Up to now the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) sequences of only three species of clitellate have been available. We have determined the complete mitogenome sequences of the elusive Burmese giant earthworm Tonoscolex birmanicus (Clitellata: Megascolecidae), which is endemic to Myanmar. The 15,170-bp long genome contains the 37 genes typical of metazoan mitogenomes [13 protein-coding genes (PCG), two rRNA genes and 22 tRNA genes] and one major non-coding region. All of the 37 genes are transcribed from the same DNA strand. The arrangement of the T. birmanicus mitogenome is identical to that of two within-ordinal species Lumbricus terrestris and Perionyx excavates. All 13 PCGs start with the ATG. For the stop codon, only six PCGs end with the TAA, whereas the remaining ones ends with the incomplete stop codon, T. Genes overlap in a total of 14 bp in five locations, and harbor a total of 16 bp of intergenic spacer sequences in nine locations.
The little sized ant species, Vollenhovia emeryi Wheeler (Hymenoptera: Myrmicinae) is the only species belonging to genus Vollenhovia in South Korea, and it is endemic in East Asia encompassing Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan and has recently invaded into North America. In this species, the queen caste shows polymorphism in its wing form, the queen with normal wings called the long-winged (L) queen and short-winged (S) queen with aberrant small wings, and the two morphs are thought not to coexist in nature, however the morphology of workers and males of the two wing morphs are indistinguishable. We obtained a L gyne from a S colony that had been maintained in the laboratory. In addition, we compared the genome size of entire castes of the two wing morphs using flowcytometry. Our results confirm that the two wing morphs are obviously the same species, and moreover, the wing morph may be determinated by the epigenetical process.
The genus Panonychus has been reported only two species, P. ulmi and P. citri, in Korea. Two new species, P. mori Yokoyama, 1929 and P. caglei Mellot, 1968 were firstly identified from jujube orchards in Gyeongsan and kudzu vine in Byunsan peninsula in Korea. Morphological differences among four species have been described especially in aedeagus shape. Comparison of nucleotide sequences of both the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region of nuclear ribosomal RNA gene and the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene were compared between four species. Phylogenetic analysis of ITS2 and COI sequences using neighbor-joining method showed that P. mori and P. caglei were most similar to each other and more closely related to P. ulmi than P. citri. In addition, species-specific primer sets of each species were designed based on ITS2 sequencesand can be used to diagnose species in this genus.
Effective treatment for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) requires administration of appropriate empirical therapy based on etiologic, clinical, and radiological fea- tures. However, in Korea, CAP is poorly characterized, and data on viral CAP are particularly sparse. Therefore, im- proper use of antibiotics is common, and is detrimental the potential for development of bacterial. Thus, we investigated clinical and radiological findings for discrimination of viral CAP from bacterial CAP. Etiologic, clinical, and radiologi- cal data from 467 patients with CAP at Chungbuk National University Hospital from October 2010 to September 2011 were analyzed retrospectively. Viruses were identified in 23 cases (11.4%); the influenza virus A was the most common virus detected (N=18, 25.4%), followed by the respiratory syncytial virus A (N=14, 17.9%). Bacteria were identified in 48 cases (23.8%); Streptococcus-pneumonia was the most common (N=24, 25.5%), followed by Staphylococcus aureus (N=20, 21.3%). Depending on hospitalization time, the fol- lowing significant differences were observed between viral and bacterial CAP: on admission, (1) high fever (≥ 38.5°C), (2) purulent sputum, (3) white blood cell count, (4) C- reactive protein levels, (5) and bilateral lung involvement on chest X-ray were higher in bacterial CAP; and at discharge, (1) duration of high fever and (2) radiologic improvement within three days were higher in viral CAP. Regarding sea- sonal patterns, both viruses and bacteria have been identi- fied with relative frequency in the winter season. This study described the etiological, clinical, and radiological findings of viral and bacterial CAP. Conduct of additional large- scale, prospective investigations will be required in order to improve the appropriate treatment of CAP.
공항 포장의 경우 항공기의 하중과 규모를 비롯하여 여러가지 극한 상황에 놓이기 때문에 공항용 구조 물은 높은 신뢰성이 담보 되어야 한다. 그러므로 공항 콘크리트 포장용 유지보수 재료는 높은 수준의 성능과 내구성이 요구된다. 부분 유지보수가 적용된 부분의 재파손이 빈번하게 발생하는데 접합면이 떨어지는 형태가 주를 이룬다. 부착강도는 부분 유지보수 재료의 성능을 평가 할 수 있는 매우 중요한 특성이라고 할 수 있다.
이 연구에서는 기존 공항 콘크리트 포장과 부분보수 재료와의 전단부착강도와 인장부착강도를 측정하 였다. 부분보수재료는 기존 공항용으로 사용되던 폴리머콘크리트와, 새로 고안된 PMC(Polymer Modified Concrete), 기존 도로용 보수재료로 사용되는 LMC(Latex Modified Concrete)를 대상으로 하였다. 전단부착강도는 Slant shear test, 인장부착강도는 Splitting tensile test를 각각 이용하였다. 또한 열팽창계수와 건조수축의 차이에 따른 포장재료와 부분보수재료의 부적합성의 결과로 부착강도가 시간에 따라 저하된다. 실험을 통해 접합면의 노화에 따라 재료별 부착강도의 변화를 비교하였다.
This article compares recent topical and methodological trends in second language research published in two domestic (English Teaching and Modern English Education)and two international journals (Language Learning and The Modern Language Journal) from 2007 to 2012. The journals were selected in consideration of the extent to which the area of language teaching and learning is given prominence, impact factors at the time of data collection, and comparability in the total number of articles during the period. A total of 867 articles were analyzed by two raters cooperatively in terms of data collection/analysis methods, target language skills, and research themes. Results reveal that there has been a significant change in domestic research over the past six years when compared to surveys before 2007. Overall, with some emerging region-specific issues and orientations, researchers in Korea seem to have embraced a greater diversity of topics and methods that are comparable to the international trends.
Price skimming practices, false claim on products, false information/communication, marketing overseas, and deception on products in marketing have received signifi cant attention by the researchers of ethics in marketing studies. This research considers these phenomena as marketing instruments that grossly violate the practice of ethics in this domain. The two most crucial parts in marketing that have received greater attention are product safety and advertising. The paper also examines Ethical Marketing as the ability to make marketing decisions that are morally right and acceptable to all. In order words, ethics in marketing explains how moral standards can be applied in marketing decisions. It seeks to answer the research question by looking at some fundamental business ethics theories, namely, Virtue ethics, Utilitarian, and Deontological approaches to business ethics. Nevertheless, ethics in business is very controversial as many hold different view about what makes up the standard morals that corporations should take and so it is necessary for any organization to formulate its ethical codes to follow.
In Korea, twelve species in genus Myrmica have been described. Some of them are morphologically similar and this makes their identification difficult. For this reason, we collected several Myrmica species in question and inferred their phylogenetic relationship using the 418bp partial COI (cytochrome C oxidase 1) region from a total of 33 individuals. We found that the CO1 haplotypes are effectively grouped into three clusters that match well to their external morphological characters. Although this three species could be distinguished by the only small part of the COI region, the two individual sample of the M. kotokuii and one sample of the M. carinata are included in the M. kurokii group. The results indicate that the morphological identification could be obscure in the three species and it requires a close examination for this phenomenon.
Wolbachia is one of the most common endosymbionts best known to induce several reproductive alterations in its insect hosts. In some cases, the insect hosts harbor more than two strains of the bacterium. The Vollenhovia emeryi ant lives in dead trees and is morphologically subdivided into the long-winged and the short-winged. Interestingly the short-winged morph is free of Wolbachia, but only the long-winged morph is multiple- infected with the Wolbachia bacterium. We sampled four populations of the long-winged morph in Korea and performed pyrosequencing in Multilocus Sequence Typing (MLST), to determine the bacterial strain diversity. Six different gene regions (coxA, fbpA, ftsZ, gatB, hcpA and wsp gene) were targeted and amplified. However, the result shows that diversity of haplotypes is very high. The pyrosequencing approach in MLST, a new method of discriminating Wolbachia strains, is promising to effectively detect multiple infections and rare haplotypes.
The hologenome theory of evolution proposes that an organism is simply not an individual but the totality of numerous microbial symbionts to the host. In fact, the evidence of biochemical and physiological associations between the symbionts and the host has been growing fast in all major taxa. The Vollenhovia emeryi ant is tiny and found nationwide in Korea. The ant can be further categorized by its wing morphology, eg. long-winged and short-winged. Our initial screening process showed that the microbial reproductive manipulator, the Wolbachia bacterium, only infected the long-winged morph. This gave us a good opportunity to investigate the effect of the Wolbachia infection on the bacterial community diversity using the next generation sequencing technique. We find that there are about 180 bacterial symbionts in the short-winged morph. On the other hand, the long-winged morph has only about 20 bacterial symbionts. This implies that the bacterial community diversity may be subject to the existence of Wolbachia. Furthermore, the Wolbachia strain diversity is unexpectedly high. In addition, the bacterial structure difference among castes indicates that there may be labour division even between queens. The results and future research direction will be discussed from the hologenome theory perspective.
Microtubule-associated protein 1B (MAP1B), a member of MAP1 family, plays a key role in neuronal development. MAP1B binds to many kinds of proteins directly or indirectly. This study was performed to investigate whether MAP1B interacts with GAPDH in bovine follicles using immunoprecipitation (IP) with Western blot analysis and immunohistochemisty. The mRNA expressions of MAP1B and glyceraldehydes 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) were down-regulated in bovine follicular cystic follicles (FCF). In parallel with the mRNA levels, their protein levels were also down-regulated in FCFs. In addition, MAP1B and GAPDH were co-localized at the cytoplasm of follicles. IP with Western blot analysis showed that MAP1B bound to GAPDH in normal follicles, but their binding was absent in FCFs, suggesting a low level of MAP1B and/or GAPDH expressions in FCFs. Taken together, these results suggest that MAP1B interacted with GAPDH may play a role in bovine follicle development, and that GAPDH does not function always as a loading control in bovine follicles.
An increase in population initiating rapid industrialization was found to consequently in-crease the effluentsand domestic wastewater into the aquatic ecosystem. In this research the potentialities of Sambucus nigra L. (SNL) plant in the remediation of water, contaminated with methylene blue (MB), a basic dye were investigated. SNL was chemically impregnated with KHCO3. Operating variables studied were pH, amount of adsorbent and contact time. In general, pH did not have any significanteffect on colour removal and the highest adsorp-tion capacity was obtained in 0.035 g MB/g-activated carbon. The Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin-Radushkevich adsorption models were applied to describe the equi-librium isotherms. The adsorption isotherm data were fittedto the Temkin isotherm. The mass transfer property of the sorption process was studied using Lagergren pseudo-firstorder and chemisorption pseudo-second-order kinetic models. The sorption process obeyed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The surface area, pores volume and diameter were assessed by the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller and Barrett-Joyner-Halenda methods. The results were compared to those from activated carbon (Merck) and an actual sample. The results indicate that SNL can be employed as a natural and eco-friendly adsorbent material for the removal of dye MB from aqueous solutions.
As a specialty oil, furan fatty acids have gained special attentions since they are known to play important roles in biological systems including human. Although several studies reported chemical synthesis of furan fatty acids, their synthesis consisted of complicated chemical multistep with chemical catalysts. Recently, a simple one-step heat treatment method was developed to produce a novel furan fatty acid, 7,10-epoxy-octadeca-7,9-dienoic acid (7,10-EODA) from a dihydroxyl fatty acid 7,10-dihydroxy-8(E)-octadecenoic acid (DOD). In this report we studied about optimization of environmental conditions for the maximum production of 7,10-EODA from DOD by heat treatment. Production of 7,10-EODA was maximized at over 85℃ for at least over 48 hour in hexane. Solvent volume for maximum production should be over 300 mL per 10 mg DOD.
The current study aimed to describe overall trends in recent English second language (L2) academic writing research and to identify effective interventions. To support drawing defensible conclusions based on the literature dealing with L2 writing, only recent empirical articles dealing with academic writing for English-L2 college students published in peer reviewed journals were included. Fifty five English L2 writing articles met the criteria for inclusion. For the identification of effective L2 writing interventions, I discriminated if the studies provided L2 writing interventions and the relevance to L2 writing development. As a result of analyses based on themes emerging in the English L2 academic writing literature, I noted effective English L2 academic writing interventions. Those interventions were teacher feedback, self-regulatory learning, peer feedback, and technology use. The use of a variety of measures and incorporation of specificity about prompts into the studies was recommended and the developmental trajectory of L2 writers was suggested to be further studied.