In ruminants, Interferon-τ (IFN-τ) has the role of recognizing pregnancy signals produced by the embryo and it may have an important role during the luteolysis. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of IFN-τ on prostaglandin synthesis, cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) gene expression in vitro and secretion of progesterone (P4) in vivo. The epithelial and stromal cells isolated from bovine endometrium were cultured with different doses of IFN-τ (0, 0.02, 0.2 and 2 μg/ml). Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG, 1.5 IU/ml) was used as a positive control. Prostaglandin E2 and F2α levels in the culture media were analyzed by enzyme immunoassays, and total RNA was extracted from the cells for RT-PCR. P4 concentrations in blood samples were assayed by chemiluminescent immunoassay system. In epithelial cells, COX-2 gene expression was increased in the presence of IFN-τ (p<0.05), but it was not significantly different in all groups of stromal cells except 2 μg/ml IFN-τ group (p<0.05). Although IFN-τ did not affect PGE2 and PGF2α production in epithelial cells, it decreased PGE2 and PGF2α production significantly in stromal cells (p<0.05). In vivo experiment, the P4 concentrations in blood sample was significantly increased after injection of 1 μg/ml IFN-τ. These results indicate that PG production was mediated by COX-2 expression in the stromal cells but it did not affect in the epithelial cells, and suggest that treatment of IFN-τ was to improve the implantation environment of uterine by maintenance of high P4 concentration. * This work was carried out with the support of “Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (Project No. PJ907008)” Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

From the HCN observations of dense molecular cloud L694-2, Lee et al.(2007) determined internal distributions of density and velocity for the cloud. The density profile collaborates roughly with the Bonnor- Ebert gas sphere, but the velocity field departs significantly from the result of numerical simulations that are started from the BE sphere. Taking L694-2 as an example of collapsing clouds, we have performed a series of collapse simulations and determined initial configurations for the cloud in such a way that the resulting density and velocity profiles both match with the empirically deduced ones. Among many trial configurations the cloud which is initially uniform in density and bound by an expanding envelop depicts most closely the empirically obtained profiles of both density and velocity.

CASS(Cast Austenitic Stainless Steel) materials are used in pressure-boundary components, such as piping and pump casing in power plant. When CASS components are exposed to high temperature (i.e. over 280oC) for a long time, thermal embrittlement could occur. Thermal embrittlement susceptibility of pipings and pump casings are determined by calculate the ferrite contents and fracture toughness. For some piping components, ferrite contents exceed the criterion value, are potentially susceptible to thermal embrittlement. But fracture toughness value is high enough to satisfy susceptibility criterion for all CASS components. Also flaw tolerance evaluation is assessed to piping and pump casing. As a result, there were no significant thermal embrittlement risk on CASS components.