• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.81 no.3
• /
• pp.216-221
• /
• 2018

Background: The number of immigrants with tuberculosis (TB) increases each year in South Korea. Determining the transmission dynamics based on whole genome sequencing (WGS) to cluster the strains has been challenging. Methods: WGS, annotation refinement, and orthology assignment for the GenBank accession number acquisition were performed on two clinical isolates from Chinese immigrants. In addition, the genomes of the two isolates were compared with the genomes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates, from two native Korean and five native Chinese individuals using a phylogenetic topology tree based on the Multiple Alignment of Conserved Genomic Sequence with Rearrangements (Mauve) package. Results: The newly assigned accession numbers for two clinical isolates were CP020381.2 (a Korean-Chinese from Yanbian Province) and CP022014.1 (a Chinese from Shandong Province), respectively. Mauve alignment classified all nine TB isolates into a discriminative collinear set with matched regions. The phylogenetic analysis revealed a rooted phylogenetic tree grouping the nine strains into two lineages: strains from Chinese individuals and strains from Korean individuals. Conclusion: Phylogenetic trees based on the Mauve alignments were supposed to be useful in revealing the dynamics of TB transmission from immigrants in South Korea, which can provide valuable information for scaling up the TB screening policy for immigrants.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
• /
• v.22 no.5
• /
• pp.71.1-71.12
• /
• 2021

Background: African swine fever (ASF) is a hemorrhagic fever occurring in wild boars (Sus scrofa) and domestic pigs. The epidemic situation of ASF in South Korean wild boars has increased the risk of ASF in domestic pig farms. Although basic reproduction number (R₀) can be applied for control policies, it is challenging to estimate the R₀ for ASF in wild boars due to surveillance bias, lack of wild boar population data, and the effect of ASF-positive wild boar carcass on disease dynamics. Objectives: This study was undertaken to estimate the R₀ of ASF in wild boars in South Korea, and subsequently analyze the spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Methods: We detected the local transmission clusters using the spatiotemporal clustering algorithm, which was modified to incorporate the effect of ASF-positive wild boar carcass. With the assumption of exponential growth, R₀ was estimated for each cluster. The temporal change of the estimates and its association with the habitat suitability of wild boar were analyzed. Results: Totally, 22 local transmission clusters were detected, showing seasonal patterns occurring in winter and spring. Mean value of R₀ of each cluster was 1.54. The estimates showed a temporal increasing trend and positive association with habitat suitability of wild boar. Conclusions: The disease dynamics among wild boars seems to have worsened over time. Thus, in areas with a high elevation and suitable for wild boars, practical methods need to be contrived to ratify the control policies for wild boars.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.8-15
• /
• 2012

Adaptive transmission technique is an effective means to counter-measure rain attenation that is one of the most significant factors degrading link quality in satellite communication systems. This paper introduces a simulator for adaptive transmission technique to compensate rain attenuation. In the simulator, a dynamic rain attenuation model is loaded, which was developed to synthesize Korean rain attenuation dynamics at a frequency band of Ka. It is a Markov chain model with rain attenuation parameters extracted from the rain attenuation data measured per second. In addition, various transmission schemes are embedded so that a user defined simulations can be performed. This paper demonstrates simulation results of adaptive schemes in comprison with fixed schemes, and show the efficiency of the adaptive schemes to compensate the rain attenuation.

• Tribology and Lubricants
• /
• v.30 no.6
• /
• pp.337-342
• /
• 2014

The reduction of drag torque is an important research issue in terms of improving transmission efficiency. Drag torque in a wet clutch occurs because of the viscous drag generated by the transmission fluid in a narrow gap (clearance) between the friction plate and a separate plate. The objective of this paper is to observe the effects of the friction plate area and the clearance on the drag torque using finite element simulation. The two-phase flow of air and oil fluid is considered and modeled for the simulation. The simulation analysis reveals that as the rotational speed increases, the drag torque generally increases to a critical point and then decreases sharply at a high speed regime. The clearance between the two plates plays an important role in controlling drag torque peak. An increase in the clearance causes a decrease in shear stress; thus, the drag torque also decreases according to Newton's law of viscosity. An observation of the effect of the area of contact between transmission fluid and friction plate shows that the drag torque increases with the contact area. The flow vectors inside the flow channel present clear evidence that the velocity of the fluid flows is faster with a larger friction plate, that is, in the case of a larger contact area. Therefore, the optimum size of the friction plate should be determined carefully, considering both the clutch performance and drag reduction. It is expected that the results from this study can be very useful as a database for clutch design and to predict the drag torque for the initial design with respect to various clutch parameters.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2010.08a
• /
• pp.54-55
• /
• 2010

Vacancy defects in graphene can be created by electron or ion irradiation and those induce ripples which can change the electronic properties of graphene. Recently, the formation of defect structures such as vacancy defects and non-hexagonal rings has been reported in the high resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) of reduced graphene oxide [1]. In those HR-TEM images, it is noticed that the dislocations with pentagon-heptagon (5-7) pairs are formed and diffuses. Interestingly, it is also observed that two 5-7 pairs are separated and diffuse far away from each other. The separation of 5-7 pairs has been known to be due to their self-diffusion. However, from our tight-binding molecular dynamics simulation, it is found that the separation of 5-7 pairs is due to the diffusion of single vacancy defects and coalescence with 5-7 pairs. The diffusion and coalescence of single vacancy defects is too fast to be observed even in HR-TEM. We also implemented Van der Waals interaction in our tight-binding carbon model to describe correctly bi-layer and multi-layer graphene. The compressibility of graphite along c-axis in our tight-binding calculation is found to be in excellent agreement with experiment. We also discuss the difference between single layer and bi-layer graphene about vacancy diffusion and reconstruction.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.23-32
• /
• 2005

An experimental control system is proposed for the attitude control of a simplified 2-DOF helicopter model. The main rotor is a rigid one, and the fuselage is simply supported by a fixed hinge point where the longitudinal motion is decoupled from the lateral one since the translations and the rolling rotation are completely removed. The yaw trim of the helicopter is performed with a tail rotor, by which the azimuthal attitude can be adjusted on the rotatable post in the yaw direction. The robust sliding mode control tracking a given attitude angle is proposed based on the flight dynamics. A pitch damper is inserted for the control of pitching angle while the compensator to reaction torque is used for the control of azimuth angle. Several parameters of the system are selected through experiments. The results shows that the proposed control method effectively counteracts nonlinear perturbations such as main rotor disturbance, undesirable chattering, and high frequency dynamics.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2010.02a
• /
• pp.340-340
• /
• 2010

Various structures of vacancy defects in graphene layers and carbon nanotubes have been reported by high resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) and those arouse an interest of reconstruction processes of vacancy defects. In this talk, we present reconstruction processes of vacancy defects in a graphene and a carbon nanotube by tight-binding molecular dynamics (TBMD) simulations and by first principles total energy calculations. We found that a structure of a dislocation defect with two pentagon-heptagon (5-7) pairs in graphene becomes more stable than other structures when the number of vacancy units is ten and over. The simulation study of scanning tunneling microscopy reveals that the pentagon-heptagon pair defects perturb the wavefunction of electrons near Fermi level to produce the $\sqrt{3}\;{\times}\;\sqrt{3}$ superlattice pattern, which is in excellent agreement with experiment. It is also observed in our tight-binding molecular dynamics simulation that 5-7 pair defects play a very important role in vacancy reconstruction in a graphene layer and carbon nanotubes.

• Journal of KSNVE
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.317-323
• /
• 1999

Dynamic characteristics of catenary that supplies electrical power to high-speed trains are investigated. A simple catenary is composed of the contact and messenger wires connected by droppers possessing bi-directional stiffness properties. For slender, repeating structures such as catenary, both the wave propagation and vibration properties need to be understood. The influence of parameters that determine catenary dynamics are investiaged through numerical simulations involving finite element models. The effects of the tension and flexural rigidity of the contact wire is first investigated. The effects of dropper characteristics are then investigated. For linear droppers wave propagation as well as modal properties are determined. For large catenary motion, droppers can be modeled as bi-directional elements possessing low stiffness in compression and high stiffness in tension. For this case, impulse response is computed and compared with the cases of linear droppers. It is found that the catenary dynamics are primarily determined by contact wire tension and dropper properties, with large responses observed in 5∼40 Hz frequency range. In particular, the dropper stiffness and spacing are found to have dominant influence on the response frequency and the wave transmission characteristics.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• v.35 no.3
• /
• pp.205-217
• /
• 2013

We investigated the population dynamics of Aurelia aurita in Sihwa Lake from April to October in 2009. Salinity ranged from 5.9 to 30.7 psu at the surface. Abundance of mesozooplankton ranged from 3 to 111,874 indiv. $m^{-3}$. Ephyrae occurred from April to May with the peak in abundance occurring on 17 April. Maximum density of ephyrae was observed near the power transmission towers that are known to be habitats of polyps. Mortality of ephyrae was lower than in other areas because of the abundant prey concentration and the absence of predators. Young medusae occurred from April to July with the peak in abundance occurring on 8 May. Adult medusae occurred from May to July with the peak in abundance on 25 June and they disappeared before the rainy season. Planula occurred only in May and June with the peak in abundance on 25 June. Growth rates of Aurelia aurita ranged from -0.06 to 0.34 $d^{-1}$, and decreased rapidly after May. The period in which adult medusa occurred was restricted, compared with those in other area in Korea (e.g., Masan Bay) and Japan (e.g., Tokyo Bay). In the period of this study, the available food was limited in June and salinity decreased to ca. 20 psu in May because of the beginning of the wet season. We assumed that the exceptionally short period of occurrence of the medusa may be a response of adults to changes in temperature, salinity or food limitation which leads to the precocious maturation of young medusa and the release of planula and that the brief occurrence of medusa was caused by an abrupt decrease in activity after the release of planula.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.796-808
• /
• 2018

The intracellular bacterium Wolbachia pipientis is widespread in arthropods. Recently, possibilities of novel Wolbachia-mediated hosts, their distribution, and natural rate have been anticipated, and the coconut leaf beetle Brontispa longissima (Gestro) (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), which has garnered attention as a serious pest of palms, was subjected to this interrogation. By adopting Wolbachia surface protein (wsp) and multilocus sequence type (MLST) genotypic systems, we determined the Wolbachia infection density within host developmental stages, body parts, and tissues, and the results revealed that all the tested samples of B. longissima were infected with the same Wolbachia strain (wLog), suggesting complete vertical transmission. The MLST profile elucidated two new alleles (ftsZ-234 and coxA-266) that define a new sequence type (ST-483), which indicates the particular genotypic association of B. longissima and Wolbachia. The quantitative real-time PCR analysis revealed a higher infection density in the eggs and adult stage, followed by the abdomen and reproductive tissues, respectively. However, no significant differences were observed in the infection density between sexes. Moreover, the wsp and concatenated MLST alignment analysis of this study with other known Wolbachia-mediated arthropods revealed similar clustering with distinct monophyletic supergroup B. This is the first comprehensive report on the prevalence, infection dynamics, and phylogeny of the Wolbachia endosymbiont in B. longissima, which demonstrated that Wolbachia is ubiquitous across all developmental stages and distributed in the entire body of B. longissima. Understanding the Wolbachia infection dynamics would provide useful insight to build a framework for future investigations, understand its impacts on host physiology, and exploit it as a potential biocontrol agent.