• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
• /
• v.30 no.3
• /
• pp.267-276
• /
• 2014

Collection of lichen together with tree twigs of oak and other trees bearing abundant growth of lichens is a common practice among the villagers and the rivals residing near Oak forests in Kumaun Himalaya. Nainital forest division represents about Twenty nine percent vegetation of the Oak forest in Kumaun Himalaya. In Kumaun, the lichen trade share is decreasing at an alarming rate of 21.93% which requires immediate actions by the Government. Lichen contributed significantly to household earnings with off-farm activities and this sector was found second highest income creator after Agriculture. It is a source of cash income during the season of extraction, which increases economic access to food. It has been observed in the present study that the secondary collector and transporters together get maximum share (>50%) of income generated from lichen, thus economic exploitation of the poorly educated people by the traders was still prevalent in the area. To improve the socio-economic standard of the people of Kumaun, it may is necessary to increase and improve the lichens resources of the area. There is a strong need for scientific management, best harvesting practices and strict monitoring of resources. The present study was conducted to assess the present and future resource potential for the conservation and sustainable management of lichens, existing market mechanism, role of Lichens in economic upliftment and livelihood generation of rural communities in Kumaun Himalaya.

• Advances in concrete construction
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.423-435
• /
• 2020

Open ground story (OGS) reinforced concrete (RC) buildings are vulnerable to the complete collapse or severe damages under seismic actions. This study investigates the effectiveness of four different strengthening techniques representing the local and global modifications to improve the seismic performance of a non-ductile RC OGS frame. Steel caging and concrete jacketing methods of column strengthening are considered as the local modification techniques, whereas steel bracing and RC shear wall systems are selected as the global strengthening techniques in this study. Performance-based plastic design (PBPD) approach relying on energy-balance concept has been adopted to determine the required design force demand on the strengthening elements. Nonlinear static and dynamic analyses are carried out on the numerical models of study frames to assess the effectiveness of selected strengthening techniques in improving the seismic performance of OGS frame.. Strengthening techniques based on steel braces and RC shear wall significantly reduced the peak interstory drift response of the OGS frame. However, the peak floor acceleration of these strengthened frames is amplified by more than 2.5 times as compared to that of unstrengthened frame. Steel caging technique of column strengthening resulted in a reasonable reduction in the peak interstory drift response without substantial amplification in peak floor acceleration of the OSG frame.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.561-568
• /
• 2014

Background: The skin is the largest body organ that regulates excretion of metabolic waste products, temperature, and plays an important role in body protection against environmental physical and chemical, as well as biological factors. These include agents that may act as oxidants or catalysts of reactions producing reactive oxygen species (ROS), reactive nitrogen species (RNS), and other oxidants in skin cells. An increased amount of the oxidants, exceeding the antioxidant defense system capacity is called oxidative stress, leading to chronic inflammation, which, in turn, can cause collagen fragmentation and disorganization of collagen fibers and skin cell functions, and thus contribute to skin diseases including cancer. Moreover, research suggests that oxidative stress participates in all stages of carcinogenesis. We report here a summary of the present state of knowledge on the role of oxidative stress in pathogenesis of dermatologic diseases, defensive systems against ROS/RNS, and discuss how physical activity may modulate skin diseases through effects on oxidative stress. The data show duality of physical activity actions: regular moderate activity protects against ROS/RNS damage, and endurance exercise with a lack of training mediates oxidative stress. These findings indicate that the redox balance should be considered in the development of new antioxidant strategies linked to the prevention and therapy of skin diseases.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
• /
• 1996.06c
• /
• pp.142-159
• /
• 1996

Engineering of automated tools for the agro-food industries and the rural world activities have to pick up two challenges : to answer the immediate important problems related to the situation of these industries, and to imaging the tools that their professional will need next century. Creating or modifying automated tools in the next few will be made taking into account parameters either technical (environmental protection, health and safety), or social and economical (investment , employment). There will be a strong interaction with disciplines like ecology, medicine, ergonomy, psycho-sociology , etc. , The partners for such a research, tools manufactures and users, should have an early involvement in its content, in order to find rapidly the solution to the drastic problems they are meeting. On a longer term , during the next 20 years , there will be an important evolution of the rural space management and of the food processes. This will imply the emergence of new types of activities and know-how's , with lines of automated tools to be invented and developed , like : micro-system for organic localized tasks -mobile and adaptive equipments highly autonomous for natural space actions - device for perception , decision and control reproducing automatically the expert behaviors of human operators. Design of such automated tools need to overcome technological difficulties like the automation of the expert-decision process, or the management of complex design.

• Toxicological Research
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.293-298
• /
• 2004

Background: Crohn's disease is characterized by a chronic relapsing inflammation of the bowel. Gliotoxin has been known to play strong immunosuppressive properties, while mechanisms for its anti-inflammatory actions are not completely understood. Here, we investigated the effects of gliotoxin in trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS) induced mouse colitis, an animal model of Crohn's disease. Results: Gliotoxin dramatically improved clinical and histopathological symptoms in accompanied with reduced expression of TNF-$\alpha$, IL-1$\beta$, and ICAM-1 protein levels in TNBS induced colitis. Interestingly Gliotoxin induced Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and the HO-1 inducer cobalt protoporphyrin IX (CoPPIX) completely mimicked the protective effects of gliotoxin in TNBS induced colitis mice. In contrast, the HO-1 inhibitor zinc protoporphyrin IX (ZnPPIX) could reverse the anti-inflammatory effects of gliotoxin and CoPPIX. Conclusions: Gliotoxin is a potential therapeutic agent targeting for the treatment of Crohn's disease by inducing HO-1.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.571-581
• /
• 2019

Objectives: This study was conducted to measure the knowledge, attitude, and practices on occupational health and the analysis factors influencing them among researchers working at corporate research centers. Methods: A total of 298 researchers working at corporate research centers participated in the study. After eliminating 12 insufficient responses, the responses of 286 participants were used for the final estimate. The questionnaire consisted of questions about general and occupational characteristics as well as knowledge, attitude, and practices on occupational health. Results: Factors influencing occupational health practices were type of business, job position, and attitude toward occupational health. Attitude toward occupational health was found to have the greatest influence. Conclusions: It is necessary to develop educational contents appropriate for each type of industry, implement educational programs for researchers working at corporate research centers, and take actions to prevent health problems among researchers through various health-care activities such as experience-based activities and discussions.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.103-114
• /
• 2003

This paper aims to propose a method that helps maintenance engineers to evaluate the damage states of bridge structure systems by using a Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis. It may be stated that Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis may be very useful for the systematic and rational fuzzy reliability assessment for real bridge structure systems problems because the approach is able to effectively deal with all the related bridge structural element damages in terms of the linguistic variables that incorporate systematically experts experiences and subjective judgement. This paper considers these uncertainties by providing a fuzzy reliability-based framework and shows that the identification of the optimum maintenance scenario is a straightforward process. This is achieved by using a computer program for LIFETIME. This program can consider the effects of various types of actions on the fuzzy reliability index profile of a deteriorating structures. Only the effect of maintenance interventions is considered in this study. However. any environmental or mechanical action affecting the fuzzy reliability index profile can be considered in LIFETIME. Numerical examples of deteriorating bridges are presented to illustrate the capability of the proposed approach. Further development and implementation of this approach are recommended for future research.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.119-136
• /
• 2015

As the means of implementation, the GCF and scaled-up climate finance compose major elements of a new climate agreement that will be implemented in 2020. The new agreement will be applicable to all parties, implying that developing countries as well as developed countries will be responsible for reducing GHG emissions. Achieving the goal of mobilizing 100 billion dollars will depend on the efforts put forth by developing countries in terms of meaningful mitigation actions and transparent implementation of the mitigation targets. This paper describes a major achievement on the negotiation related to climate finance since the Convention established and addresses the issues and perspectives for the Paris Agreement.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.31 no.1
• /
• pp.78-89
• /
• 2003

This paper presents a community participatory small-park design. It proposes that environmental planning and design can be understood as a communicative action that aims to achieve consensus among stakeholders through communication with the local residents. By studying the communicative action theory and communicative planning theory, three strategies were set for practicing small-park design as a communicative action: (1) stakeholders should how what data and actions are needed; (2) citizens should have access to the data and participate in the process; (3) the community's concerns should be consulted and their opinions heard. In applying the three strategies to the small-Park design, a council composed of experts, community members, and NGO's was established. All processes were then executed after careful deliberation. From interviews, the town-touring program and surveys, the design of the site was determined among the stakeholders. The site was subsequently designed based on the needs of the community and revised according to their suggestions. Finally, the small park was constructed. Even though the researchers experienced many limitations because the site is very small, the significance of this study can be outlined as follows: (1) the need to construct the park was suggested by the community rather than by the administration; (2) experts, members of the community, and NGO's constituted the council; (3) the design process involved deliberation among the members of council rather than a method previously established by experts; (4) the administration supported rather than led the entire process: (5) citizens discussed and reached a consensus by themselves.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.279-285
• /
• 2008

We have proposed modeling methods of mariners' standard behavior for collision avoidance by analyzing mariners' recognition process in a previous study. As a subsequent study, the aim of this study is to build a model of mariners' execution process which is one of six processes in the condition of collision avoidance. In this study, thus, the structure of mariners' information processing on the process of taking avoiding actions is described and the relation between mariners' behavior and necessary factors in the process is analyzed. And then we have built a model of mariners' standard behavior for execution process based on the characteristics of mariners in ship-handling, which are obtained from the international collaborative research on human factors. It is tried to define the contents of execution process based on the standard behavior of mariners for collision avoidance and to formulate information processing of mariners.