• Title/Summary/Keyword: small organisms

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An Analytical Study on the Structural Performance Evaluation of the Multistage Overturing Movable Gate (다단전도방식 가동보의 구조성능 평가를 위한 해석적 연구)

  • Choi, Jin Woo;Joo, Hyung Joong;Kim, Jung Min;Lee, Kyu Shick;Yoon, Soon Jong
    • Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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    • v.25 no.6
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    • pp.613-622
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    • 2013
  • Numerous water gates have been constructed and are under construction for the control of water level because, due to the topographical characteristics of mountainous area, many small size rivers are developed in Korean peninsula. Among the water gates, movable water gates are more efficient to control water level than the fixed water gates. By the field application of the movable water gates, many problems associated with the fixed water gates have been mitigated. The problems include the bottom water pollution, the change of habitats for the riparian organisms, etc. This is the reason to increase the field application of movable water gates. In the paper we present the result of analytical investigation pertaining to the structural behavior of multistage overturning movable water gate which is one of the movable water gates. In the analytical investigations, the finite element analysis on the constructed water gate has been conducted for illustration purposes and it was found that the multistage movable water gate is much better than the fixed and/or existing movable water gates in the point of structural and environmental performances.

Catch and species composition with some different traps by depth in the deep-water of the East Sea (동해 심해에서의 통발 어구종류별 수심별 어획 특성)

  • Park, Hae-Hoon;Bae, Bong-Seong
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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    • v.47 no.4
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    • pp.300-315
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    • 2011
  • The investigation for the catch and species composition in the deep sea of the East Sea was done to search marine organisms using some kinds of traps with small commercial fishing vessel near Goseong, Korea from 2008 to 2009. The experiments was carried out with some different traps at the depth of 200m, 400m, 700m and 1,000m. In 2008, the amount of catch with rectangular, cone and drum net traps was 91.4kg with twelve trips and the proportion of catch with rectangular and cone traps was high. Dominant species caught were Aniwan whelk (57%), snow crab (12%), hunchback sculpin (7%) and red snow crab (5%). The catch of Aniwan whelk was done well with rectangular and cone traps at the depth of 700-1,000m. Snow crab was mainly caught with rectangular and cone traps at the shallower depth of 200m, while red snow crab caught a lot with cone trap at the deeper depth of 700m. In 2009, the amount of catch with rectangular, cone and round traps was 92.4kg with nine trips. The proportion of catch with round trap was higher than that with cone trap. Dominant species caught were snow crab (67.1%), Aniwan whelk (14.8%) and northern shrimp (9.8%). Snow crab was caught well with round trap at the depth less than 400m.

Composition and Structure of Marine Benthic Community Regarding Conditions of Chronic Barbour Pollution

  • Fadeeva, N.P.;Bezverbnaja, I.P.;Tazaki, Kazue;Watanabe, Hiroaki;Fadeev, V.I.
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.21-30
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    • 2003
  • Seasonal fluctuations of physico-chemical and biological aspects of the environment were studied in Vladivostok harbour (Golden Horn Bay, the East Sea/Sea of Japan). The benthic community structure was described with a focus on size-spectra (bacteria, meio- and macrofauna) related with the chemical environment and chemical fluxes in sediment and to reveal their possible ecological role in the process of bioremediation of the environment. Samples from two sites with different concentrations of heavy metals (Fe, Zn, Cu, Pb, Mn, Cr, Ni Cd, Co) and petroleum hydrocarbon were assessed by a number of methods. These included plate counts of culturable bacteria, observation through a scanning electron (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). These approaches were complemented with microscopic assessments of the diversity of the benthic community. The specific communities had a limited number of species, tolerant to abnormally high levels of toxic compounds. The dominant species were presented by several sho.1-lived small polychaetes (Capitella capitata) and nematodes (Oncholaimium ramosum). The highest population density was recorded in microbenthos, in various diatoms, various physiological groups of bacteria which participate in biomineralization: marine heterotrophic bacteria, which oxidized oil, black oil in addition to groups resistant to heavy metals. They have the entire set of mechanisms for neutralizing the negative effect of those compounds, forming the detrital food web and biogeochemical circulation of material in sediments, which results in the biological self-recycling of sea basins. Macro- and meiobenthic organisms were more sensitive to a greater extent of $H_2S$ and petroleum hydrocarbons than to metal content, but the within-site rankings were the same as those achieved for microbiological analyses.

Feeding habits of Favonigobius gymnauchen in the eelgrass (Zostera marina) bed in Kwangyang Bay (광양만 잘피밭에 서식하는 날개망둑 (Favonigobius gymnauchen)의 식성)

  • HUH Sung-Hoi;KWAK Seok Nam
    • Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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    • v.31 no.3
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    • pp.372-379
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    • 1998
  • Feeding habits of Favonigobius gymnauchen collected from the eelgrass bed in Kwangyang Bay from January 1994 to December 1994 were studied. Favonigobius gymnauchen was a carnivore which consumed mainly gammarid amphipods, polychaetes, crabs and copepods. Its diets included minor Quantities of gastropods, tanaids and isopods. It showed ontogenetic changes in feeding habits. Small individuals (1$\~$2 cm) fed mainly on gammarid amphipods, polychaetes, and copepods. While the portion of the stomach contents attributable to polychaetes and crabs increased steadily with incensing fish size, consumption of copepods decreased progressively. Gammarid amphipods were the most selected prey item for all size classes. Although gammarid amphipods, polychaetes, crabs and copepods were major prey organisms for all seasons, the relative proportion of these food items changed with season. Consumption of copepods was relatively high in spring and fall and consumption of gammarid amphipods, polychaetes and crabs was relatively high in summer.

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Communications Protocol Used in the Wireless Token Rings for Bird-to-Bird

  • Nakajima, Isao;Juzoji, Hiroshi;Ozaki, Kiyoaki;Nakamura, Noboru
    • Journal of Multimedia Information System
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    • v.5 no.3
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    • pp.163-170
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    • 2018
  • We developed a multicast communication packet radio protocol using a time-sharing tablet system ("wireless token ring") to achieve the efficient exchange of files among packet radio terminals attached to swans. This paper provides an overview of the system and the protocol of the packet communications. The packet device forming the main part of the transceiver developed is the Texas Instruments CC2500. This device consists of one call-up channel and one data transmission channel and could improve error frame correction using FEC (forward error correction) with 34.8 kbps MSK and receiving power of at least -64 dBm (output 1 dBm at distance of 200 m using 3 dBi antenna). A time-sharing framework was determined for the wireless token ring using call sign ordinals to prevent transmission right loss. Tests using eight stations showed that resend requests with the ARQ (automatic repeat request) system are more frequent for a receiving power supply of -62 dBm or less. A wireless token ring system with fixed transmission times is more effective. This communication protocol is useful in cases in which frequency resources are limited; the energy consumed is not dependent on the transmission environment (preset transmission times); multiple terminals are concentrated in a small area; and information (position data and vital data) is shared among terminals under circumstances in which direct communication between a terminal and the center is not possible. The method allows epidemiological predictions of avian influenza infection routes based on vital data and relationships among individual birds based on the network topology recorded by individual terminals. This communication protocol is also expected to have applications in the formation of multiple in vivo micromachines or terminals that are inserted into living organisms.

Status and Perspective of Bioherbicde Development for Organic Weed Management (친환경 잡초방제를 위한 생물제초제의 상용화 현황)

  • Pyon, Jong Yeong;Lee, Jeung Joo;Park, Kee Woong
    • Weed & Turfgrass Science
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    • v.6 no.1
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    • pp.1-10
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    • 2017
  • Weed management under organic farming systems is very problematic since organic agriculture does not allow synthetic herbicides. Bioherbicide is needed to develop for weed management in organic agriculture systems. This review covers current status and perspectives of bioherbicide development for effective nonchemical weed management in organic farming systems. Bioherbicides are products of natural origin derived from living organisms, and more specifically bacteria, fungus and plants including natural metabolites for weed control. Bioherbicides derived from microorganisms or natural molecules are currently available on the pesticide markets. Devine, Lockdown (Collego), BioMal, Camperico, Organo-Sol and Opportune were derived from bacteria, Woad Warrior, Smolder, Mygogen, Chontrol Paste, Starritor and Phoma derived from fungus, and Katoun (pelargonic acid) and Beloukha were derived from plants. Corn gluten meal products and plant essential oils products are also available for nonselective weed control in organic agriculture. Organic weed management methods may be more feasible in small scale farming and high-value crops, and bioherbicides may be applied with other weed control practices in organic farming systems.

Identification of Caenorhabditis elegans MicroRNA Targets Using a Kernel Method

  • Lee, Wha-Jin;Nam, Jin-Wu;Kim, Sung-Kyu;Zhang, Byoung-Tak
    • Genomics & Informatics
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    • v.3 no.1
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    • pp.15-23
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    • 2005
  • Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of noncoding RNAs found in various organisms such as plants and mammals. However, most of the mRNAs regulated by miRNAs are unknown. Furthermore, miRNA targets in genomes cannot be identified by standard sequence comparison since their complementarity to the target sequence is imperfect in general. In this paper, we propose a kernel-based method for the efficient prediction of miRNA targets. To help in distinguishing the false positives from potentially valid targets, we elucidate the features common in experimentally confirmed targets. Results The performance of our prediction method was evaluated by five-fold cross-validation. Our method showed 0.64 and 0.98 in sensitivity and in specificity, respectively. Also, the proposed method reduced the number of false positives by half compared with TargetScan. We investigated the effect of feature sets on the classification of miRNA targets. Finally, we predicted miRNA targets for several miRNAs in the Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) 3' untranslated region (3' UTR) database. Condusions The targets predicted by the suggested method will help in validating more miRNA targets and ultimately in revealing the role of small RNAs in the regulation of genomes. Our algorithm for miRNA target site detection will be able to be improved by additional experimental­knowledge. Also, the increase of the number of confirmed targets is expected to reveal general structural features that can be used to improve their detection.

Structure-activity relationships of the intramolecular disulfide bonds in coprisin, a defensin from the dung beetle

  • Lee, Jaeho;Lee, Daeun;Choi, Hyemin;Kim, Ha Hyung;Kim, Ho;Hwang, Jae Sam;Lee, Dong Gun;Kim, Jae Il
    • BMB Reports
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    • v.47 no.11
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    • pp.625-630
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    • 2014
  • Defensins, which are small cationic molecules produced by organisms as part of their innate immune response, share a common structural scaffold that is stabilized by three disulfide bridges. Coprisin is a 43-amino acid defensin-like peptide from Copris tripartitus. Here, we report the intramolecular disulfide connectivity of cysteine-rich coprisin, and show that it is the same as in other insect defensins. The disulfide bond pairings of coprisin were determined by combining the enzymatic cleavage and mass analysis. We found that the loss of any single disulfide bond in coprisin eliminated all antibacterial, but not antifungal, activity. Circular dichroism (CD) analysis showed that two disulfide bonds, Cys20-Cys39 and Cys24-Cys41, stabilize coprisin's ${\alpha}$-helical region. Moreover, a BLAST search against UniProtKB database revealed that coprisin's ${\alpha}$-helical region is highly homologous to those of other insect defensins.

Biology of the Mud Shrimp Upogebia major (de Haan, 1841), with Particular Reference to Pest Management for Shrimp Control in Manila Clam Bed in the West Coast of Korea (쏙의 생물학 - 최근 서해안 바지락 양식장에 이상 증식한 쏙의 제거 대책을 중심으로 -)

  • Hong, Jae-Sang
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.35 no.4
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    • pp.323-349
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    • 2013
  • The mud shrimp Upogebia major (Upogebiidae: Decapoda: Crustacea) is a common species on muddy and sandy mud tidal flats in the west coast of Korea. They reside in Y-shaped burrows that can extend up to more than 2 meters below the sediment surface. They feed on suspended detritus carried into their burrow by the beating of their pleopods and captured by their hairy first two pairs of thoracic legs. Mud shrimp burrows provide a habitat for a variety of small organisms such as crabs, shrimps, polychaetes, and mollusks. Ovigerous females are observed from December to May. Females deposit eggs only once per breeding season. They start hatching in March and the pelagic larvae of first zoea appear in March and April, followed by benthic settlement in May. Growth over the first year is rapid, and females deposit their first eggs in the third breeding season, 31 months after their settlement. Adult shrimps live for 4~5 years. Depth of the burrow increases with body length. The deep burrows provide refuge from predators and physical stress, allowing the shrimps to survive for a long time. The mud shrimps supply oxygen-rich water to their deep burrows, and exert a great influence on the structure and metabolism of the tidal flat benthic community. However, recently this type of mud shrimp has posed a serious threat to the Korean clam industry along the west coast of Korea. The extensive burrowing shrimp populations suddenly invaded the tidal flats from 2010 where the clams (Ruditapes philippinarum) are raised. As a consequence, clam production has decreased by about 10% over the past three years in some Korean clam beds. Therefore, the objective of this study is to review the biology of this mud shrimp in order to seek solutions to control the burrowing of these shrimps.

Molecular Analyses of the Metallothionein Gene Family in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

  • Zhou, Gongke;Xu, Yufeng;Li, Ji;Yang, Lingyan;Liu, Jin-Yuan
    • BMB Reports
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    • v.39 no.5
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    • pp.595-606
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    • 2006
  • Metallothioneins are a group of low molecular mass and cysteine-rich metal-binding proteins, ubiquitously found in most living organisms. They play an important role in maintaining intracellular metal homeostasis, eliminating metal toxification and protecting against intracellular oxidative damages. Analysis of complete rice genome sequences revealed eleven genes encoding putative metallothionein (OsMT), indicating that OsMTs constitute a small gene family in rice. Expression profiling revealed that each member of the OsMT gene family differs not only in sequence but also in their tissue expression patterns, suggesting that these isoforms may have different functions they perform in specific tissues. On the basis of OsMT structural and phylogenetic analysis, the OsMT family was classified as two classes and class I was subdivided into four types. Additionally, in this paper we also present a complete overview of this family, describing the gene structure, genome localization, upstream regulatory element, and exon/intron organization of each member in order to provide valuable insight into this OsMT gene family.