• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.93-97
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• 2012

In this study, the fabrication and the characteristic analyses of OLED using in-situ passivation are investigated. OLEDs represent a disadvantage in decreasing its life due to the degradation caused by the penetration of moisture and oxygen. After the fabrication of OLED, an in-situ passivation method for inorganic thin films is developed. A process that uses PECVD method which can apply a vapor deposition process at room temperature is also developed. Changes in the degradation and electric characteristics of OLEDs are also analyzed by applying $SiO_2$ and SiNx thin films to OLED as a passivation layer. By applying the fabricated thin film to OLEDs as a passivation layer, the moisture penetration in a single layer film is ensured below $1{\times}10^{-2}\;g/m^2.day$. This leads to the improvement of such degradation characteristics in the application of multilayer films.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.897-904
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• 2007

The aim of this paper is to discuss the methodology of our investigation of the dynamics of protein degradation and the total in situ protealytic activity in meso/eutrophic, eutrophic, and hypereutrophic freshwater environments. Analysis of the kinetics and rates of enzymatic release of amino acids in water samples preserved with sodium azide allows determination of the concentrations of labile proteins $(C_{LAB})$, and their half-life time $(T_{1/2})$. Moreover, it gives more realistic information on resultant activity in situ $(V_{T1/2})$ of ecto- and extracellular proteases that are responsible for the biological degradation of these compounds. Although the results provided by the proposed method are general y well correlated with those obtained by classical procedures, they better characterize the dynamics of protein degradation processes, especially in eutrophic or hypereutrophic lakes. In these environments, processes of protein decomposition occur mainly on the particles and depend primarily on a metabolic activity of seston-attached bacteria. The method was tested in three lakes. The different degree of eutrophication of these lakes was clearly demonstrated by the measured real proteolytic pattern and confirmed by conventional trophic state determinants.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.1569-1574
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• 2005

The in situ nylon bag degradation and in vitro intestinal digestibility of dry matter (DM), and crude protein (CP) of mulberry (Morus alba) plant fractions was studied at four harvest stages, 3 (W3), 5 (W5), 7 (W7) and 9 (W9) weeks. Degradability of DM and CP of the whole plant and stem fractions declined significantly (p<0.01) with advancing plant maturity in the order W3>W5 and W7>W9 and W3>W5>W7>W9, respectively. The degradation of DM and CP of the leaf fraction was also influenced by plant maturity but no trend was observed. The degradation of DM and CP of the whole plant and leaves increased rapidly during the first 48 and 24 h of incubation, respectively, when maximum degradation was reached. In vitro intestinal digestibility of CP was more influenced by the residence time in the rumen than by plant maturity. This study showed that mulberry is suitable as a supplement, particularly to low-quality roughages, in providing a source of rapidly available nitrogen to the rumen microbes, hence improving the roughage degradability and intake.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.385-401
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• 2023

Steel is becoming increasingly popular due to its high strength, excellent ductility, great assembly performance, and recyclability. In reality, steel structures serving for a long time in atmospheric, industrial, and marine environments inevitably suffer from corrosion, which significantly decreases the durability and the service life with the exposure time. For the mechanical properties of corroded steel, experimental studies are mainly conducted. The existing numerical analyses only evaluate the mechanical properties based on corroded morphology at the isolated time-in-point, ignoring that this morphology varies continuously with corrosion time. To solve this problem, the relationships between pit depth expectation, standard deviation, and corrosion time are initially constructed based on a large amount of wet-dry cyclic accelerated test data. Successively, based on that, an in-situ pitting evolution method for evaluating the residual tensile strength of corroded steel is proposed. To verify the method, 20 repeated simulations of mass loss rates and mechanical properties are adopted against the test results. Then, numerical analyses are conducted on 135 models of corrosion pits with different aspect ratios and uneven corrosion degree on two corroded surfaces. Results show that the power function with exponents of 1.483 and 1.091 can well describe the increase in pit depth expectation and standard deviation with corrosion time, respectively. The effect of the commonly used pit aspect ratios of 0.10-0.25 on yield strength and ultimate strength is negligible. Besides, pit number ratio α equating to 0.6 is the critical value for the strength degradation. When α is less than 0.6, the pit number increases with α, accelerating the degradation of strength. Otherwise, the strength degradation is weakened. In addition, a power function model is adopted to characterize the degradation of yield strength and ultimate strength with corrosion time, which is revised by initial steel plate thickness.

• Ceramist
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.402-416
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• 2019

The development of next-generation secondary batteries, including lithium-ion batteries (LIB), requires performance enhancements such as high energy/high power density, low cost, long life, and excellent safety. The discovery of new materials with such requirements is a challenging and time-consuming process with great difficulty. To pursue this challenging endeavor, it is pivotal to understand the structure and interface of electrode materials in a multiscale level at the atomic, molecular, macro-scale during charging / discharging. In this regard, various advanced material characterization tools, including the first-principle calculation, high-resolution electron microscopy, and synchrotron-based X-ray techniques, have been actively employed to understand the charge storage- and degradation-mechanisms of various electrode materials. In this article, we introduce and review recent advances in in-situ synchrotron-based x-ray techniques to study electrode materials for LIBs during thermal degradation and charging/discharging. We show that the fundamental understanding of the structure and interface of the battery materials gained through these advanced in-situ investigations provides valuable insight into designing next-generation electrode materials with significantly improved performance in terms of high energy/high power density, low cost, long life, and excellent safety.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.281-296
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• 2018

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of different processing of rice on rumen fermentation in in vitro and in situ experiments. Different processing treatments (extruding, roasting, and steaming) were used in this study and all treatments were ground through a cyclone mill (Foss, Hillerød, Denmark) fitted with a 1 mm screen. Non-treated rice was considered to a control substrate. Then, all treatments were used in in vitro and in situ experiments. Total gas production and dry matter digestibility in control were lower than any other treatment at all incubation times (P<0.01). The lowest ammonia nitrogen ($NH_3-N$) concentration was observed in control among treatments at 6, 12, and 24 h incubation (P<0.01). Extruding had a highest total volatile fatty acids (VFA) concentration at 6, 12 h incubation (P<0.01) and Steaming exhibited a highest total VFA at 24 h (P<0.01). The lowest total VFA concentration was observed in control at 6, 12, and 24 h (P<0.01). In an in situ, The highest value of soluble fraction, degradation rates, effective degradability was observed in extruding (P<0.01). It was considered that feed processing increased dry matter digestibility, total VFA concentration, and decreased pH as well as $NH_3-N$ concentration indicating that processing may increase nutrient degradation of rice in the rumen.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.58 no.9
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• pp.33.1-33.7
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• 2016

Background: The continuing growth of the ethanol industry has generated large amounts of various distillers grains co-products. These are characterized by a wide variation in chemical composition and ruminal degradability. Therefore, their precise formulation in the ruminant diet requires the systematic evaluation of their degradation profiles in the rumen. Methods: Three distillers grains plus soluble co-products (DDGS) namely, corn DDGS, high-protein corn DDGS (HP-DDGS), and wheat DDGS, were subjected to an in situ trial to determine the degradation kinetics of the dry matter (DM) and crude protein (CP). Soybean meal (SBM), a feed with highly degradable protein in the rumen, was included as the fourth feed. The four feeds were incubated in duplicate at each time point in the rumen of three ruminally cannulated Hanwoo cattle for 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24, and 48 h. Results: Wheat DDGS had the highest filterable and soluble A fraction of its DM (37.2 %), but the lowest degradable B (49.5 %; P < 0.001) and an undegradable C fraction (13.3 %; P < 0.001). The filterable and soluble A fraction of CP was greatest with wheat DDGS, intermediate with corn DDGS, and lowest with HP-DDGS and SBM; however, the undegradable C fraction of CP was the greatest with HP-DDGS (41.2 %), intermediate with corn DDGS (2.7 %), and lowest with wheat DDGS and SMB (average 4.3 %). The degradation rate of degradable B fraction ($%\;h^{-1}$) was ranked from highest to lowest as follows for 1) DM: SBM (13.3), wheat DDGS (9.1), and corn DDGS and HP-DDGS (average 5.2); 2) CP: SBM (17.6), wheat DDGS (11.6), and corn DDGS and HP-DDGS (average 4.4). The in situ effective degradability of CP, assuming a passage rate of $0.06h^{-1}$, was the highest (P < 0.001) for SBM (73.9 %) and wheat DDGS (71.2 %), intermediate for corn DDGS (42.5 %), and the lowest for HP-DDGS (28.6 %), which suggests that corn DDGS and HP-DDGS are a good source of undegraded intake protein for ruminants. Conclusions: This study provided a comparative estimate of ruminal DM and CP degradation characteristics for three DDGS co-products and SBM, which might be useful for their inclusion in the diet according to the ruminally undegraded to degraded intake protein ratio.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.1617-1626
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• 2013

The Bacterial community structure and its complexity of the enrichment culture during the isolation and screening of imidacloprid-degrading strain were studied using denaturating gradient gel electrophoresis analysis. The dominant bacteria in the original tea rhizosphere soil were uncultured bacteria, Rhizobium sp., Sinorhizobium, Ochrobactrum sp., Alcaligenes, Bacillus sp., Bacterium, Klebsiella sp., and Ensifer adhaerens. The bacterial community structure was altered extensively and its complexity reduced during the enrichment process, and four culturable bacteria, Ochrobactrum sp., Rhizobium sp., Geobacillus stearothermophilus, and Alcaligenes faecalis, remained in the final enrichment. Only one indigenous strain, BCL-1, with imidacloprid-degrading potential, was isolated from the sixth enrichment culture. This isolate was a gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium and identified as the genus Ochrobactrum based on its morphological, physiological, and biochemical properties and its 16S rRNA gene sequence. The degradation test showed that approximately 67.67% of the imidacloprid (50 mg/l) was degraded within 48 h by strain BCL-1. The optimum conditions for degradation were a pH of 8 and $30^{\circ}C$. The simulation of imidacloprid bioremediation by strain BCL-1 in soil demonstrated that the best performance in situ (tea soil) resulted in the degradation of 92.44% of the imidacloprid (100 mg/g) within 20 days, which was better than those observed in the ex situ simulations that were 64.66% (cabbage soil), 41.15% (potato soil), and 54.15% (tomato soil).

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.704-710
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• 2008

Injectable hydrogels are quite promising materials due to their potential to minimize invasive implantation and this provides versatile fitness irrespective of the damaged regions and facilitates the incorporation of bioactive agents or cells. In situ gel formation through stereocomplex formation is a promising candidate for injectable hydrogels. In this paper, a new series of enantiomeric, four-arm, PEG-PLA block copolymers and their stereocomplexed hydrogels were prepared by bulk ring-opening polymerization of D-lactide and L-lactide, respectively, with stannous octoate as a catalyst. The prepared polymers were characterized by $^1H$ nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared (FT IR) spectroscopy, gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and thermal gravitational analysis (TGA), confirming the tailored structure and chain lengths. The swelling and degradation behavior of the hydrogels formed from a selected copolymer series were observed in different concentrations. The degradation rate decreased with increasing polymer content in the solution. The rheological behavior indicated that the prepared hydrogel underwent in situ gelation and had favorable mechanical strength. In addition, its feasibility as an injectable scaffold was evaluated using a media dependence test for cell culture. A Tris solution was more favorable for in situ gel formation than PBS and DMEM solutions were. These results demonstrated the in situ formation of hydrogel through the construction of a stereocomplex with enantiomeric, 4-arm, PEG-PLA copolymers. Overall, enantiomeric, 4-arm, PEG-PLA copolymers are a new species of stereocomplexed hydrogels that are suitable for further research into injectable hydrogels.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.1213-1220
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• 2018

Objective: An experiment was conducted to assess the antioxidant contents and activities of colored rice grains and to evaluate their nutritive characteristics in terms of chemical composition and in situ ruminal degradation. Methods: Ten cultivars of colored rice grains (Oryza sativa L.) collected from several areas of Japan were studied, and control rice without pigment, maize, barley, and wheat grains were used as control grains. Their chemical compositions, pigment, polyphenol contents, total antioxidant capacity (TAC), and degradation characteristics were determined. Results: The starch contents of the colored rice grains were in the range of 73.5% to 79.6%, similar to that of the control rice grain. The black and red rice grains contained anthocyanin (maximum: $5,045.6{\mu}g/g$) and proanthocyanidin (maximum: $3,060.6{\mu}g/g$) at high concentrations as their principal pigments, respectively. There were significantly (p<0.05) positive relationships among the pigment contents, polyphenol content, and TAC values in the colored and control rice grains, indicating that the increase in pigment contents also contributed to the increased polyphenol content and TAC values in the colored rice grains. The dry matter and starch degradation characteristics, as represented by c (fractional degradation rate of slowly degradable fraction) and by the effective degradability, of the colored rice grains and the control rice grain were ranked as follows among commonly used grains: wheat>barley${\geq}rice$>maize. The colored rice grains also included the most-digestible starch, since their potential degradable fraction and actual degradability at 48 h incubation were almost 100%. Conclusion: Colored rice grains have high potential to be used as antioxidant sources in addition to starch sources in ruminants.