• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
• /
• v.14 no.5
• /
• pp.427-432
• /
• 1986

The regulation of three ammonia assimilatory enzymes, GDH (glutamate dehydrogenase), GS (glutamine synthetase) and GOGAT (glutamate synthase), has been examined in C. glutamicum. Three kinds of arginine auxotrophs blocked in each step of arginine biosynthetic pathway from glutamate were selected as arg 5, arg 6, arg 8. Histidine and tryptophan auxotrophs were also selected because histidine and tryptophan repressed GS biosynthesis in E. coli. These strains were cultured on the media containing nitrogen-excess and limited conditions, to compare the specific activities of ${\alpha}$-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase(${\alpha}-KGDH$), GDH, GS, GOGAT from the cell-free extracts. These results showed that enzyme levels of ${\alpha}-KGDH$ and GDH from 3 kinds of arginine auxotrophs, histidine and tryptophan auxotrophs in nitrogen-excess condition and those of GS and GOGAT in nitrogen limited condition were increased compared with opposite condition. The tryptophan and histidine auxotrophs showed higher level of glutamate and glutamine than parental strains and other mutants. it is assumed that the higher levels of ${\alpha-KGDH}$ and GDH from mutants in nitrogen-excess condition promoted the accumulation of glutamate and glutamine in fermentation broth. The inhibition of GS activities by ADP suggested that GS is regulated by energy charge in C. glutamicum. The results with histidine, tryptophan, glycine, alanine, serine and GMP implied that a system of feedback inhibition were effective. The GDH, GS and GOGAT biosynthesis in culture broth was markedly repressed by the nature and kinds of available nitrogen sources such as tryptophan, proline, glycine, alanine, serine and tyrosine.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
• /
• v.10 no.1_2
• /
• pp.21-35
• /
• 1995

Risk assessment processes, which include processes for the estimation of human cancer potency using animal bioassay data and calculation of human exposure, entail uncertainties. In the exposure assessment process, exposure scenarios with various assumptions could affect the exposure amount and excess cancer risk. We compared risk estimates among various exposure scenarios of vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene in tap water. The contaminant concentrations were analyzed from tap water samples in Seoul from 1993 to 1994. The oral and inhalation cancer potencies of the contaminants were estimated using multistage, Weibull, lognormal, and Mantel-Bryan model in TOX-RISK computer software. In the first case, human excess cancer risk was estimated by the US EPA method used to set the MCL(maximum contaminant level). In the second and third case, the risk was estimated for multi-route exposure with and without adopting Monte-Carlo simulation, respectively. In the second case, exposure input parameters and cancer potencies used probability distributions, and in the third case, those values used point estimates(mean, and maximum or 95% upper-bound value). As a result, while the excess cancer risk estimated by US EPA method considering only direct ingestion tended to be underestimated, the risk which was estimated by considering multi-route exposure without Monte-Carlo simulation and then using the maximum or 95% upper-bound value as input parameters tended to be overestimated. In risk assessment for volatile organic compounds, considering multi-route exposure with adopting Monte-Carlo analysis seems to provide the most reasonable estimations.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
• /
• v.32 no.7
• /
• pp.60-68
• /
• 2004

High velocity impacts are accompanied with large deformations, which generate a large amount of heat due to plastic works, resulting in a significant temperature rise of the material. Because the elevated temperature affects the dynamic properties of materials, it is important to predict the temperature rise during high-stram-rate deformations. Both existing vacancies and excess vacancies are credited to the stored energy, yet it is difficult to distinguish one from another in contribution to the stored energy using macroscopic level materials models. In this study, an atomistic material model for fee materials such as copper is set up to calculate the stored energy using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. It is concluded that excess vacancies play an important role for the stored energy during a high-strain-rate deformation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
• /
• 2017.06a
• /
• pp.8-9
• /
• 2017

Soybean yield has been low and unstable in Japan and other areas in East Asia, despite long history of cultivation. This is contrasting with consistent increase of yield in North and South America. This presentation tries to describe perspective of breaking stagnation of soybean yield in East Asia, considering the factors of the different yields between regions. Large amount of rainfall with occasional dry-spell in the summer is a nature of monsoon climate and as frequently stated excess water is the factor of low and unstable soybean yield. For example, there exists a great deal of field-to-field variation in yield of 'Tanbaguro' soybean, which is reputed for high market value and thus cultivated intensively and this results in low average yield. According to our field survey, a major portion of yield variation occurs in early growth period. Soybean production on drained paddy fields is also vulnerable to drought stress after flowering. An analysis at the above study site demonstrated a substantial field-to-field variation of canopy transpiration activity in the mid-summer, but the variation of pod-set was not as large as that of early growth. As frequently mentioned by the contest winners of good practice farming, avoidance of excess water problem in the early growth period is of greatest importance. A series of technological development took place in Japan in crop management for stable crop establishment and growth, that includes seed-bed preparation with ridge and/or chisel ploughing, adjustment of seed moisture content, seed treatment with mancozeb+metalaxyl and the water table control system, FOEAS. A unique success is seen in the tidal swamp area in South Sumatra with the Saturated Soil Culture (SSC), which is for managing acidity problem of pyrite soils. In 2016, an average yield of $2.4tha^{-1}$ was recorded for a 450 ha area with SSC (Ghulamahdi 2017, personal communication). This is a sort of raised bed culture and thus the moisture condition is kept markedly stable during growth period. For genetic control, too, many attempts are on-going for better emergence and plant growth after emergence under excess water. There seems to exist two aspects of excess water resistance, one related to phytophthora resistance and the other with better growth under excess water. The improvement for the latter is particularly challenging and genomic approach is expected to be effectively utilized. The crop model simulation would estimate/evaluate the impact of environmental and genetic factors. But comprehensive crop models for soybean are mainly for cultivations on upland fields and crop response to excess water is not fully accounted for. A soybean model for production on drained paddy fields under monsoon climate is demanded to coordinate technological development under changing climate. We recently recognized that the yield potential of recent US cultivars is greater than that of Japanese cultivars and this also may be responsible for different yield trends. Cultivar comparisons proved that higher yields are associated with greater biomass production specifically during early seed filling, in which high and well sustained activity of leaf gas exchange is related. In fact, the leaf stomatal conductance is considered to have been improved during last a couple of decades in the USA through selections for high yield in several crop species. It is suspected that priority to product quality of soybean as food crop, especially large seed size in Japan, did not allow efficient improvement of productivity. We also recently found a substantial variation of yielding performance under an environment of Indonesia among divergent cultivars from tropical and temperate regions through in a part biomass productivity. Gas exchange activity again seems to be involved. Unlike in North America where transpiration adjustment is considered necessary to avoid terminal drought, under the monsoon climate with wet summer plants with higher activity of gas exchange than current level might be advantageous. In order to explore higher or better-adjusted canopy function, the methodological development is demanded for canopy-level evaluation of transpiration activity. The stagnation of soybean yield would be broken through controlling variable water environment and breeding efforts to improve the quality-oriented cultivars for stable and high yield.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.538-547
• /
• 2015

The goal of this study is to develop an algorithm to propose optimal deployment of detection sensor nodes in the target area, based on a performance surface, which represents detection performance of active and passive acoustic sonar systems. The performance surface of the active detection system is calculated from the azimuthal average of maximum detection ranges, which is estimated with a transmission loss and a reverberation level predicted using ray-based theories. The performance surface of the passive system is calculated using the transmission loss model based on a parabolic equation. The optimization of deployment configurations is then performed by a hybrid method of a virtual force algorithm and a particle swarm optimization. Finally, the effectiveness of deployment configurations is analyzed and discussed with the simulation results obtained using the algorithm proposed in this paper.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.408-421
• /
• 2016

Day and night sampling for gas and particle phases PAHs were carried out in Seoul to characterize gas and particle phases PAHs concentrations in day and night times. There was no significant difference between day and night time for particle phase PAHs concentrations and phase distribution of PAHs, while, gas phase PAHs concentrations in daytime were about 1/2 of nighttime concentrations in both summer and winter due to photochemical reaction of gas phase PAHs during daytime. A high fraction of cancer risk for PAHs was attributed to particle phase PAHs and the excess cancer risk in winter was higher than in summer. The excess cancer risk level of total(gas+particle) PAHs in summer was partially observed when both gas and particle phase PAHs concentrations were considered as risk assessment. Based on the diagnostic ratios and factor analysis of PAHs concentrations, combustion(coal and natural gas) and vehicular emission might be the most significant contributors of PAHs and major factors for determining of PAHs concentration were different between day and night times.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.307-313
• /
• 2001

Iron excess is known to affect long-term iron accumulation and tissue change such as fibrosis in liver. To determine the changes of expression level of genes associated with fibrosis by short-term iron exposure, we measured liver mRNA levels by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in rats fed dietary carbonyl iron (3%, wt/wt) for 9 weeks. The results showed that the expression of the collagen (I, III) and transforming growth factor (TGF)-$\beta$I mRNAs was enhanced in high-dose iron treated rat, compared to normal-dose iron treated rat. An electron microscopy study revealed that excess iron caused increase of collagen fibrils in liver. The cell shapes and compositions of hepatocytes and extracellular matrix(ECM) in liver were changed by the iron-treatment. Also, necrosised hepatocytes were broadly seen in ECM. Taken together, we suggest that iron overload affects changes of collagen and TGF-$\beta$I gene expression and these changes are associated with liver fibrogenesis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
• /
• 2003.04a
• /
• pp.73-76
• /
• 2003

SF$_{6}$ (Sulfur Hexafluoride) is a gaseous compound whose use is being greatly increased recently. The compound has a negligible background concentration from natural sources and is stable in most of groundwater environments. Therefore, SF$_{6}$ has potential for a dating tool for young groundwater. It has many advantages over chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) for groundwater investigation that sampling procedure is much simpler than CFCs and its growth is continued up to at least near future in the atmosphere. However, solubility of SF$^{6}$ is so low that excess air causes large uncertainties in recharge date of groundwater. To compensate the limitation, $N_2$/Ar method can be employed to estimate excess air content. A groundwater study is currently carrying out in Jeju Island using SF$_{6}$ as an environmental tracer, Well waters and spring waters were sampled for SF$_{6}$ and $N_2$/Ar. To establish SF$_{6}$ input history in the study area, air sampling is being conducted in the area near the center of the island on a monthly and weekly basis. Based on the present data, the level of SF$_{6}$ concentration in the atmosphere of the Island is corresponding to the trend of the Northern Hemisphere.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.43 no.1
• /
• pp.16-25
• /
• 2020

Vegetation segmentation in a field color image is a process of distinguishing vegetation objects of interests like crops and weeds from a background of soil and/or other residues. The performance of the process is crucial in automatic precision agriculture which includes weed control and crop status monitoring. To facilitate the segmentation, color indices have predominantly been used to transform the color image into its gray-scale image. A thresholding technique like the Otsu method is then applied to distinguish vegetation parts from the background. An obvious demerit of the thresholding based segmentation will be that classification of each pixel into vegetation or background is carried out solely by using the color feature of the pixel itself without taking into account color features of its neighboring pixels. This paper presents a new pixel-based segmentation method which employs a multi-layer perceptron neural network to classify the gray-scale image into vegetation and nonvegetation pixels. The input data of the neural network for each pixel are 2-dimensional gray-level values surrounding the pixel. To generate a gray-scale image from a raw RGB color image, a well-known color index called Excess Green minus Excess Red Index was used. Experimental results using 80 field images of 4 vegetation species demonstrate the superiority of the neural network to existing threshold-based segmentation methods in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and harmonic mean.

• Proceedings of the Ginseng society Conference
• /
• 1998.06a
• /
• pp.47-56
• /
• 1998

In the present study, we assayed a number of compounds isolated from Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer (Araliaceae) for an ability to protect rat cortical cell cultures from the deleterious effects of the neurotoxicant, glutamate. We found that ginsenosides Rbl and Rg3 significantly attenuated glutamate-induced neurotoxicity. Brief exposure of cultures to excess glutamate caused extensive neuronal death. Glutamate-induced neuronal cell damage was significantly reduced by pretreatment with Rbl and Rgl. Ginsenosides Rbl and Rg3 inhibited the overproduction of nitric oxide which routinely follows glutamate neurotoxicity and preserved the level of superoxide dismutase in glutamate-treated cells. Furthermore, in cultures treated with glutamate, these ginsenosides inhibited the formation of malondialdehyde, a compound produced during lipid peroxidation, and diminished the influx of calcium. These results show that ginsenosides Rbl and Rg1 exerted significant neuroprotective effects on cultured cortical cells. As such, these compounds may be efficacious in protecting neurons from oxidative damage produced by exposure to excess glutamate.