• Macromolecular Research
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.616-622
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• 2009

In-depth understanding of the influence of hot pressing and melt processing on the properties of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) is critical for effective mechanical recycling of TPU scraps. Therefore, this study focused on the effects of hot pressing and melt mixing on molecular weight (MW), polydispersity index (PDI), melt index (MI), characteristic IR peaks, hardness, thermal degradation and mechanical properties of TPU. The original TPU pellet (o-TPU) showed two broad peaks at lower and higher MW regions. However, four TPU film samples, TPU-0 prepared only by hot pressing of o-TPU pellet and TPU-1, TPU-2 and TPU-3 obtained by hot pressing of melt mixed TPUs (where the numbers indicate the run number of melt mixing), exhibited only a single peak at higher MW region. The TPU-0 film sample had the highest $M_n$ and the lowest PDI and hardness. The TPU-1 film sample had the highest $M_w$ and tensile modulus. As the run number of melt mixing increased, the peak-intensity of hydrogen bonded C=O stretching increased, however, the free C=O peak intensity, tensile strength/elongation at break and average MW decreased. All the samples showed two stage degradations. The degradation temperatures of TPU-0 sample (359 $^{\circ}C$ and 394 $^{\circ}C$)were higher than those of o-TPU (342 $^{\circ}C$ and 391 $^{\circ}C$). While all the melt mixed samples degraded at almost the same temperature (365 $^{\circ}C$ and 381 $^{\circ}C$). The first round of hot pressing and melt mixing was found to be the critical condition which led to the significant changes of $M_n$/$M_w$/PDI, MI, mechanical property and thermal degradation of TPU.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.701-708
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• 2023

Local governments are required to take measures to prevent occupational accidents under Articles 4(2) and 4(3) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and this study suggested the necessity of establishing an IT-based integrated safety and health information sharing system for serious accident reduction and safety and health management through the case of Incheon Metropolitan City. Recently, as local governments have established labor and health ordinances and basic plans, the need for an independent integrated safety and health management system based on local industrial characteristics has increased. It is necessary to establish a cooperation and support system with basic local governments and hub institutions, share integrated safety and health information with related institutions and organizations, and play a pivotal role in regional safety and health management by managing occupational accident statistics and implementing basic policies. The system through local governments' safety and health management will reduce serious accidents in the region, and the comprehensive safety and health management system for small businesses and projects ordered by local governments will strengthen the operability of the site, which will be effective in preventing critical accidents and industrial accidents.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.74-93
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• 2010

Nowadays, the navigation system is very popular to general public and the study of landmarks has an important role to develop the cognitive systems for regional navigation. The city image is composed of landmarks that are well-known to regional community and they are the reference frame for place recognition in urban navigation. In general, the case of navigation can be categorized as two kinds. The first is to explore the new region and the second is to navigate the familiar region. In case of latter, the city image has a critical role in place recognition for regional community. Place recognition of a community might be a knowledge-based inference on the basis of city image which is composed of the systematically connected places. In this study, the mental structure of urban image is regarded as a hierarchical knowledge and represents it as domain ontology for the regional navigation of a community. The city image of a community is assumed as the collection of landmarks, which are categorized as anchor, distant and local according to spatial familiarity of community. Representing city image as a regional knowledge using ontology modeling method is an essential step to make the geographical assumption of a regional community explicit and reusable for the regional agents who will provide the regional guide in LBS age.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.292-301
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• 2010

Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is a pituitary glycoprotein hormone that is encoded by separate alpha- and betasubunit genes. It plays a key role in stimulating and regulating ovarian follicular development and egg production in chicken. FSH signal transduction is mediated by the FSH receptor (FSHR) that exclusively interacts with the beta-subunit of FSH, but characterization of prokaryotic expression of the FSHb gene and its effect on the expression of the FSHR gene in local chickens have received very little attention. In the current study, the cDNA fragment of the FSHb gene from Dagu chicken was amplified using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and inserted into the pET-28a (+) vector to construct the pET-28a-FSHb plasmid. After expression of the plasmid in E. coli BL21 (DE3) under inducing conditions, the recombination protein, $FSH{\beta}$ subunit, was purified and injected into the experimental hens and the effect on the mRNA expression levels of the FSHR gene was investigated. Sequence comparison showed that the coding region of the FSHb gene in the local chicken shared 99%-100% homology to published nucleotides in chickens; only one synonymous nucleotide substitution was detected in the region. The encoded amino acids were completely identical with the reported sequence, which confirmed that the sequences of the chicken FSHb gene and the peptides of the $FSH{\beta}$ subunit are highly conserved. This may be due to the critical role of the normal function of the FSHb gene in hormonal specificity and regulation of reproduction. The results of gene expression revealed that a recombinant protein with a molecular weight of about 19 kDa was efficiently expressed and it was identified by Western blotting analysis. After administration of the purified $FSH{\beta}$ protein, significantly higher expression levels were demonstrated in uterus, ovary and oviduct samples (p<0.05). These observations suggested that the expressed $FSH{\beta}$ protein possesses biological activity, and has a potential role in regulation of reproductive physiology in chickens.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.365-380
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• 2017

Rapid changes in the flora of exotic species are ecological problems that cause the alteration of national and regional biota. The purpose of this study is to identify the reality of neophyte flora currently inhabiting in Korea. Having analyzed a total of 151 studies published up until 2016, we found the qualitative and quantitative gaps among the preceding studies due to the lack of rigorousness on the application of the spatial and temporal level of exotic species and academic terminology. In this study, the neophyte is defined as the flora introduced temporarily after the Enlightenment in Korea (late 19th century) and spatially in the Eastern Asiatic Province of the Takhtajan's floral region instead of a country boundary. A total of 326 taxa of 184 genera of 39 families were identified and analyzed for their distributional origin and habitat characteristics. Approximately 87% (285 taxa) was a component of the single-layered herb vegetation, and a total of 211 taxa originated from Europe and North America which are the same temperate biome as Korea. The wetland vegetation components were much fewer with 21 taxa, but they included a large number of invasive alien species that caused critical deterioration in the habitat structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. Ecological approaches to exotic species categories such as Ephemerophyten and Apophyten have emerged.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.376-384
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• 2017

Bangladesh is a South Asian country with subtropical monsoonal climate between the intersection of the Indo-Himalayan and Indo-Chinese sub-regions, is known as biodiversity hotspot of the Asian region. The country has different types of forest like deciduous forest, evergreen forest, mixed forest, haor (wetlands) and mangrove forest. The natural beauty of the country is increased with the presence of so many rivers, longest sea beach of the world, green plants, critical hilly regions and green agricultural forest widely spread here and there. Sundarbans is the world largest mangrove forest and world natural heritage site declared by UNESCO in 1999 situated in Bangladesh and India. About 62 percent of this mangrove forest is situated in Bangladesh and there are so many plants and animals are found in this forest. To meet the increasing demand of the large population most of the natural ecosystem is now altered, deforestation rate is increased, natural habitat of the species is disturbed. Due to the imbalance of the climate and natural system many of the rare species of the world found this region is now endangered and some of the species are extinct. Directly or indirectly they are benefited from natural resources. At present time community, based ecotourism is also an important source of income for rural poor peoples. To protect the natural resources the government is now developed so many conservation acts and policy as well NGOs are also doing work for the conservation of ecosystem and biodiversity. At present transboundary pollutants and so many natural disasters also destruct the natural resources of Bangladesh.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2008

Titanium dioxide ($TiO_2$) is one of the most researched semiconductor oxides that has revolutionised technologies in the field of environmental purification and energy generation. It has found extensive applications in heterogenous photocatalysis for removing organic pollutants from air and water and also in hydrogen production from photocatalytic water-splitting. Its use is popular because of its low cost, low toxicity, high chemical and thermal stability. But one of the critical limitations of $TiO_2$ as photocatalyst is its poor response to visible light. Several attempts have been made to modify the surface and electronic structures of $TiO_2$ to enhance its activity in the visible light region such as noble metal deposition, metal ion loading, cationic and anionic doping and sensitisation. Most of the results improved photocatalytic performance under visible light irradiation. This paper attempts to review and update some of the information on the $TiO_2$ photocatalytic technology and its accomplishment towards visible light region.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.165-179
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• 2015

In this study, the effects of writing a weekly report on the students' self-directed learning, the attitudes toward science, and the academic achievements were examined. Two hundred and three students, second graders of a high school participated. Experimental group performed writing a weekly report, while the comparative group performed regular science lessons. The results of this study are as follows: First, MSLQ test showed that there was statistically significant difference in the self-directed learning skills(p<.05). For sub-factors of motivation region, such as internal goals, extrinsic goals, learning beliefs, task value, and self-efficacy and for sub-factors of learning strategy region, such as meta-cognition, peer learning, time management, critical thinking, and demonstrations showed statistically significant results. Second, TOSRA test showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the attitudes toward science (p>.05). However, for sub-factors, such as scientific inquiry and joy to science class showed statistically significant results. Third, there was no statistically significant difference in the academic achievement in Chemistry I class (p>.05). However, top and low achievement level showed statistically significant results.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.140-145
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• 2011

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) infection causes acute enteritis with lethal watery diarrhea resulting in a high mortality rate in piglets. As with the other members of group 1 coronaviruses, PEDV also utilizes the host aminopeptidase N (APN) as the major cellular receptor for entry into target cells. The coronavirus spike (S) protein is known to interact with the cellular surface for viral attachment and the S1 domain of all characterized coronaviruses contains a receptor-binding domain (RBD) that mediates a specific high-affinity interaction with their respective cellular receptors. Although the RBDs of several coronaviruses have been mapped, the location of the PEDV RBD has to date not been defined. As a first step toward the identification of the region of the S protein of the PEDV that is critical for recognition with the cellular receptor, we generated a series of S1-truncated variants and examined their abilities to bind to the porcine APN (pAPN) receptor. Our data indicate that the N-terminus of the S1 domain is required for pAPN association. The results from the present study may assist in our understanding of the molecular interactions between the PEDV S protein and the pAPN receptor.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.110-122
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• 2014

As multimedia technologies develop, three-dimensional (3D) technologies are attracting increasing attention from researchers. In particular, video quality assessment (VQA) has become a critical issue in stereoscopic image/video processing applications. Furthermore, a human visual system (HVS) could play an important role in the measurement of stereoscopic video quality, yet existing VQA methods have done little to develop a HVS for stereoscopic video. We seek to amend this by proposing a 3D visual attention (3DVA) model which simulates the HVS for stereoscopic video by combining multiple perceptual stimuli such as depth, motion, color, intensity, and orientation contrast. We utilize this 3DVA model for pooling on significant regions of very poor video quality, and we propose no-reference (NR) stereoscopic VQA (SVQA) method. We validated the proposed SVQA method using subjective test scores from our results and those reported by others. Our approach yields high correlation with the measured mean opinion score (MOS) as well as consistent performance in asymmetric coding conditions. Additionally, the 3DVA model is used to extract information for the region-of-interest (ROI). Subjective evaluations of the extracted ROI indicate that the 3DVA-based ROI extraction outperforms the other compared extraction methods using spatial or/and temporal terms.