• Journal of Life Science
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.694-701
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• 2017

Mycoplasma genitalium represents the smallest genome among mono-cultivable prokaryotes. To discover and compare the orthologs (conservative genes) among M. genitalium and 14 prokaryotes that are uncultivable and have less orthologs than M. genitalium, COG (clusters of orthologous groups of protein) analyses were applied. The analyzed prokaryotes were M. genitalium, one hyperthermophilic exosymbiotic archaeon Nanoarchaeum equitans, four intracellular plant pathogenic eubacteria of Candidatus Phytoplasma genus, and nine endosymbiotic eubacteria of phloem- and xylem-feeding insects. Among 367 orthologs of M. genitalium, 284 orthologs were conservative between M. genitalium and at least one other prokaryote. All 15 prokaryotes commonly have 29 orthologs, representing the significance of proteins in life. They belong to 25 translation-related, including 22 ribosomal proteins, 3 subunits of RNA polymerase, and 1 protein-folding-related. Among the 15 prokaryotes, 40 orthologs were only found in all four Candidatus Phytoplasma. The other nine Candidatus, all endosymbionts with insects, showed only a single common COG0539 (ribosomal protein S1), representing the diversity of orthologs among them. These results might provide clues to understand conservative genes in uncultivable prokaryotes, and may be helpful in industrial areas, such as handling prokaryotes producing amino acids and antibiotics, and as precursors of organic synthesis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.10
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• pp.681-687
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• 2016

It is essential for micro jet injectors in the biomedical sector to operate under high pressure. High pressure injection, however, is accompanied by high volumes. On/Off valves that can be operated at high speeds have been used to address this problem. In this research, piezoelectric actuators which have a response frequency of the order of hundreds of kilohertz were used as the On/Off valve and experiments were applied. Researchers developed a controller to precisely manipulate the piezoelectric valve with various waveforms. They also fabricated five types of nozzles to consider the effect of nozzle type on injection. This allowed researchers to manipulate and confirm factors that can affect the injection volume and force. Results of this experiment have shown how to decrease the injection volume and increase the injection force. and it is predicted that the optimized injection volume and force value can be determined depending on the skin type.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.110-116
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• 2012

Nuruk plays a significant role in the flavor and quality of Takju and Yakju, which are produced through saccharification and alcohol fermentation by various microorganisms. In this study, we identified microbial strains isolated from a plate count and PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis targeting the 16S and 28S rRNA genes, in order to characterize bacterial and fungal diversity in Sansung Nuruk. The numbers of bacteria and fungi in Nuruk were $1.5{\times}10^9$ CFU/g and $2.2{\tims}10^8$ CFU/g, respectively. The 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that the predominant bacteria in the isolates and PCR-DGGE profile of Nuruk were Kocuria spp., Pantoea spp., Lactobacillus spp., Pediococcus spp., Weissella spp., Staphylococcus spp., endophytic bacterium, uncultured Gamma-proteobacteria, uncultured Cyanobacteria, and Actinobacteria. Dominant bacteria from the PCR-DGGE profile were Pediococcous pentosaceus and uncultured Cyanobacteria. The 28S rRNA gene sequence indicated the predominant fungi in the isolates and PCR-DGGE profile to be Trichomonascus spp. Pichia spp., Torulaspora spp., Wickerhamomyces spp., Sacharomycopsis spp., Lichtheimia spp., Mucor spp., Rhizopus spp. Aspergillus spp., and Cladosporium spp. Dominant fungi from the PCR-DGGE profile were Pichia kudriavzevii and Aspergillus oryzae. The PCR-DGGE technique was used for the first time in this study to assess a microbial community in Nuruk and proved to be an effective protocol for profiling microbial diversity.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.125-131
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• 2018

The analysis and comparison on the usage of public cremation facilities located in Seoul through online reservation service of ehaneul funeral information system by area from Jan. 1, 2011 to Dec. 31, 2017 showed that among 314,877 in the number of bodies using the facilities, 225,828 (or 71.7%) belonged to Seoul citizens and 89,049 (or 28.3%) belonged to people living in other area than Seoul, such as Goyang city, Gyeonggi-do and other local governments. Therefore, there appeared that the Seoul citizens could not get the timely cremation service but instead extended the funeral service to 4 to 5 days or had to go to the remote area for cremation. This trend gets severe every year. To solve these problems, it is recommended that Seoul city government makes effort of constructing or expanding the public cremation facilities in cooperation with other local government of the area whose residents show high rate of using Seoul public cremation facilities and that Seoul city government expands or builds its own public cremation facilities in mid- and long-term. In addition, the local government of other area around Seoul needs to expand their use rate of their own (4) public cremation facilities or raise the creation fee for the residents from other areas, thus trying to dispersing and controlling the demand for the cremation.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.64-70
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• 2011

Portable artificial electronic nose (E-nose) system suffers from noisy fluctuation in surroundings such as temperature, vapor concentration, and gas flow, because its measuring condition is not controled precisely as in the laboratory. It is important to develop a simple and robust vapor recognition technique applicable to this uncontrolled measurement, especially for the portable measuring and diagnostic system which are expanding its area with the improvements in micro bio sensor technology. This study used a PDA-based portable E-nose to collect the uncontrolled vapor measurement signals, and applied the image matching algorithm developed in the previous study on the measured signal to verify its robustness and improved accuracy in portable vapor recognition. The results showed not only its consistent performance under noisy fluctuation in the portable measurement signal, but also an advanced recognition accuracy for 2 similar vapor species which have been hard to discriminate with the conventional maximum sensitivity feature extraction method. The proposed method can be easily applied to the data processing of the ubiquitous sensor network (USN) which are usually exposed to various operating conditions. Furthermore, it will greatly help to realize portable medical diagnostic and environment monitoring system with its robust performance and high accuracy.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.36-42
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• 2007

Hepatitis B is a serious public health problem leading to chronic infection and liver cancer. Quantitation of circulating hepatitis B virus (HBV) is important for monitoring disease progression and for assessing the response to antiviral therapy. In this study, by using Real-Time PCR and novel Micro-PCR assay method, we measured HBV concentration in the clinical sample. A total of 120 serum samples from patients with HBV infection collected was in Dankook university hospital to compare the detection limit, sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility of the two assay methods. These findings of this study suggest that Micro-PCR and Real-Time PCR assay methods are comparable to each other in there detection limit, sensitivity, and reproducibility for HBV DNA quantitation. However, Micro-PCR assay is more efficient than Real-Time PCR method, because Real-Time PCR is not so time - consuming, technically easy and need to reagent of a small quantity. It will be useful for rapid and reliable clinical diagnosis of HBV in many countries.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.93-100
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• 2002

Cocoon production, which is a representative of traditional sericulture shifted into silkworm powder production in the spring of 1995. This, infect, signifies the change from the dress-centered textile business to the bio-industry and the functional resource industry. One of the most outstanding shifting is utilization of silkworm larvae for anti-diabetic agent. In Asian countries including Korea, silkworm powder derived from the domestic silkworm (Bombyx mori L.) has long been favored for anti-diabetic agent, but its efficacy was not tested until last decade by modern scientific methods. In this article, we reviewed the major researches on the silkworm powder as a blood glucose-lowering substance. After the beginning test of the efficacy of silkworm powder by a cooperative research between Department of Sericulture and Entomlogy, NIAST, RDA and Kyung Hee University, substantial data have been accumulated so far, In a serial experiment to select best condition, the fifth instar larvae prepared by freeze dry method turned out to have the best blood glucose-lowering effect. In the pharmacological experiment to understand the mechanism of silkworm powder in small intestine, the silkworm powder turned out to inhibit the activity of ${\alpha}$-glucosidase, by competitively binding to $\alpha$-type disaccharides. The animal experiment showed that the extract of silkworm powder prevents a rapid increase of blood glucose level after meal and prevents hunger and law blood glucose level during empty stomach. In the experiment to isolate the major component of silkworm powder, which exerts blood glucose-lowering effect, 1-deoxynojirimy-cin (DNJ) was eventually mass-purified, and it turned out that DNJ isolated from silkworm powder was excellent in its blood glucose-lowering effect. In the experiment to understand the personal difference of the efficacy of the silkworm powder, clinical candidates were divided on the basis of the criterion of traditional Chinese medicine: Tae-Yang, Tae-Um, So-yang, and So-Um. The result showed that silkworm powder has a tendency to reduce blood glucose level at fasting and at 2 hours after meal, and this trend was somewhat obvious in the Tae-Um body type. In summary, we reviewed scientific papers on the efficacy of silkworm powder and its purified DNJ as a blood glucose-lowering agent. These suggest that silkworm powder truly possesses blood glucose-lowering effect as documented in the traditional Chinese medicine, although further researches will be required to develop them as "medical" resource instead of functional food.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.163-172
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• 2016

This study conducts an analysis of a problem on internet reservation of e-haneul funeral total information system by disqualified fee imposition standard in public cremation facilities through research and investigation focusing on the operational realities and an ordinance related to public cremation facilities made by each local government across the country, and then is to suggest a policy proposal to improve the drawn problem. As a result of the analysis, as a way to improve the drawn problems, this study suggests a policy proposal that prevents an illegal camouflaged move-in to reduce fee by restricting residence period in requirement of local residents inside the jurisdiction who can use public cremation facilities, raises fee of public cremation facilities of local residents inside the jurisdiction into the optimum level that is set cheaper than production cost, and unifies age norm of an object to apply adult fee in the central government about a difference of age norm of an object to apply fee of adult with the highest availability of public cremation facilities between local governments, resolving a fee difference through fee cutting of local residents outside the jurisdiction priced higher than production cost.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.3-12
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• 2015

Recently, various studies have been attempted to provide a biological information monitoring service through integrating with the web service. The medical information transmission standard ISO/IEEE 11073 PHD defines the optimized exchange protocol ISO/IEEE 11073-20601 based on the No-IP to exchange the biometric information between the ISO/IEEE 11073 agent and the manager. It's system structure based on the No-IP using ISO/IEEE 11073-20601 is not suitable for providing a remote biological information monitoring services. That is because it is difficult to provide to control and manage the biological information measurement devices, which have installed IP protocol stack at the remote. Furthermore, ACSE and CMDISE in ISO/IEEE 11073-20601 are not suitable to provide U-healthcare services based on IoT because they are complicated and difficult to implement it caused by the structural complexity. In order to solve the problems, in this paper, we propose the biological information monitoring architecture based on ISO/IEEE 11073 DIM/REST of IoT environment to provide the biological information monitoring service based on IoT. To do this, we designed biological information monitoring system architecture based on IoT and the message exchange protocol of ISO/IEEE 11073 DIM/REST between the ISO/IEEE 11073 agent and the ISO/IEEE 11073 manager. In order to verify the realistic possibility of the proposed system architecture, we developed the service prototype.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.59-67
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• 2008

Due to the fast increase in cellular phone users, public interest on health effect of electromagnetic fields(EMFs) by cellular phonos is gradually increasing. Some EHS(electromagnetic hypersensitivity) patients complain of psycho-neurophysiological symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, memory loss resulting from RF radiation by CDMA cellular phones. However, EHS is difficult to diagnose and depends on the individual's subjective judgement. And we don't know clearly if the cause of EHS is uneasiness or real exposure. There have been various EHS volunteer studies on heart rate, blood pressure and subjective symptoms using GSM phones. But there are few studies on experimental case-control study investigating physiological parameters, subjective symptoms, and perception of EMFs. In this study, two volunteer groups of 17 self-declared EHS and 19 controls were exposed to both sham and real RF exposure by CDMA cellular phones for half an hour each. We investigated not only the physiological parameters such as heart rates, respiration rates and HRVs(hear rate variability), but also the perception of EMFs and subjective symptoms. As the results, EMF exposure did not have any effects on the subjective symptoms or physiological parameters for both groups. For the EMF perception, there was no evidence that EHS group perceived the EMFs correctly than the control group.