• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.808-817
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• 2011

Because of its elevated cellulolytic activity, the filamentous fungus Trichoderma harzianum has a considerable potential in biomass hydrolysis applications. Trichoderma harzianum cellobiohydrolase I (ThCBHI), an exoglucanase, is an important enzyme in the process of cellulose degradation. Here, we report an easy single-step ion-exchange chromatographic method for purification of ThCBHI and its initial biophysical and biochemical characterization. The ThCBHI produced by induction with microcrystalline cellulose under submerged fermentation was purified on DEAE-Sephadex A-50 media and its identity was confirmed by mass spectrometry. The ThCBHI biochemical characterization showed that the protein has a molecular mass of 66 kDa and pI of 5.23. As confirmed by smallangle X-ray scattering (SAXS), both full-length ThCBHI and its catalytic core domain (CCD) obtained by digestion with papain are monomeric in solution. Secondary structure analysis of ThCBHI by circular dichroism revealed ${\alpha}$- helices and ${\beta}$-strands contents in the 28% and 38% range, respectively. The intrinsic fluorescence emission maximum of 337 nm was accounted for as different degrees of exposure of ThCBHI tryptophan residues to water. Moreover, ThCBHI displayed maximum activity at pH 5.0 and temperature of $50^{\circ}C$ with specific activities against Avicel and p-nitrophenyl-${\beta}$-D-cellobioside of 1.25 U/mg and 1.53 U/mg, respectively.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2003

A solar radiation model was used to investigate the UV radiation at the surface offing Sejong Station in West Antarctica. The results calculated by this model were compared with the values measured by UV-Biometer and UV-A meter during 1999-2000. In this study, the parameterization of solar radiative transfer process was based on Chou and Lee(1996). The total ozone amounts measured by Breve. Ozone Spectrophotometer and the aerosol amounts by Nakajima et al.(1996) was used as the input data of the solar radiative transfer model. And the surface albedo is assumed to be 0.20 in summer and 0.85 in winter. The sensitivity test of solar radiative transfer model was done with the variation of total ozone, aerosol amount, and surface albedo. When the cosine of solar zenith angle is 0.3, Erythemal UV-B radiation decreased 73% with the 200% increase of total ozone from 100 DU to 300 DU, but the decrease of UV-A radiation is about 1%. Also, for the same solar zenith angle, UV-A radiation was decreased 31.0% with the variation of aerosol optical thickness from 0.0 to 0.3 and Erythemal UV-B radiation was decreased only 6.1%. The increase of Erythemal W-B radiation with the variation of surface albedo was twice that of UV-A increase. The surface Erythemal UV-B and UV-A radiation calculated by solar raditive transfer model were compared with the measured values fer the relatively clear day at King Sejong Station in West Antarctica. The model calculated Erythemal UV-B radiation at the surface coincide well with the measured values except for cloudy days. But the difference between the model calculated UV-A radiation and the measured value at the surface was large because of cloud scattering effect. So, the cloud property data is needed to calculate the UV radiation more exactly at King Sejong Station in West Antarctica.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.8.1-8.1
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• 2011

Nanocrystalline titanium dioxide ($TiO_2$) materials have been widely used as an electron collector in DSSC. This is required to have an extremely high porosity and surface area such that the dye can be sufficiently adsorbed and be electronically interconnected, resulting in the generation of a high photocurrent within cells. In particular, their geometrical structures and crystalline phase have been extensively investigated as important issues in improving its photovoltaic efficiency. In this study, we present a new strategy to fabricate a photoelectrode having a periodic structured $TiO_2$ film templated from 1D or 3D polystyrene (PS) microspheres array. Monodisperse PS spheres of various radiuses were used for colloidal array on FTO glasses and two types of photoelectrode structures with different $TiO_2$ materials were investigated respectively. One is the igloo-shaped electrode prepared by $TiO_2$ deposition by RF-sputtering onto 2D microsphere-templated substrates. At the interface between the film and substrate, there are voids formed by the decomposition of PS microspheres during the calcination step. These holes might be expected to play the predominant roles as scattering spherical voids to promote a light harvesting effect, a spacious structure for electrolytes with higher viscosity and effective paths for electron transfer. Additionally the nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ phase prepared by the RF-sputtering method was previously reported to improve the electron drift mobility within $TiO_2$ electrodes. This yields solar cells with a cell efficiency of 2.45% or more at AM 1.5 illumination, which is a very remarkable result, considering its $TiO_2$ electrode thickness (<2 ${\mu}m$). This study can be expanded to obtain higher cell efficiency by higher dye loading through the increase of surface area or multi-layered stacking. The other is the inverse opal photonic crystal electrode prepared by titania particles infusion within 3D colloidal arrays. To obtain the enlargement of ordered area and high quality of crystallinity, the synthesis of titania particles coated with a organic thin layer were applied instead of sol-gel process using the $TiO_2$ precursors. They were dispersed so well in most solvents without aggregates and infused successfully within colloidal array structures. This ordered mesoporous structure provides the large surface area leading to the enough adsorption of dye molecules and have an light harvesting effect due to the photonic band gap properties (back-and-forth reflection effects within structures). A major advantage of this colloidal array template method is that the pore size and its distribution within $TiO_2$ photoelectrodes are determined by those of latex beads, which can be controlled easily. These materials may have promising potentials for future applications of membrane, sensor and so on as well as solar cells.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.43-54
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• 2018

Images taken in haze weather are characteristic of low contrast and poor visibility. The process of reconstructing clear-weather image from a hazy image is called dehazing. The main challenge of image dehazing is to estimate the transmission map or depth map for an input hazy image. In this paper, we propose a single image dehazing method by utilizing the Generative Adversarial Network(GAN) for accurate depth map estimation. The proposed GAN model is trained to learn a nonlinear mapping between the input hazy image and corresponding depth map. With the trained model, first the depth map of the input hazy image is estimated and used to compute the transmission map. Then a guided filter is utilized to preserve the important edge information of the hazy image, thus obtaining a refined transmission map. Finally, the haze-free image is recovered via atmospheric scattering model. Although the proposed GAN model is trained on synthetic indoor images, it can be applied to real hazy images. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior dehazing results against the state-of-the-art algorithms on both the real hazy images and the synthetic hazy images, in terms of quantitative performance and visual performance.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.642-652
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• 2014

The synthesis of octenyl succinyl ${\beta}$-gucan (OSA-${\beta}$-glucan) was carried out and its interfacial properties at the oil-water interface and in emulsion systems were investigated. An aqueous ethanol system as a reaction media was used to facilitate the synthesis process; 10% (w/w) ethanol found to be the best as it showed a maximum degree of substitution (DS: 0.0132). FT-IR showed a characteristic absorption spectrum at $1736cm^{-1}$, indicating the esterification of octenyl succinyl groups to ${\beta}$-glucan backbone. As for interfacial tension measurements, it was decreased with increasing concentration of OSA-${\beta}$-glucan in the aqueous phase and when NaCl was added to aqueous OSA-${\beta}$-glucan solution in the range of 0.01 M to 0.1 M and also when pH was raised (pH 3 ~ pH 9). In systems of emulsion stabilized with OSA-${\beta}$-glucan, fat globule size found to decrease with increasing concentration of OSA-${\beta}$-glucan, showing a critical value of about $0.32{\mu}m$ at 0.5 wt%. When the OSA-${\beta}$-glucan emulsions were stored, it was found that fat globule size was increased with storage time and particularly pronounced increase was observed in emulsion with 1% OSA-${\beta}$-glucan, possibly due to depletion flocculation. Results of creaming stability evaluated by light scattering technique showed that it was more stable in emulsions containing smaller fat globule size. Surface load of OSA-${\beta}$-glucan in emulsions increased with increasing concentration of OSA-${\beta}$-glucan, suggesting a multilayer adsorption.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.347-354
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• 1994

The structural change and magnetic properties of mechanically milled Fe-N and Mn-Al alloy powders have been investigated by XRD, TEM, VSM, $M\"{o}ssbauer$ spectroscopy and inelastic neutron scattering measurements. During milling of ${\gamma}'-Fe_{4}N$ powders, and fcc ${\gamma}'-Fe_{4}N$ phase is transformed to a bct ${\alpha}'-Fe(N)$ phase by stress-induced martensitic transformation, being accompanied by an initial increase in saturation magnetization. During annealing the bct ${\alpha}'-Fe(N)$ nanocrystalline phase which is obtained by mechanical grinding for a long time, an ${\alpha}'-Fe_{16}N_{2}$ phase partially appears as an intermediate phase at 673~773 K, causing an increase in saturation magnetization. During milling of Mn-45, 70 and 85 at.% Al mixed powders, Al atoms are partially solubilized into an ${\alpha}-Mn$ phase. The Al supersaturated ${\alpha}-Mn-type$ phases change from paramagnetic to ferromagnetic : the saturation magnetization is 11 emu/g for the as-milled Mn-70 at.% Al powders. Moreover, by removing almost all Al atoms from the as-milled Mn-85 at.% Al powders using chemical leaching, the saturation magnetization increases up to 36 emu/g. The above bct ${\alpha}'-Fe(N)$ and ferromagnetic ${\alpha}-Mn$ type alloys are the magnetic materials found for the first time, by using the present mechanochemical process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.16-16
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• 2010

GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are attracting great interest as candidates for next-generation solid-state lighting, because of their long lifetime, small size, high efficacy, and low energy consumption. However, for general illumination applications, the external quantum efficiency of LEDs, determined by the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) and the light extraction efficiency, must be further increased. The IQE is determined by crystal quality and epitaxial layer structure and high value of IQE more than 70% for blue LEDs have been already reported. However, there is much room for improvement of light extraction efficiency because most of the generated photons from active layer remain inside LEDs by total internal reflection at the interface of semiconductor with air due to the high refractive index difference between LEDs epilayer (for GaN, n=2.5) and air (n=1). The light confining in LEDs will be reabsorbed by the metal electrode or active layer, reducing the efficacy of LEDs. Here, we present the first demonstration of enhanced light extraction by forming a MgO nano-pyramids structure on the surface of vertical-LEDs. The MgO nano-pyramids structure was successfully fabricated at room temperature using conventional electron-beam evaporation without any additional process. The nano-sized pyramids of MgO are formed on the surface during growth due to anisotropic characteristics between (111) and (200) plane of MgO. The ZnO layer with quarter-wavelength in thickness is inserted between GaN and MgO layers to increase the critical angle for total internal reflection, because the refractive index of ZnO (n=1.94) could be matched between GaN (n=2.5) and MgO (n=1.73). The MgO nano-pyramids structure and ZnO refractive-index modulation layer enhanced the light extraction efficiency ofV-LEDs with by 49%, comparing with the V-LEDs with a flat n-GaN surface. The angular-dependent emission intensity shows the enhanced light extraction through the side walls of V-LEDs as well as through the top surface of the n-GaN, because of the increase in critical angle for total internal reflection as well as light scattering at the MgO nano-pyramids surface.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2000

The morphological changes in normal and weathering hair shafts of the human scalp were investigated by using the transmission and scanning electron microscopes. The hair shaft composed of cuticular layer, cortex and medula. The surface of normal hairs are smooth and covered by imbricated cuticular scales. The cuticular layer consists of five to seven cuticle cells. These cells, which are flat and thin, measuring about $100{\mu}m$ long and $0.4{\mu}m$ thick, appears intercellular membrane complex in diameter 25 nm. The cortex composed of melanin granules and cornified cells, which multicomponent concentric microfibrils in diameter about 8 nm give rise to macrofibrils in diameter $0.5{\mu}m$ to $0.8{\mu}m$ encased in limiting membrane. The melanin granules are spherical shaped about $0.5{\mu}m$ in size and scattered between macrofibrils. The medulla in the normal hairs are $16{\mu}m$ in diameter centrally region of cortex. Normal hair shafts undergo progressive degenerative changes due to a variety of environmental insults. In the initial weathering process of hair, the cuticular scales became irregularly raised and broken, and then cuticle cells formed cytoplasmic vacuolation, following dissociated intercellular membrane complex, ultimately entirely lost and nuded cortex. Occasionally, transverse fissures were seen at hair shafts indicating that the hairs were deteriorated. Complete removal of the cuticular layer in the heavily damaged cortex portions appeared splitting of the cortical cell into its macrofibrils and scattering of melanin granules.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.222-229
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• 2005

A simplified one-dimensional model STELLA was used to predict soil water movement in lllinois corn fields using soil water balance sheets. It offered the potential to increase understanding of soil nitrate and agrochemical leaching process. The model accounted for aU possible annual inputs and outputs of water from a closed ecosystem as represented by corn fields. Water inputs included precipitation, while outputs included runoff, transpiration, evaporation and drainage. To run the model required daily inputs of two climatic data measurements such as daily precipitation and pan evaporation. Vertical water flow through the soil profile was calculated with first order equation including the difference in hydraulic conductivity and matric potential at the various soil types. The output results included daily changes of water content in the soil layers and daily amount of water losses including run-off, percolation, transpiration. This model was verified using Illinois corn field data for the soil water content measured by neutron scattering methods through 1992 to 1994 growing seasons. Approximately 22 to 78% of simulated water contents agreed with the measured values and their standard deviation, depending on soil types, whereas 30 to 70% of simulated water values agreed with the measured values and their standard deviations depending on soil layers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.249-249
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• 2013

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a sensitive approach to detect and to identify a variety of molecules. To enhance the Raman signal, optimization of the gap between nanostructures is quite important. One-dimensional materials such as nanowires, nanotubes, and nanograsses have great potential to be used in SERS due to their unique sizes and shape dependent characteristics. In this study we investigate a simple way to fabricate SERS substrates based on randomly grown copper oxide (CuO) nanowires. CuO nanograss is fabricated on pre-cleaned Cu foils. Cu oxidized in an ammonium ambient solution of 2.5 M NaOH and 0.1 M $(NH_4)_2S_2O_8$ at $4^{\circ}C$ for 10, 30, and 60 minutes. Then, Cu(OH)2 nanostructures are formed and dried at $180^{\circ}C$ for 2 h. With the drying process, the Cu(OH)2 nanostructure is transformed to CuO nanograss by dehydration reaction. CuO nanograss are grown randomly on Cu foil with the average length of 10 ${\mu}m$ and the average diameter of a 100 nm. CuO nanograsses are covered by Ag with various thicknesses from 10 to 30 nm using a thermal evaporator. Then, we immerse uncoated and Ag coated CuO nanowire samples of various oxidation times in a 0.001M methanol-based 4-mercaptopyridine (4-Mpy) in order to evaluate SERS enhancement. Raman shift and SERS enhancement are measured using a Raman spectrometer (Horiba, LabRAM ARAMIS Spectrometer) with the laser wavelength of 532 nm. Raman scattering is believed to be enhanced by the interaction between CuO nanograss and Ag island film. The gaps between Ag covered CuO nanograsses are diverse from <10 nm at the bottom to ~200 nm at the top of nanograsses. SERS signal are improved where the gaps are minimized to near 10s of nanometers. There are many spots that provide sufficiently narrow gap between the structures on randomly grown CuO nanograss surface. Then we may find optimal enhancement of Raman signal using the mapping data of average results. Fabrication of CuO nanograss based on a solution method is relatively simple and fast so this result can potentially provide a path toward cost effective fabrication of SERS substrate for sensing applications.