• Title/Summary/Keyword: ecological systems

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Recent Development of Carbon Dioxide Conversion Technology (이산화탄소 전환 기술의 현황)

  • Choi, Ji-Na;Chang, Tae-Sun;Kim, Beom-Sik
    • Clean Technology
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.229-249
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    • 2012
  • At present, global warming and depletion of fossil fuels have been one of the big issues which should be solved for sustainable development in the future. CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) technology as the post $CO_2$ reduction technology has been considered as a promising solution for global warming due to increased carbon emission. However, the environmental and ecological effects of CCS have drawn concerns. There are needs for noble post reduction technology. More recently, CCU (carbon capture and utilization) Technology, which emphasizes transforming carbon dioxide into value-added chemicals rather than storing it, has been attracted attentions in terms of preventing global warming and recycling the renewable carbon source. In this paper, various technologies developed for carbon dioxide conversion both in gas and liquid phase have been reviewed. For the thermochemical catalysis in gas phase, the development of the catalytic system which can be performed at mild condition and the separation and purification technology with low energy supply is required. For the photochemical conversion in liquid phase, efficient photosensitizers and photocatalysts should be developed, and the photoelectrochemical systems which can utilize solar and electric energy simultaneously are also in development for more efficient carbon dioxide conversion. The energy needed in CCU must be renewable or unutilized one. CCU will be a key connection technology between renewable energy and bio industry development.

Mitochondrial Genetic Diversity and Phylogenetic Relationships of Siberian Flying Squirrel(Pteromys volans) Populations

  • Lee, Mu-Yeong;Park, Sun-Kyung;Hong, Yoon-Jee;Kim, Young-Jun;Voloshina, Inna;Myslenkov, Alexander;Saveljev, Alexander P.;Choi, Tae-Young;Piao, Ren-Zhu;An, Jung-Hwa;Lee, Mun-Han;Lee, Hang;Min, Mi-Sook
    • Animal cells and systems
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.269-277
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    • 2008
  • Siberian flying squirrel, an endangered species in South Korea, is distributed through major mountain regions of South Korea. The number of Siberian flying squirrel(Pteromys volans) in South Korea has decreased and their habitats are fragmented and isolated because of anthropogenic activities. So far no molecular genetic data has, however, been available for their conservation and management. To obtain better information concerning genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships of the Siberian flying squirrel in South Korea, we examined 14 individuals from South Korea, 7 individuals from Russia, and 5 individuals from northeastern China along with previously published 29 haplotypes for 1,140 bp of the mtDNA cytochrome b gene. The 14 new individuals from South Korea had 7 haplotypes which were not observed in the regions of Russia and Hokkaido. The level of genetic diversity(0.616%) in the South Korean population was lower than that in eastern Russia(0.950%). The geographical distribution of mtDNA haplotypes and reduced median network confirmed that there are three major lineages of Siberian flying squirrel, occupying; Far Eastern, northern Eurasia, and the island of Hokkaido. The South Korean population only slightly distinct from the Eurasia, and eastern Russian population, and is part of the lineage Far Eastern. Based on these, we suggest that the South Korean population could be considered to belong to one partial ESU(Far Eastern) of three partial ESUs but a different management unit. However, the conservation priorities should be reconfirmed by nuclear genetic marker and ecological data.

Mountain-cultivated Ginseng Ripened into Persimmon Vinegar Ingestion on Fat Storage and Metabolic Protein Expression in Diet-controlled Rats (산양삼 혼입 숙성 감식초 섭취에 의한 식이 제한 흰쥐의 지방 저장 및 에너지 대사 단백질 발현)

  • Lee, In-Ho;Kim, Pan-Ki;Ryu, Sungpil
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.104 no.1
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    • pp.67-75
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    • 2015
  • This research is to investigate the four years growth mountain-cultivated ginseng ripened twenty-two weeks into four years fermented persimmon vinegar (tentatively: Sansamcho) ingestion on obese-related factors during dietary control. The Sansamcho was ingested orally, two times a day, after every meal for six weeks to the male rats. Groups were divided into the control (CON), the restricted diet (RD), and the weight cycling (WC). And, each groups has its own sub-groups as the -control (-CON), 2.5 times diluted Sansamcho ingestion (-MPV2.5), and 5.0 times diluted Sansamcho ingestion (-MPV5.0) groups, respectively. The number of rat was consisted of seven in each group. After six weeks rearing periods was done, abdominal fats (retroperitoneal fat, mesentery fat, and epididymal fat) and energy metabolic-related protein (AMPK: AMP-activated protein kinase; PPAR-${\alpha}$: peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-${\alpha}$; and CPT-1: carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1) were weighed and analyzed. Amount of stored fat was significantly or tended to decrease by Sansamcho ingestion. In addition, sum of fats increasing were suppressed by the material. On the contrary, energy metabolism-related protein expression was significantly increased or tended to increase by Sansamcho ingestion. This results suggested that increased energy metabolism using Sansamcho was restrained effectively visceral fat store by high-fat diet and/or dietary control. In other words, it has a good function to suppress weight cycling which is the most insoluble problem. Therefore, the fusion material, Sansamcho, may expect to utilize as the obese-suppression-food.

International Comparison of Nuclear Energy Conflict in Europe and Northeast Asia from the Viewpoint of New Social Movement: With an Emphasis on the Risk Communication (신 사회운동의 과점에서 본 유럽과 동북아시아의 핵에너지 갈등의 국제적 비교: 모험 커뮤니케이션을 중심으로)

  • Kim, Seong-Jae
    • Korean journal of communication and information
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    • v.25
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    • pp.7-40
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    • 2004
  • Today, nuclear energy conflict is caused from the dangerous radioactive material. The main party of this conflict are politic and economic systems which deride nuclear energy, and the persons concerned which it oppose and the anti-nuclear environment group. If the nuclear waste is transported from one nation to another nation, multi national anti-nuclear group appears as conflict party. We call this domestic and transnational risk communication new social movement. From the viewpoint of system theory, the new social movement can mean the offensive development of self-reference which withstand the "technicalization of communication" through the "symbolically generalized communication media" like money and power. By comparing Northeast Asia and Europe, the nuclear energy conflict did not show a big difference in the selection of nuclear waste storing site. In the Northeast Asia, when Taiwan exports the nuclear waste to North Korea, the international conflict broke out. In Europe, Germany has a hard experience with the construction-plan for the re-treating plant that produces the plutonium from the dangerous nuclear waste, and with the transnational transport of the nuclear waste. The new social movement aims the global paradigm which is able to guarantee the subtainability of ecological environment. The nuclear conflict in the "world risk society" is solved through the "discourse-alliance" which accomplishes sub-politics by crossing the border of class, nation and system.

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Emergy Analysis Overview of Korea (한국의 자연환경과 경제에 대한 EMERGY분석)

  • ;Howard T. Odum
    • Journal of Environmental Science International
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    • v.3 no.2
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    • pp.165-175
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    • 1994
  • An emergy analysis of the main energy flows driving the economy of humans and life support systems was made including environmental energies, fuels, and imports, all expressed as solar emjoules. The total emergy use (4, 373 E20 sej/yr) is 90 per cent from imported sources, fuels and goods and services. The emergy flows from the environment are modest, because the share of global inputs such as ruin and geological uplift flux is modest. Consequently, the ratio of outside investment to attracting natural resources is already large, like other industrialized countries. The population level is already in excess of carrying capacity. The emergy use per person in Korea indicates a moderate emergy standard of living, even though the indigenous resource is very poor. If the present economy were running entirely on stored reserves of fuels, soils, woods, etc., it would last about 2 years. Its carrying capacity for steady state on its renewable sources is only 3.3 million people, compared to 43.3 million in 1991. Continued availability of foreign oil at a favorable balance of emergy trade, currently about 7 to 1 net emergy, is the basis for present economic activity and must decrease as the net emergy of foreign oil purchased goes down. Close economic integration with Middle East may determine how long this is possible in the future.

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A Comparison of Geomorphological and Hydrological Methods for Delimitation of Flood Plain in the Mankyung River, Korea (지형학적 및 수문학적 방법에 의한 만경강 홍수터 획정 방법 비교)

  • Kim, Ji-Sung;Lee, Chan-Joo;Kim, Joo-Hun;Choi, Cheonkyu;Kim, Kyu-Ho
    • Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.128-136
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    • 2015
  • River areas include channels, floodplains and all the areas affected by physical and ecological processes in river systems. It is noticeably different from present riparian zone which is bounded by dykes. In this study, two methods for delineation of a floodplain are proposed, which are used for evaluation of the function of a river. One of them is a geomorphology-based technique and the other is hydrology-based inundation analysis. For the Mankyung River, these two methods are applied to delineate the floodplain area. Areas delineated with both methods are mutually compared. The results show that the geomorphology-based method is suitable for the delineation of a valley bottom, including the floodplain in a broader sense, which is unlike an inundated area reflecting contemporary hydrologic conditions. Compared with other flood frequency areas, a 100-year flood inundation area was found reasonable to represent the spatial extent of a floodplain without regard to the longitudinal location along a river. However, it is necessary in certain rivers reach where the division of a channel exists to compare a geomorphological analysis on a valley bottom with an inundation area of different frequencies.

Effects of Mountain Ginseng-added High Fat diet on Lipid Peroxidation and Antioxidant Protein Expression of Skeletal Muscle in Rats (산양삼을 첨가한 고지방식이 흰쥐 골격근의 지질과산화 및 항산화 단백질 발현 효과)

  • Kwon, Dae-Keun;Kang, Jun-Yong;Song, Youngju;Kim, Pan-Gi;Seo, Hyobin;Ryu, Sungpil
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.101 no.1
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    • pp.69-76
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    • 2012
  • We investigated the effect of mountain ginseng-added high fat diet supplementation on lipid peroxidation and antioxidant protein expressions in rats. Thirty-two male rats were randomly divided into 4 groups; HS (high-fat diet sedentary group, n=8), MG1 (0.5% mountain ginseng-added diet group, n=8), MG2 (1% mountain ginsengadded diet group, n=8) and MG3 (2% mountain ginseng-added diet group, n=8). They have fed the diet for 4 weeks. The blood triglyceride were significantly lower in the MG1 and MG2 groups than that of the HS group. The blood HDL-cholesterol were significantly higher in the MG3 group than that of the HS and MG2 groups. The muscle glycogen contents of the MG2 and MG3 groups were significantly higher than that of HS and MG1 groups. The MDA contents in the MG1, MG2 and MG3 groups tended to lower than the HS group. The GPx protein expression in the gastrocnemius muscle of the MG2 group was significantly increased compared to that of the HS group. The Cu,Zn-SOD protein expression in the gastrocnemius muscle of the MG1 and MG2 groups was significantly increased compared to that of the MG3 group. The Mn-SOD protein expression in the MG1, MG2 and MG3 groups tended to higher than the HS group. From these results, it was suggested that mountain ginseng-added diet may have an crucial role on decreased MDA levels and increased antioxidant function in the skeletal muscle of rat fed a high fat diet.

Spatial Estimation of Point Observed Environmental Variables: A Case Study for Producing Rainfall Acidity Map (점관측 환경 인자의 공간 추정 - 남한 지역의 강우 산도 분포도 작성)

  • 이규성
    • Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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    • v.11 no.3
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    • pp.33-47
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    • 1995
  • The representation of point-observed environmental variables in Geographic Information Systems(GIS) has often been inadequate to meet the need of regional-scale ecological and environmental applications. To create a map of continuous surface that would represent more reliable spatial variations for these applications, I present three spatial estimation methods. Using a secondary variable of the proximity to coast line together with rainfall acidity data collected at the 63 acid rain monitoring stations in Korea, average rainfall acidity map was cteated using co-kriging. For comparison, two other commonly used interpolation methods (inverse distance weighting and kriging) were also applied to rainfall acidity data without reference to the secondary variable. These estimation methods were evaluated by both visual assessments of the output maps and the quantitative comparison of error measures that were obtained from cross validation. The co-kriging method produced a rainfall acidity map that showed noticeable improvement in repoducing the inherent spatial pattern as well as provided lower statistical error as compared to the methods using only the primary variable.

Evaluation of Water Productivity of Thailand and Improvement Measure Proposals

  • Suthidhummajit, Chokchai;Koontanakulvong, Sucharit
    • Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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    • 2019.05a
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    • pp.176-176
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    • 2019
  • Thailand had issued a national strategic development master plan with issues related to water resources and water security in the entire water management. Water resources are an important factor of living and development of the country's socio-economy to be stable, prosperous and sustainable. Therefore, water management in both multidimensional and multi-sectoral systems is important and will supports socio-economic and environmental development. The direction of national development in accordance with the national strategic framework for 20 years that requires the country to level up security level in terms of water, energy and food. To response to the proposed goals, there is a subplan to increase water productivity of the entire water system for economical development use by evaluating use value and to create more value added from water use to meet international standard level. This study aims to evaluate the water productivity of Thailand in each basin and all sectors such as agricultural sector, service and industrial sectors by using the water use data from water account analysis and GDP data from NESDB during the past 10 years (1996-2015). The comparison of water productivity with other countries will also be conducted and in addition, the measures to improve water productivity in next 20 years will be explored to response to the National Strategic Master Plan goals. Water productivity is defined as output per unit of water depleted. The simplest way to compare water productivity across different enterprises is in monetary terms. World Bank presents water productivity as an indication of the efficiency by which each country uses its water resources. There are two data sets used for water productivity analyses, i.e., the first is water use data at end users and the second is Gross Domestic Product. The water use at end users are estimated by water account method based on the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-Water) concept of United Nations. The water account shows the analyses of the water balance between the use and supply of each water resource in physical terms. The water supply and use linkage in the water account analyses separated into each phases, i.e., water sources, water managers, water service providers, water user at end user under water regulators of all kinds of water use activities such as household, industrial, agricultural, tourism, hydropower, and ecological conservation uses. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a well- known measuring method of the national economic growth is not actually a comprehensive approach to describe all aspects of national economic status, since GDP does not take into account the costs of the negative impacts to natural resources that result from the overexploitation of development projects, however, at present, integrating the environment with the economy of a country to measure its economic growth with GDP is acceptable worldwide. The study results will show the water use at each basin, use types at end users, water productivity in each sector from 1996-2015 compared with other countries, Besides the productivity improvement measures will be explored and proposed for the National Strategic Master Plan.

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A Study on Factors Influencing the Recovery of People with a Mental Disorder: With a Focus on the Moderating Effects of Family Resilience (정신장애인의 회복에 영향을 미치는 요인에 관한 연구 : 가족탄력성의 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • Jeon, Soon-Bo;Lee, Dong-Young
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.19 no.5
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    • pp.306-315
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    • 2019
  • The purpose of this study was to analyze empirically influential factors related to the recovery of people with a mental disorder and also the moderating effects of family resilience. For this purpose, the investigator developed a research model that took into consideration both the positive and negative elements of individual and social factors based on the ecological, psychological, social, and ecosystem perspectives in previous studies and checked their causal effects and the moderating effects of family resilience in statistical significance. The subjects include 112 clients at an institution for people with a mental disorder. Data was collected with an interview based on a structured questionnaire. Collected data was put to the multiple regression analysis. The analysis results show that there was statistical significance in self-esteem, social stigma, and social support excluding symptoms and that the moderating effects of family resilience had positive(+) synergistic effects only on self-esteem and social support. Based on these results, the study made proposals about practice strategies including the establishment of internal and external support systems to make an effective approach to recovery and the systemization of family resilience and supportive strategies to promote the smooth recovery of people with a mental disorder through the reinforcement of programs related to the confirmed positive elements of self-esteem and social support.