• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.161-170
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• 1997

The concentrations of dimethylsulfide (DMS) were determined using samples collected from a station located at Kosan, Cheju Island during two field campaigns held in December 1996 and January 1997. The atmospheric DMS concentrations measured at 6-hr intervals during the entire campaign periods, after excluding a few extreme values, spanned in the range of 14 to 410 pptv with mean and 1 SD value of 127 $\pm$ 94 pptv (N=42). Between two month periods during which the field campaigns were conducted, a notable reduction in DMS levels was observed which was comparable to the dramatic shift in air temperature. A considerable difference was also noted in DMS levels, when data were grouped by day/night basis. The cause of unexpected, high day-to-night DMS ratios is best explained in terms of high efficiency of daytime source processes relative to low efficiency of nighttime sink processes due to the characteristics of the study location. The surface water DMS of the study site, although scarcely measured, also behaved similarly to its atmospheric counterpart with its range from 0.3 to 19 nM (N=11). When correlation analysis was conducted between the atmospheric DMS concentration and other concurrently determined parameters, significant correlations were observed from most basic meteorological parameters such as windspeed, relative humidy, and air temperature. However, the existence of "not-so-strong" correlations between air temperature and DMS concentrations relative to other ones indicated that the effect of temperature on DMS behavior must be reflected in more complicated manners at the study site. The sea-to-air flux of DMS was approximated through an application of the mass-balance flux calculation method of Wylie and de Mora (1996) under the assumption that sink mechanism within the marine boundary layer is in steady-state condition with its counterpart, source mechanism. Based on this estimation method, we reached a conclusion that oceanic DMS emitted from the southwest sea of the Korean Peninsula can amount to approximately 9 $\sim$ 36 Gg S $yr^{-1}$.$yr^{-1}$.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.97-106
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• 2010

Environmental issues resulting from climate change and energy crises have become global issues, and cycling has gained greater popularity for sustainable transportation. Though many cities are trying to build bicycle roads, it is not easy to implement bicycle roads because there is little available space for bicycle facilities. Therefore, road diets have become more popular in Korea. However, there has been no intensive research to date of their impacts. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effects of road diets and construction of bike lanes. Every benefit, including energy benefit, environmental benefit, and health benefit is considered, while only time savings benefit has been considered in previous studies. The benefit analysis for the Seoul metropolitan area as a case study shows that road diets have a (1) time saving benefit for only five percent of the mode share and (2) enough total benefit even if bicycle mode share is less than two percent.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2018

Ground-level ozone ($O_3$) can be a menace for vegetation, especially in Asia where $O_3$ levels have been dramatically increased over the past decades. To ensure food security and maintain forest ecosystem services, such as nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration and functional diversity of soil biota, in the over-populated Asia, environmental standards are needed. To set proper standards, dose-response relationships should be established from which critical levels are derived. The predictor of the response in the dose-response relationship is an $O_3$ metric that indicates the dose level to which the plant has been exposed. This study aimed to review the relevant scientific literature and summarize the $O_3$ metrics used worldwide to provide insights for Asia. A variety of $O_3$ metrics have been used, for which we discuss their strengths and weaknesses. The most widely used metrics are based only on $O_3$ levels. Such metrics have been adopted by several regulatory agencies in the global. However, they are biologically irrelevant because they ignore the plant physiological capacity. Adopting AOT40 ($O_3$ mixing ratios Accumulated Over the Threshold of $40nmol\;mol^{-1}$) as the default index for setting critical levels in Asia would be a poor policy with severe consequences at national and Pan-Asian level. Asian studies should focus on flux-based $O_3$ metrics to provide relevant bases for developing proper standards. However, given the technical requirements in calculating flux-based $O_3$ metrics, which can be an important limitation in developing countries, no-threshold cumulative exposure indices like AOT0 should always accompany flux-based indices.

• Atmosphere
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.27-37
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• 2022

The Korean Integrated Model (KIM) forecast system was extended to assimilate Horizontal Line-Of-Sight (HLOS) wind observations from the Atmospheric Laser Doppler Instrument (ALADIN) on board the Atmospheric Dynamic Mission (ADM)-Aeolus satellite. Quality control procedures were developed to assess the HLOS wind data quality, and observation operators added to the KIM three-dimensional variational data assimilation system to support the new observed variables. In a global cycling experiment, assimilation of ALADIN observations led to reductions in average root-mean-square error of 2.1% and 1.3% for the zonal and meridional wind analyses when compared against European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecast System (IFS) analyses. Even though the observable variable is wind, the assimilation of ALADIN observation had an overall positive impact on the analyses of other variables, such as temperature and specific humidity. As a result, the KIM 72-hour wind forecast fields were improved in the Southern Hemisphere poleward of 30 degrees.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.33 no.11
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• pp.1403-1411
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• 2023

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the most abundant component of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and directly creates environmental issues such as global warming and climate change. Carbon capture and storage have been proposed mainly to solve the problem of increasing CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere; however, more emphasis has recently been placed on its use. Among the many methods of using CO₂, one of the key environmentally friendly technologies involves biologically converting CO₂ into other organic substances such as biofuels, chemicals, and biomass via various metabolic pathways. Although an efficient biocatalyst for industrial applications has not yet been developed, biological CO₂ conversion is the needed direction. To this end, this review briefly summarizes seven known natural CO₂ fixation pathways according to carbon number and describes recent studies in which natural CO₂ assimilation systems have been applied to heterogeneous in vivo and in vitro systems. In addition, studies on the production of methanol through the reduction of CO₂ are introduced. The importance of redox cofactors, which are often overlooked in the CO₂ assimilation reaction by enzymes, is presented; methods for their recycling are proposed. Although more research is needed, biological CO₂ conversion will play an important role in reducing GHG emissions and producing useful substances in terms of resource cycling.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.597-632
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• 2010

There is general agreement that global warming is occurring and that the main contributor to this probably is the buildup of green house gasses, GHG, in the atmosphere. Two main contributors are the utilization of fossil fuels and the deforestation of many regions of the world. The burning of fossil fuels increases atmospheric carbon while the burning of fuel-wood reducing fossil fuel consumption along with its forest source maintain an atmospheric carbon level. The standing timber in the forests is a carbon sink, as are wood buildings and structures, and fossil fuel in the ground. This paper is designed to examine a number of current issues related to mitigating the global warming problem through forestry. For this purpose, we develop a modeling approach by integrating timber market, fossil fuel market and carbon cycling model. We use discrete time optimal control theory to identify optimal time paths, the laws of motion, and stationary stats solutions of endogenous variables in the model. On the basis of these results, we identify the optimal amounts of subsidies to be provided or taxes to be imposed by the regulatory agency to mitigate atmospheric carbon accumulation. We also present a numerical example to help illustrate the characteristics of variables in the model when the social cost for atmospheric carbon incrementally shifts upward. A surprising result is that the social cost function for atmospheric carbon has a very smaller impact on the optimal rotation period than previous literature suggested.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1199-1205
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• 2017

Global energy consumption is rapidly increasing yearly due to drastic industrial advances, requiring the development of new energy storage devices. For this reason, supercapacitors with fast charge-discharge, long life cycle and high power density is getting attention, and have been considered as one of the potential energy storage systems. In this research, we developed a supercapacitor that consists of amorphous manganese oxide($MnO_2$) electrodes deposited onto carbon cloth substrates using the hydrothermal method. The Fe-doped amorphous $MnO_2$ samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD), Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy(EDX), as well as scanning electron microscopy(SEM). The electrochemical analysis of the prepared samples were performed using cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge-discharge measurements in 1M $Na_2SO_4$ electrolyte. The test results demonstrate that the supercapacitor based on the Fe-doped amorphous $MnO_2$ electrodes has a specific capacitance as high as 163F/g at 1A/g current density, and good cycling stability of 87.34% capacitance retention up to 1000 cycles.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.22-29
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• 2008

Bombina orientalis, or Korean fire-bellied toad is belonging to Class Amphinia, Order Anura, Family Bombinatoridae, Genus Bombina. Ecological characteristics, such as small size, slow moving and swimming, gentle attitude to other species, under laboratory and/or wild condition lead the toad as suitable experimental animals with easy handling. Seasonal reproductive biology except breeding season (usually from Apr. to late Jun.) are unknown still caused by sampling methods for hibernating specimens have not been established yet. Most species of amphibian, include B. orientalis, are declined around the world related with global warming, therefore, wild caught specimen for any purposes must be limited controled soon. Even though, some pre-studies of biotope for increasing biodiversity have been reported, construction of an artificial biotope to get natural breeding cycling specimen for study of amphibian reproduction is unique modelling and only trial. In an effort to set year-round sampling for study of reproduction of B. orientalis, we suggest protocols for planning, construction manual and SOP(Standard Operation Process) to manage amphibian biotope. During pilot operation of a designed and constructed biotope, the seasonal acclimation during winter hibernation of B. orientalis were successful. It will be helpful for studying the reproductive biology of wild amphibians in temperate region and allow to get reasonable research conditions in amphibian laboratory.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.7-18
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• 2015

Objectives: Lawsone (1,4 naphthoquinone) is a non redox cycling compound that can be catalyzed by DT diaphorase (DTD) into 1,2,4-trihydroxynaphthalene (THN), which can generate reactive oxygen species by auto oxidation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the toxicity of the phytomarker 1,4 naphthoquinone and its metabolite THN by using the molecular docking program AutoDock 4. Methods: The 3D structure of ligands such as hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$), nitric oxide synthase (NOS), catalase (CAT), glutathione (GSH), glutathione reductase (GR), glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate hydrogen (NADPH) were drawn using hyperchem drawing tools and minimizing the energy of all pdb files with the help of hyperchem by $MM^+$ followed by a semi-empirical (PM3) method. The docking process was studied with ligand molecules to identify suitable dockings at protein binding sites through annealing and genetic simulation algorithms. The program auto dock tools (ADT) was released as an extension suite to the python molecular viewer used to prepare proteins and ligands. Grids centered on active sites were obtained with spacings of $54{\times}55{\times}56$, and a grid spacing of 0.503 was calculated. Comparisons of Global and Local Search Methods in Drug Docking were adopted to determine parameters; a maximum number of 250,000 energy evaluations, a maximum number of generations of 27,000, and mutation and crossover rates of 0.02 and 0.8 were used. The number of docking runs was set to 10. Results: Lawsone and THN can be considered to efficiently bind with NOS, CAT, GSH, GR, G6PDH and NADPH, which has been confirmed through hydrogen bond affinity with the respective amino acids. Conclusion: Naphthoquinone derivatives of lawsone, which can be metabolized into THN by a catalyst DTD, were examined. Lawsone and THN were found to be identically potent molecules for their affinities for selected proteins.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.339-347
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• 2023

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a key component in the biogeochemical cycling in freshwater ecosystem. However, it has been rarely explored, particularly complex river watershed dominated by natural and anthropogenic sources, such as various effluent facility and livestock. The current research developed a new analytical method for TOC/TN (Total Organic Carbon/Total Nitrogen) stable isotope ratio, and distinguish DOM source using stable isotope value (δ¹³C-DOC) and spectroscopic indices (fluorescence index [FI] and biological index [BIX]). The TOC/TN-IR/MS analytical system was optimized and precision and accuracy were secured using two international standards (IAEA-600 Caffein, IAEA-CH-6 Sucrose). As a result of controlling the instrumental conditions to enable TOC stable isotope analysis even in low-concentration environmental samples (<1 mgC L^-1), the minimum detection limit was improved. The 12 potential DOM source were collected from watershed, which includes top-soils, groundwater, plant group (fallen leaves, riparian plants, suspended algae) and effluent group (pig and cow livestock, agricultural land, urban, industry facility, swine facility and wastewater treatment facilities). As a result of comparing characteristics between 12 sources using spectroscopic indices and δ¹³C-DOC values, it were divided into four groups according to their characteristics as a respective DOM sources. The current study established the TOC/TN stable isotope analyses system for the first time in Korea, and found that spectroscopic indices and δ¹³C-DOC are very useful tool to trace the origin of organic matter in the aquatic environments through library database.