• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.213-220
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• 2009

In order to predict the risk of freeze injury for 'Changhowon Hwangdo' peach trees, we used the dormancy depth (i.e., the daily chill unit accumulation during the overwintering period) as a proxy for the short-term, physiological tolerance to freezing temperatures. A Chill-days model was employed and its parameters such as base temperature and chilling requirement were optimized for peach trees based on the 12 observational experiments during the 2008-2009 winter. The model predicted the flowering dates much closer to the observations than other models without considering dormancy depth, showing the strength of employing dormancy depth into consideration. To derive empirical equations for calculating the probabilistic freeze risk, the dormancy depth was then combined with the browning ratio and the budburst ratio of frozen peach fruit branches. Given the exact date and the predicted minimum temperature, the equations calculate the probability of freeze damages such as a failure in budburst or tissue browning. This method of employing dormancy depth in addition to freezing temperature would be useful in locating in advance the risky areas of freezing injury for peach trees production under the projected climate change.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.433-446
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• 2009

Pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment are trace contaminants of growing importance in environmental health due to their physiologically active nature. Pharmaceuticals could affect non-target species and might eventually damage sustainability of susceptible populations in the ecosystem. Potentials for health consequences among susceptible human population cannot be ruled out since long-term exposure to cocktails of pharmaceuticals, which might be present in drinking water, is possible. Selection of antibiotic resistant microorganisms is of another concern. In order to understand, and if needed, to properly address the environmental health issues of pharmaceutical residues, knowledge gaps need to be filled. Knowledge gaps exist in many important areas such as prioritization of target pharmaceuticals for further risk studies, occurrence patterns in different environments, chronic toxicities, and toxicities of pharmaceutical mixtures. Appropriate treatment technologies for drinking water and wastewater could be developed when they are deemed necessary. One of the simplest, yet most efficient measures that could be undertaken is to implement a return program for unused or expired drugs. In addition, implementation of environmental risk assessment frameworks for pharmaceuticals would make it possible to efficiently manage potential environmental health problems associated with pharmaceutical residues in the environment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.224-229
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• 2011

Recently, the management of the marine invasive alien species introduced by ballast water has come to the core as an urgent task. Because, hazardous organisms cause harmful effects on the ecosystem. Hazardous organisms also negatively affect fisheries, commercial shipping activities, and marine resources. In this regard, IMO used to operate GloBallast, Ballast Water Risk Assessment System, in order to manage the introduction of invasive species by ballast water. GloBallast is constructed to assess the relative risk due to the movement of ballast water between nations, using the volume and the number of times of ballast water discharge, the environmental similarity between ports, and the abundance of hazardous species as the main factors. According to the results of the demo-operation of GloBallast, it was found out that the environmental similarity factor had affected most highly the results of risk assessment. Therefore, in this study, the correlation between the main factors used in GloBallast risk assessment were re-examined, and some methods were suggested in order to reflect these main factors in the risk assessment more reasonable.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.191-197
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• 2015

Invasive alien species are considered to be one of the main factors that cause biodiversity loss. Establishment of management strategies through continuous monitoring and risk assessment is a key element for invasive alien species management policy. In the present study, we introduce examples of ecological risk assessment tools developed in Japan, Germany-Austria and Belgium. Invasive alien species have been designated in Japan based on the assessment of risks to ecosystems, human health and primary industry. German-Austrian Black List Information System categorized alien species into Black List, White List and Grey List according to their risks to biodiversity. In the Harmonia Information System developed in Belgium, invasiveness, adverse impacts on native species and ecosystem functions and invasion stages were assessed and alien species were categorized into Black List, Watch List and Alert List. These international risk assessment tools may be helpful to improve our national risk assessment protocol for the prioritization of invasive alien species management.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.18.1-18.5
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• 2020

Finding publications that propose alternative methods to animal experiments is an important but time-consuming task since researchers need to perform various queries to literature databases and screen many articles to assess two important aspects: the relevance of the article to the research question, and whether the article's proposed approach qualifies to being an alternative method. We are currently developing a Web application to support finding alternative methods to animal experiments. The current (under development) version of the application utilizes external tools and resources for document processing, and relies on the PubAnnotation ecosystem for annotation querying, annotation storage, dictionary-based tagging of cell lines, and annotation visualization. Currently, our two PubAnnotation repositories for discourse elements contain annotations for more than 110k PubMed documents. Further, we created an annotator for cell lines that contain more than 196k terms from Cellosaurus. Finally, we are experimenting with TextAE for annotation visualization and for user feedback.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.121-125
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• 2010

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology mitigates the emission amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and can reduce green house effect which causes the climate change. Deep saline aquifer or obsolete oil/gas storage etc. in the marine geological structure are considered as the candidates for the storage. The injection and storage relating technology have been interested in the global society, however the adverse effect caused by leakage from the system failure. Even the safety level of the CCS is very high and there is almost no possibility to leak but, still the risk to marine ecosystem of the high concentrated carbon dioxide exposure is not verified. The present study introduces the system and environmental risk assessment methods. The feature, event and process approach can be a good starting point and we found the some possibility from the fault tree analysis for evaluation. From the FEP analysis, we drove the possible scenario which we need to concentrate on the construction and operation stages.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.785-795
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• 2018

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has recognized the risk of hull fouling and announced '2011 Guidelines for the control and management of ship's biofouling to minimize the transfer of invasive aquatic species'and is planning international regulations to enforce them in the future. In this study, to effectively respond to future international regulation, we introduce the case of leading countries related to management of hull fouling and also investigate environmental risk assessment techniques for in-water cleaning. Australia and New Zealand, the leading countries in hull fouling management, have established hull fouling regulations through biological and chemical risk assessment based on in-water cleaning scenarios. Most European countries without their government regulation have been found to perform in-water cleaning in accordance with the IMO's hull fouling regulations. In the Republic of Korea, there is no domestic law for hull fouling organisms, and only approximately 17 species of marine ecological disturbance organisms, are designated and managed under the Marine Ecosystem Law. Since in-water cleaning is accompanied by diffusion of alien species and release of chemical substances into aquatic environments, results from biological as well as chemical risk assessment are performed separately, and then evaluation of in-water cleaning permission is judged by combining these two results. Biological risk assessment created 40 codes of in-water cleaning scenarios, and calculated Risk Priority Number (RPN) scores based on key factors that affect intrusion of alien species during in-water cleaning. Chemical risk assessment was performed using the MAMPEC (Marine Antifoulant Model to Predict Environmental Concentrations), to determine PEC and PNEC values based on copper concentration released during in-water cleaning. Finally, if the PEC/PNEC ratio is >1, it means that chemical risk is high. Based on the assumption that the R/V EARDO ship performs in-water cleaning at Busan's Gamcheon Port, biological risk was estimated to be low due to the RPN value was <10,000, but the PEC/PNEC ratio was higher than 1, it was evaluated as impossible for in-water cleaning. Therefore, it will be necessary for the Republic of Korea to develop the in-water cleaning technology by referring to the case of leading countries and to establish domestic law of ship's hull fouling management, suitable for domestic harbors.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.252-260
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• 2015

This paper describes the technical background for the Korean wildlife radiation dose assessment code, K-BIOTA, and the summary of its application. The K-BIOTA applies the graded approaches of 3 levels including the screening assessment (Level 1 & 2), and the detailed assessment based on the site specific data (Level 3). The screening level assessment is a preliminary step to determine whether the detailed assessment is needed, and calculates the dose rate for the grouped organisms, rather than an individual biota. In the Level 1 assessment, the risk quotient (RQ) is calculated by comparing the actual media concentration with the environmental media concentration limit (EMCL) derived from a bench-mark screening reference dose rate. If RQ for the Level 1 assessment is less than 1, it can be determined that the ecosystem would maintain its integrity, and the assessment is terminated. If the RQ is greater than 1, the Level 2 assessment, which calculates RQ using the average value of the concentration ratio (CR) and equilibrium distribution coefficient (Kd) for the grouped organisms, is carried out for the more realistic assessment. Thus, the Level 2 assessment is less conservative than the Level 1 assessment. If RQ for the Level 2 assessment is less than 1, it can be determined that the ecosystem would maintain its integrity, and the assessment is terminated. If the RQ is greater than 1, the Level 3 assessment is performed for the detailed assessment. In the Level 3 assessment, the radiation dose for the representative organism of a site is calculated by using the site specific data of occupancy factor, CR and Kd. In addition, the K-BIOTA allows the uncertainty analysis of the dose rate on CR, Kd and environmental medium concentration among input parameters optionally in the Level 3 assessment. The four probability density functions of normal, lognormal, uniform and exponential distribution can be applied.The applicability of the code was tested through the participation of IAEA EMRAS II (Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety) for the comparison study of environmental models comparison, and as the result, it was proved that the K-BIOTA would be very useful to assess the radiation risk of the wildlife living in the various contaminated environment.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.1-12
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• 2005

Policies regarding to soil quality of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Demark were analyzed to suggest Korean policy for improving soil quality concept and it's implementation. All countries met four criteria: I) Soil quality levels of contaminants are indebt to concept of contaminant risk to recipients (human and ecosystem); ii) Any soil quality value can't be a magic number to determine whether a site is contaminated or not. To determine risk of sites, risk assessment of the sites should be followed; iii) Concentrations of contaminants of sites are not always significantly certain to risk of human and ecosystem of the sites; and iv) Soil quality levels are adopted based on land uses and plans. Considering our rooms to improve policies and analysis of the other country reports on their legislations about soil quality levels, our policy implementation could be approached from these directions: i) Our concept for soil quality levels needs to develop in scientific and rational. ii) Soil quality levels and risk assessment should be implemented as determining tools of site contamination in parallel, and iii) Soil quality levels depending on land uses and plans should be developed in debt with rational and scientific concept of risk. Increasing efficacy of Korea policy regarding the soil quality levels would be in dept to applying concepts of SCL (Soil Contamination Level) and SRL (Soil Regulatory Level) developed, implementing soil quality levels and risk assessment of contaminated sites in conjunction, and classifying three distinctions of land uses based on sensitiveness of recipients (human and ecosystem) to contaminants in soil in this research.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.901-906
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• 2013

We examined the availability of the lacZ gene (${\beta}$-galactosidase gene) as a reporter of foreign gene transfer in the cysts of Artemia franciscana (A. franciscana) to conduct a risk assessment of living genetically modified organisms (LMOs) in the marine ecosystem. The LacZ gene was transferred to decapsulated cysts by particle bombardment, and its insertion and expression were assessed by means of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and X-gal staining. X-gal staining indicated lacZ expression in all A. franciscana examined (including the control group), which exhibited not only negative but also positive PCR amplification. Endogenous ${\beta}$-galactosidase is highly active in the whole body of A. franciscana during all stages of the life cycle. Thus, the lacZ gene is unsuitable as a reporter for foreign gene transfer in A. franciscana cysts, because it is difficult to discriminate between exogenous and endogenous ${\beta}$-galactosidase activity.