Background: ErigoPro enables acute stroke patients to carry out stable weight-bearing training with gradual verticalization. Study on the effectiveness of robotic assisted treatment equipment for chronic patients is insufficient. Objectives: This study aims to investigate the effect of dynamic vertical posture training using ErigoPro on trunk alignment and balance in chronic stroke patients. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Methods: The subjects of this study were 30 patients were randomly assigned to a study group of 15 patients and a control group of 15 patients. The study intervention was carried out for 50 minutes per day consisting of 30 minutes of general neuro-physiotherapy and 20 minutes of ErogoPro training, 3 times a week for 8 weeks. Results: The study group showed difference in trunk inclination (P<.05), kyphotic angle (P<.05), lateral deviation of the spine (P<.05), thoracic angle (P<.01), timed up and go test (P<.01), Berg balance score (P<.01). There was a significant difference between the groups in the trunk inclination (P<.05), timed up and go test (P<.01), Berg balance score (P<.05). Conclusion: It could be seen that the treatment combined with ErigoPro training for 8 weeks was effective in restoring trunk alignment and improving balance ability in chronic stroke patients.

This study introduces a newly discovered brittle star, Amphiophiura megapoma, from the mesophotic zone in the East Sea, Korea. It is the second species belonging to the genus Amphiophiura (which includes 57 species) to be recorded in Korean waters after A. sculpta. The specimen was discovered during a September 2022 survey, by SCUBA diving in the upper mesophotic zone of the East Sea, Korea. This study presents the morphological characteristics of A. megapoma, highlighting its differences from the related species within a comprehensive taxonomic description. It provides highresolution images of A. megapoma and a taxonomic key for Amphiophiura species in Korea.

This study (1) explored spatio-temporal population distribution patterns in Jeonju by using emerging hot spot analysis and (2) identified the influential factors to determine the spatio-temporal patterns by using multinomial logit model. The major findings are as follows. First, the results of emerging hot spot analysis indicated that the 100*100m grid in the urban area of Jeonju was found to have a category of hot spots, whereas most of the cold spot series was concentrated in the outskirts of the city. Also, new towns such as Jeonju Eco City, Jeonbuk Innovation City, and Hyocheon District were persistent or intensifying hot spots, Third, the results of multinomial logit model revealed that the factors influencing deterrmining the spatio-temporal patterns were accessibility to schools, hospitals, parks, and walfare services. This study offered a deeper understanding of urbanization and regional changes in Jeonju, and important information for urban planning.

Companies are paying attention to project governance to realize their goal strategies, project success, and project value in a rapid and complex environment due to the development of information technology. This study aims to explore project governance and factors from literature review and practice guides related to project governance and empirically analyze the impact of project governance factors on IT project objective performance. The survey was conducted on project managers, project team members, and project management members with experience in carrying out business IT projects within two years at companies in various industries in Korea. The main conclusion is as follows. Among the project governance factors, disclosure and reporting that uses and reports using appropriate and reliable information about projects related to decision-making activities positively impact the achievement of IT project objectives: business success and stakeholder satisfaction. Among the project governance factors, project sponsorship, a role that effectively connects management and projects, and a project management framework that provides tools, procedures, resources, and techniques for projects positively impact IT project objective performance. This study is of academic and practical significance in that it identifies the definition and factors of project governance through companies in various industries in Korea and the positive impact of project governance factors on IT project objective performance.

This empirical analysis investigates the impact of consultant competency and project manager (PM) competency on business performance. Two hundred and twenty four chief executive officers and executive members at small and medium sized firms in the manufacturing sector were surveyed, yielding several outcomes. First, consultant competency positively affects consulting performance. Second, consultant competency positively affects business performance. Third, PM competency does not have a significant influence on consulting performance. Fourth, PM competency does not have a significant impact on business performance. Fifth, consulting performance does not have a significant effect on business performance. Finally, regarding the mediation effect of consulting performance on the influence of consultant competency and PM competency on business performance, consulting performance had no significant impact. Thus, expertise and insight are crucial for a consulting business to enable the growth of professional consultants. Furthermore, this study is expected to enhance the consulting performance of small and medium sized manufacturing firms by providing useful data to consultants and project managers when carrying out consulting projects.

Silicon (Si) has the potential to improve plant growth and stress tolerance. The study aimed to explore Si-involving plant responses and molecular characterization of different Si-responsive genes in alfalfa. In this study, the exogenous supplementation of Si enhanced plant growth, and biomass yield. Si-acquisition in alfalfa root and shoot was higher in Si-supplemented compared to silicon deficient (-Si) plants, implying Si-acquisition has beneficial on alfalfa plants. As a consequence, the quantum efficiency of photosystem II (Fv/Fm) was significantly increased in silicon-sufficient (+Si) plants. The quantitative gene expression analysis exhibited a significant upregulation of the Lsi1, Lsi2, Lsi3, NIP5;1, and NIP6;1 genes in alfalfa roots, while BOR1, BOR4, NIP2, and NIP3 showed no significant variation in their expression. The MEME results further noticed the association of four motifs related to the major intrinsic protein (MIP). The interaction analysis revealed that NIP5;1 and Lsi1 showed a shared gene network with NIP2, BOR1, and BOR4, and Lsi2, Lsi3 and NIP3-1, respectively. These results suggest that members of the major intrinsic proteins (MIPs) family especially Lsi1, Lsi2, Lsi3, NIP5;1, and NIP6;1 genes helped to pass water and other neutral solutes through the cell membrane and those played significant roles in Si uptake and transport in plants. Together, these insights might be useful for alfalfa breeding and genome editing approaches for alfalfa improvement.

The experiment aim to breed an early-maturing variety of Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.). It was conducted at the Grassland and Forage Crops Division, National Institute of Animal Science, RDA, Cheonan, Korea, from 2022 to 2023. The new variety named “Oasis” is a diploid with green leaves and has a semi-erect growth habit in late fall, and an erect growth habit in early spring. With a heading date of May 10, Oasis is categorized as an early-maturing variety. Compared with the “Florida80” as a control variety, Oasis’s flag leaf was 1 mm wider and 2 cm shorter, while the plant length was 7.8 cm longer. Additionally, the ear of Oasis was 1.2 cm longer than that of Florida80, and it showed lodging resistance. The dry matter yield of Oasis (8,805 kg/ha) was higher than that of Florida80. The total digestible nutrient and crude protein contents of Oasis were 64.5%, and 9.3%, respectively, which were 1.1% and 0.6% higher than those of Florida80, respectively. The neutral and acid detergent fiber contents in Oasis were 54.2% and 30.8%, respectively, which was 1.9% and 1.4% lower than those of Florida80, respectively. These results indicate that Oasis has good dry matter yield in the most of region and especially, middle and northern region of South Korea.

The air transport industry is experiencing unprecedented fluctuations in aviation demand through the Covid-19 pandemic, and is more focused than ever on maintaining and generating business profitability. During the pandemic, demand for air cargo has soared, and the conversion business from passenger aircrafts to freighters(P2F) is drawing attention as a new business in the aviation maintenance industry. This study derives important factors to be considered in order to successfully carry out the P2F project through a wide range of cases and related literature, and analyzes the relative importance of each factor using the analytic hierarchy process. Through a survey of 33 aviation maintenance experts with more than 20 years of field experience, the importance of main factors and their sub factors was determined and implications were drawn. As a primary result, in order to succeed in the P2F project, the main factors were identified in the order of skill, finance, and location. The most important sub factors for each main factors were identified in order of securing airframe modification skill, securing infrastructure construction cost, and creating P2F business complex and district. The quantified success factors suggested the critical direction for the successful development of Korea's P2F business, and presented viable and specific business strategies and implementation plans for each factors.

The metal bush assembling process is a process of inserting and compressing a metal bush that serves to reduce the occurrence of noise and stable compression in the rotating section. In the metal bush assembly process, the head diameter defect and placement defect of the metal bush occur due to metal bush omission, non-pressing, and poor press-fitting. Among these causes of defects, it is intended to prevent defects due to omission of the metal bush by using signals from sensors attached to the facility. In particular, a metal bush omission is predicted through various data mining techniques using left load cell value, right load cell value, current, and voltage as independent variables. In the case of metal bush omission defect, it is difficult to get defect data, resulting in data imbalance. Data imbalance refers to a case where there is a large difference in the number of data belonging to each class, which can be a problem when performing classification prediction. In order to solve the problem caused by data imbalance, oversampling and composite sampling techniques were applied in this study. In addition, simulated annealing was applied for optimization of parameters related to sampling and hyper-parameters of data mining techniques used for bush omission prediction. In this study, the metal bush omission was predicted using the actual data of M manufacturing company, and the classification performance was examined. All applied techniques showed excellent results, and in particular, the proposed methods, the method of mixing Random Forest and SA, and the method of mixing MLP and SA, showed better results.

Canine parvovirus-2 (CPV-2) has been reported worldwide as a major pathogen associated with acute hemorrhagic enteritis. The disease is a major infectious cause of death, particularly in young dogs. The earliest type of CPV-2 was replaced with three main subspecies, CPV-2a, CPV-2b, and CPV-2c, within a few years. Vaccination is carried out regularly, but the emergence of antigenic variants and the influence of maternal antibodies have limited the efficacy of commercial vaccines. New vaccines, such as the subunit vaccine, have been developed for alternative, safe, and effective vaccination. The baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) is an excellent eukaryotic expression system with a high-level expression of foreign proteins and the ability of post-translational modification. Therefore, it is used widely to produce recombinant protein and subunit vaccines. In this study, the VP2 protein of CPV-2b cloned in the gateway vector system was generated using a baculovirus expression system in Spodoptera frugiperda (SF9) insect cells. Hemagglutination assay (HA) titers (24) were obtained, and the expression was detected in 6-His tagged VP2 and monoclonal antibody (mAb) against CPV-2 by western blotting. The VP2 protein of CPV-2b expressed in this study may provide a basis for a clinical diagnosis and vaccination applications for CPV-2.

The present study was conducted to analyze agronomic characteristics of 8 ecotypes of Arundinella hirta (A. hirta) and the correlation among them. Changes in phenotypic characteristics of 8 ecotypes were measured at equal intervals of time from May to September. Among ecotypes, Jangsoo-1 has the highest plant height (172.33 cm), number of leaves (9.00) and leaf length (55 cm) while the ecotype Youngduk has the highest leaf width (1.57 cm), fresh mass (26.63 g), dry mass (7.06 g), number of spikelets per spike (53.33), amount of seeds per spike (0.74 g) and amount of seeds per 10 spikes (7.23 g). The ecotype Jinju-1 has the shortest plant height (119 cm) and leaf number (6.33), while Okgye-2 has shortest leaf length (30.67 cm), leaf width (0.93 cm), fresh mass (12.60 g), dry mass (3.30 g), spike length (30.33 cm), spikelet per spike (39.67), amount of seeds per spike (0.61 g) and amount of seeds per 10 spikes (6.00 g). Correlation coefficients were estimated among the studied agronomic characteristics which showed positive and significant association with each other. In the present study, the agronomic data collected would be useful to understand the potential of A. hirta as a forage resource and helpful in selecting the high-yielding genetic resource for future forage improvement.

This study investigated ethopabate (EPB) residues in edible tissues of broiler chickens given in drinking water and established the withdrawal time (WT) of EPB in poultry tissues. Twenty-four healthy Ross broiler chickens were orally administered with EPB at the concentration of 3.8 mg/L for 14 days (EPB-1, n=24) and 15.2 mg/L for 7 days (EPB-2, n=24) through drinking water, respectively. After the drug treatment, tissue samples were collected from six broiler chickens at 0, 1, 3, and 5 days, respectively. EPB residue concentrations in poultry tissues were determined using LC-MS/MS. Correlation coefficient values ranged from 0.9980 to 0.9998, and the limits of detection and quantification (LOQ) were 0.03~0.09 and 0.1~0.3 μg/kg, respectively. Mean recoveries in muscle, liver, kidney and skin/fat tissues were 95.9~109.8, 108.7~115.3, 89.9~96.6 and 86.7~96.8%, respectively, and coefficient of variations were less than 17.11%. At the end of the drug-administration period (0 day), EPB was detected at levels under the LOQ in all tissues from both the EPB-1 and EPB-2 groups. According to the results of EPB residue in Ross broiler tissues, withdrawal periods of both EPB-1 and EPB-2 in poultry tissues were established to 0 day. In conclusion, the developed analytical method is suitable for the detection of EPB in poultry tissues, and the estimated WT of EPB in poultry tissues will contribute to ensuring the safety of Ross broiler chickens.