• Journal of Apiculture
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.253-259
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• 2017

Propolis, natural antibacterial agent, which has been used traditional medicine across the globe, is resinous mixture to include abundant bioactive substances. In present study, we investigated antimicrobial activity according to quality characteristics of propolis collected from 9 different regions in Korea. Antimicrobial activity was evaluated by measuring growth inhibition zone using agar well diffusion method against Streptococcus mutans. Constituents analysis of propolis samples were measured through total phenolic contents, total flavonoid contents and quantitative analysis of major compound (pinocembrin) by ultra performance liquid chromatography. As a result, 9 different propolis (10mg/mL) and pinocembrin (1mg/mL) showed antimicrobial activity that has growth inhibition zone more than 11.9mm on S. mutans. The total flavonoid contents of 8 different propolis excluding Jeju island were in compliance with standard of health functional food in Korea and were found to affect antimicrobial activity on S. mutans when contained over 10mg/g. In addition, when content of pinocembrin in propolis was ranged from 12mg/g to 32mg/g, each propolis excluding Jeju island exhibited antimicrobial activity alike. These results indicate that pinocembrin plays a important role for antimicrobial activity of propolis collected from 8 different regions in Korea, and that it can be used as basic data for standardization of Korean propolis.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.3-17
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• 2021

Currently, there is a drain of natural resources, environmental contamination, generation of waste, and problems of the earth's climate by CO₂ emissions according to mass production and overconsumption of mankind. It is effectuated by a linear economy that involves manufacturing products, use, and waste repeatedly; there is no guarantee in the lives of humans and the future of the globe if we do not find alternative proposals. For a sustainable developing society and to overcome the present global problems, we must successively change to a circular economy from a linear economy. The circular economy has the concept of an extended value chain in recovery, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling, instead of discarding after the use of manufactured goods. New business models of circular economy have been realized to save the earth ecology and sustainable developing society in serious recognition of the linear economy system. New business models are established by creating a vision and developing a program, and by renovating technology, law, and financial support through a worldwide government policy.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.161-188
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• 2021

Libraries are experiencing numerous modifications to multifunctional spaces in response to the declaration of WHO pandemic. Most libraries throughout the globe have reported their closures, including national libraries in every country, and most established facing services have been transformed to untact services. However, the breadth of the service varies by local autonomous entity and library, making it difficult for librarians to act according to their conviction, and also users are feeling inconvenienced. As a result, this study used a user perception survey to determine the extent of non-face-to-face services in the library and to suggest the direction of operation of non-face-to-face services in a pandemic condition. To that purpose, beginning February 12, 2020, an online survey of library customers in 37 public libraries was performed for about three weeks, and the 117 replies were examined using the SPSS statistics tool to perform frequency analysis, regression analysis, correlation analysis, and reliability analysis. By the survey and data survey results, it was recommended that library services be re-established in the direction of non-face-to-face library service operation, that library non-face-to-face services be expanded, that user education be conducted, that non-face-to-face services be promoted, and that user opinions be collected.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.189-200
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• 2022

In today's digital world, smartphones and web-based applications have gained remarkable importance throughout the globe. These smart applications are playing a very significant role in maintaining a powerful business. As well as, they are helping a lot to expand these businesses via social networks. Social media networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are playing a prominent role to promote the companies. In the hospitality sector, most of the companies are running their hotel booking systems by utilizing mobile applications and a web-based infrastructure, but usability issues still exist. This study has been conducted specifically to tackle the usability issues of hotel booking systems and the best utilization of social networks to promote the business. TripAdvisor was selected as an authentic source for selecting those systems and two international hotels are selected for this study. The first step is to identify different hotel booking systems. In the second step, the user's satisfaction level was measured for the selected systems by performing the System Usability Scale (SUS, Quick & Dirty) approach. Additionally, by which source (social media or personal relations) they found these hotels. It is found that the SUS rating for both systems is below the acceptable level of usability. The Mean SUS for hotel 1 is found at 55.25 and 51.2 for hotel 2. The third step was to identify the user interface (UI) issues, and heuristic evaluation is performed for this. The experts identified the UI issues on the basis of their experience. The major issues were related to the visibility of system status, error prevention, flexibility and efficiency of use. Depending upon the identified issues, an interactive UI (prototype) for the selected web-based applications was proposed. This prototype is mainly based on the user's perspective. This prototype can be used for improving the UI of the selected systems which is based on the user's perspective. During the process of verifying the satisfaction level, it is revealed that the targeted audience is not able to use these systems efficiently and effectively. The reason behind this is the negligence of usability guidelines throughout the process of design and development of these hotel booking systems. Therefore, it is highly recommended that the usability of these systems should be evaluated and redesigned, based on expert opinions. It has also been observed that the reviews/ feedback of customers has spread a negative impact through social networks.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.28-36
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• 2022

This study analyzed 284 K-pop song and dance cover short-form videos recreated by Chinese influencers uploaded on TikTok, to explore which reform factors of image similarity, language similarity, the extent of audience participation leading, the extent of lyrics or subtitles translated into Chinese, PPL disclosure, the length of video and the reputation of influencer affected Chinese TikTok audiences' reactions - number of "Likes," "Comments" and "Shares." The results showed that only the "reputation of influencer" was significantly affected the number of "Likes" which estimated as a relatively passive response, but the other factors affected the number of "Comments" and "Shares" significantly which estimated as more active responses. The more an influencer is perceived as not similar to the singer in terms of image the more comments were posted. And the videos expressed in Korean archived more comments and shares than those lyrics or subtitles translated into Chinese. This study is meaningful in that it confirmed the necessity of influencers in the globe diffusion of K-pop, by specifically analyzing the audience's reactions according to the characteristics of UCCs created by local influencers using short-form video platforms.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.473-488
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• 2022

To have a better understanding of the impact of the PETRONAS oil and gas platform on commercial fisheries activities, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) examined two approaches which are data collection from satellite and data collection from fishermen and anglers. By profiling the anglers who utilize reefed oil and gas structures for fishing, it can determine if the design and location of the reef platforms will benefit or negatively impacts those anglers and fisherman. Furthermore, this assessment will be contributing to the knowledge regarding the value of offshore oil and gas platforms as fisheries resources. Collectively, the apparent fishing activity data included, combined with the findings in the reefing viability index will help to inform PETRONAS's future decommissioning decisions and may help determine if the design and proposed locations for future rigs-to-reefs candidates would benefit commercial fishing groups, further qualifying them as appropriate artificial reef candidates. The method applied in this study is approaching by using a data satellite known as Google's Global Fishing Watch technology, which is one of the applications to measure commercial fishing efforts around the globe. The apparent commercial fishing effort around the selected twelve PETRONAS platforms was analyzed from January 2012 to December 2018. Using the data collection from fishermen which is the total estimation of commercial fish value cost (in Malaysia ringgit, MYR [RM]) in Peninsular Malaysia Asset, Sabah Asset, and Sarawak Operation region. The data were extracted every month from 2016 to 2018 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database. Most of the selected platforms that show a high frequency of vessels around the year are platform KP-A, platform BG-A and platform PL-B. The estimated values of commercial fishes varied between platforms, with ranged from RM 10,209.92 to RM 89,023.78. Thus, platforms with high commercial fish value are selected for reefing in-situ and will serve multi-purposes and benefit the locals as well as the country. The current study has successfully assessed the potential reefing area of the Malaysian offshore environment with greater representativeness and this paper focused on its potential as a new fishing ground.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.21-31
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• 2021

As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changes healthcare around the globe, the need for smart healthcare that allows for remote diagnosis is increasing. The current classification of respiratory diseases cost high and requires a face-to-face visit with a skilled medical professional, thus the pandemic significantly hinders monitoring and early diagnosis. Therefore, the ability to accurately classify and diagnose respiratory sound using deep learning-based AI models is essential to modern medicine as a remote alternative to the current stethoscope. In this study, we propose a deep learning-based respiratory sound classification model using data collected from medical experts. The sound data were preprocessed with BandPassFilter, and the relevant respiratory audio features were extracted with Log-Mel Spectrogram and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC). Subsequently, a Parallel CNN network model was trained on these two inputs using stacking ensemble techniques combined with various machine learning classifiers to efficiently classify and detect abnormal respiratory sounds with high accuracy. The model proposed in this paper classified abnormal respiratory sounds with an accuracy of 96.9%, which is approximately 6.1% higher than the classification accuracy of baseline model.

• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.107-133
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• 2009

International relations in the 21st century is featured by boundless competition among nations to secure sufficient energy resources for achieving economic development. Resource diplomacy, therefore, is competitive in its nature, which is derived from the fact that resources of the globe are limited. Chinese recent economic growth has been possible mainly due to its success in resource diplomacy. The Chinese resource diplomacy has shown two different patterns according to target regions. On the one hand, China has pursued multilateral approach to Central Asia region, by which China aimed to secure energy with joint exploration method in the region. Chinese resource diplomacy toward Africa, on the other hand, has been based on bilateral approach combined with unit-centered economic aid to African nations. This difference in Chinese foreign policy pattern seems to be derived from three factors: namely, Chinese strategic considerations on geopolitical condition, regional security sensitivity, and legacies of Chinese long-time non-alignment diplomacy since the 1950s. Whether China is able to maintain the current pattern of resource diplomacy will be depended on how wisely China pursue its relations with two other global powers: Russia in the Central Asia and the U.S. in Africa. In this regard, the Chinese resource diplomacy is expected to work as determining factor of shaping a pattern of tri-lateral strategic relations among the U.S., Russia, and China. Chinese resource diplomacy thus will determine the future direction of the global politics in terms of strategic arrangement.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.44.1-44.17
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• 2023

Background: Antibiotic resistance is a significant public health concern around the globe. Antimicrobial peptides exhibit broad-spectrum and efficient antibacterial activity with an added advantage of low drug resistance. The higher water content and 3D network structure of the hydrogels are beneficial for maintaining antimicrobial peptide activity and help to prevent degradation. The antimicrobial peptide released from hydrogels also hasten the local wound healing by promoting epithelial tissue regeneration and granulation tissue formation. Objective: This study aimed at developing sodium alginate based hydrogel loaded with a novel antimicrobial peptide Chol-37(F34-R) and to investigate the characteristics in vitro and in vivo as an alternative antibacterial wound dressing to treat infectious wounds. Methods: Hydrogels were developed and optimized by varying the concentrations of crosslinkers and subjected to various characterization tests like cross-sectional morphology, swelling index, percent water contents, water retention ratio, drug release and antibacterial activity in vitro, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infected wound mice model in vivo. Results: The results indicated that the hydrogel C proved superior in terms of cross-sectional morphology having uniformly sized interconnected pores, a good swelling index, with the capacity to retain a higher quantity of water. Furthermore, the optimized hydrogel has been found to exert a significant antimicrobial activity against bacteria and was also found to prevent bacterial infiltration into the wound site due to forming an impermeable barrier between the wound bed and external environment. The optimized hydrogel was found to significantly hasten skin regeneration in animal models when compared to other treatments in addition to strong inhibitory effect on the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines (interleukin-1β and tumor necrosis factor-α). Conclusions: Our results suggest that sodium alginate -based hydrogels loaded with Chol-37(F34-R) hold the potential to be used as an alternative to conventional antibiotics in treating infectious skin wounds.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.355-361
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• 2023

Temperature of the Earth's surface is a crucial physical variable in understanding weather and atmospheric dynamics and in coping with extreme heat events that have a great impact on living organismsincluding humans. Thermalsensors on satellites have been a useful meansfor acquiring surface temperature information for wide areas on the globe, and thus characterization of its estimation uncertainty is of central importance for the utilization of the data. Among various factors that affect the estimation, the uncertainty caused by the algorithm itself has not been tested for the atmospheric environment of Korean vicinity. Thisstudy derivesthe uncertainty of the single-channel algorithm under the local atmospheric and oceanic conditions by using reanalysis data and buoy temperature data collected around Korea. Atmospheric profiles were retrieved from two types of reanalysis data, the fifth generation of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalysis of the global climate and weather (ERA5) and Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications-2 (MERRA-2) to investigate the effect of reanalysis data. MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission (MODTRAN) was used as a radiative transfer code for simulating top of atmosphere radiance and the atmospheric correction for the temperature estimation. Water temperatures used for MODTRAN simulations and uncertainty estimation for the single-channel algorithm were obtained from marine weather buoyslocated in seas around the Korean Peninsula. Experiment results showed that the uncertainty of the algorithm varies by the water vapor contents in the atmosphere and is around 0.35K in the driest atmosphere and 0.46K in overall, regardless of the reanalysis data type. The uncertainty increased roughly in a linear manner as total precipitable water increased.