• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.209-221
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• 2019

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a neurotransmitter that exerts several physiological functions and positive effects on human health. The aim of this study was to isolate and characterize the strains that had GABA-producing abilities from various fermented fish products. A total of 91 acid-producing strains were isolated from 41 samples of fermented fish products, and 27 strains showing GABA-producing abilities were identified by the 16S rDNA sequences. Among the strains, 31% strains tolerated at high-salt environment of 10-20% throughout the fermentation of fish sauces. The 27 isolates that produced GABA at various concentrations did so in the range of 5 to 454 mM. These GABA-producing isolates were identified as lactic acid bacteria of 14 strains, which included twelve Lactococcus lactis, one Enterococcus faecium, and one Lactococcus pentosus; eight Bacillus cereus group, which included seven B. thuringiensis and one B. cereus; and five Staphylococcus spp. Interestingly, with Vietnamese fish sauces, we mostly identified species of B. thuringiensis and Staphylococcus spp., while with Korean fermented fish products, the majority of the strains identified belonged to L. lactis. Among the strains, B. thuringiensis LH2134 produced the highest levels of GABA at 366 mM among the strains identified from Vietnamese fish sauces, whereas L. lactis LA43, a new strain isolated from Korean jeotgal (salted shrimp paste), produced the highest amount of GABA at 454 mM and the glutamate concentration in the medium was essential for GABA accumulation. Therefore, such the isolates might serve as good starters for development of more GABA-reinforced foods among fermented fish products.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.1144-1154
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• 2019

There have been several studies regarding lichen-associated bacteria obtained from diverse environments. Our screening process identified 49 bacterial species in two lichens from the Himalayas: 17 species of Actinobacteria, 19 species of Firmicutes, and 13 species of Proteobacteria. We discovered five types of strong antimicrobial agent-producing bacteria. Although some strains exhibited weak antimicrobial activity, NP088, NP131, NP132, NP134, and NP160 exhibited strong antimicrobial activity against all multidrug-resistant strains. Polyketide synthase (PKS) fingerprinting revealed results for 69 of 148 strains; these had similar genes, such as fatty acid-related PKS, adenylation domain genes, PfaA, and PksD. Although the association between antimicrobial activity and the PKS fingerprinting results is poorly resolved, NP160 had six types of PKS fingerprinting genes, as well as strong antimicrobial activity. Therefore, we sequenced the draft genome of strain NP160, and predicted its secondary metabolism using antiSMASH version 4.2. NP160 had 46 clusters and was predicted to produce similar secondary metabolites with similarities of 5-100%. Although NP160 had 100% similarity with the alkylresorcinol biosynthetic gene cluster, our results showed low similarity with existing members of this biosynthetic gene cluster, and most have not yet been revealed. In conclusion, we expect that lichen-associated bacteria from the Himalayas can produce new secondary metabolites, and we found several secondary metabolite-related biosynthetic gene clusters to support this hypothesis.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.933-943
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• 2019

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-producing strains were isolated from four edible insects and subjected to 16S rRNA sequence analysis. Among the four GABA-producing bacteria, Enterococcus avium JS-N6B4 exhibited the highest GABA-production, while cultivation temperature, initial pH, aerobic condition, and mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) feeding were found to be the key factors affecting GABA production rate. The culture condition was optimized in terms of glucose, yeast extract, and MSG concentrations using response surface methodology (RSM). GABA production up to 16.64 g/l was obtained under the conditions of 7 g/l glucose, 45 g/l yeast extract, and 62 g/l MSG through the optimization of medium composition by RSM. Experimental GABA production was 13.68 g/l, which was close to the predicted value (16.64 g/l) calculated from the analysis of variance, and 2.79-fold higher than the production achieved with basic medium. Therefore, GABA-producing strains may help improve the GABA production in edible insects, and provide a new approach to the use of edible insects as effective food biomaterials.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.143-152
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• 2019

A new cultivar 'Sanjanghyang' was bred from monokaryotic strains of 'Sanbaekhyang' and 'Jangan 1ho'. Pileus was flat, round, and reddish brown. The diameters of the pilei and stipe length of the fruiting bodies were 67.1 mm and 16.9 mm, respectively. The scales were white or slightly brown and distributed evenly. The gill density was sparse and showed a rippled texture. The stipe was cream in color and the fluff was medium. 'Sanjanghyang' had a short cultivation period and fruiting bodies occurred sporadically. Temperature for fruiting body formation was a medium, between 15 to $19^{\circ}C$. 'Sanjanghyang' was different from 'Sanbaekhyang' with regard to its pileus diameter (67.1 mm) and autumn and spring fruiting body production period. 'Sanbaekhyang' had pileus diameter of 74.7 mm, and fruiting body formation occurred in spring and autumn. The rate of fruiting body formation was 89% (first flush), 4% (second flush), and 7% (third flush).

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.37-47
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• 2019

The main objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the efficiency of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) in enhancing the unconfined compressive strength of soft soil alone and soft soil mixed with recycled tiles. The recycled tiles have been used to treat soft soil in a previous research by Al-Bared et al. (2019) and the results showed significant improvement, but the improved strength value was for samples treated with low cement content (2%). Hence, OPC is added alone in this research in various proportions and together with the optimum value of recycled tiles in order to investigate the improvement in the strength. The results of the compaction tests of the soft soil treated with recycled tiles and 2, 4, and 6% OPC revealed an increment in the maximum dry density and a decrement in the optimum moisture content. The optimum value of OPC was found to be 6%, at which the strength was the highest for both samples treated with OPC alone and samples treated with OPC and 20% recycled tiles. Under similar curing time, the strength of samples treated with recycled tiles and OPC was higher than the treated soil with the same percentage of OPC alone. The stress-strain curves showed ductile plastic behaviour for the untreated soft clay and brittle behaviour for almost all treated samples with OPC alone and OPC with recycled tiles. The microstructural tests indicated the formation of new cementitious products that were responsible for the improvement of the strength, such as calcium aluminium silicate hydrate. This research promotes recycled tiles as a green stabiliser for soil stabilisation capable of reducing the amount of OPC required for ground improvement. The replacement of OPC with recycled tiles resulted in higher strength compared to the control mix and this achievement may results in reducing both OPC in soil stabilisation and the disposal of recycled tiles into landfills.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.439-457
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• 2019

In this paper, a new application of a four variable refined plate theory to analyze the nonlinear bending of functionally graded plates exposed to thermo-mechanical loadings, is presented. This recent theory is based on the assumption that the transverse displacements consist of bending and shear components in which the bending components do not contribute toward shear forces, and similarly, the shear components do not contribute toward bending moments. The derived transverse shear strains has a quadratic variation across the thickness that satisfies the zero traction boundary conditions on the top and bottom surfaces of the plate without using shear correction factors. The material properties are assumed to vary continuously through the thickness of the plate according to a power-law distribution of the volume fraction of the constituents. The solutions are achieved by minimizing the total potential energy. The non-linear strain-displacement relations in the von Karman sense are used to derive the effect of geometric non-linearity. It is concluded that the proposed theory is accurate and simple in solving the nonlinear bending behavior of functionally graded plates.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.632-642
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• 2019

The concentrations of functional compounds and micronutrients of chicken breast from native chickens were compared with those from broiler. Totally 200 male chicks from a commercial native chicken (HH) and three newly bred native chicken strains (2A, 2C, and 2D) were reared for about 2 kg of final live weight up to 12 wk. After slaughtered, antioxidant dipeptides, reducing sugar, free amino acids, vitamins, and minerals of the breast muscles were analyzed with those from broilers with similar live weight. Mostly native chicken strains had higher contents of carnosine, anserine, and reducing sugar than the broiler. Especially HH implied the highest values of carnosine and anserine, and 2C did the highest of reducing sugar (p<0.05). Vitamin A contents between native chickens and broiler were not significantly different (p>0.05). The contents of ${\alpha}-tocopherol$ were significantly higher in 2C than those of HH or broiler (p<0.05). Native chicken strains contained lower cholesterol levels than the broiler. Broiler had higher contents of P, Mg, and Na than native chickens (p<0.05), but it had lower content of Cu than HH or 2A. The savory free amino acids including glutamic acid was highest in 2A than the other native chickens and broiler (p<0.05). This study confirms that certain new strains of native chickens be a good source in terms of functional compounds and micronutrients which can be attractive health promoting nutritional quality factors.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.70 no.5
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• pp.551-562
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• 2019

In the present study, a suitable mathematical model considering parabolic transverse shear strains for dynamic analysis of laminated composite skew plates under different types of impulse and spatial loads was presented for the first time. The proposed mathematical model satisfies zero transverse shear strain at the top and bottom of the plate. On the basis of the cubic variation of thickness coordinate in in-plane displacement fields of the present mathematical model, a 2D finite element (FE) model was developed including skew transformations in the mathematical model. No shear correction factor is required in the present formulation and damping effect was also incorporated. This is the first FE implementation considering a cubic variation of thickness coordinate in in-plane displacement fields including skew transformations to solve the forced vibration problem of composite skew plates. The effect of transverse shear and rotary inertia was incorporated in the present model. The Newmark-${\beta}$ scheme was adapted to perform time integration from step to step. The $C^0$ FE formulation was implemented to overcome the problem of $C^1$ continuity associated with the cubic variation of thickness coordinate in in-plane displacement fields. The numerical studies showed that the present 2D FE model predicts the result close to the analytical results. Many new results varying different parameter such as skew angles, boundary conditions, etc. were presented.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.259-271
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• 2019

It is important to obtain reasonable predictions of the extent of the damage during maritime accidents such as ship collisions and groundings. Many fracture models based on different mechanical backgrounds have been proposed and can be used to estimate the extent of damage involving ductile fracture. The goal of this study was to compare the damage extents provided by some selected fracture models. Instead of performing a new series of material constant calibration tests, the fracture test results for the ship building steel EH36 obtained by Park et al. (2019) were used which included specimens with different geometries such as central hole, pure shear, and notched tensile specimens. The test results were compared with seven ductile fracture surfaces: Johnson-Cook, Cockcroft-Latham-Oh, Bai-Wierzbicki, Modified Mohr-Coulomb, Lou-Huh, Maximum shear stress, and Hosford-Coulomb. The linear damage accumulation law was applied to consider the effect of the loading path on each fracture surface. The Swift-Voce combined constitutive model was used to accurately define the flow stress in a large strain region. The reliability of these simulations was verified by the good agreement between the axial tension force elongation relations captured from the tests and simulations without fracture assignment. The material constants corresponding to each fracture surface were calibrated using an optimization technique with the minimized object function of the residual sum of errors between the simulated and predicted stress triaxiality and load angle parameter values to fracture initiation. The reliabilities of the calibrated material constants of B-W, MMC, L-H, and HC were the best, whereas there was a high residual sum of errors in the case of the MMS, C-L-O, and J-C models. The most accurate fracture predictions for the fracture specimens were made by the B-W, MMC, L-H, and HC models.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.79-90
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• 2019

Lichens are generally known as self-sufficient, symbiotic life-forms between fungi and algae/cyanobacteria, and they also provide shelter for a wide range of beneficial bacteria. Currently, bacterial-derived biodegradable polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) is grabbing the attention of many researchers as a promising alternative to non-degradable plastics. This study was conducted to develop a new method of PHA production using unexplored lichen-associated bacteria, which can simultaneously degrade two ubiquitous industrial toxins, anthracene and naphthalene. Here, 49 lichen-associated bacteria were isolated and tested for PHA synthesis. During the GC-MS analysis, a potential strain of EL19 was found to be a 3-hydroxyhexanoate (3-HHx) accumulator and identified as Pseudomonas sp. based on the 16S rRNA sequencing. GC analysis revealed that EL19 was capable of accumulating 30.62% and 19.63% of 3-HHx from naphthalene and anthracene, respectively, resulting in significant degradation of 98% and 96% of naphthalene and anthracene, respectively, within seven days. Moreover, the highly expressed phaC gene verified the genetic basis of $PHA_{mcl}$ production under nitrogen starvation conditions. Thus, this study strongly supports the hypothesis that lichen-associated bacteria can detoxify naphthalene and anthracene, store energy for extreme conditions, and probably help the associated lichen to live in extreme conditions. So far, this is the first investigation of lichen-associated bacteria that might utilize harmful toxins as feasible supplements and convert anthracene and naphthalene into eco-friendly 3-HHx. Implementation of the developed method would reduce the production cost of $PHA_{mcl}$ while removing harmful waste products from the environment.