The low-temperature sinterability of TiO2-CuO systems was investigated using a solid solution of SnO2. Sample powders were prepared through conventional ball milling of mixed raw powders. With the SnO2 content, the compositions of the samples were Ti1-xSnxO2-CuO(2 wt.%) in the range of x  0.08. Compared with the samples without SnO2 addition, the densification was enhanced when the samples were sintered at 900oC. The dominant mass transport mechanism seemed to be grain-boundary diffusion during heat treatment at 900oC, where active grain-boundary diffusion was responsible for the improved densification. The rapid grain growth featured by activated sintering was also obstructed with the addition of SnO2. This suggested that both CuO as an activator and SnO2 dopant synergistically reduced the sintering temperature of TiO2.

We introduce a depth scaling strategy to improve the accuracy of frequency-domain elastic full waveform inversion (FWI) using the new pseudo-Hessian matrix for seismic data without low-frequency components. The depth scaling strategy is based on the fact that the damping factor in the Levenberg-Marquardt method controls the energy concentration in the gradient. In other words, a large damping factor makes the Levenberg-Marquardt method similar to the steepest-descent method, by which shallow structures are mainly recovered. With a small damping factor, the Levenberg-Marquardt method becomes similar to the Gauss-Newton methods by which we can resolve deep structures as well as shallow structures. In our depth scaling strategy, a large damping factor is used in the early stage and then decreases automatically with the trend of error as the iteration goes on. With the depth scaling strategy, we can gradually move the parameter-searching region from shallow to deep parts. This flexible damping factor plays a role in retarding the model parameter update for shallow parts and mainly inverting deeper parts in the later stage of inversion. By doing so, we can improve deep parts in inversion results. The depth scaling strategy is applied to synthetic data without lowfrequency components for a modified version of the SEG/EAGE overthrust model. Numerical examples show that the flexible damping factor yields better results than the constant damping factor when reliable low-frequency components are missing.

A new embryonic cell line (OFEC-17FEN) derived from olive flounder Paralichthys olivaceus was developed. OFEC-17FEN cells were subcultured for <30 passages over ~200 days. OFEC-17FEN cells had a doubling time of 114.34 h and modal diploid chromosome number was 48. The pluripotency genes POU5f1 and NANOG were expressed in OFEC-17FEN cells. However, the lack of several pluripotency-related genes expression indicates that OFEC-17FEN cells are not stem cells. OFEC-17FEN cells transfected with plasmid pEGFP-c1 exhibited a strong green fluorescent signal at 48 h after transfection. Accordingly, OFEC-17FEN cells may be useful for both basic research and biotechnological application.

In the previous study, 141 BC3F2 lines from a cross between the Oryza sativa cv. Milyang 23 and O. glaberrima were used to identify favorable wild QTL alleles for yield component traits. In this study, we carried out QTL analysis of four grain morphology as well as four yield component traits using 141 BC3F5 lines from the same cross and compared QTLs detected in two different generations. The mean number of O. glaberrima segments in the 141 BC3F5 lines ranged from 1 to 13 with 2.69 and 5.71 of the average means of homozygous and heterozygous segments, respectively. There was a three-fold difference in the number of QTLs detected for four traits commonly evaluated in two generations (seven QTLs in the BC3F5 vs 21 in the BC3F2 population). The percentages of the phenotypic variance explained by QTLs in the BC3F5 population were similar to or less than those in the BC3F2 population. This is probably due to the difference in the genetic composition of two populations and the environmental effects. The locations of the QTLs commonly detected in both generations were in good agreement except for one QTL for spikelets per panicle. The yield QTL, yd3 was colocalized with the spikelets per panicle, spp3. Yield increase at this locus is due to the increase in spikelets per panicle, because both traits were associated with increase in spikelets per panicle and yield due to the presence of an O. glaberrima allele. Clusters of QTLs for grain morphology traits were observed in two chromosome regions. One cluster harboring five QTLs near SSR markers RM106 and RM263 was detected on chromosome 2. This population would serve as a foundation for development of the introgression line population from a cross between Milyang 23 and O. glaberrima.

In this study, a 141 BC3F4 lines from across between the O. sativa cv. Milyang23 as there current parent, and O. glaberrima as the donor parent was used to identify favorable QTL alleles from O. glaberrima for yield and yield components. To detect the introgressions, 198 microsatellite markers of known chromosomal position were used for the parental survey. Of the 178 markers, 128 (64.6%) showed polymorphism. Among them, 115 SSR markers were used to construct a genetic linkage map with average interval length of 12.7 cM based on the previous rice molecular genetic map. The mean number of O. glaberrima segments in the population was 1.84 ranging from 0 to 7. The average length of the segments was 16.6 cM and ranged from 0.5 to 232.5 cM. This population consisting of 141 lines was used to evaluate for six traits of agronomic importance and genotypes were determined for 141 BC3F5 using SSR markers. A total of 22 QTLs for 6 traits were detected on chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9. Phenotypic variance associated with each QTL ranged 9.5% ~ 58.2%. For 26 of the QTLs identified in this study, the O. glaberrima alleles contributed a desirable agronomic effect despite the over all undesirable characteristics of the wild phenotype. Favorable wild alleles were detected for culm length, panicle length, yield, panicles per plant and 1000-grain weight. When compared with previous studies involving interspecific crosses, it can be concluded that O. glaberrima is useful asa source of valuable alleles for rice improvement. There sults will be discussed.