The purpose of this study is to suggest the modification of activities to introduce the nature of science in earth science classrooms. A small modification can turn ordinary textbook activities into the nature of science activities. Since earth science could provide a good basis for the tentative, creative, and socially and culturally embedded nature of science, as well as appropriate understanding about scientific methods, careful modification of earth science activities could be effective for students to understand the nature of science. Considering which aspects of the nature of science are appropriate, along with the possible change in the activity, teachers will be able to modify textbook activities effectively. An example modification of H-R diagram activity was also suggested.

In this study, the estimation of the temperature distribution of Jeju Island with coastal ocean derived from the thermal band of Landsat 7/ETM+ of January 6, 2003 was carried out. For the computation of the temperature of the island and the coastal ocean based on the thermal band, we used NASA method wiich is the 8 bit Digital Number(DN) converted into spectral radiance. The computed results showed that the land temperature variations were from 0 to 12 Celsius degrees, and a good agreement with the observation ones based on the method. However, the ocean surface temperature was not much changed ground 15 degree since the water was well mixed between the coastal and the offshore ocean. The interesting results were that the temperature distributions of the southern part(Seogwipo City) of Jeju Island were higher than those of the north one(Jeju City) by more than 2 Celsius degree at the same height although the distance between the Jeju and the Seogwipo is only about 35km in winter season. The reason was found that the solar irradiance intensity of the south part was stronger than the north one by Halla mountain in winter season only. From the results, we found that the seasonal variations of solar irradiation and the height of Mt. Halla were an important role of temperature distribution of Jeju Island.

The present study was undertaken to investigate the effects of Moutan Cortex Radicis extracts and paeonol, a major component, on rabbit platelet aggregation and thromboxane (TX) B₂ formation. Moutan Cortex Radicis methanol and butanol layers (100 μg/mL) showed the weak inhibitions, and water layer (100 μg/ mL) had no effect on the collagen-induced platelet aggregation. Whereas, hexane and EtOAc layers potently inhibited the collagen (3 μg/mL)-induced platelet aggregation with the IC_(50) values of 10.9±1.0 and 31.5±0.8 μg/mL, respectively. Paeonol isolated from the hexane-acetone layer specifically inhibited the collagen-induced platelet aggregation with the IC_(50) value of 113.1 ± 0.9 μM, whereas it had little effects on the other agonists such as AA-, thrombin-, A23187- and thapsigargin-induced platelet aggregations. Paeonol also potently inhibited the collagen-induced TXB₂ formation in rabbit platelet in a concentration-dependent manner. These results suggest that paeonol may inhibit rabbit platelet aggregation by interfering with an essential step in collagen-induced platelet activation and TXA₂ formation. Paeonol may be a promising candidate for an antiplatelet agent.

We investigated the antiplatelet effect of a newly synthesized guanidine derivative KR-32558, a sodium-hydrogen exchanger-1 (NHE-1) inhibitor, together with the elucidation of the possible mechanisms of action. KR-32558 concentration -dependently inhibited the aggregation of washed rabbit platelets induced by collagen (10 μg/ml) with an IC_(50) value of 85.9 μM, but with much weaker potency against aggregation induced by thapsigargin (0.5 μM) or A23187 (5 μM). And had no effect on platelet aggregation induced by arachidonic acid (100 μM), thrombin (0.05 U/ml) and U46619 (1 μM) up to 100 μM. KR-32558 completely inhibited the [Ca^(2+)] mobilization induced by collagen at concentration of 100μiM. Taken together, these observations suggest that KR-32558 selectively inhibited collagen-mediated platelet aggregation by blocking the cytoplasmic calcium mobilization in addition to NHE-1 inhibition.

Molecular genetic markers were genotyped used to detect chromosomal regions which contain economically important traits such as growth traits in pigs. Three generation resource population was constructed from a cross between the Korean native boars and Landrace sows. A total of 193 F2 animals from intercross of F1 were produced. Phenotypic data on 7 traits, birth weight, body weight at 3, 5, 12, 30 weeks of age, live empty weight were collected for F2 animals. Animals including grandparents (F0), parents (F1), offspring (F2) were genotyped for 194 microsatellite markers covering from chromosome 1 to 18. Quantitative trait locus analyses were performed using interval mapping by regression under line-cross model. To characterize presence of imprinting, genetic full model in which dominance, additive and imprinting effect were included was fitted in this analysis. Significance thresholds were determined by permutation test. Using imprinting full model, four QTL with expression of imprinted effect were detected at 5% chromosome-wide significance level for growth traits on chromosome 1, 5, 7, 13, 14, and 16.