• STI Policy Review
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.113-135
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• 2013

This paper explores how research excellence is perceived among researchers in Thailand and Japan with an aim to explore whether there are any new indicators that could later be proposed and adopted as criteria of excellence. Based on a questionnaire survey, the findings reflect ideas and viewpoints that could be found among researchers in both countries. Creative researchers are crucial to a strong national research and innovation system. Institutions should provide an environment or incentives based on research performance for their researchers to flourish and be productive. For decades, bibliometrics have been used to evaluate individual research performance for its easy approach and faster speed than a qualitative assessment would warrant. Nonetheless, there have been a number of studies on research performance evaluating systems that point out how a purely bibliometric approach is inadequate in summarizing the quality of the scientific performance. The pressures on researchers today influence their thinking and oppose their creativity. To investigate the perception of research excellence, three key research questions were set in this study: what counts as excellence, how to measure excellence, and how to support excellence. The findings confirm that traditional granting criteria that frames an idea of excellence remain valid, but they also suggest novel criteria be considered and prioritized. This paper argues that the existing evaluating system is insufficient for unleashing the curiosity and creativity of researchers and fostering excellence. In the final section, the paper discusses factors that contribute to scientific creativity that we should not overlook.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.531-549
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• 2012

Numerous oil tanker losses have been reported and one of the possible causes of such casualties is caused by the structural failure of aging ship hulls in rough weather. In aging ships, corrosion and fatigue cracks are the two most important factors affecting structural safety and integrity. This research is about effect on hull girder ultimate strength behavior of double hull oil tanker according to corrosion after Part I: stiffened panel. Based on corrosion data of Part I (time-dependent corrosion wastage model and CSR corrosion model), when progressing corrosion of fourtypes of double hull oil tankers (VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax, and Panamax), the ultimate strength behavior of hull girder is compared and analyzed. In case of the ultimate strength behavior of hull girder, when occurring corrosion, the result under vertical and horizontal bending moment is analyzed. The effect of time-dependent corrosion wastage on the ultimate hull girder strength as well as the area, section modulus, and moment of inertia are also studied. The result of this research will be useful data to evaluate ultimate hull girder strength of corroded double hull oil tanker.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.507-530
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• 2012

Age-related problems especially corrosion and fatigue are normally suffered by weatherworn ships and aging offshore structures. The effect of corrosion is one of the important factors in the Common Structural Rule (CSR) guideline of the ship design based on a 20 or 25 years design life. The aim of this research is the clarification of the corrosion effect on ultimate strength of stiffened panels on various types of double hull oil tankers. In the case of ships, corrosion is a phenomenon caused by the ambient environment and it has different characteristics depending on the parts involved. Extensive research considering these characteristic have already done by previous researchers. Based on this data, the ultimate strength behavior of stiffened panels for four double hull oil tankers such as VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax, and Panamax classes are compared and analyzed. By considering hogging and sagging bending moments, the stiffened panels of the deck, inner bottom and outer bottom located far away from neutral axis of ship are assessed. The results of this paper will be useful in evaluating the ultimate strength of an oil tanker subjected to corrosion. These results will be an informative example to check the effect of ultimate strength of a stiffened panel according to corrosion addition from CSR for a given type of ship.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.755-771
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• 2014

Environmental changes, especially global climate change, are creating new challenges to the development of the Arctic regions, which have substantial energy resources. And attention to offshore structures has increased with oil and gas development. The structural impact response of an explosion-resistant profiled blast walls normally changes when it operates in low temperatures. The main objectives of this study are to investigate the structural response of blast walls in low temperature and suggest useful guidelines for understanding the characteristics of the structural impact response of blast walls subjected to hydrocarbon explosions in Arctic conditions. The target temperatures were based on the average summer temperature ($-20^{\circ}C$), the average winter temperature ($-40^{\circ}C$) and the coldest temperature recorded (approximately $-68^{\circ}C$) in the Arctic. The nonlinear finite element analysis was performed to design an explosion-resistant profiled blast wall for use in Arctic conditions based on the behaviour of material properties at low temperatures established by performing a tensile test. The conclusions and implications of the findings are discussed.

• Genes and Genomics
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• v.40 no.11
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• pp.1149-1155
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• 2018

Epileptic encephalopathies are genetically heterogeneous disorders which leads to epilepsy and cause neurological disorders. Seizure threshold 2 (SZT2) gene located on chromosome 1p34.2 encodes protein mainly expressed predominantly in the parietal and frontal cortex and dorsal root ganglia in the brain. Previous studies in mice showed that mutation in this gene can confers low seizure threshold, enhance epileptogenesis and in human may leads to facial dysmorphism, intellectual disability, seizure and macrocephaly. Objective of this study was to find out novel gene or novel mutation related to the gene phenotype. We have identified a large consanguineous Saudi family segregating developmental delay, intellectual disability, epilepsy, high forehead and macrocephaly. Exome sequencing was performed in affected siblings of the family to study the novel mutation. Whole exome sequencing data analysis, confirmed by subsequent Sanger sequencing validation study. Our results showed a novel homozygous mutation (c.9368G>A) in a substitution of a conserved glycine residue into a glutamic acid in the exon 67 of SZT2 gene. The mutation was ruled out in 100 unrelated healthy controls. The missense variant has not yet been reported as pathogenic in literature or variant databases. In conclusion, the here detected homozygous SZT2 variant might be the causative mutation that further explain epilepsy and developmental delay in this Saudi family.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.294-305
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• 2014

In offshore structures, fire is one of the most important hazardous events. The concern of fires has recently been reflected in the rules and quantified risk assessment based design practice. Within the framework of quantified risk assessment and the management of offshore installations, therefore, more refined computations of the consequences or hazardous action effects due to fire are required. To mitigate fire risk, passive fire protection(PFP) is widely used on offshore structures. This study presents methods for a nonlinear structural response analysis considering the PFP effects under fires. It is found that a structural response analysis is most likely to use valuable technology for the optimization and design of offshore structures with PFP. Thermal and structural response analyses have been performed using LS-DYNA and FAHTS/USFOS. The results of these structural response analyses are compared with each other.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.283-290
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• 2014

Environmental changes, especially global climate change, are creating new routes to reduce a shipping service distance in Arctic area. The Arctic routes are shorter than 60% of existing ways Panama or Suez canal). For this reason, ship owners prefer to navigate in Arctic area and a transportation of goods though the Arctic area is increasing. But the low temperature in Arctic condition changes the material properties. Especially, the material will be brittle and strength will increase. And an ultimate strength analysis of ship stiffened panels is changed depending on temperatures. In present study, the ultimate strength analysis of stiffened panels in double hull oil tankers is performed under various low temperatures with the material properties obtained by tensile coupon test. The analytical method as named ALPS/ULSAP was used for analysis method and 6 kinds of temperature (20, 0, -20, -40, -60 and $-80^{\circ}C$) were considered to investigate the effect of Arctic conditions.

• Mycobiology
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.107-110
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• 2012

Genes encoding the cellobiohydrolase enzyme (CBHI), designated as cbhI, were isolated from the basidiomycetes Auricularia fuscosuccinea, Pleurotus giganteus, P. eryngii, P. ostreatus, and P. sajor-caju. Initially, the fungal genomic DNA was extracted using a modified cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) protocol and used as a DNA template. The cbhI genes were then amplified and cloned using the pGEM-T Easy Vector Systems. The sizes of these PCR amplicons were between 700~800 bp. The DNA sequences obtained were similar showing high identity to the cbhI gene family. These cbhI genes were partial consisting of three coding regions and two introns. The deduced amino acid sequences exhibited significant similarity to those of fungal CBHI enzymes belonging to glycosyl hydrolase family 7.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.87-106
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• 2014

The concern for the global environment ensues researchers from various disciplines to work in collaboration to tackle with the issues of sustainability and environmental conservation for well-being of the people. In this study, we have selected and focused on few basic environment-effecting factors such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and oxygen concentration level and referred them as meteorological data. In this paper, we present the development of our own customized hardware setup, environmental monitoring device (EMD) to obtain the data. Utilizing the relationship among these basic parameters, represented in the form of formulas and equations, we tried to encode them using Matlab programming. Data visualization is achieved by plotting the graphs of basic parameters obtained from EMD as well for the derivatives using Matlab programs.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.47-61
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• 2013

This study compares the Residual ultimate longitudinal strength - grounding Damage index (R-D) diagrams produced by two analysis methods: the ALPS/HULL Intelligent Supersize Finite Element Method (ISFEM) and the design formula (modified Paik and Mansour) method - used to assess the safety of damaged ships. The comparison includes four types of double-hull oil tankers: Panamax, Aframax, Suezmax and VLCC. The R-D diagrams were calculated for a series of 50 grounding scenarios. The diagrams were efficiently sampled using the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) technique and comprehensively analysed based on ship size. Finally, the two methods were compared by statistically analysing the differences between their grounding damage indices and ultimate longitudinal strength predictions. The findings provide a useful example of how to apply the ultimate longitudinal strength analysis method to grounded ships.