• Title/Summary/Keyword: source separation

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Quantification of kerosene and Diesel in Mixed Petroleum Fuels for Environmental Sample Characterization (다종유류 오염 환경매체에서의 유류 분리.정량에 관한 연구(I) - 등유, 경유 정량을 중심으로 -)

  • 이군택;이민효
    • Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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    • v.5 no.2
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    • pp.23-31
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    • 2000
  • The objective of this study was to develop an effective separation and quantification method for kerosene and diesel in a mixed petroleum fuel (gasoline, kerosene, and diesel) contaminated environmental samples. This investigation was directed to prove the hypothesis that if the source of petroleum fuels were identical, the peak-area ratios of a reference n-alkane to other n-alkane peaks should be a constant even at the different concentrations. In addition, experimental recovery rates were determined to select the reference peaks of kerosene and diesel for peak area ratio measurements. The experimental results showed that the peak area ratios were constant among the samples having different concentrations when the ratios were calculated from areas of $C_{l3}$, $C_{l4}$, and $C_{15}$ peaks for kerosene and $C_{l6}$ and $C_{l7}$ peak for diesel as reference n-alkane peaks. The recovery rates were evaluated by comparing the relative peak area ratios of each reference peaks after making pairs of the kerosene and diesel reference peaks in the samples contained a known amount of gasoline, kerosene, and diesel. The recovery rates(%) Were 107.0$_{{\pm}20.6}$/86.6/ sub $\pm$15.9/ for kerosene- $C_{13}$/diesel- $C_{16}$, 99.6$\pm$$_{17.2}$/86.6$_{{\pm}15.9}$ for kerosene- $C_{14}$/diesel- $C_{16}$, 73.9/$\pm$14.4//86.6$_{{\pm}sub 15.9}$ for kerosene- $C_{15}$ /diesel- $C_{16}$, 109.4$_{{pm}0.8}$/75.9$_{{pm}4.7}$ for kerosene- $C_{13}$/diesel- $C_{17}$, 107.4$_{{pm}7.9}$/75.9$_{{pm}4.7}$ for kerosene- $C_{14}$/diesel- $C_{17}$, and 95.7$_{{pm}4.6}$ /75.9/$\pm$14.6//75.9$_{{pm$}4.7}$ for kerosene- $C_{15}$ /diesel- $C_{17.}$ The above experimental results confirm that all of the reference peak pairs of kerosene and diesel are applicable to the quantitative analysis for the mixed fuel contaminated samples, but the kerosene- $C_{15}$ /diesel- $C_{l7}$ peaks are recommended since the pair has a lower standard deviation than the other pairs.s..s.s.s..s..s.s.s.s.s.

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Establishment of Waste Collection and Transportation System for Composting I. Estimation of Unit Garbage Generation (퇴비화촉진을 위한 쓰레기 수거체계의 확립 I. 음식물찌꺼기 원단위 발생량의 산정)

  • Shin, H.S.;Hwang, E.J.;Kang, H.;Lee, S.J.;Jang, W.
    • Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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    • v.3 no.2
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    • pp.25-36
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    • 1995
  • It is important to separate the compostables from waste for successful operation of composting plant, since various compositions are mixed in it. For the separation of compostables, it is necessary to estimate total amounts of compostables from several sources. Based on it, required capacity and number of composting plant as well as proper waste collection and transportation system can be determined. So, amounts of garbage, major target material for composting. were estimated in this study. In survey of unit garbage generation(UGG). different estimation results would be obtained depending on the basis of its measurement. However, previous researches did not consider it. In this paper, the correlations between area and the number of user of garbage source were analyzed to find the related equations which were apllyed to estimation of total generation. Obtained results are as the following. Relative variations of measured UGG based on area and custumer are 62.5 and 52.8, respectively. In linear regression, related equation between area and custumer was Y=0.244X+59.0 (X=area, Y=custumer). The correlation factor r is 0.904. Equation Y=616.5X/(X+1215.4) was also obtained from linear regression using Monod equation (r=0.720). From the first order equation and measured data of UGG based on custumer, amounts of garbage generation from restaurant in Seoul and the whole country were calculated to 2043.9 ton/d and 9014.0 ton/d, respectively. But, the values calculated from measured data of UGG based on area were as low as 821.3 ton/d Cin Seoul) and 3821.0 ton/d(in the whole country). Consequently, the measurement of unit garbage generation based on the number of custumer was more favorable to lessen the points of survey and to guarantee the representative values. Especially, it would fit well on restaurant having statistics of area.

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Use of Human Adipose Tissue as a Source of Endothelial Cells (혈관내피세포 채취의 원천으로 인간 지방조직의 활용)

  • Park, Bong-Wook;Hah, Young-Sool;Kim, Jin-Hyun;Cho, Hee-Young;Jung, Myeong-Hee;Kim, Deok-Ryong;Kim, Uk-Kyu;Kim, Jong-Ryoul;Jang, Jung-Hui;Byun, June-Ho
    • Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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    • v.32 no.4
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    • pp.299-305
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    • 2010
  • Purpose: Adipose tissue is located beneath the skin, around internal organs, and in the bone marrow in humans. Its main role is to store energy in the form of fat, although it also cushions and insulates the body. Adipose tissue also has the ability to dynamically expand and shrink throughout the life of an adult. Recently, it has been shown that adipose tissue contains a population of adult multipotent mesenchymal stem cells and endothelial progenitor cells that, in cell culture conditions, have extensive proliferative capacity and are able to differentiate into several lineages, including, osteogenic, chondrogenic, endothelial cells, and myogenic lineages. Materials and Methods: This study focused on endothelial cell culture from the adipose tissue. Adipose tissues were harvested from buccal fat pad during bilateral sagittal split ramus osteotomy for surgical correction of mandibular prognathism. The tissues were treated with 0.075% type I collagenase. The samples were neutralized with DMEM/and centrifuged for 10 min at 2,400 rpm. The pellet was treated with 3 volume of RBC lysis buffer and filtered through a 100 ${\mu}m$ nylon cell strainer. The filtered cells were centrifuged for 10 min at 2,400 rpm. The cells were further cultured in the endothelial cell culture medium (EGM-2, Cambrex, Walkersville, Md., USA) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum, human EGF, human VEGF, human insulin-like growth factor-1, human FGF-$\beta$, heparin, ascorbic acid and hydrocortisone at a density of $1{\times}10^5$ cells/well in a 24-well plate. Low positivity of endothelial cell markers, such as CD31 and CD146, was observed during early passage of cells. Results: Increase of CD146 positivity was observed in passage 5 to 7 adipose tissue-derived cells. However, CD44, representative mesenchymal stem cell marker, was also strongly expressed. CD146 sorted adipose tissue-derived cells was cultured using immuno-magnetic beads. Magnetic labeling with 100 ${\mu}l$ microbeads per 108 cells was performed for 30 minutes at $4^{\circ}C$ a using CD146 direct cell isolation kit. Magnetic separation was carried out and a separator under a biological hood. Aliquous of CD146+ sorted cells were evaluated for purity by flow cytometry. Sorted cells were 96.04% positivity for CD146. And then tube formation was examined. These CD146 sorted adipose tissue-derived cells formed tube-like structures on Matrigel. Conclusion: These results suggest that adipose tissue-derived cells are endothelial cells. With the fabrication of the vascularized scaffold construct, novel approaches could be developed to enhance the engineered scaffold by the addition of adipose tissue-derived endothelial cells and periosteal-derived osteoblastic cells to promote bone growth.

The Prediction of DEA based Efficiency Rating for Venture Business Using Multi-class SVM (다분류 SVM을 이용한 DEA기반 벤처기업 효율성등급 예측모형)

  • Park, Ji-Young;Hong, Tae-Ho
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.139-155
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    • 2009
  • For the last few decades, many studies have tried to explore and unveil venture companies' success factors and unique features in order to identify the sources of such companies' competitive advantages over their rivals. Such venture companies have shown tendency to give high returns for investors generally making the best use of information technology. For this reason, many venture companies are keen on attracting avid investors' attention. Investors generally make their investment decisions by carefully examining the evaluation criteria of the alternatives. To them, credit rating information provided by international rating agencies, such as Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch is crucial source as to such pivotal concerns as companies stability, growth, and risk status. But these types of information are generated only for the companies issuing corporate bonds, not venture companies. Therefore, this study proposes a method for evaluating venture businesses by presenting our recent empirical results using financial data of Korean venture companies listed on KOSDAQ in Korea exchange. In addition, this paper used multi-class SVM for the prediction of DEA-based efficiency rating for venture businesses, which was derived from our proposed method. Our approach sheds light on ways to locate efficient companies generating high level of profits. Above all, in determining effective ways to evaluate a venture firm's efficiency, it is important to understand the major contributing factors of such efficiency. Therefore, this paper is constructed on the basis of following two ideas to classify which companies are more efficient venture companies: i) making DEA based multi-class rating for sample companies and ii) developing multi-class SVM-based efficiency prediction model for classifying all companies. First, the Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is a non-parametric multiple input-output efficiency technique that measures the relative efficiency of decision making units(DMUs) using a linear programming based model. It is non-parametric because it requires no assumption on the shape or parameters of the underlying production function. DEA has been already widely applied for evaluating the relative efficiency of DMUs. Recently, a number of DEA based studies have evaluated the efficiency of various types of companies, such as internet companies and venture companies. It has been also applied to corporate credit ratings. In this study we utilized DEA for sorting venture companies by efficiency based ratings. The Support Vector Machine(SVM), on the other hand, is a popular technique for solving data classification problems. In this paper, we employed SVM to classify the efficiency ratings in IT venture companies according to the results of DEA. The SVM method was first developed by Vapnik (1995). As one of many machine learning techniques, SVM is based on a statistical theory. Thus far, the method has shown good performances especially in generalizing capacity in classification tasks, resulting in numerous applications in many areas of business, SVM is basically the algorithm that finds the maximum margin hyperplane, which is the maximum separation between classes. According to this method, support vectors are the closest to the maximum margin hyperplane. If it is impossible to classify, we can use the kernel function. In the case of nonlinear class boundaries, we can transform the inputs into a high-dimensional feature space, This is the original input space and is mapped into a high-dimensional dot-product space. Many studies applied SVM to the prediction of bankruptcy, the forecast a financial time series, and the problem of estimating credit rating, In this study we employed SVM for developing data mining-based efficiency prediction model. We used the Gaussian radial function as a kernel function of SVM. In multi-class SVM, we adopted one-against-one approach between binary classification method and two all-together methods, proposed by Weston and Watkins(1999) and Crammer and Singer(2000), respectively. In this research, we used corporate information of 154 companies listed on KOSDAQ market in Korea exchange. We obtained companies' financial information of 2005 from the KIS(Korea Information Service, Inc.). Using this data, we made multi-class rating with DEA efficiency and built multi-class prediction model based data mining. Among three manners of multi-classification, the hit ratio of the Weston and Watkins method is the best in the test data set. In multi classification problems as efficiency ratings of venture business, it is very useful for investors to know the class with errors, one class difference, when it is difficult to find out the accurate class in the actual market. So we presented accuracy results within 1-class errors, and the Weston and Watkins method showed 85.7% accuracy in our test samples. We conclude that the DEA based multi-class approach in venture business generates more information than the binary classification problem, notwithstanding its efficiency level. We believe this model can help investors in decision making as it provides a reliably tool to evaluate venture companies in the financial domain. For the future research, we perceive the need to enhance such areas as the variable selection process, the parameter selection of kernel function, the generalization, and the sample size of multi-class.

The Design of Wireless Underwater Telephone -Analysis of Underwater Background Noise for Wireless Underwater Telephone Design - (수중 무선 전화기의 설계 - 수중무선전화기 설계를 위한 수중소음분석을 중심으로-)

  • 박문갑;윤갑동;김석제;윤종락
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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    • v.37 no.4
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    • pp.302-307
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    • 2001
  • The underwater background noise measured in Geoje and Tongyoung diving fishing ground from May to December, 2000 and analyzed to get optimum carrier frequency and transmitter power level for underwater wireless telephone design. The results obtained are summarized as follows: 1. At the Geoje and Tongyoung diving fishing ground, the lowest ambient noise band was 25~30kHz with 57dB and 52dB re 1$\mu$Pa, respectively. 2. At the Geoje and Tongyoung diving fishing ground, the lowest noise band during fishing activity was 67dB and 62dB re 1$\mu$Pa, respectively. 3. At the Geoje diving fishing ground, the noise of water jetter which is a digging machine for subbottom shells was 102dB re 1$\mu$Pa. 4. Considering the design parameters of underwater wireless telephone, it is found that the optimum carrier frequency band is around 30kHz and the transmitter source level should be at least 131dB re 1$\mu$Pa for 500m range telephone.

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A Study on the Successful Case of Brand Renewal through American National Brand 'C' Company's Marketing Strategy (미국(美國) 내셔널브랜드 C사(社)의 마케팅전략(戰略)을 통한 브랜드리뉴얼 성공사례(成功事例) 연구(硏究))

  • Koh, Hee-Sook
    • Journal of Fashion Business
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    • v.6 no.1
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    • pp.137-154
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    • 2002
  • It's not easy to renew old brand of over 50 years history to the tastes of new consumer of our time. Most of national brands that has a history of some 20 years in Korea have strove for continuation and growth of brand to no avails, which can be taken as a good example of current situation. For instance, C company, one of the National brand of US which has a history of 51 years, has made its position secure as a fashion group and based itself on a sound foundation by establishing new marketing strategy and completing successful brand renewal in the process of strategic M&A with Italian company. Those successful marketing strategies are as follows. 1) they regarded both market and consumer oriented marketing activity as company's highest priority strategy and put great emphasis upon concentration on target market and reestablishment of brand image of business casual wear. 2) Setting up and operating planning team composed of merchandizer alone in Milano, they set the direction of plan on the basis of concentrated research on potential item in market according to thorough market research done by buying office in Korea, branch office in Hong Kong and buyer in US prior to blueprint planning for season. 3) Great emphasis was placed on business which focused on intensive presentation of basic key item for apparel career women who are main consumer group in the midium-low prices market in US and on supplementation of size and color. they named this line 'collectibles' and helped their customer develop their own clothes plan without worrying about the change of color and fabric by supporting same fabric and color throughout the year and enabled them to add variation easily by supplementing new trend item. 4) Company set black as a main color that lots of apparel career women find easy to care and to express their own image and presented them with pebble which belongs to navy and beige and added fashion color such as wine and brown etc as season goes by. They constructed basic line in order for their customers to coordinate purchased item with new one or to add them to present collection, and to achieve efficient sale by setting up strategy which allows this cross coordination and changing pattern occasionally. 5) Though basic jacket for 99$, short slim skirt for 49$ are products within midium-low prices range, in the material planning stage aiming at production of item that has both resonable function appealing to consumer and is fashionable, synthetic material had to be used as a main source due to price competitiveness. Despite this situation, considering comfortable sense of fit and refined drape of silhouette that has no sign of cheap material, whole collectible line was divided into two items, which contributed to reduction of cost. In case of material that is composed of triacetate and polyester in 70 to 30 ratio, was used up to 4 million yard, which allowed drastic curtailment of cost accompanied by concentration. In case of 'collectibles' line, using Korean material mainly, C company chose to have their product sewed in Southeast Asian countries where transportation is well developed and both productivity and quality verified by operating global production system which aiming at cutdown of cost through outsourcing production from the country where labor cost is low and getting finished product. Polarization between present consumers telling us that consumers with the mind of middle classes in the past no longer exists between consumers who seek after only fine article of highest quality and wise consumers who are sensible enough to judge bubble on correlation between price and quality. To cope with this change in new consumer mind, apparel makes changing their policy so as to produce item that has reasonable quality and falls within affordable price range anywhere in the world. and they're striving to get out of difficult situation by operating global marketing strategy which stresses separation of planning, production and sale and sensibility of fashion shared worldwide. The marketing strategy of C company can be exemplified as a successful one.

STUDIES ON THE EXTRACTION OF SEAWEED PROTEINS 1. Extraction of Water Soluble Proteins (해조단백질의 추출에 관한 연구 1. 수용성 단백질의 추출)

  • RYU Hong-Soo;LEE Kang-Ho
    • Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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    • v.10 no.3
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    • pp.151-162
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    • 1977
  • Distribution of marine algae is diverse in Korea and the resource of edible algae is abundant marking 239,037 tons of yearly production in 1976. They have been known as a protein source and used as a supplement in Korean diet. It is necessary to estimate the potentiality and properties of usable algal proteins especially as food resources and studies of extraction and separation of the proteins, therefore, are basically required for this purpose. In this study, the influence of various factors including the sample treatment, extraction time and temperature, sample us extraction solvent ratio and pH upon the extractability of the water soluble protein was determined. And the effect of precipitation treatment for isolation of the algal protein from the extracts was also tested. Nine species of algae, the major ones in consumption as food namely Porphyra suborbiculata, Undaria pinnatifida, Hizikia fusiforme, Sargassum fulvellu, Enteromorpha linza, Codium fragile, Sargassum kjellmanianum and Ulva pertusa were collected as fresh from Kijang, Yangsan Gun, in the vicinity of Busan city. The content of crude protein $(N\times6.25)$ of the algae ranged from $9.46\%\;to\;24.14\% showing the highest value in Porphyra suborbiculata and the minimum in Hizikia fusiforme. In the effort of maceration of blending methods on the extractability, immersion freezing in dry ice-methanol solution appeared most effective yielding 1.5 to 2.5 times extractability than that of the mortar grinding method. The effect of the ratio of sample vs solvent on extractability differed from species. It was enhanced at the ratio of 1:20 (w/v) in Ulva pertusa and Enteromorpha linza while the ratio was 1:30 (w/v) for Cedium fragile, Undaria pinnatifida, Hizikia fusiferme, Sargassum fulvellum and Porphyra suborbiculata and 1:40 for Sargassum kjellmanianum respectively. The effect of extraction time and temperature was revealed differently from species which might be caused by differences in the constitution of algal tissues resulting in that the extraction for 1 hour at $50^{\circ}C$ gave the maximum extractabilily in Ulva pertusa and Enteromorpha linza, 2 hours in Porphyra suborbiculata, Hikikia fusiforme, Undaria pinnatifida, Sargassum kjellmanianum and 3 hours in Codium fragile. And the extractability was higher at $50^{\circ}C$ to $60^{\circ}C$ for the most of the tested samples except Hizikia fusiforme. The optimum pH for the extraction was 9 to 12. The recovery of extractable nitrogen to the total nitrogen was $63\%$ in average with the first extracts and $8.6\%$ with the second extracts respectively. Both extracts were prepared by 2 hour extraction at $50{\pm}1^{\circ}C$ with dry ice-methanol frozen and seasand macerated materials. And these conditions assumed to be an optimum for the extraction of water soluble algal proteins since the nitrogen content after the first extraction covered $90\%$ of the total water extractable nitrogen. In the precipitation of the extracted proteins, Barnstein method and methanol treatment seemed to be more efficient than other precipitation methods.

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Bioleaching of Mn(II) from Manganese Nodules by Bacillus sp. MR2 (Bacillus sp. MR2에 의한 망간단괴의 생물용출)

  • Choi, Sung-Chan;Lee, Ga-Hwa;Lee, Hong-Keum
    • Korean Journal of Microbiology
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    • v.45 no.4
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    • pp.411-415
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    • 2009
  • Some microorganisms are capable of leaching Mn(II) from nonsulfidic manganese ores indirectly via nonenzymatic processes. Such reductive dissolution requires organic substrates, such as glucose, sucrose, or galactose, as a source of carbon and energy for microbial growth. This study investigated characteristics of Mn(II) leaching from manganese nodules by using heterotrophic Bacillus sp. strain MR2 provided with corn starch as a less-expensive substrate. Leaching of Mn(II) at 25.6 g Mn(II) $kg^{-1}$ nodule $day^{-1}$ was accompanied with cell growth, but part of the produced Mn(II) re-adsorbed onto residual $MnO_2$ particles after 24 h. Direct contact of cells to manganese nodule was not necessary as a separation between them with a dialysis tube produced similar amount [24.6 g Mn(II) $kg^{-1}$ nodule $day^{-1}$]. These results indicated an involvement of extracellular diffusible compound(s) during Mn(II) leaching by strain MR2. In order to optimize a leaching process we tested factors that influence the reaction, and the most efficient conditions were $25\sim35^{\circ}C$, pH 5~7, inoculum density of 1.5~2.5% (v/v), pulp density of 2~3 g/L, and particle size <75 ${\mu}m$. Although Mn(II) leaching was enhanced as particle size decrease, we suggest <212 ${\mu}m$ as a proper size range since more grinding means more energy consumption The results would help for the improvement of bioleaching of manganese nodule as a less expensive, energy-efficient, and environment-friendly technology as compared to the existing physicochemical metal recovery technologies.

Isolation and Morphological Identification of Fresh Water Green Algae from Organic Farming Habitats in Korea (유기농업 생태계로부터 담수 녹조류 분리 및 형태적 동정)

  • Kim, Min-Jeong;Shim, Chang-Ki;Kim, Yong-Ki;Hong, Sung-Jun;Park, Jong-Ho;Han, Eun-Jung;Jee, Hyeong-Jin;Yun, Jong-Chul;Kim, Suk-Chul
    • Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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    • v.22 no.4
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    • pp.743-760
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    • 2014
  • This study aimed to isolate and identify freshwater algae from the organic agricultural ecosystems and investigate its biological characteristics to study the possibility of utilizing a biomass freshwater algae in organic farming. In the survey area, average water temperature was $12.4{\sim}28.2^{\circ}C$ and the pH ranges were from 6.1 to 8.5. The solid culture method is more suitable than liquid culture method for isolation of freshwater algae with lower contamination level and higher isolation frequency. A total of 115 strains were isolated from six freshwater algae habitats in nine regions in Korea. BGMM (BG11 Modified Medium) amended with NaNO3 and $KNO_3$ as a nitrogen, and $Na_2CO_3$ as carbon source was designed to isolate and culture freshwater algae. Absorbance of freshwater algae culture has increased dramatically to four days and decreased after eight days after inoculation. CHK008 of the seven isolates showed the highest absorbance in seven days after culturing in BGMM. The optimal pH of BGMM for culturing freshwater algae was pH 6-7. As light intensity increased, growth of freshwater algae increased. Among the five kinds of carbon sources, glucose and galactose promoted good growth of freshwater algae in BGMM. The colony color of purified 16 green algae isolates showed a separation of green, dark and light green, and of them, eleven algae strains showed a strong fluorescent light under fluorescence microscopy. Cell size of the green algae showed a wide range of variation depending on the species. General morphology of the green algae strains was spherical. Chlamydomonas sp. was elliptical, and Chlorella sorokiniana was ellipsoidal and cylindrical. All strains of the green algae except for Chlamydomonas sp. did not have flagella. One isolate of Chlamydomonas sp. and five isolates of C. sorokiniana secreted mucus. Sixteen isolates of 16 green algae were identified as two family and six species, Chlorella vulgalis, C. sorokiniana, C. pyrenoidosa, C. kessleri, C. emersonii, and Chlamydomonas sp. based on their morphological characteristics.

Statics corrections for shallow seismic refraction data (천부 굴절법 탄성파 탐사 자료의 정보정)

  • Palmer Derecke;Nikrouz Ramin;Spyrou Andreur
    • Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.7-17
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    • 2005
  • The determination of seismic velocities in refractors for near-surface seismic refraction investigations is an ill-posed problem. Small variations in the computed time parameters can result in quite large lateral variations in the derived velocities, which are often artefacts of the inversion algorithms. Such artefacts are usually not recognized or corrected with forward modelling. Therefore, if detailed refractor models are sought with model based inversion, then detailed starting models are required. The usual source of artefacts in seismic velocities is irregular refractors. Under most circumstances, the variable migration of the generalized reciprocal method (GRM) is able to accommodate irregular interfaces and generate detailed starting models of the refractor. However, where the very-near-surface environment of the Earth is also irregular, the efficacy of the GRM is reduced, and weathering corrections can be necessary. Standard methods for correcting for surface irregularities are usually not practical where the very-near-surface irregularities are of limited lateral extent. In such circumstances, the GRM smoothing statics method (SSM) is a simple and robust approach, which can facilitate more-accurate estimates of refractor velocities. The GRM SSM generates a smoothing 'statics' correction by subtracting an average of the time-depths computed with a range of XY values from the time-depths computed with a zero XY value (where the XY value is the separation between the receivers used to compute the time-depth). The time-depths to the deeper target refractors do not vary greatly with varying XY values, and therefore an average is much the same as the optimum value. However, the time-depths for the very-near-surface irregularities migrate laterally with increasing XY values and they are substantially reduced with the averaging process. As a result, the time-depth profile averaged over a range of XY values is effectively corrected for the near-surface irregularities. In addition, the time-depths computed with a Bero XY value are the sum of both the near-surface effects and the time-depths to the target refractor. Therefore, their subtraction generates an approximate 'statics' correction, which in turn, is subtracted from the traveltimes The GRM SSM is essentially a smoothing procedure, rather than a deterministic weathering correction approach, and it is most effective with near-surface irregularities of quite limited lateral extent. Model and case studies demonstrate that the GRM SSM substantially improves the reliability in determining detailed seismic velocities in irregular refractors.