• Title/Summary/Keyword: region contrast

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The First Measurement of Seasonal Trends in the Equatorial Ionospheric Anomaly Trough at the CHUK GNSS Site During the Solar Maximum in 2014

  • Chung, Jong-Kyun;Yoo, Sung-Moon;Lee, Wookyoung
    • Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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    • v.33 no.4
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    • pp.287-293
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    • 2016
  • The equatorial region of the Earth's ionosphere exhibits large temporal variations in electron density that have significant implications on satellite signal transmissions. In this paper, the first observation results of the variations in the trough of the equatorial ionospheric anomaly at the permanent Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) site in Chuuk (Geographic: $7.5^{\circ}N$, $151.9^{\circ}E$; Geomagnetic: $0.4^{\circ}N$) are presented. It was found that the daytime Global Positioning System (GPS) total electron content (TEC) values vary according to the 27 day period of solar rotation, and that these trends show sharp contrast with those of summer. The amplitudes of the semi-annual anomaly were 12.4 TECU (33 %) on $19^{th}$ of March and 8.8 TECU (23 %) on $25^{th}$ of October respectively, with a yearly averaged value of 38.0 TECU. The equinoctial asymmetry at the March equinox was higher than that at the October equinox rather than the November equinox. Daily mean TEC values were higher in December than in June, which could be interpreted as annual or winter anomalies. The nighttime GPS TEC enhancements during 20:00-24:00 LT also exhibited the semi-annual variation. The pre-midnight TEC enhancement could be explained with the slow loss process of electron density that is largely produced during the daytime of equinox. However, the significant peaks around 22:00-23:00 LT at the spring equinox require other mechanisms other than the slow loss process of the electron density.

Complete Sequence of a Gene Encoding KAR3-Related Kinesin-like Protein in Candida albicans

  • Kim Min-Kyoung;Lee Young Mi;Kim Wankee;Choi Wonja
    • Journal of Microbiology
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    • v.43 no.5
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    • pp.406-410
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    • 2005
  • In contrast to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, little is known about the kinesin-like protein (KLP) in Candida albicans. The motor domain of kinesin, or KLP, contains a subregion, which is well conserved from yeast to humans. A similarity search, with the murine ubiquitous kinesin heavy chain region as a query, revealed 6 contigs that contain putative KLPs in the genome of C. albicans. Of these, the length of an open reading (ORF) of 375 amino acids, temporarily designated CaKAR3, was noticeably short compared with the closely related S. cerevisiae KAR3 (ScKAR3) of 729 amino acids. This finding prompted us to isolate a ${\lambda}$ genomic clone containing the complete CaKAR3 ORF, and here the complete sequence of CaKAR3 is reported. CaKAR3 is a C-terminus motor protein, of 687 amino acids, encoded by a non-disrupting gene. When compared with ScKAR3, the amino terminal region of 112 amino acids was unique, with the middle part of the 306 amino acids exhibiting $25\%$ identity and $44\%$ similarity, while the remaining C-terminal motor domain exhibited $64\%$ identity and $78\%$ similarity, and have been submitted to GeneBank under the accession number AY182242.

Use of Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis to Differentiate Fungal Strains in Sunchang Meju

  • Jung, Jong-Hyun;Seo, Dong-Ho;Bhoo, Sung-Hee;Ha, Suk-Jin;Kim, Jong-Sang;Kim, Jeong-Hwan;Kwon, Dae-Young;Cha, Jae-Ho;Park, Cheon-Seok
    • Food Science and Biotechnology
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.888-891
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    • 2008
  • Twenty-three fungal strains were isolated from meju that had originated from the Sunchang province, the famous location for making fermented soybean foods in Korea. The restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the rDNA (ITS-RFLP) was applied to differentiate the isolated fungal strains. First, the ITS region by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with specific primers was amplified and then cleaved the products with different restriction enzymes. Cleavage of the amplified fragments with the restriction enzymes AluI, HaeIII, HhaI, and TaqI revealed extensive polymorphisms. The ITS-RFLP results highly correlated with ITS sequence analysis. All of the 23 fungal strains were classified into 5 groups by ITS-RFLP analysis. Aspergillus oryzae was the major fungal strain isolated from Sunchang meju (12 out of 23), while Aspergillus fumigatus was the next most frequently isolated strain (7 out of 23). In contrast, it was found that Fusarium asiaticum, Aspergillus sydowii, and Arthrinium sp. were the minor fungal strains in meju.

GTG as a Potential Translation Initiation Godon in Mitochondrial F1 ATPase $\alpha$-Subunit Gene(atpA) of Korean Ginseng (고려인삼의 $F_1$ ATPase $\alpha$-Subunit 유전자(atpA)의 구조적 특성)

  • Kim, Kab-Sig;Park, Ui-Sun;Choi, Kwan-Sam;Choi, Kwang-Tae
    • Journal of Ginseng Research
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.127-133
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    • 1995
  • The complete open reading frame (ORF) of o-subunit of the $F_1$ ATP synthase (atPA) in Korean ginseng mitochondria was identified by the sequence similarity with atPA genes in other plant mitochondria. The sequence alignment showed that the common translation initiation codon, ATG, in plant genes was replaced with GTG valid codon in Korean ginseng. The atPA gene from GTG to TGA termination codon was 1524 nucleotides long, and the sequence homology of nucleotides and deduced amino acids revealed high values of 92~97%. A deletion event of 6 nucleotides was observed at the 1468th nucleotide from the GTG in Korean ginseng, in contrast to that at the 1450th in other plants such as pea, common bean, soybean, sugar beet, and radish. An unidentified open reading frame (on7) was observed upstream of atmA ORF. No other ATG as an initiation codon was detected in the region between off and atmA ORF in Korean ginseng, although a pyrimidine cluster "TTTTCTTTT" was located in this region as in Oenothera and maize genes. It could be supposed that GTG codon in atpA gene of Korean ginseng mitochondria would act as an initiation codon as in microbial genes.ial genes.

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Effects of Surface Color and Morphology on the Mar Behaviors of Urethane-Acrylate Coatings (우레탄 아크릴 코팅 소재의 표면 색상 및 모폴로지가 긁힘 거동에 미치는 영향)

  • Jung, Won-Young;Weon, Jong-Il
    • Polymer(Korea)
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    • v.38 no.1
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    • pp.1-8
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    • 2014
  • The effects of surface color and morphology on the mar behaviors of urethane-acrylate coated surfaces were examined. The superiority of mar resistance was observed in the order of white, red and black-colored samples. This can be explained by a contrast effect. In other words, in case of black colored sample, it takes place the defuse reflection of the incident light on the damaged region where mar damage exerts, leading to whitening phenomenon. Therefore, the damaged region is easily recognized by contrasting the black background. On the other hand, it is difficult for the white-colored sample to perceive the mar-damaged area by the white background acting as protecting coloration. As the gloss of urethane-acrylate coated surface increases, it is observed that there is an increase in the number of carbonyl (-C=O) function group, amount of ethylene and silica. The enhancements of surface rigidity by adding the silica particles and formation of carbonyl function groups by the surface oxidation lead to the increase in mar resistance, while the increase of polyethylene wax is responsible for the improved gloss and smooth-faced surface. Based on the above findings, technical approaches leading the improvement of mar resistance of the urethane-acrylate coated surface are discussed.

A deep and High-resolution Study of Ultra-diffuse Galaxies in Distant Massive Galaxy Clusters

  • Lee, Jeong Hwan;Kang, Jisu;Jang, In Sung;Lee, Myung Gyoon
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.44 no.1
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    • pp.38.4-38.4
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    • 2019
  • Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are intriguing in the sense that they are much larger than dwarf galaxies but have much lower surface brightness than normal galaxies. To date, UDGs have been found only in the local universe. Taking advantage of deep and high-resolution HST images, we search for UDGs in massive galaxy clusters in the distant universe. In this work, we present our search results of UDGs in three massive clusters of the Hubble Frontier Fields: Abell 2744 (z=0.308), Abell S1063 (z=0.348), and Abell 370 (z=0.375). These clusters are the most distant and massive among the host systems of known UDGs. The color-magnitude diagrams of these clusters show that UDGs are mainly located in the faint end of the red sequence. This means that most UDGs in these clusters consist of old stars. Interestingly, we found a few blue UDGs, which implies that they had recent star formation. The radial number densities of UDGs clearly decrease in the central region of the clusters in contrast to those of bright galaxies which keep rising. This implies that a large fraction of UDGs in the central region were tidally disrupted. These features are consistent with those of UDGs in nearby galaxy clusters. We estimate the total number of UDGs (N(UDG)) in each cluster. The abundance of UDGs shows a tight relation with the virial masses (M_200) of thier host systems: M_200 \propto N(UDG)^(1.01+/-0.05). This slope is found to be very close to one, indicating that efficiency of UDGs does not significantly depend on the host environments. Furthermore, estimation of dynamical masses of UDGs indicates that most UDGs have dwarf-like masses (M_200 < 10^11 M_Sun), but a few UDGs have $L{\ast}$-like masses (M_200 > 10^11 M_Sun). In summary, UDGs in distant massive clusters are found to be similar to those in the local universe.

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Extraction of Blood Flow of Brachial Artery on Color Doppler Ultrasonography by Using 4-Directional Contour Tracking and K-Means Algorithm (4 방향 윤곽선 추적과 K-Means 알고리즘을 이용한 색조 도플러 초음파 영상에서 상환 동맥의 혈류 영역 추출)

  • Park, Joonsung;Kim, Kwang Baek
    • Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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    • v.24 no.11
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    • pp.1411-1416
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    • 2020
  • In this paper, we propose a method of extraction analysis of blood flow area on color doppler ultrasonography by using 4-directional contour tracking and K-Means algorithm. In the proposed method, ROI is extracted and a binarization method with maximum contrast as a threshold is applied to the extracted ROI. 4-directional contour algorithm is applied to extract the trapezoid shaped region which has blood flow area of brachial artery from the binarized ROI. K-Means based quantization is then applied to accurately extract the blood flow area of brachial artery from the trapezoid shaped region. In experiment, the proposed method successfully extracts the target area in 28 out of 30 cases (93.3%) with field expert's verification. And comparison analysis of proposed K-Means based blood flow area extraction on 30 color doppler ultrasonography and brachial artery blood flow ultrasonography provided by a specialist yielded a result of 94.27% accuracy on average.

Empirical Modeling of the Global Distribution of Magnetosonic Waves with Ambient Plasma Environment using Van Allen Probes

  • Kim, Kyung-Chan
    • Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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    • v.39 no.1
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    • pp.11-22
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    • 2022
  • It is suggested that magnetosonic waves (also known as equatorial noise) can scatter radiation belt electrons in the Earth's magnetosphere. Therefore, it is important to understand the global distribution of these waves between the proton cyclotron frequency and the lower hybrid resonance frequency. In this study, we developed an empirical model for estimating the global distribution of magnetosonic wave amplitudes and wave normal angles. The model is based on the entire mission period (approximately 2012-2019) of observations of Van Allen Probes A and B as a function of the distance from the Earth (denoted by L*), magnetic local time (MLT), magnetic latitude (λ), and geomagnetic activity (denoted by the Kp index). In previous studies the wave distribution inside and outside the plasmasphere were separately investigated and modeled. Our model, on the other hand, identifies the wave distribution along with the ambient plasma environment-defined by the ratio of the plasma frequency (fpe) to the electron cyclotron frequency (fce)-without separately determining the wave distribution according to the plasmapause location. The model results show that, as Kp increases, the dayside wave amplitude in the equatorial region intensifies. It thereby propagates the intense region towards the wider MLT and inward to L* < 4. In contrast, the fpe/fce ratio decreases with increasing Kp for all regions. Nevertheless, the decreasing aspect differs between regions above and below L* = 4. This finding implies that the particle energy and pitch angle that magnetosonic waves can effectively scatter vary depending on the locations and geomagnetic activity. Our model agrees with the statistically observed wave distribution and ambient plasma environment with a coefficient of determination of > 0.9. The model is valid in all MLTs, 2 ≤ L* < 6, |λ| < 20°, and Kp ≤ 6.

Two new free-living marine nematodes of the genus Belbolla (Nematoda, Enoplida, Enchelidiidae) from a shallow subtidal benthic habitat of the outermost islands of Korea

  • Hyun Soo Rho;Hyo Jin Lee;Heegab Lee;Chang Geun Choi
    • Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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    • v.39 no.4
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    • pp.423-434
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    • 2021
  • Two new free-living marine nematodes of the genus Belbolla Andrássy, 1973 belonging to family Enchelidiidae are newly described based on specimens obtained from a shallow subtidal sediment of the western and southern outermost islands of Korea. Belbolla koreensis sp. nov. differs from other species of the genus by the combination of the following characteristics: longer body length (3,080-3,462 ㎛ long), eight oesophageal bulbs in the posterior region of pharynx, well-developed two winged precloacal supplements (anterior precloacal supplement slightly longer than posterior one: 47-59 ㎛ vs. 43-46 ㎛ long), strongly arcuated, very thick, L-shaped spicule (122-127 ㎛ long, 1.7-1.9 anal body diameter(a.b.d.) long) with three separated blunt distal tips, and well-developed relatively long cylindrical shaped gubernacular apophysis with blunt teeth covering two thirds of the dorsal margin (57-58 ㎛ long, 0.8-0.9 a.b.d. long). Belbolla hoonsooi sp. nov. is characterized by the following combination of characteristics: longer body length (3,494 ㎛ long), eight oesophageal bulbs in the posterior region of pharynx, well-developed two winged precloacal supplements (anterior precloacal supplement slightly longer than posterior one: 43 ㎛ vs. 36 ㎛ long), strongly arcuated, L-shaped spicule (119 ㎛ long, 1.5 a.b.d. long) with three separated blunt distal tip, and well-developed relatively long inverted triangle shaped gubernacular apophysis with blunt teeth covering half of the dorsal margin (45 ㎛ long, 0.6 a.b.d. long). Detailed morphological characteristics and illustrations of two new Belbolla nematodes from the Korean seawaters were provided by differential interference contrast microscopy. Comparative tables on biogeographical and morphological characteristics of Belbolla species are also provided herein.

Investigation on Individual Variation of Organ Doses for Photon External Exposures: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study

  • Yumi Lee;Ji Won Choi;Lior Braunstein;Choonsik Lee;Yeon Soo Yeom
    • Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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    • v.49 no.1
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    • pp.50-64
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    • 2024
  • Background: The reference dose coefficients (DCs) of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) have been widely used to estimate organ doses of individuals for risk assessments. This approach has been well accepted because individual anatomy data are usually unavailable, although dosimetric uncertainty exists due to the anatomical difference between the reference phantoms and the individuals. We attempted to quantify the individual variation of organ doses for photon external exposures by calculating and comparing organ DCs for 30 individuals against the ICRP reference DCs. Materials and Methods: We acquired computed tomography images from 30 patients in which eight organs (brain, breasts, liver, lungs, skeleton, skin, stomach, and urinary bladder) were segmented using the ImageJ software to create voxel phantoms. The phantoms were implemented into the Monte Carlo N-Particle 6 (MCNP6) code and then irradiated by broad parallel photon beams (10 keV to 10 MeV) at four directions (antero-posterior, postero-anterior, left-lateral, right-lateral) to calculate organ DCs. Results and Discussion: There was significant variation in organ doses due to the difference in anatomy among the individuals, especially in the kilovoltage region (e.g., <100 keV). For example, the red bone marrow doses at 0.01 MeV varied from 3 to 7 orders of the magnitude depending on the irradiation geometry. In contrast, in the megavoltage region (1-10 MeV), the individual variation of the organ doses was found to be negligibly small (differences <10%). It was also interesting to observe that the organ doses of the ICRP reference phantoms showed good agreement with the mean values of the organ doses among the patients in many cases. Conclusion: The results of this study would be informative to improve insights in individual-specific dosimetry. It should be extended to further studies in terms of many different aspects (e.g., other particles such as neutrons, other exposures such as internal exposures, and a larger number of individuals/patients) in the future.