• Title/Summary/Keyword: Single-phase

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Solution Structure of 21-Residue Peptide (Asp 84-Leu 104), Functional Site derived from $p16^{INK4A}$ ($p16^{INK4A}$ 단백질 활성부위(Asp 84-Leu 104)의 용액상 구조)

  • Lee, Ho-Jin;Ahn, In-Ae;Ro, Seonggu;Choi, Young-Sang;Yoon, Chang No;Lee, Kang-Bong
    • Analytical Science and Technology
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.494-503
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    • 2000
  • A 21-residue peptide corresponding to amino acids 84-104 of $p16^{INK4A}$, the tumor suppressor, has been synthesized and its structure was studied by Circular Dichroism, $^1H$ NMR spectroscopy and molecular modeling. A p16-derived peptide (84-104 amino acids) forming stable complex with CDK4 and CDK6 inhibits the ability of CDK4/6 to phosphorylate pRb in vitro, and blocks cell-cycle progression through G1/S phase as shown in the function of the full-length p16. Its NMR spectral data including NOEs, $^3J_{NH-H{\alpha}}$ coupling constants, $C_{\alpha}H$ chemical shift, the average amplitude of amide chemical shift oscillation and temperature coefficients indicate that the secondary structure of a p16-derived peptide is similar to that of the same region of full-length p16, which consists of helix-turn-helix structure. The 3-D distance geometry structure based on NOE-hased distance and torsion angle restraints is characterized by ${\gamma}$-turn conformation between residues $Gly^{89}-Leu^{91}$(${\varphi}_{i+1}=-79.8^{\circ}$, ${\varphi}_{i+1}=60.2^{\circ}$) as evidenced in a single crystal structure for the corresponding region of p18 or p19, but is undefined at both the N and C termini. This compact and rigid ${\gamma}$-turn region is considered to stabilize the structure of p16-derived peptide and serve as a site recognizing cyelin dependent kinase, and this well-defined ${\gamma}$-turn structure could be utilized for the design of anti-cancer drug candidates.

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Organization and function of shoot apical meristem affecting growth and development in plants (식물의 생장과 발달에 영향을 미치는 슈트 정단분열조직의 체제와 기능)

  • Lee, Kyu Bae
    • Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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    • v.41 no.4
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    • pp.180-193
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    • 2014
  • In plants, a shoot apex has a small region known as the shoot apical meristem (SAM) having a group of dividing (initiating) cells. The SAM gives rise to all the groundabove structures of plants throughout their lifetime, and thus it plays important role in growth and development of plants. This review describes theories to explain the SAM organization and function developed over the last 250 years. Since in 1759 German botanist C. F. Wolff has described firstly the SAM, in 1858 Swiss botanist C. N${\ddot{a}}$geli proposed the apical cell theory from the observation of a large single apical cell in the SAM of seedless vascular plants: however, this view was recognized to be unsuitable to seed plants. In 1868, German botanist J. Hanstein suggested the histogen theory: this concept subdividing the SAM into dermatogen, periblem, and plerome was unable to generally apply to seed plants. In 1924, German botanist A. Schmidt proposed the tunica-corpus theory from the examination of angiosperm SAM in which two parts show different planes of cell division: this theory was proved to be not suitable to gymnosperm SAM, not have stable surface tunica layer. In 1938, American botanist A. Foster described zones in gymnosperm SAM based on the cytohistologic differentiation and thus called it a cytohistological zonation theory. With works by E. Gifford, in 1954, this zonation pattern was demonstrated to be also applicable to angiosperm SAM. As another theory, in 1952 French botanist R. Buvat proposed the m${\acute{e}}$rist${\grave{e}}$me d'attente (waiting meristem) theory: however, this concept was confuted because of its negation of function during vegetative growth phase to central initial cells. Rescent studies with Arabidopsis thaliana have found that formation and maintenance of the SAM are under the control of selected genes: SHOOTMERISTEMLESS (STM) gene forms the SAM, and WUSCHEL (WUS) and CLAVATA (CLV) genes function in maintaining the SAM; signaling between WUS and CLV genes act through a negative feedback loop.

A Study on the Analysis of Five Artificial Sweetners in Beverages by HPLC/MS/MS (HPLC/MS/MS를 이용한 음료류 중 인공감미료 동시분석에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Seong-Bong;Yong, Kum-Chan;Hwang, Sun-Il;Kim, Young-Su;Jung, You-Jung;Seo, Mi-Young;Lee, Chang-Hee;Sung, Jin-Hee;Yoon, Mi-Hye
    • Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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    • v.29 no.4
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    • pp.327-333
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    • 2014
  • A method for analysis of five artificial sweetners (sodium saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame-K, sucralose, cyclamate) in beverage samples was developed using high-performance liquid chromatography/triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS/MS). The method uses a single-step dilution for sample preperation. Seperation was achieved on a $C_{18}$ column ($2.1{\times}150mm$, $3.5{\mu}m$) with A- 2% methanol (1 mM ammonium acetate), B-95% methanol (1 mM ammonium acetate) as mobile phase with gradient mode. The quantitation of target compounds was performed by external calibration in selected reaction monitorning (SRM) mode. The coefficient of determination of calibration curve for sodium saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame-K, sucralose and cyclamate were 0.9957, 0.9991, 0.9943, 0.9982 and 0.9948, respectively. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantitation (LOQs) were in the range of 0.001~0.022 mg/L and 0.004~0.073 mg/L, repectively. Recoveries for beverage samples were in the range of 92.76~113.50% with RSD < 10.91%. The method has applied to the determination of the five sweetners in 102 beverage samples. Three artificial sweetners-aspartame, acesulfame-K, sucralose were detected from 42 samples. Sodium saccharin and cyclamate were not detected in all samples.

Recent research activities on hybrid rocket in Japan

  • Harunori, Nagata
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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    • 2011.04a
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    • pp.1-2
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    • 2011
  • Hybrid rockets have lately attracted attention as a strong candidate of small, low cost, safe and reliable launch vehicles. A significant topic is that the first commercially sponsored space ship, SpaceShipOne vehicle chose a hybrid rocket. The main factors for the choice were safety of operation, system cost, quick turnaround, and thrust termination. In Japan, five universities including Hokkaido University and three private companies organized "Hybrid Rocket Research Group" from 1998 to 2002. Their main purpose was to downsize the cost and scale of rocket experiments. In 2002, UNISEC (University Space Engineering Consortium) and HASTIC (Hokkaido Aerospace Science and Technology Incubation Center) took over the educational and R&D rocket activities respectively and the research group dissolved. In 2008, JAXA/ISAS and eleven universities formed "Hybrid Rocket Research Working Group" as a subcommittee of the Steering Committee for Space Engineering in ISAS. Their goal is to demonstrate technical feasibility of lowcost and high frequency launches of nano/micro satellites into sun-synchronous orbits. Hybrid rockets use a combination of solid and liquid propellants. Usually the fuel is in a solid phase. A serious problem of hybrid rockets is the low regression rate of the solid fuel. In single port hybrids the low regression rate below 1 mm/s causes large L/D exceeding a hundred and small fuel loading ratio falling below 0.3. Multi-port hybrids are a typical solution to solve this problem. However, this solution is not the mainstream in Japan. Another approach is to use high regression rate fuels. For example, a fuel regression rate of 4 mm/s decreases L/D to around 10 and increases the loading ratio to around 0.75. Liquefying fuels such as paraffins are strong candidates for high regression fuels and subject of active research in Japan too. Nakagawa et al. in Tokai University employed EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) to modify viscosity of paraffin based fuels and investigated the effect of viscosity on regression rates. Wada et al. in Akita University employed LTP (Low melting ThermoPlastic) as another candidate of liquefying fuels and demonstrated high regression rates comparable to paraffin fuels. Hori et al. in JAXA/ISAS employed glycidylazide-poly(ethylene glycol) (GAP-PEG) copolymers as high regression rate fuels and modified the combustion characteristics by changing the PEG mixing ratio. Regression rate improvement by changing internal ballistics is another stream of research. The author proposed a new fuel configuration named "CAMUI" in 1998. CAMUI comes from an abbreviation of "cascaded multistage impinging-jet" meaning the distinctive flow field. A CAMUI type fuel grain consists of several cylindrical fuel blocks with two ports in axial direction. The port alignment shifts 90 degrees with each other to make jets out of ports impinge on the upstream end face of the downstream fuel block, resulting in intense heat transfer to the fuel. Yuasa et al. in Tokyo Metropolitan University employed swirling injection method and improved regression rates more than three times higher. However, regression rate distribution along the axis is not uniform due to the decay of the swirl strength. Aso et al. in Kyushu University employed multi-swirl injection to solve this problem. Combinations of swirling injection and paraffin based fuel have been tried and some results show very high regression rates exceeding ten times of conventional one. High fuel regression rates by new fuel, new internal ballistics, or combination of them require faster fuel-oxidizer mixing to maintain combustion efficiency. Nakagawa et al. succeeded to improve combustion efficiency of a paraffin-based fuel from 77% to 96% by a baffle plate. Another effective approach some researchers are trying is to use an aft-chamber to increase residence time. Better understanding of the new flow fields is necessary to reveal basic mechanisms of regression enhancement. Yuasa et al. visualized the combustion field in a swirling injection type motor. Nakagawa et al. observed boundary layer combustion of wax-based fuels. To understand detailed flow structures in swirling flow type hybrids, Sawada et al. (Tohoku Univ.), Teramoto et al. (Univ. of Tokyo), Shimada et al. (ISAS), and Tsuboi et al. (Kyushu Inst. Tech.) are trying to simulate the flow field numerically. Main challenges are turbulent reaction, stiffness due to low Mach number flow, fuel regression model, and other non-steady phenomena. Oshima et al. in Hokkaido University simulated CAMUI type flow fields and discussed correspondence relation between regression distribution of a burning surface and the vortex structure over the surface.

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The Heading Response of Field-grown Rice Varieties of Different Heading Ecotypes in Korea (벼 품종의 출수생태 특성에 따른 포장 출수 반응 분석)

  • Yang, Woonho;Kang, Shingu;Kim, Sukjin;Choi, Jong-Seo;Park, Jeong-Hwa
    • KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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    • v.63 no.4
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    • pp.282-293
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    • 2018
  • The heading response of rice varieties is determined by the combined effects of their basic vegetative phase (BVP), photoperiod-sensitivity (PS), and thermo-sensitivity (TS). This study was performed to analyze the effect of differences among heading ecotypes of rice on their heading response in the field. To do this, we investigated the heading response of 15 varieties grown under different day-length and temperature conditions in a phytotron. The characteristics of heading ecotypes were compared to the heading responses in the field-grown rice varieties that were used in the phytotron experiments. The ranges of these characteristics across the 15 varieties were 18 - 35 days for BVP, 12 - 61 days for PS, and 12 - 35 days for TS. In comparisons of coupled varieties that differed only in a single trait among BVP, PS, and TS, the variety with the longer BVP and that with the higher PS had a longer period from sowing to heading (DTH), while the variety with the higher TS had a shorter DTH. The comparative magnitude of DTH in the coupled varieties followed the PS trait when BVP and PS were involved, the BVP trait when BVP and TS were involved, and the PS trait when PS and TS were involved in the heading response of field-grown rice. When comparing the coupled varieties with different traits of the three examined factors, the heading response was consistent with the PS trait. The DTH in all 15 varieties was significantly correlated with the PS, and the DTH in 9 selected varieties with a relatively small PS was correlated with BVP. The reduced DTH of rice in the July 10 seeding treatment compared to those in the June 25 and May 11 seeding treatments was positively associated with PS, but not with TS. We concluded that the heading response of rice varieties under natural conditions in Korea is mainly governed by the PS trait and is also greatly affected by the BVP trait when the PS is small.

Development of A Material Flow Model for Predicting Nano-TiO2 Particles Removal Efficiency in a WWTP (하수처리장 내 나노 TiO2 입자 제거효율 예측을 위한 물질흐름모델 개발)

  • Ban, Min Jeong;Lee, Dong Hoon;Shin, Sangwook;Lee, Byung-Tae;Hwang, Yu Sik;Kim, Keugtae;Kang, Joo-Hyon
    • Journal of Wetlands Research
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    • v.24 no.4
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    • pp.345-353
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    • 2022
  • A wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is a major gateway for the engineered nano-particles (ENPs) entering the water bodies. However existing studies have reported that many WWTPs exceed the No Observed Effective Concentration (NOEC) for ENPs in the effluent and thus they need to be designed or operated to more effectively control ENPs. Understanding and predicting ENPs behaviors in the unit and \the whole process of a WWTP should be the key first step to develop strategies for controlling ENPs using a WWTP. This study aims to provide a modeling tool for predicting behaviors and removal efficiencies of ENPs in a WWTP associated with process characteristics and major operating conditions. In the developed model, four unit processes for water treatment (primary clarifier, bioreactor, secondary clarifier, and tertiary treatment unit) were considered. Additionally the model simulates the sludge treatment system as a single process that integrates multiple unit processes including thickeners, digesters, and dewatering units. The simulated ENP was nano-sized TiO2, (nano-TiO2) assuming that its behavior in a WWTP is dominated by the attachment with suspendid solids (SS), while dissolution and transformation are insignificant. The attachment mechanism of nano-TiO2 to SS was incorporated into the model equations using the apparent solid-liquid partition coefficient (Kd) under the equilibrium assumption between solid and liquid phase, and a steady state condition of nano-TiO2 was assumed. Furthermore, an MS Excel-based user interface was developed to provide user-friendly environment for the nano-TiO2 removal efficiency calculations. Using the developed model, a preliminary simulation was conducted to examine how the solid retention time (SRT), a major operating variable affects the removal efficiency of nano-TiO2 particles in a WWTP.

How has 'Hakmun'(學問, learning) become converted into a modern concept? focused on 'gyeogchi'(格致) and 'gungni'(窮理) (학문(學問) 개념의 근대적 변환 - '격치(格致)', '궁리(窮理)' 개념을 중심으로 -)

  • Lee, Haeng-hoon
    • (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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    • no.37
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    • pp.377-410
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    • 2009
  • In the East Asian Confucianism society, Hakmun was aimed to bring human beings and nature into harmony, and to explore a unity between knowledge and conducts. For example, Neo-Confucianism aspired they could explain the human existence and society through a single concept of Iki(理氣, the basic principles and the atmospheric force of nature). In this philosophy, humanics and natural sciences had not been differentiated at all. The East-West cultural interchanges at the beginning of modernity caused a crack in the traditional academic concepts. Through the Hundred Days of Reform(變法自疆運動, a movement of Strenuous Efforts through Reforming the Law), the Western Affairs Movement(洋務運動) in China, Meiji Restoration(明治維新) in Japan, or Innovation Movements(開化運動) and the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement(愛國啓蒙運動) in Korea, the traditional meanings of Hakmun was degraded while it became a target of the criticism of the enlightenment movements. Accordingly, East Asians' perception of Hakmun rapidly began to change. Although there had been the Silhak(實學, practical science) movement in Korea, which tried to differentiate its conceptualization of Hakmun from that of Neo-Confucianism during the 18th and 19th century, the fundamental shift in meaning occurred with the influx of the modern Western culture. This change converted the ultimate objective of Hakmun as well as its methods and substances. The separation of humanics and natural sciences, rise in dignity of the technological sciences, and subdivision of learning into disciplines and their specialization were accelerated during the Korean enlightenment period. The inflow of the modern western science, humanized thought, and empiricism functioned as mediators in these phase and they caused an irreversible crack in the traditional academic thoughts. Confronting the western mode of knowledge, however, the East Asian intellectuals had to explain their new learning by using traditional terms and concepts; modification was unavoidable when they tried to explain the newly imported knowledge and concepts. This presentation focuses on the traditional concepts of 'gyeogchi'(格致, extending knowledge by investigating things) and 'gungni'(窮理, investigation of principles), pervasively used in philosophy, physics and many other fields of study. These concepts will mark the key point with which to trace changes of knowledge and to understand the way how the concept of Hakmun was converted into a modern one.

Effect of Cardanol Content on the Antibacterial Films Derived from Alginate-PVA Blended Matrix (알지네이트-폴리비닐알콜 블랜드 항균 필름 제조를 위한 카다놀 함량의 영향)

  • Ahn, Hee Ju;Kang, Kyung Soo;Song, Yun Ha;Lee, Da Hae;Kim, Mun Ho;Lee, Jae Kyoung;Woo, Hee Chul
    • Clean Technology
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    • v.28 no.1
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    • pp.24-31
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    • 2022
  • Petroleum-based plastics are used for various purposes and pose a significant threat to the earth's environment and ecosystem. Many efforts have been taken globally in different areas to find alternatives. As part of these efforts, this study manufactured alginate-based polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) blended films by casting from an aqueous solution prepared by mixing 10 wt% petroleum-based PVA with biodegradable, marine biomass-derived alginate. Glutaraldehyde was used as a cross-linking agent, and cardanol, an alkyl phenol-based bio-oil extracted from cashew nut shell, was added in the range of 0.1 to 2.0 wt% to grant antibacterial activity to the films. FTIR and TGA were performed to characterize the manufactured blended films, and the tensile strength, degree of swelling, and antibacterial activity were measured. Results obtained from the FTIR, TGA, and tensile strength test showed that alginate, the main component, was well distributed in the PVA by forming a matrix phase. The brittleness of alginate, a known weakness as a single component, and the low thermal durability of PVA were improved by cross-linking and hydrogen bonding of the functional groups between alginate and PVA. Addition of cardanol to the alginate-based PVA blend significantly improved the antibacterial activity against S. aureus and E. coli. The antibacterial performance was excellent with a death rate of 98% or higher for S. aureus and about 70% for E. coli at a contact time of 60 minutes. The optimal antibacterial activity of the alginate-PVA blended films was found with a cardanol content range between 0.1 to 0.5 wt%. These results show that cardanol-containing alginate-PVA blended films are suitable for use as various antibacterial materials, including as food packaging.

Screening of Natural Products for Anti-diabetic Activity and Analysis of Their Active Compounds (항당뇨 효능이 있는 천연물의 탐색 및 활성물질의 분석)

  • Hwa Sin Lee;Bo Bae Park;Sun Nyoung Yu;Min Ji Kim;Yun Jin Bae;Yi Rooney Lee;Ye Eun Lee;Si Yoon Kim;Yun Ho Shim;Soon Cheol Ahn
    • Journal of Life Science
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    • v.33 no.10
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    • pp.783-790
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    • 2023
  • Modern people have an increased incidence of metabolic diseases due to changed eating habits, and diabetes is considered the most significant metabolic disease. Given that existing diabetes treatments are accompanied by side effects, the aim of this study was to identify traditional natural products that have anti-diabetic activity. The potential anti-diabetic and antioxidant activities of natural products were examined using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging assay, α-glucosidase assay, and protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) inhibition assay. Methanol extracts of Ulmus davidiana var. japonica, Acer tegmentosum branches, Nelumbo nucifera seeds, and Carthamus tinctorius seeds were found to have high anti-diabetic activity and further fractionated with solvents using ethyl acetate and butanol. Consequently, the ethyl acetate fraction of C. tinctorius seeds (MG-11-E) with high α-glucosidase and PTP1B inhibitory activity was selected. MG-11-E was subjected to preparative thin layer chromatography, and fraction #6 showed high α-glucosidase and PTP1B inhibitory activity. Fraction #6 was analyzed and fractionated via high performance liquid chromatography with 50% methanol as the mobile phase, and anti-diabetic activity was observed in the sample that eluted after 4 min as a single peak. The α-glucosidase inhibitory activity exhibited by this sample seemed to be greater than the PTP1B inhibitory activity; thus, it was concluded that a greater anti-diabetic therapeutic effect may be achieved by combining this agent with natural products that inhibit PTP1B activity.

Transfer Learning using Multiple ConvNet Layers Activation Features with Principal Component Analysis for Image Classification (전이학습 기반 다중 컨볼류션 신경망 레이어의 활성화 특징과 주성분 분석을 이용한 이미지 분류 방법)

  • Byambajav, Batkhuu;Alikhanov, Jumabek;Fang, Yang;Ko, Seunghyun;Jo, Geun Sik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.205-225
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    • 2018
  • Convolutional Neural Network (ConvNet) is one class of the powerful Deep Neural Network that can analyze and learn hierarchies of visual features. Originally, first neural network (Neocognitron) was introduced in the 80s. At that time, the neural network was not broadly used in both industry and academic field by cause of large-scale dataset shortage and low computational power. However, after a few decades later in 2012, Krizhevsky made a breakthrough on ILSVRC-12 visual recognition competition using Convolutional Neural Network. That breakthrough revived people interest in the neural network. The success of Convolutional Neural Network is achieved with two main factors. First of them is the emergence of advanced hardware (GPUs) for sufficient parallel computation. Second is the availability of large-scale datasets such as ImageNet (ILSVRC) dataset for training. Unfortunately, many new domains are bottlenecked by these factors. For most domains, it is difficult and requires lots of effort to gather large-scale dataset to train a ConvNet. Moreover, even if we have a large-scale dataset, training ConvNet from scratch is required expensive resource and time-consuming. These two obstacles can be solved by using transfer learning. Transfer learning is a method for transferring the knowledge from a source domain to new domain. There are two major Transfer learning cases. First one is ConvNet as fixed feature extractor, and the second one is Fine-tune the ConvNet on a new dataset. In the first case, using pre-trained ConvNet (such as on ImageNet) to compute feed-forward activations of the image into the ConvNet and extract activation features from specific layers. In the second case, replacing and retraining the ConvNet classifier on the new dataset, then fine-tune the weights of the pre-trained network with the backpropagation. In this paper, we focus on using multiple ConvNet layers as a fixed feature extractor only. However, applying features with high dimensional complexity that is directly extracted from multiple ConvNet layers is still a challenging problem. We observe that features extracted from multiple ConvNet layers address the different characteristics of the image which means better representation could be obtained by finding the optimal combination of multiple ConvNet layers. Based on that observation, we propose to employ multiple ConvNet layer representations for transfer learning instead of a single ConvNet layer representation. Overall, our primary pipeline has three steps. Firstly, images from target task are given as input to ConvNet, then that image will be feed-forwarded into pre-trained AlexNet, and the activation features from three fully connected convolutional layers are extracted. Secondly, activation features of three ConvNet layers are concatenated to obtain multiple ConvNet layers representation because it will gain more information about an image. When three fully connected layer features concatenated, the occurring image representation would have 9192 (4096+4096+1000) dimension features. However, features extracted from multiple ConvNet layers are redundant and noisy since they are extracted from the same ConvNet. Thus, a third step, we will use Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to select salient features before the training phase. When salient features are obtained, the classifier can classify image more accurately, and the performance of transfer learning can be improved. To evaluate proposed method, experiments are conducted in three standard datasets (Caltech-256, VOC07, and SUN397) to compare multiple ConvNet layer representations against single ConvNet layer representation by using PCA for feature selection and dimension reduction. Our experiments demonstrated the importance of feature selection for multiple ConvNet layer representation. Moreover, our proposed approach achieved 75.6% accuracy compared to 73.9% accuracy achieved by FC7 layer on the Caltech-256 dataset, 73.1% accuracy compared to 69.2% accuracy achieved by FC8 layer on the VOC07 dataset, 52.2% accuracy compared to 48.7% accuracy achieved by FC7 layer on the SUN397 dataset. We also showed that our proposed approach achieved superior performance, 2.8%, 2.1% and 3.1% accuracy improvement on Caltech-256, VOC07, and SUN397 dataset respectively compare to existing work.