• Corrosion Science and Technology
• /
• v.19 no.5
• /
• pp.265-280
• /
• 2020

External corrosion of buried pipes can be controlled using both coating and cathodic protection. However, deterioration of the coating can occur due to several reasons. The detection reliabilty of coating flaw detection methods is affected by interference such as metal objects connected to rectifiers and copper grids. When performing parallel direct current voltage gradient (DCVG) inspection, a sine wave form without potential reversal in voltage gradient appears in the area where the interference exists. However, this area may be not identified using existing methods. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of analyzing direction on the reliability of coating flaw detection of pipes buried in soil using a multi-electrode detector. DCVG on the buried pipe was measured along the buried pipe. This measurement parallel to the pipe was repeated. Measured data were analyzed for parallel, vertical, and diagonal directions. The reliability of coating flaw detection was improved by up to 46.4% compared to the conventional method.

• Development and Reproduction
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.159-168
• /
• 2008

Nanog is a newly identified member of the homeobox family of DNA binding transcription factors that functions to maintain the undifferentiated state of stem cells. However, molecular mechanisms underlying the function of Nanog remain largely unknown. To elucidate the regulatory roles of Nanog involved in maintenance of P19 embryonal carcinoma (EC) stem cells, we transfected three small interfering RNA (siRNA) duplexes targeted against different regions of the Nanog gene into P19 cells. The Nanog siRNA-100 duplexes effectively decreased the expression of Nanog up to 30.7% compared to other two Nanog siRNAs, the Nanog siRNA-400 (67.9 %) and -793 (53.0%). When examined by RT-PCR and real-time PCR, the expression of markers for pluripotency such as Fgf4, Oct3/4, Rex1, Sox1 and Yes was downregulated at 48 h after transfection with Nanog siRNA-100. Furthermore, expression of the ectodermal markers, Fgf5 and Isl1 was reduced by Nanog knockdown. By contrast, the expression of other markers for pluripotency such as Cripto, Sox2 and Zfp57 was not affected by Nanog knockdown at this time. On the other hand, the expression of Lif/Stat3 pathway molecules and of the endoderm markers including Dab2, Gata4, Gata6 and the germ cell nuclear factor was not changed by Nanog knockdown. The results of this study demonstrated that the knockdown of Nanog expression by RNA interference in P19 cells was sufficient to modulate the expression of pluripotent markers involved in the self-renewal of EC stem cells. These results provide the valuable information on potential downstream targets of Nanog and add to our understanding of the function of Nanog in P19 EC stem cells.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.456-464
• /
• 2010

RNA interference (RNAi) is an acknowledged useful and effective tool to study gene function in various cells. Here, we suppressed the Connexin 43 (Cx 43) gene expression during in vitro development of ovine pre-implantation embryos using the RNAi method. The 353 bp Cx 43 double-stranded RNA was microinjected into in vitro fertilized ovine zygotes, and the levels of target mRNA and protein were investigated. Control groups included uninjected zygotes or those injected with RNase-free water. The dsRNA injection resulted in the specific reduction of Cx 43 transcripts as analyzed by quantitative real-time RT-PCR and decreased protein levels as shown by Western blot analysis at the blastocyst stage. Microinjection of Cx 43 dsRNA led to 20.3%, 21.7% and 34.5% blastocyst rates and 19.2%, 37.5% and 41.3% hatched blastocyst rates in Cx 43 dsRNA-injected, water-injected and uninjected groups, respectively. Then the RNAi could not significantly affect cell number and cell death rates of blastocysts. Therefore, suppression of Cx 43 dsRNA and proteins did not apparently affect the development potential of ovine pre-implantation embryos but may play a role in embryo quality. RNAi technology is a promising approach to study gene function in early ovine embryogenesis.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.22 no.8
• /
• pp.1133-1140
• /
• 2012

Ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) inhibits the expression of target genes in a sequence-specific manner, and shows potential for gene knockdown in filamentous fungi, in which the locus-specific gene knockout occurs in low frequency. In this study, the function of the repressor of cellulase expression I (ACEI) was verified in Trichoderma koningii (T. koningii) YC01 through RNAi, and ace1-silenced strains with improved cellulase productivity were obtained. An expression cassette that transcribed the interfering double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) of ace1 was constructed and transformed into T. koningii, and the transformants, in which the expression of ace1 was successfully silenced, were selected. As a result of the ace1 gene silencing, the expression levels of the main cellulase and xylanase genes were elevated, and the enhanced production of total proteins, cellulase, and xylanase was observed in the cultivation. In addition, the down-regulation of ace1 resulted in an increasing expression of xyr1, but no clear variation in the expression of cre1, which suggested that ACEI acted as a repressor of the xyr1 transcription, but was not involved in the regulation of the cre1 expression. The results of this work indicate that ace1 is a valid target gene for enhancing enzyme production in T. koningii, and RNAi is an appropriate tool for improving the properties of industrial fungi.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.8
• /
• pp.3711-3719
• /
• 2016

Drawbacks of conventional cancer treatments, with lack of specificity and cytotoxicity using current approaches, underlies the necessity for development of a novel approach, gene-directed cancer therapy. This has provided novel technological opportunities in vitro and in vivo. This review focuses on a member of an apoptosis inhibitor family, survivin, as a valuable target. Not only the gene but also its promoter are applicable in this context. This article is based on a literature survey, with especial attention to RNA interference as well as tumor-specific promoter action. The search engine and databases utilized were Science direct, PubMed, MEDLINE and Google. In addition to cell-cycle modulation, apoptosis inhibition, interaction in cell-signaling pathways, cancer-selective expression, survivin also may be considered as specific target through its promoter as a novel treatment for cancer. Our purpose in writing this article was to create awareness in researchers, emphasizing relation of survivin gene expression to potential cancer treatment. The principal result and major conclusion of this manuscript are that survivin structure, biological functions and applications of RNA interference systems as well as tumor-specific promoter activity are of major interest for cancer gene therapy.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.1823-1829
• /
• 2014

Aims: Much evidence suggests that increased glucose metabolism in tumor cells might contribute to the development of acquired chemoresistance. However, the molecular mechanisms are not fully clear. Therefore, we investigated a possible correlation of mRNA expression of HIF-$1{\alpha}$ and GLUT1 with chemoresistance in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Methods: Bone marrow samples were obtained from newly diagnosed and relapsed AML (M3 exclusion) cases. RNA interference with short hairpin RNA (shRNA) was used to stably silence GLUT1 or HIF-$1{\alpha}$ gene expression in an AML cell line and HIF-$1{\alpha}$ and GLUT1 mRNA expression was measured by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay (qPCR). Results: High levels of HIF-$1{\alpha}$ and GLUT1 were associated with poor responsiveness to chemotherapy in AML. Down-regulation of the expression of GLUT1 by RNA interference obviously sensitized drug-resistant HL-60/ADR cells to adriamycin (ADR) in vitro, comparable with RNA interference for the HIF-$1{\alpha}$ gene. Conclusions: Our data revealed that over-expression of HIF-$1{\alpha}$ and GLUT1 might play a role in the chemoresistance of AML. GLUT1 might be a potential target to reverse such drug resistance.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.23 no.7
• /
• pp.1677-1688
• /
• 1998

In this paper, we analyze the performance of a DS-CDMA system employing adaptive adaptive array antenna technology at base-station. For the analysis the receiving architecture of a multiple team adaptive base-station array antenna is proposed as a major system omponent, and signal to interference and noise ratio(SINR) on the proposed architecture is developed. We show that the perfomance enhancement of the CDMA system is represented as great reduction of interfreence by employing an array antenna capable of resolving the angular distribution of the mobile users as seen at the ase-station. The energy associated with each mobile or a group of mobiles is thus confined within the addressed volume, greatly reducing the amount of co-channel interference experienced from and by neighboring co-channel cells. In order to ascertain the benefits of such an antenna, a theoretical approach, which eis based on the conventional and proposed antenna systems in a typical mobile radio environment, is adopted. Finally computer simulation results show the insight into how the adaptive array antenna operates when used in conjunction with DS-CDMA and illustrate the potential benefits in the SINR point of view.

• Elastomers and Composites
• /
• v.42 no.3
• /
• pp.151-158
• /
• 2007

MWNTs have been widely investigated due to unique properties of such as good electrical conductivity and thermal stability in polymer composites industries. This paper established the procedure to fabricate PMMA/MWNT composites by a modular intermeshing co-rotating twin screw extruder with L/D ratio of 42. The electrical properties of PMMA/MWNT composites with different content of MWNT have been investigated. A sheet resistance percolation was observed at 4 wt% of MWNT for the melt processed composites. Sheet resistance of PMMA/MWNT composite film containing 4 wt% of MWNT was nearby $10^4{\Omega}/sq$ and this shows the possibility of potential application to EMI (Electronic Magnetic Interference) shielding materials. The characteristics of composites were analyzed by TGA, DSC, and SEM. In addition, MFI (Melt Flow Index) has been measured to analyze the rheological property.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.47 no.7
• /
• pp.791-803
• /
• 2015

The effective cross sections (XSs) in the direct whole core calculation code nTRACER are evaluated by the equivalence theory-based resonance-integral-table method using the WIMS-based library as an alternative to the subgroup method. The background XSs, as well as the Dancoff correction factors, were evaluated by the enhanced neutron-current method. A method, with pointwise microscopic XSs on a union-lethargy grid, was used for the generation of resonance-interference factors (RIFs) for mixed resonant absorbers. This method was modified by the intermediate-resonance approximation by replacing the potential XSs for the non-absorbing moderator nuclides with the background XSs and neglecting the resonance-elastic scattering. The resonance-escape probability was implemented to incorporate the energy self-shielding effect in the spectrum. The XSs were improved using the proposed method as compared to the narrow resonance infinite massbased method. The RIFs were improved by 1% in $^{235}U$, 7% in $^{239}Pu$, and >2% in $^{240}Pu$. To account for thermal feedback, a new feature was incorporated with the interpolation of pre-generated RIFs at the multigroup level and the results compared with the conventional resonance-interference model. This method provided adequate results in terms of XSs and k-eff. The results were verified first by the comparison of RIFs with the exact RIFs, and then comparing the XSs with the McCARD calculations for the homogeneous configurations, with burned fuel containing a mixture of resonant nuclides at different burnups and temperatures. The RIFs and XSs for the mixture showed good agreement, which verified the accuracy of the RIF evaluation using the proposed method. The method was then verified by comparing the XSs for the virtual environment for reactor applicationbenchmark pin-cell problem, as well as the heterogeneous pin cell containing burned fuel with McCARD. The method works well for homogeneous, as well as heterogeneous configurations.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
• /
• v.36 no.4
• /
• pp.286-296
• /
• 2009

A major challenge in next generation optical Internet (NGOI) networks based on dense-wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) is the provision of guaranteed quality-of-service (QoS) for a wide variety of multimedia applications. One of the critical issues in NGOI is the routing and wavelength assignment problem that is embossed as very important and plays a key role in improving the global efficiency for capacity utilization. But the previous researches had the delay problem, and the path routed by higher priority nodes may be congested and interfere with potential future multicast session requests. To overcome these problems, in this research we suggest a Priority-based Minimum Interference Path Multicast Routing (PMIPMR) algorithm, a new routing algorithm which finds alternative routes based on node priorities and Virtual Source (VS) nodes that has both splitting and wavelength conversion, and then chooses a path that does not interfere with potential future multicast session requests when congestions occur in the network. The PMIPMR algorithm reduces blocking rate significantly and increases the wavelength utilization by avoiding congestion in future multicast session requests.