• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.242-257
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• 2019

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) stretches two kilometers north and south from the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) of South and North Korea. This area was established as a weapons-free buffer zone when an armistice agreement was signed in 1953. However, there have been several very high-tension military standoffss over the past 65 years. On the South Korean side, civilian access to the Civilian Control Line (CCL) and beyond to the north has been restricted, and natural heritage has been well maintained. Natural heritage is defined as living things, their habitat and non-living things of the ecosystem which deserve to be protected. Research shows that a variety of flora and fauna, their habitat, marshes and geographical structures are found across the DMZ region. Although the DMZ region has not been such a good place for habitat conservation, we can say that this area may be the best location for restoration in terms of its variety of ecosystems and considerable land size. Restoration of course depends on future plans and management policies. This area, including the DMZ and the well-protected north of the CCL, will be the best habitat for endangered species of wild fauna and flora if we classify the various habitat types and create a habitat map. In doing this project, we need to include the estuary of the Han River and the lagoon (brackish water lake) of the East Sea coast. In addition, we must establish long-term plans for conservation and sustainable use and do international scientific research across the DMZ region in collaboration with scientists of South and North Korea and international experts. Mutual cooperation between the two Koreas for investigation and conservation efforts is paramount.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.39-50
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to be performed with studio-type housings among urban life-type housings to investigate the physical characteristic and crime-related factors of studios from the viewpoint of the basic principles of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). Method: Eight CPTED guidelines available in Korea were reviewed to select 20 planing factors for actual condition investigation. Five single households in studio-type housings in Gwanak-gu, Seoul, were chosen according to the subject screening criteria to perform the actual condition investigation. Results: First, a lighting plan around a building for natural surveillance should consider the building location, relation with the front road, and surrounding facilities. In a building of a piloti structure, the parking lot and the building gate should be arranged in a manner that enables natural surveillance. Second, the shape of the corridors in studio-type housings should be considered to plan the installation of a lighting at the door of each household, the installation of a viewer window at the door of each household, and the arrangement of the elevator. Third, to support access control, an access control system having the function of video and voice communication is recommended to be installed at the building gate. Criteria for the type of security windows and the floors on which security windows should be installed, and the regulations about the CCTV installation inside and outside the building should be prepared. Fourth, to enhance territoriality in parking lots, ground patterns, parking lot gate, and signs may be installed. Fifth, in view of effective utilization and maintenance, lighting facilities should be installed to increase the usability of ground parking lots, and relevant installation criteria should be prepared regarding the type, number, and brightness of the lightings.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.625-632
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• 2018

Malaria remains one of the leading health burdens in the developing world, especially in several sub-Saharan Africa countries; and Uganda has some of the highest recorded measures of malaria transmission intensity in the world. It is evident that the prevalence of malaria infection, the incidence of disease, and mortality from severe malaria remain very high in Uganda. Although the recent stable political and economic situation in the last few decades in Uganda supported for a fairly good appreciation of malaria control, the declines in infection, morbidity, and mortality are not sufficient to interrupt transmission and this country is among the top 4 countries with cases of malaria, especially among children under 5 years of age. In fact, Uganda, which is endemic in over 95% of the country, is a representative of challenges facing malaria control in Africa. In this study, we evaluated an active case detection program in 6 randomly selected villages, Uganda. This program covered a potential target population of 5,017 individuals. Our team screened 12,257 samples of malaria by active case detection, every 4 months, from February 2015 to January 2017 in the 6 villages (a total of 6 times). This study assessed the perceptions and practices on malaria control in Kiyuni Parish of Kyankwanzi district, Uganda. Our study presents that the incidence of malaria is sustained high despite efforts to scale-up and improve the use of LLINs and access to ACDs, based on the average incidence confirmed by RDTs.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.1446-1451
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• 2016

Clostridium difficile toxin A causes acute gut inflammation in animals and humans. It is known to downregulate the tight junctions between colonic epithelial cells, allowing luminal contents to access body tissues and trigger acute immune responses. However, it is not yet known whether this loss of the barrier function is a critical factor in the progression of toxin A-induced pseudomembranous colitis. We previously showed that NADH:quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1) KO (knockout) mice spontaneously display weak gut inflammation and a marked loss of colonic epithelial tight junctions. Moreover, NQO1 KO mice exhibited highly increased inflammatory responses compared with NQO1 WT (wild-type) control mice when subjected to DSS-induced experimental colitis. Here, we tested whether toxin A could also trigger more severe inflammatory responses in NQO1 KO mice compared with NQO1 WT mice. Indeed, our results show that C. difficile toxin A-mediated enteritis is significantly enhanced in NQO1 KO mice compared with NQO1 WT mice. The levels of fluid secretion, villus disruption, and epithelial cell apoptosis were also higher in toxin A-treated NQO1 KO mice compared with WT mice. The previous and present results collectively show that NQO1 is involved in the formation of tight junctions in the small intestine, and that defects in NQO1 enhance C. difficile toxin A-induced acute inflammatory responses, presumably via the loss of epithelial cell tight junctions.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.345-355
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• 2014

Since the beginning of the 21st century, emergence of innovative technologies in robotic and telepresence surgery has revolutionized minimally access surgery and continually has advanced them till recent years. One of such surgeries is endoscopic surgery, in which endoscope and endoscopic instruments are inserted into the body through small incision or natural openings, surgical operations being carried out by a laparoscopic procedure. Due to a vast amount of developments in this technology, this review article describes only a technological state-of-the arts and trend of endoscopic robots, being further limited to the aspects of key components, their functional requirements and operational procedure in surgery. In particular, it first describes technological limitations in developments of key components and then focuses on the description of the performance required for their functions, which include position control, tracking, navigation, and manipulation of the flexible endoscope body and its end effector as well, and so on. In spite of these rapid developments in functional components, endoscopic surgical robots should be much smaller, less expensive, easier to operate, and should seamlessly integrate emerging technologies for their intelligent vision and dexterous hands not only from the points of the view of surgical, ergonomic but also from safety. We believe that in these respects a medical robotic technology related to endoscopic surgery continues to be revolutionized in the near future, sufficient enough to replace almost all kinds of current endoscopic surgery. This issue remains to be addressed elsewhere in some other review articles.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.88-92
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• 2009

The effect of Chlorella vulgaris (CV) on the urinary excretion of di-ortho PCB congeners (PCB-138, -153) was investigated. Sprague-Dawley rats (6-weeks-old, n=10 rats/group) were randomly divided into one control (0CV) or 2% CV (2CV) or 5% CV (5CV) or 10% CV (10CV) groups, respectively. Composition of normal and chlorella meal-based diet were made up of 30% casein, 15% cornstarch, 50% sucrose, 5% cellulose, 5% coconut oil, 3.5% mineral mixture, 1 % vitamin mixture. All rats had free access to water and diet for 4 weeks. A significant increase in both PCB 138 and 153 in urinary level was detected in CV fed groups, 540% and 167% for 2CV, 155% and 89% for 5CV, 114% and 144% for 10CV group, respectively, when compared with their controls. These findings suggest that CV may have potential to eliminate body burden levels of dioxin-like PCB compounds.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.343-350
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• 2008

Many reports have warned of insufficient water supply in most countries in future and prospected providing safe and clean water become more difficult by lack of access to sustainable drinking water resources. Several facts and figures explained the impact by natural climate change and human activity results in the water scarcity and deterioration. Among many scientific solutions, the seawater desalination using a reverse osmosis membrane, so called SWRO (Seawater Reverse Osmosis) process, has been recognized as one of the most promising alternatives because of its stability and efficiency in producing large amount of drinking water from seawater through desalination by membrane filtration. Recently, in Korea, numerous researches are conducted to develop more productive and cost effective SWRO process for its wide implementation. The objective of this paper is to review the patents concerning SWRO technologies involving the plant engineering, maintenance including pretreatment of seawater and fouling control, module design, and mechanical units development for energy saving. The patents in Korea, U.S., Japan, Europe, and PCT were intensively researched and analyzed to provide the state of the art as well as leading edge technology on SWRO. This information can hopefully suggest meaningful guidelines on future research and development.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.431-440
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• 2008

Turbid water or suspended sediment is associated with negative effects on aquatic organisms; fish, aquatic invertebrate, and periphyton. Effects of turbid water on fish differ depending on their developmental stage and a level of turbidity. Low turbid water may cause feeding and predation rates, reaction distance, and avoidance in fish, and it could make fish to die under high turbidity and long period. Therefore, it is very important to find out how turbid water or suspended sediment can affect fish in domestic watersheds. The objectives of this study were 1) to introduce international case studies and their standards to deal with suspended sediment, 2) to determine acute toxicity in 4 major freshwater fishes, and 3) to determine in relation to adverse effect of macroinvertebrates and fish. Impacts of turbid water on fish can be categorized into direct and indirect effects, and some factors such as duration and frequency of exposure, toxicity, temperature, life stage of fish, size of particle, time of occurrence, availability of and access to refugia, etc, play important role to decide magnitude of effect. A review of turbidity standard in USA, Canada, and Europe indicated that each standard varied with natural condition, and Alaska allowed liberal increase of turbidity over natural conditions in streams. Even though acute toxicity with four different species did not show any fatal effect, it should be considered to conduct a chronic test (long-term) for more detailed assessment. Compared to the control, dominance index of macroinvertebrates was greater in the turbid site, whereas biotic index, species diversity index, species richness index, and ecological score were smaller in the turbid site. According to histopathological analysis with gills of macroinvertebrate and fishes, morphological and physiological modification of gills due to suspended sediments can cause disturbance of respiration, excretion and secretion. In conclusion, in order to maintain good and healthy aquatic ecosystem, it is the best to minimize or prevent impact by occurrence of turbid water in stream and reservoir. We must make every effort to maintain and manage healthy aquatic ecosystem with additional investigation using various assessment tools and periodic biomonitoring of fish.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.1663-1667
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• 2013

Neointimal hyperplasia causes vascular access dysfunction in hemodialysis patients with synthetic arteriovenous (AV) grafts. Several studies have reported that paclitaxel- or sirolimus-eluting AV grafts inhibit neointimal hyperplasia and display lower rates of stenosis compared with control grafts. However, there have been few comparative studies of the efficacy of paclitaxel- and sirolimus-eluting grafts. We compared the neointimal hyperplasia of paclitaxel- and sirolimus-eluting grafts. AV grafts were implanted laterally between the common carotid artery and the external jugular vein in 12 female Landrace pigs. The animals were sacrificed six weeks after surgery. The neointimal hyperplasia at the anastomosis sites of the grafts was quantified using the ratio of the intragraft hyperplasia to the graft area (H/G ratio) at the graft-vessel interface. The area of intimal hyperplasia at the venous (paclitaxel 1.06 [0.72-1.56] vs sirolimus 2.40 [1.72-3.0] $mm^2$, P = 0.04) and arterial anastomosis sites (paclitaxel 0.93 [0.57-1.48] vs sirolimus 2.40 [1.72-3.0] $mm^2$, P = 0.04) was significantly different between the two groups. However, the H/G ratios for the venous anastomosis site (paclitaxel 0.25 (0.17-0.38) vs sirolimus 0.38 (0.2-0.66), P = 0.4) and the arterial anastomosis site (paclitaxel 0.19 (0.08-0.39) vs sirolimus 0.41 (0.34-0.50), P = 0.1) did not differ significantly between the groups. In conclusion, there was no significant difference in the inhibition of neointimal hyperplasia by sirolimus- and paclitaxel-eluting AV grafts.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.424-437
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• 2012

As to the increase of crime against children, the importance of safety in school area is more emphasized ever. Safety in school area can be achieved by the well-organized combination of physical, managemental and spatial planning factors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the spatial planning direction to prevent crimes for the schools and their surroundings on the viewpoint of CPTED(crime prevention through environmental design). Field survey using checklist drawn up with 5 major CPTED principles was conducted for 7 schools(primary, middle and high schools) located at Noen New-town, Daejeon Korea. Problems derived from field survey were categorized to 5 CPTED principles and countermeasures were suggested together with computer graphic simulation. CPTED design principles and guidelines for spatial planning can make school area safer because these can assure natural surveillance, territoriality, natural access control, etc.