• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.99-125
• /
• 2013

Renewable energy industry not only has a promising future but also has more risk than conventional energy industry because of its characteristics. Therefore, in this study, an analysis of domestic renewable energy company risk has been performed. The risk of domestic wind and photovoltaic energy companies has been analyzed by using time varying beta model. The model has been constructed based on risk factors like firm size, firm diversification index, domestic installation, and so on. The principal result of analysis can be summarized as follows. First, risk factors affect domestic renewable energy companies have been discovered. Variables like firm size, growth rate of debt ratio, firm diversification index are statistically significant. I found that large firms are less riskier than small firms. It is also confirmed that companies with high diversification index and high debt ratio have high risk. Second, I got the result that policy factors like domestic renewable energy installation and government R&D expenditure could decrease risk of domestic renewable energy company. Third, relative sensitivity of each risk factor have been discovered. The effect of each variable gets bigger in this order: growth rate of domestic installation, firm size or diversification index, growth rate of debt ratio, growth rate of government R&D expenditure.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.37-41
• /
• 2012

The current standard for testing tetrodotoxin (TTX) in foodstuffs is the mouse bioassay (MBA) in Korea as in many other countries. However, this test suffers from potential ethical concerns over the use of live animals. In addition, the mouse bioassay does not test for a specific toxin thus a sample resulting in mouse incapacitation would need further confirmatory testing to determine the exact source toxin (e.g., TTX, STX, brevotoxin, etc.). Furthermore, though the time of death is proportional to toxicity in this assay, the dynamic range for this proportional relationship is small thus many samples must be diluted and new mice be injected to yield a result that falls within the quantitative dynamic range. Therefore, in recent years, there have been many efforts in this field to develop alternative assays. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) has been emerged as one of the most promising options. A LC-MS-MS method involves solid-phase extraction (SPE) and followed by analysis using an electrospray in the positive ionization mode and multiple reactions monitoring (MRM). To adopt LC-MS-MS method as alternative standard for testing TTX, we performed a validation study for the quantification of TTX in puffer fish. This LC-MS-MS method showed good sensitivity as limits of detection (LOD) of $0.03{\sim}0.08{\mu}g/g$ and limits of quantification (LOQ) of $0.10{\sim}0.25{\mu}g/g$. The linearity ($r^2$) of tetrodotoxin were 0.9986~0.9997, the recovery were 80.9~103.0% and the relative standard deviations (RSD) were 4.3~13.0%. The correlation coefficient between the mouse bioassay and LC/MS/MS method was higher than 0.95.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.53-61
• /
• 2014

Background and Objectives : Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma(ATC) is a rare but highly aggressive thyroid malignancy that is associated with an extremely poor survival despite the best multidisciplinary care. BRAF(V600E) mutation is detected in about a quarter of ATC, but unlike its high treatment response to selective BRAF inhibitor (PLX4032) in metastatic melanoma, the treatment response of ATC is reported to be low. The purpose of this study is to investigate the innate resistance mechanism responsible for this low treatment response to BRAF inhibitor and its effect on epithelial-mesenchymal transition(EMT). Materials and Methods : Two ATP cell lines, 8505C and FRO were selected and treated with PLX4032 and its drug sensitivity and effects on cell migration and EMT were examined and compared. Further investigation on the changes in signals responsible for the different treatment response to PLX4032 was carried out and the same experiment was performed on both orthotopic and ectopic xenograft mouse models. Results : FRO cell line was more sensitive to PLX4032 treatment compared to 8505C cell line. The resistance to BRAF inhibition in 8505C was due to increased expression of EGFR. Effective inhibition of both EGFR and p-AKT was achieved after dual treatment with BRAF inhibitor(PLX4032) and EGFR inhibitor(Erlotinib). Similar results were confirmed on in vivo study. Conclusion : EGFR-mediated reactivation of the PI3K/AKT pathway and MAPK pathway contributes to the relative insensitivity of BRAF(V600E) mutant ATC cells to PLX4032. Dual inhibition of BRAF and EGFR leads to sustained treatment response including cell invasiveness.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
• /
• v.49 no.6
• /
• pp.411-419
• /
• 2016

Purpose: Dysregulation of adipokines caused by excess adipose tissue has been implicated in the development of obesity-related metabolic diseases. This study evaluated the effects of mugwort (Artemisia princeps Pampanini) ethanol extract on lipid metabolic changes, insulin resistance, adipokine balance, and body fat reduction in obese rats. Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed either a control diet (NC), high-fat diet (HF, 40% kcal from fat), or high-fat diet with 1% mugwort extract (HFM) for 6 weeks. Results: Epididymal and retroperitoneal fat mass increased in the HF group compared with the NC group, and epididymal fat mass was reduced in the HFM group (p < 0.05). No difference was observed in serum levels of total cholesterol (TC) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) among the groups. However, triglyceride (TG), TG/HDL-C ratio, and TC/HDL-C ratio increased in the HF group and significantly decreased in the HFM group. TG and TC levels in the liver were significantly higher in the HF group, whereas these levels were significantly reduced in the HFM group. HF rats had lower insulin sensitivity as indicated by increased homeostasis model assessment of the insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) value. HOMA-IR values significantly decreased in the HFM group. Adiponectin levels were higher in NC rats, and their leptin and PAI-1 levels were lower. Relative balance of adipokines was reversed in the HF group, with lower adiponectin levels but higher leptin and PAI-1 levels. In contrast, the HFM group maintained balance of adiponectin/leptin and adiponectin/PAI-1 levels similar to NC by reducing leptin and PAI-1 levels. Conclusion: Overall data indicated that mugwort extract can be effective in alleviating metabolic dislipidemia, insulin resistance, and adipokine dysregulation induced by a high-fat diet.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.190-203
• /
• 2015

VRI(Vulnerability-Resilience Index), which is defined as a function of 3 variables: climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, has been quantified for the case of Typhoon which is one of the extreme weathers that will become more serious as climate change proceeds. Because VRI is only indicating the relative importance of vulnerability between regions, the VRI quantification is prerequisite for the effective adaptation policy for climate in Korea. For this purpose, damage statistics such as amount of damage, occurrence frequency, and major damaged districts caused by Typhoon over the past 20 years, has been employed. According to the VRI definition, we first calculated VRI over every district in the case of both with and without weighting factors of climate exposure proxy variables. For the quantitative estimation of weighting factors, we calculated correlation coefficients (R) for each of the proxy variables against damage statistics of Typhoon, and then used R as weighting factors of proxy variables. The results without applying weighting factors indicates some biases between VRI and damage statistics in some regions, but most of biases has been improved by applying weighting factors. Finally, due to the relations between VRI and damage statistics, we are able to quantify VRI expressed as a unit of KRW, showing that VRI=1 is approximately corresponding to 500 hundred million KRW. This methodology of VRI quantification employed in this study, can be also practically applied to the number of future climate scenario studies over Korea.

• Atmosphere
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.347-356
• /
• 2016

Radiosonde is an observation equipment that measures pressure (geopotential height), temperature, relative humidity and wind by being launched up from the ground. Radiosonde data which serves as an important element of weather forecast and research often causes a bias in a model output due to accuracy and sensitivity between the different manufacturers. Although Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) and several institutes have conducted routine and intensive radiosonde observations, very few studies have been done before on the characteristics of radiosonde performance. Analyzing radiosonde observation data without proper understanding of the unique nature of those sensors may lead to a significant bias in the analysis of results. To evaluate performance and reliability of radiosonde, we analyzed the differences between two sensors made by the different manufacturers, which have been used in the campaign of Experiment on Snow Storm At Yeongdong (ESSAY). We improved a couple of methods to launch the balloon being attached with the sensors. Further we examined cloud-layer impacts on temperature and humidity differences for the analysis of both sensors' performance among various weather conditions, and also compared daytime and nighttime profiles to understand temporal dependence of meteorological sensors. The overall results showed that there are small but consistent biases in both temperature and humidity between different manufactured sensors, which could eventually secure reliable precisions of both sensors, irrespective of accuracy. This study would contribute to an improved sounding of atmospheric vertical states through development and improvement of the meteorological sensors.

• Archives of Pharmacal Research
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.136-143
• /
• 2001

Fumonisins are specific inhibitors of ceramide synthase in sphingolipid metabolism. An alteration in sphingolipid metabolism as a result of fumonisin exposure is related to cell death (Yoo et al., 1992). The objective of this study was to investigate whether elevated free sphinganine levels are related to the sensitivity of cultured cells to fumonisin exposure. Fumonisin $B_1$ elevated the intracellular free sphinganine concentraions in both LLC-$PK_1$ and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. However, CHO cells are resistant to fumonisin cytotoxicity at 50${u}m$, while LLC-$PK_1$ cells are sensitive at concentrations greater than 357M. The intracellular concentration of free sphinganine in LLC-$PK_1$ cells treated at 50${u}m$ fumonisin $B_1$ for 72 h was approximately 1450 pmol/mg protein relative to the 37 pmol observed in the control culture. Under the same conditions, the population of apoptotic cells in the 50${u}m$ fumonisin $B_1$-treated culture was approximately 37% of the total compared to 12% in the control. The caspase III-like activity after 72 h in the 50${\mu}$M fumonisin $B_1$-exposed culture Increased to approximately 50 $pmol/mg$ protein/hr compared to 6 $pmol/mg$ protein/hr in the control. L-cycloserine, a serine palmitoyltransferase inhibitory reduced the fumonisin $B_1$-stimulated caspase III-like activity down to the control level. Under the same culture conditions, the intracellular concentration of free sphinganine after-cycloserine plus fumonisin $B_1$ treatment was 140 pmol/mg protein compared to 1450 $pmol/mg$ protein in fumonisin $B_1$ alone. The intracellular concentration of free sphinganine in CHO cells treated with 50${u}m$ fumonisin $B_1$ for 72 h was al)proximately 460 pmol/mg protein, indicating that the mass amount of elevated free sphinganine in the CHO cells was about 32% of that in LLC-$PK_1$ cells. Adding exogenous sphinganine to the CHO cells along with 50${u}m$ fumonisin $B_1$ treatment for 72 h caused both necrosis and apoptosis. In conclusion, the elevated endogenous sphinganine acts as a contributing factor to the fumonisin-induced cell death.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.14 no.8
• /
• pp.245-252
• /
• 2016

The purpose of this study is to make up for missing of weather informations from ASOS and AWS using artificial neural networks. We collected temperature, relative humidity and wind velocity for August during 5-yr (2011-2015) and sample designed artificial neural networks, assuming the Seoul weather station was missing. The result of sensitivity study on number of epoch shows that early stopping appeared at 2,000 epochs. Correlation between observation and prediction was higher than 0.6, especially temperature and humidity was higher than 0.9, 0.8 respectively. RMSE decreased gradually and training time increased exponentially with respect to increase of number of epochs. The predictability at 40 epoch was more than 80% effect on of improved results by the time the early stopping. It is expected to make it possible to use more detailed weather information via the rapid missing complemented by quick learning time within 2 seconds.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.35 no.3
• /
• pp.240-248
• /
• 1991

The regioselectivity in the nitrosation of seven N-methyl-N'-substituted phenylureas ($CH_3NHCONHC_6H_4-G$; G = H, p-CH$_3$, m-CH$_3$, m-CH$_3$O, p-F, m-F, m-Br) was examined using NaNO$_2$ and 4 different acids (diluted HCl, HCOOH, CH$_3$COOH, CF$_3$COOH). In all cases, the two regioisomeric products, N-nitroso-N-methyl-N'-substituted phenylureas (A) and N'-nitroso-N-methyl-N'-substituted phenylureas (B) were observed to be formed as major products and product ratios were determined by the integration of their methyl peaks in $^1$H-NMR. Electron donating substitutent(G) on phenyl of the ureas generally led to increase the ratio of B to A. The data have revealed that the relative sensitivity of the nitrosonium species (HONO, HCOONO, CH$_3$COONO, CF$_3$COONO) toward the change of electron density on nitrogen with phenyl substitutents are 1.00 : 0.93 : 0.78 : > ∼ 0.7.

• Atmosphere
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.111-126
• /
• 2016

In the numerical weather model, surface properties can be defined by various parameters such as terrain height, landuse, surface albedo, soil moisture, surface emissivity, roughness length and so on. And these parameters need to be improved in the Seoul metropolitan area that established high-rise and complex buildings by urbanization at a recent time. The surface roughness length map is developed from digital elevation model (DEM) and it is implemented to the high-resolution numerical weather (WISE-WRF) model. Simulated results from WISE-WRF model are analyzed the relationship between meteorological variables to changes in the surface roughness length. Friction speed and wind speed are improved with various surface roughness in urban, these variables affected to temperature and relative humidity and hence the surface roughness length will affect to the precipitation and Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) height. When surface variables by the WISE-WRF model are validated with Automatic Weather System (AWS) observations, NEW experiment is able to simulate more accurate than ORG experiment in temperature and wind speed. Especially, wind speed is overestimated over $2.5m\;s^{-1}$ on some AWS stations in Seoul and surrounding area but it improved with positive correlation and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) below $2.5m\;s^{-1}$ in whole area. There are close relationship between surface roughness length and wind speed, and the change of surface variables lead to the change of location and duration of precipitation. As a result, the accuracy of WISE-WRF model is improved with the new surface roughness length retrieved from DEM, and its surface roughness length is important role in the high-resolution WISE-WRF model. By the way, the result in this study need various validation from retrieved the surface roughness length to numerical weather model simulations with observation data.