• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.139-143
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• 2010

Quail is a very useful animal model for studying vertebrate development because of its small body size and unique reproductive traits. This species is also ideal model for producing germline chimeras via transferring exogenous primordial germ cells (PGCs) into the recipient embryo. To increase the contribution efficiency of donor PGCs into recipients' tissues, decreasing the population of endogenous PGCs has been rate-limiting factor. We therefore conducted this study to investigate if gamma ($\gamma$)-irradiation depletes endogenous PGCs in developing quail embryo. Firstly, freshly laid stage X quail embryos were irradiated with various output of $\gamma$-irradiation and its teratogenic effect on the embryo was evaluated. Although a dose-dependent increase in the number of embryo showing malformation was found as the output increased (0, 250, 500, 750, and 1,000 rads), only a maximum of 10.1% of embryos were abnormal in 1,000 rads. Immunocytochemical analysis using the QCR1 antibody, which is specific marker for quail PGCs, was conducted to analyze the effect of sterilization. As results, $\gamma$-rays at a dose-rate of 500 rads/73 sec onto undeveloped stage X embryo significantly reduced the number of germ cells to an average of 75.55 % and 82.03 % in male and female embryos, respectively. We conclude that $\gamma$-ray selectively targets PGCs while affects minimally to the somatic development in quail embryo. Our results will not only provide important data for germline chimera production but can be used for analyzing the effect of ionized rays on the differentiating germ cells in various stages during animal development.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.215-235
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• 1996

The thermal analysis by mathematical model simulation makes it possible to reasonably predict heating and/or cooling requirements of certain greenhouses located under various geographical and climatic environment. It is another advantages of model simulation technique to be able to make it possible to select appropriate heating system, to set up energy utilization strategy, to schedule seasonal crop pattern, as well as to determine new greenhouse ranges. In this study, the control pattern for greenhouse microclimate is categorized as cooling and heating. Dynamic model was adopted to simulate heating requirements and/or energy conservation effectiveness such as energy saving by night-time thermal curtain, estimation of Heating Degree-Hours(HDH), long time prediction of greenhouse thermal behavior, etc. On the other hand, the cooling effects of ventilation, shading, and pad ||||&|||| fan system were partly analyzed by static model. By the experimental work with small size model greenhouse of 1.2m$\times$2.4m, it was found that cooling the greenhouse by spraying cold water directly on greenhouse cover surface or by recirculating cold water through heat exchangers would be effective in greenhouse summer cooling. The mathematical model developed for greenhouse model simulation is highly applicable because it can reflects various climatic factors like temperature, humidity, beam and diffuse solar radiation, wind velocity, etc. This model was closely verified by various weather data obtained through long period greenhouse experiment. Most of the materials relating with greenhouse heating or cooling components were obtained from model greenhouse simulated mathematically by using typical year(1987) data of Jinju Gyeongnam. But some of the materials relating with greenhouse cooling was obtained by performing model experiments which include analyzing cooling effect of water sprayed directly on greenhouse roof surface. The results are summarized as follows : 1. The heating requirements of model greenhouse were highly related with the minimum temperature set for given greenhouse. The setting temperature at night-time is much more influential on heating energy requirement than that at day-time. Therefore It is highly recommended that night- time setting temperature should be carefully determined and controlled. 2. The HDH data obtained by conventional method were estimated on the basis of considerably long term average weather temperature together with the standard base temperature(usually 18.3$^{\circ}C$). This kind of data can merely be used as a relative comparison criteria about heating load, but is not applicable in the calculation of greenhouse heating requirements because of the limited consideration of climatic factors and inappropriate base temperature. By comparing the HDM data with the results of simulation, it is found that the heating system design by HDH data will probably overshoot the actual heating requirement. 3. The energy saving effect of night-time thermal curtain as well as estimated heating requirement is found to be sensitively related with weather condition: Thermal curtain adopted for simulation showed high effectiveness in energy saving which amounts to more than 50% of annual heating requirement. 4. The ventilation performances doting warm seasons are mainly influenced by air exchange rate even though there are some variations depending on greenhouse structural difference, weather and cropping conditions. For air exchanges above 1 volume per minute, the reduction rate of temperature rise on both types of considered greenhouse becomes modest with the additional increase of ventilation capacity. Therefore the desirable ventilation capacity is assumed to be 1 air change per minute, which is the recommended ventilation rate in common greenhouse. 5. In glass covered greenhouse with full production, under clear weather of 50% RH, and continuous 1 air change per minute, the temperature drop in 50% shaded greenhouse and pad ＆ fan systemed greenhouse is 2.6$^{\circ}C$ and.6.1$^{\circ}C$ respectively. The temperature in control greenhouse under continuous air change at this time was 36.6$^{\circ}C$ which was 5.3$^{\circ}C$ above ambient temperature. As a result the greenhouse temperature can be maintained 3$^{\circ}C$ below ambient temperature. But when RH is 80%, it was impossible to drop greenhouse temperature below ambient temperature because possible temperature reduction by pad ||||&|||| fan system at this time is not more than 2.4$^{\circ}C$. 6. During 3 months of hot summer season if the greenhouse is assumed to be cooled only when greenhouse temperature rise above 27$^{\circ}C$, the relationship between RH of ambient air and greenhouse temperature drop($\Delta$T) was formulated as follows : $\Delta$T= -0.077RH＋7.7 7. Time dependent cooling effects performed by operation of each or combination of ventilation, 50% shading, pad ＆ fan of 80% efficiency, were continuously predicted for one typical summer day long. When the greenhouse was cooled only by 1 air change per minute, greenhouse air temperature was 5$^{\circ}C$ above outdoor temperature. Either method alone can not drop greenhouse air temperature below outdoor temperature even under the fully cropped situations. But when both systems were operated together, greenhouse air temperature can be controlled to about 2.0-2.3$^{\circ}C$ below ambient temperature. 8. When the cool water of 6.5-8.5$^{\circ}C$ was sprayed on greenhouse roof surface with the water flow rate of 1.3 liter/min per unit greenhouse floor area, greenhouse air temperature could be dropped down to 16.5-18.$0^{\circ}C$, whlch is about 1$0^{\circ}C$ below the ambient temperature of 26.5-28.$0^{\circ}C$ at that time. The most important thing in cooling greenhouse air effectively with water spray may be obtaining plenty of cool water source like ground water itself or cold water produced by heat-pump. Future work is focused on not only analyzing the feasibility of heat pump operation but also finding the relationships between greenhouse air temperature(T$_{g}$ ), spraying water temperature(T$_{w}$ ), water flow rate(Q), and ambient temperature(T$_{o}$).

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.85-102
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• 2009

With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.36 no.8
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• pp.965-974
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• 2007

This study was performed to investigate the effects of vegetable sprout powder on serum and adipose tissue lipid metabolism in rats fed high-fat diet for 4 weeks for induction hyperlipidemic model rat. Weight-matched male Sprague-Dawley rats were assigned to five groups according to dietary fat level (10% or 20% of diet wt.) and mixture of vegetable sprout powder levels (5% or 10% 10% or 20% of diet wt.). Vegetable sprout powder was the mixture of same amounts of dried barley, broccoli, rapeseed, alfalfa, radish, mustard, buckwheat and brussels sprouts. Experimental groups were normal fat diet with 5% cellulose (NF-C), high fat diet without fiber (HF-N), high fat diet with 5% cellulose (HF-C), HF-C diet with 5% vegetable sprout powder (HF-CSL), and HF-C diet with 10% vegetable sprout powder (HF-CSH). The body weight of HF-N group increased 16% compared with the NF-C group, while it was decreased by 15% and 22% for HF-CSL group and HF-CSH group, respectively. Fat mass and fat cell size of adipose tissue were lower in HF-CSL group and HF-CSH group compared with HF-C group, and lower in HF-CSH group compared with HF-CSL group. Serum triglyceride, total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol contents were markedly decreased by vegetable sprout powder containing diet, while the serum HDL-cholesterol and phospholipid contents were higher in vegetable sprout powder containing diet in a dose-dependent manner. Leptin and insulin levels in serum showed a decrease in HF-CSH group. Significantly increased contents of triglyceride, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, leptin and insulin in the serum of HF-N group were returned to normal or even below normal levels by feeding 10% vegetable sprout powder diet. The increased activities of NADP-malate dehydrogenase (ME), glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) and 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (6PGDH) and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) in adiposetissue by HF-N group were decreased to the activity of normal fat group by feeding vegetable sprout powder in a dose-dependant manner. These results indicate that lipid metabolism in rats fed high-fat diet was suppressed by feeding vegetable sprout powder.