orders is relatively short) is higher than that of causal shoppers. In addition we discover that with frequent shoppers, the accuracy of association rules appears very high when the co-occurrence criteria of the training set corresponds to the validation set (i.e., target set). It implies that the co-occurrence criteria of frequent shoppers should be set according to the application purpose period. For example, an analyzer should use a day as a co-occurrence criterion if he/she wants to offer a coupon valid only for a day to potential customers who will use the coupon. On the contrary, an analyzer should use a month as a co-occurrence criterion if he/she wants to publish a coupon book that can be used for a month. In the case of causal shoppers, the accuracy of association rules appears to not be affected by the period of the application purposes. The accuracy of the causal shoppers' association rules becomes higher when the longer co-occurrence criterion has been adopted. It implies that an analyzer has to set the co-occurrence criterion for as long as possible, regardless of the application purpose period.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.279-288
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• 2013

Objectives: Effectiveness and conditions of vapor-phase hydrogen peroxide (VPHP) system on decontamination of Geobacillus stearothermophilus(GS) spores, Escherichia coli (E.coli) and Enterobacteria phage felix01 (felix01) were determined. Methods: The VPHP system was designed to vaporize 35% (w/w) solution of hydrogen peroxide, continuously to inject and withdraw VPHP. The system and VHP 1000ED (Steris) were operated such that dehumidification and conditioning were initiated without samples in the chamber. Then the samples were loaded into and removed. Coupons (glass, anodizing, silicon, viton) with GS spores ($1{\times}10^6$ colony forming unit/mL [CFU/mL]), E.coli ($1{\times}10^7$ CFU/mL) and felix01 ($1{\times}10^7$ plaque forming unit/mL[PFU/mL]), and Biological Indicator (BI) with GS spores ($1{\times}10^6$ CFU/mL) on stainless steel coupons were used. The tested samples were sonicated and vortexed, and then were plated for enumeration, followed by incubation at $55^{\circ}C$, 24 hr for GS spores, and at $37^{\circ}C$, 24 hr for E.coli and felix01. BI analysis in broth culture was only qualitative. Results: The efficacy of the VPHP system on decontamination was almost equivalent to that of VHP 1000ED. The conditions for complete decontamination with the VPHP system was as follows: concentration; 700~450 ppm, relative humidity; approximately 55%, and temperature; $34{\sim}32^{\circ}C$. When comparing the decontamination efficiency among different kinds of coupons, glass was the most effective, however, all kinds of coupons were decontaminated completely after 60 min exposure in both systems. Conclusion: The VPHP system can be recommended as an alternative system for traditional system using ethylene oxide, formaldehyde or chlorine dioxide.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1114-1119
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• 2004

The biofilms on pipe walls in water distribution systems are of interest since they can lead to chlorine demand, coliform growth, pipe corrosion, and water taste and odor problems. As such, the study described in this paper is part of an AWWARF and Tampa Bay Water tailored collaboration project to determine the effect of blending different source waters on the water quality in various distribution systems. The project was based on 18 independent pilot distribution systems (PDS), each being fed by a different water blend (7 finished waters blended in different proportions). The source waters compared were groundwater, surface water, and brackish water, which were treated in a variety of pilot distribution systems, including reverse osmosis (RO) (desalination), both membrane and chemical softening, and ozonation-biological activated carbon (BAC), resulting in a total of 7 different finished waters. The observations from this study consistently demonstrated that unlined ductile iron was more heavily colonized by a biomass than galvanized steel, lined ductile iron, and PVC (in that order) and that the fixed biomass accumulation was more influenced by the nature of the supporting material than by the water quality (including the secondary residual levels). However, although the bulk liquid water cultivable bacterial counts (i.e. heterotrophic plate counts or HPCs) did not increase with a greater biofilm accumulation, the results also suggested that high HPCs corresponded to a low disinfectant residual more than a high biofilm inventory. Furthermore, temperature was found to affect the biofilms, plus the AOC was important when the residual was between 0.6 and 2.0 mg $Cl_2/l$. An additional aspect of the current study was that the potential of the exoproteolytic activity (PEPA) technique was used along with a traditional so-called destructive technique in which the biofilm was scrapped off the coupon surface, resuspended, and cultivated on an R2A agar. Both techniques indicated similar trends and relative comparisons among the PDSs, yet the culturable biofilm values for the traditional method were several orders of magnitude lower than the PEPA values.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 2004

E-Commerce is suddenly spreading in a daily life. A rights trading system is a system that circulates digital-tickets such as plane tickets, software license, coupon. There are two main approaches so far account-based and smart-card based systems. The NTT Proposed FlexToken, a new smart card based copy prevention scheme for digital rights. They Proposed using pseudonymous self certified keys of Petersen and Horster in order to ensure anonymity of users. However. Petersen and Holster's scheme should register a pseudonymous key pair at TTP (One-time) every time so that users create the signature which is satisfied with unlinkability property In this paper, we propose a new anonymous rights trading system using group signature. This paper has a meaning having applied to digital rights trading system an efficient smart card based group signature.