• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.256-264
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• 2021

Rapid urbanization around the world has negatively affected wildlife habitats, including birds. Wild birds settled in the city are adapting to the changed surroundings, and are typically known to make nests using materials that are easy to find around the city. This study was conducted for the purpose of analyzing the nesting materials on the Paridae using artificial bird nests installed in cities. In this study, the researchers established a total of 33 artificial bird nests in urban parks (22) and forests (11) in Cheonan-si, Chungcheongnam-do. Then we collected 4 artificial bird nests in urban parks (18.19%) and 5 in urban forests (45.46%) to compare the characteristics of bird nest materials by the nest, species, and urban green area types. Eight nests, excluding a nest abandoned by a pair of Paridae, were used for the material analysis. The collected nests were dried, and classified into natural materials (vegetable materials, animal materials, moss, and soil) and artificial materials (cotton, paper pieces, plastics, vinyl, and synthetic fibers), and then each nest was weighed. The classification result shows that the portion of moss (50.65%) was the highest in all nests, followed by soil (21.43%), artificial material (13.95%), vegetable material (5.78%), animal material (4.57%), and others (3.59%) in that order. Artificial materials were used in all nests in urban green areas. Moreover, although the Paridae used about 5.16% more vegetable material than the Parus varius, it was not significant (t=2.17, p=0.07). Plant materials and soil were most preferred in urban forests, and moss, animal, and artificial materials were widely used in that order in urban parks. There was a significant difference in the use of vegetable materials between urban parks and urban forests (t=3.07, p<0.05^*). In the habitats like urbanized and dry areas, where artificial materials are highly accessible, artificial materials replaced some roles of natural materials. This study is a basic study for the analysis of the types of materials used in artificial bird nests to understand the habitat system of urban ecosystems. It can be used as the basic data for ecological studies and conservation of the Paridae species.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.27-42
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• 2020

Startup accelerators have emerged as new investment entities that help early startups, which are not easy to survive continuously due to lack of funds, commercialization capabilities, and experiences. As their positive performance on early startups and the ecosystem has been proven, the number of early startups which want to receive their investment is also increasing. However, they are vaguely preparing to attract accelerators' investment because they do not have any information on what factors the accelerators consider important. In addition, researches on startup accelerators are also at an early level, so there are no remarkable prior studies on factors that decide on investment. Therefore, this study aims to help startups prepare for investment attraction by looking at what factors are important for accelerators to invest, and to provide meaningful implications to academia. In the preceding study, we derived five upper level categories, 26 lower level accelerators' investment determinants through the qualitative meta-synthesis method, secondary data analysis, observation on US accelerators and in-depth interviews. In this study, we want to derive important implications by deriving priorities of the accelerators' investment determinants. Therefore, we used AHP that are evaluated as the suitable methodology for deriving importance and priority. The analysis results show that accelerators value market-related factors most. This means that startups that are subject to investment by accelerators are early-stage startups, and many companies have not fully developed their products or services. Therefore, market-related factors that can be evaluated objectively seem to be more important than products (or services) that are still ambiguous. Next, it was found that the factors related to the internal workforce of startups are more important. Since accelerators want to develop their businesses together with start-ups and team members through mentoring, ease of collaboration with them is very important, which seems to be important. The overall priority analysis results of the 26 investment determinants show that 'customer needs' and 'founders and team members' understanding of customers and markets' (0.62) are important and high priority factors. The results also show that startup accelerators consider the customer-centered perspective very important. And among the factors related to startups, the most prominent factor was the founder's openness and execution ability. Therefore, it can be confirmed that accelerators consider the ease of collaboration with these startups very important.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.48-67
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• 2021

Plant species exhibit current characteristics as a result of interactions with environmental conditions. The plants of Viola sp. have selected chasmogamous flowers with vigorous vegetative propagation or development of cleistogamous flowers as an adaptation strategy. Viola websteri is distributed on the Korean peninsula and the eastern part of Jilin Province, China. The center and edge of the distribution are expected to exhibit different population-dynamics. It is necessary to investigate the cause of its current limited distribution even though V. websteri has a mixed-mating strategy. Firstly, We examined the vegetation environment of habitats and evaluated its characteristics. Growth characteristics were examined through plant phenology. We then evaluated the population structure, characteristics of chasmogamous flowers, and productivity of cleistogamous flowers. Moreover, we compared population sizes between 2014 and 2018. Most habitats were located in deciduous broadleaf mixed forests adjacent to valleys. V. websteri produced chasmogamous flowers with self-incompatibility in April-May and cleistogamous flowers in June-September. The cleistogamous flower production is a strategy ensuring seed production under uncertain environmental fluctuations; these were approximately twice as numerous as chasmogamous flowers. The population structure was distinguished into stable and very unstable regions. There were sites where the population experienced a sharp decline in the 2018 compared to that of 2014. This large decline was found in the edge populations. The habitats had different microsites depending on the natural disturbances of drought and the matrix constituting the habitat, thus supporting various plants. Ensuring the production of seeds through cleistogamous flowers, it was determined that rapid seedling re-establishment and population replenishment were possible when the natural disturbance factor was removed. Environmental factors did not equally affect all populations or individuals. Therefore, it was expected that it would be able to persisted in a long time, despite the rapid decrease in the number of individuals in the population regionally. Local extinction and re-establishment are likely to repeat according to environmental change. We propose the additional population investigation based on this works are required. We also suggest a need to assess the long-term population dynamics and the genetic characteristics of chasmogamous flowers and cleistogamous flowers to establish and implement effective conservation strategies.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.6_1
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• pp.1465-1483
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• 2020

Evapotranspiration is a concept that includes the evaporation from soil and the transpiration from the plant leaf. It is an essential factor for monitoring water balance, drought, crop growth, and climate change. Actual evapotranspiration (AET) corresponds to the consumption of water from the land surface and the necessary amount of water for the land surface. Because the AET is derived from multiplying the crop coefficient by the reference evapotranspiration (ET0), an accurate calculation of the ET0 is required for the AET. To date, many efforts have been made for gridded ET0 to provide multiple products now. This study presents a comparison between the ET0 products such as FAO56-PM, LDAPS, PKNU-NMSC, and MODIS to find out which one is more suitable for the local-scale hydrological and agricultural applications in Korea, where the heterogeneity of the land surface is critical. In the experiment for the period between 2016 and 2019, the daily and 8-day products were compared with the in-situ observations by KMA. The analyses according to the station, year, month, and time-series showed that the PKNU-NMSC product with a successful optimization for Korea was superior to the others, yielding stable accuracy irrespective of space and time. Also, this paper showed the intrinsic characteristics of the FAO56-PM, LDAPS, and MODIS ET0 products that could be informative for other researchers.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.265-274
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• 2021

Outlier detection research in ocean data has traditionally been performed using statistical and distance-based machine learning algorithms. Recently, AI-based methods have received a lot of attention and so-called supervised learning methods that require classification information for data are mainly used. This supervised learning method requires a lot of time and costs because classification information (label) must be manually designated for all data required for learning. In this study, an autoencoder based on unsupervised learning was applied as an outlier detection to overcome this problem. For the experiment, two experiments were designed: one is univariate learning, in which only SST data was used among the observation data of Deokjeok Island and the other is multivariate learning, in which SST, air temperature, wind direction, wind speed, air pressure, and humidity were used. Period of data is 25 years from 1996 to 2020, and a pre-processing considering the characteristics of ocean data was applied to the data. An outlier detection of actual SST data was tried with a learned univariate and multivariate autoencoder. We tried to detect outliers in real SST data using trained univariate and multivariate autoencoders. To compare model performance, various outlier detection methods were applied to synthetic data with artificially inserted errors. As a result of quantitatively evaluating the performance of these methods, the multivariate/univariate accuracy was about 96%/91%, respectively, indicating that the multivariate autoencoder had better outlier detection performance. Outlier detection using an unsupervised learning-based autoencoder is expected to be used in various ways in that it can reduce subjective classification errors and cost and time required for data labeling.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.120-132
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• 2021

Although the development of high-Nickel is being actively carried out to solve the capacity limitation and the high price of raw cobalt due to the limitation of high voltage use of the existing LiCoO₂, the deterioration of the battery characteristics due to the decrease in structural stability and increase of the Ni content. It is an important cause of delaying commercialization. Therefore, in order to increase the high stability of the Ni-rich ternary cathod material LiNi_0.6Co_0.2Mn_0.2O₂, precursor Ni_0.6Co_0.2Mn_0.2-x(OH)₂/xTiO₂ was prepared using a nanosized TiO₂ suspension type source for uniform Ti substitution in the precursor. It was mixed with Li₂CO₃, and after heating, the cathode active material LiNi_0.6Co_0.2Mn_0.2-xTi_xO₂ was synthesized, and the physical properties according to the Ti content were compared. Through FE-SEM and EDS mapping analysis, it was confirmed that a positive electrode active material having a uniform particle size was prepared through Ti-substituted spherical precursor and Particle Size Analyzer and internal density and strength were increased, XRD structure analysis and ICP-MS quantitative analysis confirmed that the capacity was effectively maintained even when the Ti-substituted positive electrode active material was manufactured and charging and discharging were continued at high temperature and high voltage.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.97-106
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• 2022

Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) is one of gram-positive foodborne pathogens with a very high fatality rate. Unlike most foodborne pathogens, L. monocytogenes is capable of growing at low temperatures, such as in refrigerated foods. Thus, various physical and chemical prevention methods are used in the manufacturing, processing and distribution of food. However, there are limitations to the methods such as possible changes to the food quality and the consumer awareness of synthetic preservatives. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the anti-listeria activity of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from kimchi and characterize the bacteriocin produced by Lactococcuslactis which is one of isolated strains from kimchi. The analysis on the anti-listeria activity of a total of 36 species (Lactobacillus, Weissella, Lactobacillus, and Lactococcus) isolated from kimchi by the agar overlay method revealed that L. lactis NJ 1-10 and NJ 1-16 had the highest anti-listeria activity. For quantitatively analysis on the anti-listeria activity, NJ 1-10 and NJ 1-16 were co-cultured with L. monocytogenes in Brain Heat Infusion (BHI) broth, respectively. As a result, L. monocytogenes was reduced by 3.0 log CFU/mL in 20 h, lowering the number of bacteria to below the detection limit. Both LAB strains showed anti-listeria activity against 24 serotypes of L. monocytogenes, although the sizes of clear zone was slightly different. No clear zone was observed when the supernatants of both LAB cultures were treated with proteinase-K, indicating that their anti-listerial activities might be due to the production of bacteriocins. Heat stability of the partially purified bacteriocins of NJ 1-10 and NJ 1-16 was relatively stable at 60℃ and 80℃. Yet, their anti-listeria activities were completely lost by 60 min of treatment at 100℃ and 15 min of treatment at 121℃. The analysis on the pH stability showed that their anti-listeria activities were the most stable at pH 4.01, and decreased with the increasing pH value, yet, was not completely lost. Partially purified bacteriocins showed relatively stable anti-listeria activities in acetone, ethanol, and methanol, but their activities were reduced after chloroform treatment, yet was not completely lost. Conclusively, this study revealed that the bacteriocins produced by NJ 1-10 and NJ 1-16 effectively reduced L. monocytogenes, and that they were relatively stable against heat, pH, and organic solvents, therefore implying their potential as a natural antibacterial substance for controlling L. monocytogenes in food.

• Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.341-352
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• 2021

Acerola is an excellent ingredient because of its high natural vitamin C content, but it is difficult to stabilize and has hardly been studied as a cosmetic material. Therefore, this study developed a mixed liposome preparation for stabilizing acerola extract. As a safety test, the skin irritation test was evaluated by BCOP assay and HET-CAM assay. We evaluated the inhibition of tyrosinase activity, the whitening effect of melanin production, and the wrinkle effect of prochloragentype-I C-peptide production, and confirmed the possibility of functional cosmetics. In addition, a cream of liposomes containing acerola extract mixture was developed to evaluate the clinical studies of skin wrinkles and whitening. BCOP assay, HET-CAM assay and human skin primary irritation test results of liposomes containing acerola extract mixture showed no irritation and were safe from skin and eye. The result of tyrosinase activity by 75.8% at 1,000 ㎍/mL. As a result of the melanogenesis inhibition test, liposome with acerola extract showed the melanin content by 46.2% at 1,000 ㎍/mL that does not effect the viability of the B16F10 cell line. The result of collagen production test using ELISA kit, liposomes containing acerola extract mixture showed collagen synthesis ability by 152.1% at 1,000 ㎍/mL that does not affect the viability of the HS68 cell line. But it did not showed any inhibition of collagenase (MMP-1) activity at all concentrations in the MMP-1 activity inhibition test in the HS68 cell line. We performed clinical studies for the whitening and skin-wrinkle activity of cream containing acerola extract mixes liposome, was showed that the melanin contents and wrinkle was statistically significant reduction. These results suggest that liposomes containing acerola extract mixture have safe natural material, and skin wrinkle, whitening effects allowing their application in cosmetics as a natural product.

• Korean Journal of Mineralogy and Petrology
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2022

The mobility and transport of radioactive cesium are crucial factors to consider for the safety assessment of high-level radioactive waste disposal sites in granite. The retardation of radionuclides in the fractured crystalline rock is mainly controlled by the hydrochemical condition of groundwater and surface reactions with minerals present in the fractures. This paper reports the experimental results of cesium sorption to the Wonju Granite, a typical Mesozoic granite in Korea, performed in an anaerobic chamber that mimics the anoxic environment of a deep disposal site. We measured the rates and amounts of cesium (¹³³Cs) removed by crushed granite samples in different electrolyte (NaCl, KCl, and CaCl₂) solutions and a synthetic groundwater solution, with variations in the initial cesium concentration (10^-5, 5×10^-6, 10^-6, 5×10^-7 M). The cesium sorption kinetic and isotherm data were successfully simulated by the pseudo-second-order kinetic model (r²= 0.99) and the Freundlich isotherm model (r²= 0.99), respectively. The sorption distribution coefficient of granite increased almost linearly with increasing biotite content in granite samples, indicating that biotite is an effective cesium scavenger. The cesium removal was minimal in KCl solution compared to that in NaCl or CaCl₂ solution, regardless of the ionic strength and initial cesium concentration that we examined, showing that K⁺ is the most competitive ion against cesium in sorption to granite. Because it is the main source mineral of K⁺ in fracture fluids, biotite may also hinder the sorption of cesium, which warrants further research.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.73-80
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• 2022

In this study, details of NRC beam-column connections were developed in which beam and columns pre-assembled in factories using steel angles were bolted on site. The developed joint details are NRC-J type and NRC-JD type. NRC-J type is a method of tensile joining with TS bolts to the side and lower surfaces of the side plate of the NRC column and the end plate of the NRC beam. NRC-JD type has a rigid joint with high-strength bolts between the NRC beam and the side of the NRC column for shear, and with lap splices of reinforcing bar penetrating the joint and the beam main reinforcement for bending. For the seismic performance evaluation of the joint, three specimens were tested: an NRC-J specimen and NRC-JD specimen with NRC beam-column joint details, and an RC-J specimen with RC beam-column joint detail. As a result of the repeated lateral load test, the final failure mode of all specimens was the bending fracture of the beam at the beam-column interface. Compared to the RC-J specimen, the maximum strength of the specimen by the positive force was 10.1% and 29.6% higher in the NRC-J specimen and the NRC-JD specimen, respectively. Both NRC joint details were evaluated to secure ductility of 0.03 rad or more, the minimum total inter-story displacement angle required for the composite intermediate moment frame according to the KDS standard (KDS 41 31 00). At the slope by relative storey displacemet of 5.7%, the NRC-J specimen and the NRC-JD specimen had about 34.8% and 61.1% greater cumulative energy dissipation capacity than the RC specimen. The experimental strength of the NRC beam-column connection was evaluated to be 30% to 53% greater than the theoretical strength according to the KDS standard formula, and the standard formula evaluated the joint performance as a safety side.