• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.1809-1815
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• 2019

Objective: Copy number variations (CNVs) are a major source of genetic diversity complementary to single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in animals. The aim of the study was to perform a comprehensive genomic analysis of CNVs based on high density whole-genome SNP markers in Chinese Dongxiang spotted pigs. Methods: We used customized Affymetrix Axiom Pig1.4M array plates containing 1.4 million SNPs and the PennCNV algorithm to identify porcine CNVs on autosomes in Chinese Dongxiang spotted pigs. Then, the next generation sequence data was used to confirm the detected CNVs. Next, functional analysis was performed for gene contents in copy number variation regions (CNVRs). In addition, we compared the identified CNVRs with those reported ones and quantitative trait loci (QTL) in the pig QTL database. Results: We identified 871 putative CNVs belonging to 2,221 CNVRs on 17 autosomes. We further discarded CNVRs that were detected only in one individual, leaving us 166 CNVRs in total. The 166 CNVRs ranged from 2.89 kb to 617.53 kb with a mean value of 93.65 kb and a genome coverage of 15.55 Mb, corresponding to 0.58% of the pig genome. A total of 119 (71.69%) of the identified CNVRs were confirmed by next generation sequence data. Moreover, functional annotation showed that these CNVRs are involved in a variety of molecular functions. More than half (56.63%) of the CNVRs (n = 94) have been reported in previous studies, while 72 CNVRs are reported for the first time. In addition, 162 (97.59%) CNVRs were found to overlap with 2,765 previously reported QTLs affecting 378 phenotypic traits. Conclusion: The findings improve the catalog of pig CNVs and provide insights and novel molecular markers for further genetic analyses of Chinese indigenous pigs.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.329-347
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• 2019

The shipbuilding industry is characterized by order production, and various processes are performed simultaneously in the construction of ships. Therefore, effective management of the production process and productivity improvement form important key factors in the industry. For decades, researchers and process managers have attempted to improve processes by using business process analysis (BPA). However, conventional BPA is time-consuming, expensive, and mainly based on subjective results generated by employees, which may not always correspond to the actual conditions. This paper proposes a method to improve the production process of offshore plant modules by analysing the process mining data obtained from the shipbuilding industry. Process mining uses information accumulated from the system-provided event logs to generate a process model and determine the values hidden within the process. The discovered process is visualized as a process model. Subsequently, alternatives are proposed by brainstorming problems (such as bottlenecks or idle time) in the process. The results of this study can aid in productivity improvement (idle time or bottleneck reduction in the production process) in conjunction with a six-sigma technique or ERP system. In future, it is necessary to study the standardization of the module production processes and development of the process monitoring system.

• Animal Bioscience
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• v.37 no.4_spc
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• pp.730-741
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• 2024

Pig production is one of the viable enterprises of the livestock sub-sector of agriculture. It contributes significantly to the economy and animal protein supply to enhance food security in Africa and globally. This article explored the present status of pig production in Africa, the challenges, prospects and potentials. The pig population of Africa represents 4.6% of the global pig population. They are widely distributed across Africa except in Northern Africa where pig production is not popular due to religio-cultural reasons. They are mostly reared in rural parts of Africa by smallholder farmers, informing why majority of the pig population in most parts of Africa are indigenous breeds and their crosses. Pig plays important roles in the sustenance of livelihood in the rural communities and have cultural and social significance. The pig production system in Africa is predominantly traditional, but rapidly growing and transforming into the modern system. The annual pork production in Africa has grown from less than a million tonnes in year 2000 to over 2 million tonnes in 2021. Incidence of disease outbreak, especially African swine fever is one of the main constraints affecting pig production in Africa. Others are lack of skills and technical know-how, high ambient temperature, limited access to high-quality breeds, high cost of feed ingredients and veterinary inputs, unfriendly government policies, religious and cultural bias, inadequate processing facilities as well as under-developed value-chain. The projected human population of 2.5 billion in Africa by 2050, increasing urbanization and decreasing farming population are pointers to the need for increased food production. The production systems of pigs in Africa requires developmental research, improvements in housing, feed production and manufacturing, animal health, processing, capacity building and pig friendly policies for improved productivity and facilitation of export.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.704-711
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• 2020

Objective: Muscle fiber types, numbers and area are crucial aspects associated with meat production and quality. However, there are few studies of pig muscle fibre traits in terms of the detection power, false discovery rate and confidence interval precision of whole-genome quantitative trait loci (QTL). We had previously performed genome scanning for muscle fibre traits using 183 microsatellites and detected 8 significant QTLs in a White Duroc×Erhualian F₂ population. The confidence intervals of these QTLs ranged between 11 and 127 centimorgan (cM), which contained hundreds of genes and hampered the identification of QTLs. A whole-genome sequence imputation of the population was used for fine mapping in this study. Methods: A whole-genome sequences association study was performed in the F₂ population. Genotyping was performed for 1,020 individuals (19 F₀, 68 F₁, and 933 F₂). The whole-genome variants were imputed and 21,624,800 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified and examined for associations to 11 longissimus dorsi muscle fiber traits. Results: A total of 3,201 significant SNPs comprising 7 novel QTLs showing associations with the relative area of fiber type I (I_RA), the fiber number per square centimeter (FN) and the total fiber number (TFN). Moreover, one QTL on pig chromosome 14 was found to affect both FN and TFN. Furthermore, four plausible candidate genes associated with FN (kinase non-catalytic C-lobe domain containing [KNDC1]), TFN (KNDC1), and I_RA (solute carrier family 36 member 4, contactin associated protein like 5, and glutamate metabotropic receptor 8) were identified. Conclusion: An efficient and powerful imputation-based association approach was utilized to identify genes potentially associated with muscle fiber traits. These identified genes and SNPs could be explored to improve meat production and quality via marker-assisted selection in pigs.

• MALSORI
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• no.52
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• pp.61-84
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• 2004

This study investigates the Korean native speakers' English liquid perception and production. Perception and production experiments were each conducted twice before and after a short period of explicit learning process of phonetic characteristics of English liquids. The results showed that correlation between perception and production varied depending on factors. In both perception and production, word-final position was the most difficult, and cluster position was the easiest. A considerable improvement was observed in word-initial and medial positions in production, whereas no improvement was achieved in word-final position, especially in production. This study is also concerned with the formant structures of Korean native speakers' production of English liquids in order to see what acoustic features are highly correlated with Korean native speakers' production accuracy of English liquids. The results showed that F2 did not show a high correlation while F3 was a strong correlate of the production accuracy.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.209-219
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• 2015

This paper deals with a case study about productivity improvement in medium and small-sized manufacturing factories. It is popular to improve the productivity of lines by shortening the production cycles and assigning multi jobs to workers. We analyze the production lines and improve the productivity in the case study through multi-functional workers and shortened production lines. Based on the case study, we propose some guidelines to improve the productivity of production lines.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.199-204
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• 2017

Good product quality is so essential to enabling firms to succeed that how to make the product quality better through technology development is one of the most important issues that many CEOs think over. With regard to the product quality improvement from firms' technology development, this study has made an attempt to empirically investigate the effect of the external information network diversity on the product quality improvement of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the information technology (IT) sector, mediated by their production process improvement. This research illuminates the following two points by empirically analyzing the 310 IT SMEs through the ordinary least squares regression analysis. First, IT SMEs' external information network diversity has a positive influence on their product quality improvement from technology development. Second, IT SMEs' production process improvement partially mediates the impact of their external information network diversity on the product quality improvement.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.152-158
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to find the difficulties and problems in the carbon dioxide production experiment and to suggest the device for the improvement. Many students have misconception for the smell of carbon dioxide. I found that the smell of carbon dioxide of producting through the experiment didn't concern with the quantity of calcium carbonate. I certificated that the smell of carbon dioxide was related with the concentration of hydrochloric acid. I built two trap applicaing suction in the gas production device to exclude fully the smell of carbon dioxide. So the smell of carbon dioxide was not present by passing the two trap. To find the ideal experimental conditions I perform the experiment step by step. As the result enough carbon dioxide to use for the property experiment was collected under the condition that is 60 mL of 3 molarity hydrochloric acid and 30 g calcium carbonate. I certificated to mesuring flowing quantity of carbon dioxide using the flow meter of carbon dioxide. In the improvement experiment of the property of carbon dioxide, I proposed the experiment device regarding as spreading of the gas and children's interest. To improve the problem of gas production experiment, I proposed the gas certification device using a thread.

• The Microorganisms and Industry
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.34-41
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• 1993

Industrial strain improvement is concerned with developing or modifying microorganisms used in production of commercially important fermentation products. The aim is to reduce the production cost by improving productivity of a strain and manipulating specific characteristics such as the ability to utilize cheaper raw materials or resist bacteriophages. The traditional empirical approach to strain improvement is mutation combined with selection and breeding techniques. It is still used by us to improve the productivity of organisms in amino acids, organic acids and enzymes production. The breeding of high L-lysine-producing strain Au112 is one of the outstanding examples of this approach. It is a homoserine auxotroph with AEC, TA double metabolic analogue resistant markers. The yield reaches 100 g/l. Besides, the citric acid-producing organism Aspergillus niger, Co827, its productivity reaches the advanced level in the world, is also the result of a series mutations especially with $^60Co{\gamma}$-radiation. The thermostable .alpha.-amylase producing strain A 4041 is the third example. By combining physical and chemical mutations, the strain A 4041 becomes an asporogenous, catabolite derepressed mutant with rifamycin resistant and methionine, arginine auxotroph markers. The .alpha.-amylase activity reaches 200 units/ml. The fourth successful example of mutation in strain improvement is the glucoamylase-producing strain Aspergillus niger SP56, its enzyme activity is 20,000 units/ml, 4 times of that of the parental strain UV-11. Recently, recombinant DNA approach provides a worthwhile alternative strategy to industrial strain improvement. This technique had been used by us to increase the thermostable .alpha.-amylase production and on some genetic researches.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.794-799
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• 2003

A study was conducted on 2102 records of 808 crossbred cows of various genetic groups maintained under 'All India Coordinated Research Project on Cattle' at C C S Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, over 25 years period (1968-1993) with an objective to assess and compare the amount of percent improvement and heterotic effect for different performance traits in various genetic groups produced under this programme. Survivability sharply and significantly declined from 1/2 to $3/4^th$ bred and further from $3/4^th$ to inter-se bred. This may be due to periodic and management differences in addition to the higher level of exotic inheritance and decreased heterotic effect over the filial generations. Jersey and Holstein Friesian crosses among 1/2 breds and their 50% inheritance among $3/4^th$ and inter-se breds had highest improvement and heterosis in reproduction and production traits respectively. Among inter se bred genetic groups, BFH (I) had no recombination loss in SP and CI, while FJH (I), JFH (I) and FBH (I) had on recombination loss in AFC, LY, LL and PE. The crossbreeding of zebu cows with exotic breeds brings about spectacular improvement in comparison to the performance of zebu breed, while conventional selection over several generation would lead to only modest improvement. In addition to additive effect, there was sufficient heterosis in Jersey crosses for reproduction and Holstein Friesian crosses for production performance. Three breed crosses with exotic inheritance between 50 and 75 percent incorporating genes (25 to 50%) from both of these breeds is the best combination for stabilization.