• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.685-693
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• 2017

Candidiasis involving the biofilms of Candida albicans is a threat to immunocompromised patients. Candida biofilms are intrinsically resistant to the antifungal drugs and hence novel treatment strategies are desired. The study intended to evaluate the anti-Candida activity of allyl isothiocyanate (AITC) alone and with fluconazole (FLC), particularly against the biofilms. Results revealed the concentration-dependent activity of AITC against the planktonic growth and virulence factors of C. albicans. Significant (p <0.05) inhibition of the biofilms was evident at ${\leq}1mg/ml$ concentrations of AITC. Notably, a combination of 0.004 mg/ml of FLC and 0.125 mg/ml of AITC prevented the biofilm formation. Similarly, the preformed biofilms were significantly (p <0.05) inhibited by the AITC-FLC combination. The fractional inhibitory concentration indices ranging from 0.132 to 0.312 indicated the synergistic activity of AITC and FLC against the biofilm formation and the preformed biofilms. No hemolytic activity at the biofilm inhibitory concentrations of AITC and the AITC-FLC combination suggested the absence of cytotoxic effects. The recognizable synergy between AITC and FLC offers a potential therapeutic strategy against biofilm-associated Candida infections.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.95-100
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• 2003

This paper is for the investigation of the relationship between the geomagnetic disturbances and the relativistic electron events occurring at geosynchronous orbit. We have analyzed the electron fluxes of E > 2 MeV measured by GOES 10 satellite and the hourly Dst index for the period of April, 1999 to December, 2002. With the rigorous definition of the relativistic event, total 34 events were identified during the time period. Our statistical study showed that more than 50% of the total events occurred associated with weak (or sometimes virtually no) magnetic storms. And only ~ 20% of the events took place accompanied by a strong magnetic storm of $Dst_{min}$ < -100 nT. This result suggests that large geomagnetic storms may not be crucial for the occurrence of a relativistic event at geosynchronous orbit. We also found that there is no clear correlation between the maximum electron flux of an event and the associated minimum of Dst. Therefore any study on the physical mechanism (s) accounting for the relativistic events should take it into account that strong magnetic storms may not be necessarily required for the occurrence of a relativistic electron event at geosynchronous orbit.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2013

The geomagnetic activity shows the semiannual variation stronger in vernal and autumnal equinoxes than in summer and winter solstices. The semiannual variation has been explained by three main hypotheses such as Axial hypothesis, Equinoctial hypothesis, and Russell-McPherron Effect. Many studies using the various geomagnetic indices have done to support three main hypotheses. In recent, Oh & Yi (2011) examined the solar magnetic polarity dependency of the geomagnetic storm occurrence defined by Dst index. They reported that there is no dependency of the semiannual variation on the sign of the solar polar fields. This study examines the solar magnetic polarity dependency of quiet time geomagnetic activity. Using Dxt index (Karinen & Mursula 2005) and Dcx index (Mursula & Karinen 2005) which are recently suggested, in addition to Dst index, we analyze the data of three-year at each solar minimum for eight solar cycles since 1932. As a result, the geomagnetic activity is stronger in the period that the solar magnetic polarity is anti-parallel with the Earth's magnetic polarity. There exists the difference between vernal and autumnal equinoxes regarding the solar magnetic polarity dependency. However, the difference is not statistically significant. Thus, we conclude that there is no solar magnetic polarity dependency of the semiannual variation for quiet time geomagnetic activity.

• Annual Conference of KIPS
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• 2022.11a
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• pp.308-310
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• 2022

With the rise of the Al wave, task-oriented dialogue systems have become one of the popular research directions in academia and industry. Currently, task-oriented dialogue systems mainly adopt pipelined form, which mainly includes natural language understanding, dialogue state decision making, dialogue state tracking and natural language generation. However, pipelining is prone to error propagation, so many task-oriented dialogue systems in the market are only for single-round dialogues. Usually single- domain dialogues have relatively accurate semantic understanding, while they tend to perform poorly on multi-domain, multi-round dialogue datasets. To solve these issues, we developed a paddle-based multi-domain task-oriented Chinese dialogue system. It is based on NEZHA-base pre-training model and CrossWOZ dataset, and uses intention recognition module, dichotomous slot recognition module and NER recognition module to do DST and generate replies based on rules. Experiments show that the dialogue system not only makes good use of the context, but also effectively addresses long-term dependencies. In our approach, the DST of dialogue tracking state is improved, and our DST can identify multiple slotted key-value pairs involved in the discourse, which eliminates the need for manual tagging and thus greatly saves manpower.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.113-128
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• 2008

Solar wind dynamic pressure enhancements are known to cause various types of disturbances to the magnetosphere. In particular, dynamic pressure enhancements may affect the evolution of magnetic storms when they occur during storm times. In this paper, we have investigated the statistical significance and features of dynamic pressure enhancements during magnetic storm times. For the investigation, we have used a total of 91 geomagnetic storms for 2001-2003, for which the Dst minimum $(Dst_{min})$ is below -50 nT. Also, we have imposed a set of selection criteria for a pressure enhancement to be considered an event: The main selection criterion is that the pressure increases by ${\geq}50%\;or\;{\geq}3nPa$ within 30 min and remains to be elevated for 10 min or longer. For our statistical analysis, we define the storm time to be the interval from the main Dst decrease, through $Dst_{min}$, to the point where the Dst index recovers by 50%. Our main results are summarized as follows. $(i){\sim}$ 81% of the studied storms indicate at least one event of pressure enhancements. When averaged over all the 91 storms, the occurrence rate is ${\sim}$ 4.5 pressure enhancement events per storm and ${\sim}$ 0.15 pressure enhancement events per hour. (ii) The occurrence rate of the pressure enhancements is about three times higher for CME-driven storm times than for CIR-driven storm times. (iii) Only 21.1% of the pressure enhancements show a clear association with an interplanetary shock. (iv) A large number of the pressure enhancement events are accompanied with a simultaneous change of IMF $B_y$ and/or $B_z$: For example, 73.5% of the pressure enhancement events are associated with an IMF change of either $|{\Delta}B_z|>2nT\;or\;|{\Delta}B_y|>2nT$. This last finding suggests that one should consider possible interplay effects between the simultaneous pressure and IMF changes in many situations.

• The Korean Journal of Malacology
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.331-336
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• 2011

The present study investigated survival and growth of the abalone, Haliotis discus hannai and sea cucumber, Stichopus japonicus co-cultured and supplied with abalone formula feed (AFF) and dry sea tangle (DST) in indoor tank. During the experimental period from April 20 to July 15 in 2011, we used abalone with shell length of $28.54{\pm}1.23mm$ and total weight of $2.92{\pm}0.26g$. The sea cucumber used in the experiment weighed $3.0{\pm}0.2g$ in wet weight. For the experiment, 3 types of feeds including AFF, DST and AFF-DST mixed (1:1) group were supplied to abalone and sea cucumber. During the experiment, survival of abalone reached over 97.0% and 87.0% for sea cucumber in three experimental tanks. Survival of the abalone was found to be higher in DST group, while it was lower among sea cucumber, although the survival was not significantly different among three experimental group. Growth of abalone fed with AFF was significantly higher, while the growth rate of sea cucumber was highest in the tank fed with AFF+DST mixed diet (P < 0.05).

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.404-411
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• 2006

Purpose : Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is an emerging threat to human beings. However, there is little data on the current status of MDR-TB in Korea. This study investigated the current status of MDR-TB in Korea using a survey of all the data from drug susceptibility tests (DST) performed across the country over the last three years. Method : The DST results between Jan. 2000 and Dec. 2002 from 7 laboratories, which were in charge of all antituberculous DSTs across the country as of March 2002, were collected and analyzed to determine the actual number of drug-resistant or MDR-TB patients, annual trend, degree and pattern of resistance against anti-TB drugs, etc. Results : Six laboratories used the absolute concentration method for DST and one used the proportional method. 59, 940 tests had been performed over the 3 year study period. The number of DST performed annually was 18,071, 19,950, and 21,919 in 2000-2002, respectively. The number of resistant tuberculosis patients (resistant against at least one anti-TB drug) had increased by 16.9% from 6,338 in 2000 to 7,409 in 2002. The rate of resistant tuberculosis among all DST results was 35.1% in 2000, 34.5% in 2001, and 33.8% in 2002. The number of MDR-TB patients (resistant against at least both isoniazid and rifampin) showed an increasing trend (14.5%) from 3,708 in 2000 to 4,245 in 2002. Conclusion : Approximately 4,000 MDR-TB cases are newly identified by DST annually and the number is showing an increasing trend. This study suggests that in order to cope with the current MDR-TB situation, the DST methods will need to be standardized and more aggressive measures will be required.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.69-69
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• 1999

• Proceedings of the KSEEG Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.23-24
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• 2000

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 1999.09a
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• pp.61-61
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• 1999