• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.290-301
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• 2017

Background: Forest edges create distinctive ecological space as adjacent constituents, which distinguish between different ecosystems or land use types. These edges are made by anthropogenic or natural disturbance and affects both abiotic and biotic factors gradually. This study was carried out to assess edge effects on disturbed landscape at the pine-dominated clear-cut area in a genetic resources reserve in Uljin-gun, eastern Korea. This study aims to estimate the distance of edge influence by analyzing changes of abiotic and biotic factors along the distance from forest edge. Further, we recommend forest management strategy for sustaining healthy forest landscapes by reducing effects of deforestation. Results: Distance of edge effect based on the abiotic factors varied from 8.2 to 33.0 m. The distances were the longest in $Mg^{2+}$ content and total nitrogen, $K^+$, $Ca^{2+}$ contents, canopy openness, light intensity, air humidity, $Na^+$ content, and soil temperature followed. The result based on biotic factors varied from 6.8 to 29.5 m, coverage of tree species in the herb layer showed the longest distance and coverage of shrub plant in the herb layer, evenness, species diversity, total coverage of herb layer, and species richness followed. As the result of calculation of edge effect by synthesizing 26 factors measured in this study, the effect was shown from 11.0 m of the forest interior to 22.4 m of the open space. In the result of stand ordination, Rhododendron mucronulatum, R. schlippenbachii, and Fraxinus sieboldiana dominated arrangement of forest interior sites and Quercus mongolica, Vitis amurensis, and Rubus crataegifolius dominated spatial distribution of the open area plots. Conclusions: Forest interior habitat lies within the influence of both abiotic and biotic edge effects. Therefore, we need a forest management strategy to sustain the stability of the plant and further animal communities that depend on its stable conditions. For protecting forest interior, we recommend selective logging as a harvesting method for minimizing edge effects by anthropogenic disturbance. In fact, it was known that selective logging contributes to control light availability and wind regime, which are key factors affecting microclimate. In addition, ecological restoration applying protective planting for the remaining forest in the clear-cut area could contribute to prevent continuous disturbance in forest interior.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.93-101
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• 2023

Climate change has emerged as a global problem, with frequent temperature increases, droughts, and floods, and it is predicted that it will have a great impact on the characteristics and productivity of crops. Cnidium officinale is used not only as traditionally used herbal medicines, but also as various industrial raw materials such as health functional foods, natural medicines, and living materials, but productivity is decreasing due to threats such as continuous crop damage and climate change. Therefore, this paper proposes a model that can predict the physiologically active ingredient index according to the climate change scenario of Cnidium officinale, a representative medicinal crop vulnerable to climate change. In this paper, data was first augmented using the CTGAN algorithm to solve the problem of data imbalance in the collection of environment information, physiological reactions, and physiological active ingredient information. Column Shape and Column Pair Trends were used to measure augmented data quality, and overall quality of 88% was achieved on average. In addition, five models RF, SVR, XGBoost, AdaBoost, and LightBGM were used to predict phenol and flavonoid content by dividing them into ground and underground using augmented data. As a result of model evaluation, the XGBoost model showed the best performance in predicting the physiological active ingredients of the sacrum, and it was confirmed to be about twice as accurate as the SVR model.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.400-406
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• 2018

In this experiment the effect of supplemental lighting on the growth and yield of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L. 'Fresh') plants during low radiation period of winter season were investigated in glasshouses using common high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps and newly developed plasma lighting system (PLS) lamps. Plants grown without supplemental lighting were considered as a control. Supplemental lighting was provided from November 20th, 2015 to March 15th, 2016 to ensure 14-hour photoperiod (natural+supplemental light), also lamps were operated automatically when the outside sun radiation levels were less than $100W{\cdot}m^{-2}$. Spectral analysis showed that HPS lamp had a discrete spectrum, lacked of the radiation in the 400-550 nm wave band (blue-green light), but had a high output in the orange-red region (550-650 nm). A higher red light output resulted in an increased red to far-red (R/FR) ratio in HPS lamp. PLS had a continuous spectrum and had a peak radiation in green region (490-550 nm). HPS has 12.6% lower output in photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) but 12.6% higher output in near infra-red (NIR) spectral regions compared to PLS. Both HPS and PLS lamps emitted very low levels of ultra-violet radiation (300-400 nm). Supplemental lighting both from HPS and PLS lamps increased plant height, leaf number, internode number and dry weight of cucumber plants compared to control. Photosynthetic activity of cucumber plants grown under two supplemental lighting systems was comparable. Number of fruits per cucumber plant (fruit weight per plant) in control, PLS, and HPS plots were 21.2 (2.9 kg), 38.7 (5.5 kg), and 40.4 (5.6 kg), respectively, thereby increasing yield by 1.8-1.9 times in comparison with control. An analysis of the economic feasibility of supplemental lighting in cucumber cultivation showed that considering lamp installation and electricity costs the income from supplemental lighting increased by 37% and 62% for PLS and HPS lamps, respectively.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.102 no.3
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• pp.446-454
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• 2013

The present study investigated the biological agents and environmental conditions of the habitats of the Kirengeshoma koreana, a class 2 endangered species class according to the South Korean Ministry of Environment (MOE), elucidated the structural characteristics of the forest stands in the habitats with the importance value and the diversity index, conducted comparative analysis of the factors, and explored their relationship with environmental factors. According to the results of direction analysis of natural habitats of the Kirengeshoma koreana, the direction was distributed to the north or the northeast, and the slope amounted to $15-40^{\circ}$, thus demonstrating that the slope has little effect. In addition, the results showed that the distribution of Kirengeshoma koreana populations dramatically increased starting in areas at least 600 m above the sea level and that the relative light intensity was 3.79% on an average. Most populations were native to gorges and crevices between rocks so that they mainly tended to inhabit areas that could see soil loss in times of precipitation. In addition, a considerable number of the populations were close to hiking trails as well, thus leading to concerns about their artificial destruction. The soil of layer a in the main growth space of the Kirengeshoma koreana was analyzed and turned out to be strongly acidic, measuring pH 4.45-4.89 (average: 4.68). All investigation sections were typical natural broad-leaved tree areas, and, judging from the fact that the Kirengeshoma koreana was most likely to appear in colonies of the Mongolian oak tree (Quercus mongolica Fisch. ex Ledeb.), the Mongolian oak tree seems to be the species of tree that has the greatest effect on the inhabitation of the Kirengeshoma koreana.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-12
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of high voltage pulsed current stimulation (HVPCS) on the healing rate of a dermal wound in a rat. We also determined the mechanism of promoting healing by HVPCS. Twenty male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into two group; HVPCS group (n=10) and control group (n=10). The HVPCS rats received electrical stimulation with a current intensity of 50 V at 100 pps for a duration of 30 minutes, while the control group was given the same treatment without electricity for a week. The biopsy specimens were fixed in formalin, embedded in paraffin and stained with Masson's trichrome, hematoxylin and eosin (H&E). The fibroblasts and collagen density were counted using a light microscope and computerized image analysis system and calculated as the density and the percent. A Student t-test showed a significantly higher wound healing rate of the HVPCS group than control (t=-4.161, p<0.001). The fibroblasts in the HVPCS group were higher than in the control group (t=-4.921, p<0.001). The density of collagen in the HVPCS group was also higher than in the control group (t=-4.367, p<0.001). These results indicate that the HVPCS accelerated the rate of healing in dermal wound, and increased fibroblasts and collagen density in the regenerative dermis. These findings suggest that the HVPCS may activate fibroblasts by alteration of the electrical environment, and it may increase collagen synthesis in the regenerative dermal wound.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.20-29
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• 2018

Background: For various reasons such as agricultural and economical purposes, land-use changes are rapidly increasing not only in Korea but also in the world, leading to shifts in the characteristics of local carbon cycle. Therefore, in order to understand the large-scale ecosystem carbon cycle, it is necessary first to understand vegetation on this local scale. As a result, it is essential to comprehend change of the carbon balance attributed by the land-use changes. In this study, we attempt to understand accumulated soil carbon (ASC) and soil respiration (Rs) related to carbon cycle in two ecosystems, artificially turned forest into pastureland from forest and a native deciduous temperate forest, resulted from different land-use in the same area. Results: Rs were shown typical seasonal changes in the alpine pastureland (AP) and temperate deciduous forest (TDF). The annual average Rs was $160.5mg\;CO_2\;m^{-2}h^{-1}$ in the AP, but it was $405.1mg\;CO_2\;m^{-2}h^{-1}$ in the TDF, indicating that the Rs in the AP was lower about 54% than that in the TDF. Also, ASC in the AP was $124.49Mg\;C\;ha^{-1}$ from litter layer to 30-cm soil depth. The ASC was about $88.9Mg\;C\;ha^{-1}$, and it was 71.5% of that of the AP. The temperature factors in the AP was high about $4^{\circ}C$ on average compared to the TDF. In AP, it was observed high amount of sunlight entering near the soil surface which is related to high soil temperature is due to low canopy structure. This tendency is due to the smaller emission of organic carbon that is accumulated in the soil, which means a higher ASC in the AP compared to the TDF. Conclusions: The artificial transformation of natural ecosystems into different ecosystems is proceeding widely in the world as well as Korea. The change in land-use type is caused to make the different characteristics of carbon cycle and storage in same region. For evaluating and predicting the carbon cycle in the vegetation modified by the human activity, it is necessary to understand the carbon cycle and storage characteristics of natural ecosystems and converted ecosystems. In this study, we studied the characteristics of ecosystem carbon cycle using different forms in the same region. The land-use changes from a TDF to AP leads to changes in dominant vegetation. Removal of canopy increased light and temperature conditions and slightly decreased SMC during the growing season. Also, land-use change led to an increase of ASC and decrease of Rs in AP. In terms of ecosystem carbon sequestration, AP showed a greater amount of carbon stored in the soil due to sustained supply of above-ground liters and lower degradation rate (soil respiration) than TDF in the high mountains. This shows that TDF and AP do not have much difference in terms of storage and circulation of carbon because the amount of carbon in the forest biomass is stored in the soil in the AP.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.179-186
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• 2021

Manipulation of complex objects with an anthropomorphic robot hand like a human hand is a challenge in the human-centric environment. In order to train the anthropomorphic robot hand which has a high degree of freedom (DoF), human demonstration augmented deep reinforcement learning policy optimization methods have been proposed. In this work, we first demonstrate augmentation of human demonstration in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is effective for object manipulation by comparing the performance of the augmentation-free Natural Policy Gradient (NPG) and Demonstration Augmented NPG (DA-NPG). Then three DRL policy optimization methods, namely NPG, Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), have been evaluated with DA (i.e., DA-NPG, DA-TRPO, and DA-PPO) and without DA by manipulating six objects such as apple, banana, bottle, light bulb, camera, and hammer. The results show that DA-NPG achieved the average success rate of 99.33% whereas NPG only achieved 60%. In addition, DA-NPG succeeded grasping all six objects while DA-TRPO and DA-PPO failed to grasp some objects and showed unstable performances.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.384-389
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• 2009

Germination characteristics of Chinese milk vetch(CMV) seeds produced from Hanam Province, China and Milyang, Korea were investigated to give basic information on the stability of seedling establishment in the CMV cultivation. The germination percentage of the imported CMV seed from China varied according to importation year and seed collection site ranging from 79~95%. The germination of black colored seed coat was lower than the light green colored ones and germination by seed weight was not significantly different. Although the seed germination was lower under dark than in the presence of light, it was not significantly different. The germination of the imported CMV seed slightly declined to only less than 6% after one-year of storage under natural environment conditions but it significantly decreased after two years. However, when the seed was stored at the $5^{\circ}C$, the seed germination was the same as after two years of storage. On the other hand, fresh CMV seed produced in Milyang, Korea had only 8% germination due to seed coat dormancy but the germination increased to 73~85% after breaking seed dormancy after a year of storage. The high germination percentage of 72~82% was still maintained even after 27 months of seed storage unlike the CMV seed produced from China. These results indicate that CMV seeds do not require light for germination and the seed from China should be used within one-year after importation while the seeds produced from Korea can be used even after two years from harvest for stable CMV seedling establishment in the CMV-rice cropping system.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.139-143
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• 2002

Cotton Glutathione S-Transferase (GST: EC 2.5.1.18) was cloned and overexpressed in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants. Northern blot analysis confirmed the successful transformation of cotton gst gene in tobacco plant. Type I and Type ll transcript patterns were identified in transgenic tobacco plants and only Type I transcripts were discussed in this paper, The activity of GST in the type II transgenic plants was about 1.5-fold higher than those of the wild type and non-expresser by using 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) and reduced glutathione as the substrate. The expression of cotton GST in tobacco plants proved that Gh-5 could be translated into functional protein. Type II transgenic plants produced functional GST in the cells. The effects of cotton GST in the seedlings was evaluated by growing the control and transgenic seedlings at $15^{\circ}C$ in the growth chamber in the light. Overexpressors were grown well compared to the control plants (non-expressors). lo test far tolerance to salinity, seeds of Gh-5 overexpressors and the wild type Xanthi seedlings were grown at 0, 50, 100, 150, and 200 mM NaCl solution. Gh-5 transgenic seedlings showed higher growth rate over control seedlings on 50 and 100 mM NaCl solution. There was no difference in growth rate at 150 and 200mM NaCl concentration.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.91-101
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the positive effects of artificial ground greening on the reduction of carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) which can help improve ecological functions in cities and mitigation of climate change, through quantifying $CO_2$ uptake and evapotranspiration by the process of photosynthesis of some plants. Experiment of $CO_2$ uptake and evapotranspiration was conducted by measurement of $CO_2$ exchange rate using the infrared gas analyzer, for 7 month, growing season from May to November 2009, 2 times a month. The result was as follows; The $CO_2$ uptake quantity per $cm^2$ of Chrysanthemum zawadskii was the highest rate at $21.47{\times}10^{-6}g/cm^2/s$ and Poa pratensis was $16.20g{\times}10^{-6}g/cm^2/s$. The stronger was light of intensity, the higher were $CO_2$ uptake rate of most plants. In quantity of evapotranspiration, Poa pratensis was the highest rate at $8.75{\times}10^{-5}g/cm^2/s$ and Aquilegia buergariana was $8.66{\times}10^{-5}g/cm^2/s$. From this study, it is confirmed that artificial ground greening has capacity of absorption $CO_2$ and effects on improving urban microclimate.