• Title/Summary/Keyword: Biosphere

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Comparative Viral Metagenomics of Environmental Samples from Korea

  • Kim, Min-Soo;Whon, Tae Woong;Bae, Jin-Woo
    • Genomics & Informatics
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    • v.11 no.3
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    • pp.121-128
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    • 2013
  • The introduction of metagenomics into the field of virology has facilitated the exploration of viral communities in various natural habitats. Understanding the viral ecology of a variety of sample types throughout the biosphere is important per se, but it also has potential applications in clinical and diagnostic virology. However, the procedures used by viral metagenomics may produce technical errors, such as amplification bias, while public viral databases are very limited, which may hamper the determination of the viral diversity in samples. This review considers the current state of viral metagenomics, based on examples from Korean viral metagenomic studies-i.e., rice paddy soil, fermented foods, human gut, seawater, and the near-surface atmosphere. Viral metagenomics has become widespread due to various methodological developments, and much attention has been focused on studies that consider the intrinsic role of viruses that interact with their hosts.

Marine-Derived Pharmaceuticals - Challenges and Opportunities

  • Lindequist, Ulrike
    • Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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    • v.24 no.6
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    • pp.561-571
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    • 2016
  • Marine biosphere is the largest one of the earth and harbors an enormous number of different organisms. Living conditions differ fundamentally from those in terrestrial environment. The production of specific secondary metabolites is an important adaption mechanism of marine organisms to survive in the sea. These metabolites possess biological activities which make them interesting as possible drugs for human. The review presents sources, chemistry, production and pharmacology of FDA approved marine derived pharmaceuticals arranged according to their therapeutic indication. Four of the presently seven approved drugs are used for the treatment of cancer. Each another one is applicated for treatment of viral diseases, chronic pain and to lower triglyceride level in blood. Some other products are of interest in diagnostic and as experimental tools. Besides, this article describes challenges in drug development from marine sources, especially the supply problem.

Development of Reference Scenarios Based on FEPs and Interaction Matrix for the Near-surface LILW Repository

  • Lee, Dong-Won;Kim, Chang-Lak;Park, Joo-Wan
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.33 no.5
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    • pp.539-546
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    • 2001
  • Systematic procedure of developing radionuclide release scenarios was established based on FEP list and Interaction Matrix for near-surface LILW repository. FEPs were screened by experts'review in terms of domestic situation and combined into scenarios on the basis of Interaction Matrix analysis. Under the assumption of design scenario, The system domain was divided into three sections: Near-field, Far-field and Biosphere. Sub-scenarios for each section were developed, and then scenarios for entire system were built up with sub-scenarios of each section. Finally, sixteen design scenarios for near-surface repository were evaluated A reference scenario and other noteworthy scenarios were selected through experts'scenario screening.

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Estimation of Grid-Scale Common Land Model Using Assimilation System (자료동화기법에 근거한 격자 기반 Common Land Model의 적용성)

  • Kim, Da-Eun;Choi, Min-Ha
    • Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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    • 2011.05a
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    • pp.350-353
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    • 2011
  • 전 세계적으로 기후변화로 인한 자연재해가 빈번하게 발생함에 따라 수자원 분야에서 또한 환경의 변화에 대한 정확한 예측이 더욱 요구되고 있다. 국내에서도 이를 위하여 다양한 방법을 통하여 연구가 이루어지고 있으나 본 연구에서 사용된 Common Land Model (CLM)은 국내에서의 실질적인 적용이 아직 부족하다. 이 모형은 Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Transfer 모형 중 대표적 모델로 Land Surface Model (LSM), Biosphere-Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS), Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Atmospheric Physics LSM의 세 모형이 결합되어 발전하였다. CLM의 강제입력자료로는 위성, 지면모형 등을 기반으로 만들어진 자료를 제공하는 Korea Land Data Assimilation Systme (KLDAS; 한반도지표자료동화체계)의 격자화 된 자료를 사용하여 모형에 강제시켰다. KLDAS는 기존의 Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS)에서 발전한 형태로 동아시아 지역을 대상으로 자료를 제공하고 있으며, 본 연구에서는 이 자료를 사용하여 국내 전반에 걸쳐 격자에 대한 수문 기상학적 인자를 산출하였다.

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Contribution to the Development of Global Land Related Dataset from Asia

  • Tateishi, Ryutaro
    • Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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    • 1998.09a
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    • pp.116-121
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    • 1998
  • Global land related datasets such as land use, land cover, vegetation cover percentage, forest cover percentage, are part of important global geospatial environmental datasets for global change studies. Since land cover varies place by place, continental production of dataset is a usual approach. Western academically developed countries have some projects to describe land cover related information in digital form using remote sensing technology in African, American continent and Oceania. In this paper, the author introduce his initiative to coordinate Asian scientists in order to develop land related dataset of Asia for our better understanding of the environment of Asia and for contribution to the development of global dataset. This paper explains activities by Land Cover Working Group (LCWG) of the Asian Association on Remote Sensing(AARS), Data and Information System(DIS) sub-committee of Japan national committee for the International Geosphere and Biosphere Program(IGBP), and the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing(ISPRS) Working Group IV/6 on Global databases supporting environmental monitoring.

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METEORITES: ROCKS FROM THE OUTER SPACE

  • Doh, Seong-Jae;Yu, Yong-Jae
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.43 no.6
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    • pp.183-190
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    • 2010
  • According to the historical documents and paintings in many civilizations, rocks that fell from the sky fascinated humans as the message from the God or supernaturals. Scientific progress allows humans to recognize these exciting extraterrestrial objects as meteorites. Meteorites contain a wealth of pivotal information regarding formation of the early Solar System. Meteorites also provide broader scientific insights on, for example, the origin of life, interplanetary transfer of life forms, massive depletion of biosphere on Earth, and evolution of lithosphere on Earth-like planetary bodies.

Importance of microbial diversity

  • Ahn, Tae-Seok
    • Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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    • 1995.10b
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    • pp.88-88
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    • 1995
  • Microorganism are centIal core to biosphere sm1ainablity and biogeochemical cycles on this earth. Most of food, medical and pabamceutical new materials through biotechnology are derived from many kinds of microorganisms. Microorganisms are important resources of biotechnology. Beside these, micorbial diversity is key to explore the frontiers of knowledge about the strategies and limits of life. Through the micorotganisms, we can monitor the environmental changes and conditions. Moreover, the microorganismsms play a role in conservation and restoration of higher plants and animals. And we can get a lot of ecological, evolutionary knowledges from microbial models. In spite of these importances, the microbial diversity is not properly evaluted because of their unculturablity. Only 0.001 - 3 % of total bacteria in natural habitats are cultumble and the rest are viable but uncultumble. Only 3,100 species are listed up in the Bergey's Manual. Considering the symbisis and estimated numbers of insect are more than 800,000, the symbiotic microorganisms are about 1,000,000 species. Recently, by using the genetic and molecular technics, the microbial diversity is now unveiled. In this symposium, the genetic, species and ecological diversity will be given. given.

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Plant biotechnology in Asia - Past, present and future

  • Komamine, Astushi
    • Proceedings of the Botanical Society of Korea Conference
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    • 1999.07a
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    • pp.1-9
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    • 1999
  • Plant biotechnology including plant tissue culture is the most important science to rescue human beings from the crisis of biosphere of the earth which they will face in the 21st century. Global area other than Asia of trangenic crops increased more than 16 times from 1996 to 1998. In Asian countries, micropropagation using tissue culture techniques has been well developed and has contributed to agricultural production. Although researches on levels of laboratory and test field trial of transgenic crops have been performed actively in some Asian countries, areas of growing transgenic crops are still small in Asia countries except in China. In this paper, the status of plant biotechnology in global and Asian countries are reviewed and the future prospect of plant biotechnology in Asia and roles of Korean and Japanese plant scientists in it are discussed.

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Ichthyofaunistic Biogeography of the East Sea: Comparison between Benthic and Pelagic Zonalities

  • Kafanov, Alexander I.;Volvenko, Igor V.;Pitruk, Dmitry L.
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.35-49
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    • 2001
  • An ichthyofauna analysis of the East Sea using quantitative investigation procedures for latitudinal variations of the species richness and clustering of the species list is presented to illustrate the application of the adopted geographical scaling (less than 1:10,000,000) which provides a principal opportunity for common benthic and pelagic biogeographical zonation. The distribution of both pelagic and benthic marine fish biota at a scale of biosphere (or its major sections) was highly influenced by spatial nonuniformity of hydrological structure associated with the various water circulations and frontal zones. Following zoogeographical zonations were established for the East Sea: Osaka, East Korea, Primorye, North Primorye, Northern East Sea, Uetsu, Tsugaru, Soya and West Sakhalin.

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A Case Study on the Safety Assessment for Groundwater Pathway in a Near-Surface Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility

  • Park, Joo-Wan;Chang, Keun-Moo;Kim, Chang-Lak
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.34 no.3
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    • pp.232-241
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    • 2002
  • A safety assessment is carried out for the near-surface radioactive waste disposal in the reference engineered vault facility. The analysis is mainly divided into two parts. One deals with the release and transport of radionuclide in the vault and unsaturated zone. The other deals with the transport of radionuclide in the saturated zone and radiological impacts to a human group under well drinking water scenario. The parameters for source-term, geosphere and biosphere models are mainly obtained from the site specific data. The results show that the annual effective doses are dominated by long lived, mobile radionuclides and their associated daughters. And it is found that the total effective dose for drinking water is far below the general criteria of regulatory limit for radioactive waste disposal facility.