The honeybee inhibitor cysteine knot (ICK) peptide acts as an antifungal peptide and insecticidal venom toxin. However, the ICK peptide from bumblebees has not been characterized. Here, we report the molecular cloning and antifungal activity of a bumblebee (Bombus ignitus) ICK peptide (BiICK). We identified a BiICK that contains an ICK fold. The BiICK was expressed in the epidermis, fat body, and venom gland of B. ignitus worker bees. A 6.7-kDa recombinant BiICK peptide was expressed in baculovirus-infected insect cells. Recombinant BiICK peptides directly bound to Beauveria bassiana, Ascosphaera apis, and Fusarium graminearum, but they did not bind to Escherichia coli, Paenibacillus larvae, or Bacillus thuringiensis. Consistent with this finding, BiICK exhibited antifungal activity against fungi. These results demonstrate that BiICK acts as an antifungal peptide.

Propolis collected from botanical sources by honey bee, has been used as a popular natural remedies in folk medicine throughout the world. This study was conducted to assess growth inhibitory effects of ethanol extracts of propolis (EEPs) from 20 different regions in South Korea on human intestinal bacteria as well as BACE-1, AChE inhibitory, antioxidant, antiproliferative, and anti-human rhinovirus activities. Correlation coefficient (r) analysis of the biological activities of EEP samples was determined using their 50% inhibition concentration or minimal inhibitory concentration values and their polyphenol or flavonoid contents in 20 Korean EEP samples. Correlation coefficient analysis showed that total polyphenol contents may be negatively correlated with DPPH free radical scavenging activity (r = –0.872) and total flavonoid content has no correlation with the activity (r = 0.071). No direct correlation between BACE-1 inhibition, AChE inhibition, or antiproliferative activity and total polyphenol or total flavonoid content in Korean EEP samples was found.

The present issue of insect resistance and environmental toxicity of pesticides is triggering deep discussion about the pest management tactics, in which pest monitoring and control activity are mainly involved. Novel control agents, hopefully overcoming the present issues and problems, should be researched and commercially applied to the farm fields. With the monitoring-based research, additionally we have to focus on the control-based, particularly control agent-based research and application. Entomo- pathogenic fungi can used as one of the possible novel control agents once considerations are given to the control of soil- or water-dwelling pests. In our research group, the entomopathogenic fungal library has been constructed using the mealworm-based isolation system, which showed a variety of opportunities of their use in pest control. Important key production technologies including granular formulation have been developed to increase their industrialization. Some entomopathogenic fungal isolates showed high biological performance in the control of rice weevils, western flower thrips and Japanese bettles in field stands. To elucidate the fungal mode of action, a fungal transformation system using AtMT and gene identification tools were established. Recently a more deep study about the relationship between insect and entomopathogenic fungi is be investigated using RNA seq. We suggest that to make the entomopathogenic fungal products be applied to agricultural farm field, R&D of down-stream process should be seriously considered as the key step.

We developed the smart mosquito counter device (height 1080 mm x width 560 mm x diameter 320 mm, 220V 60Hz 30 W), which can attract the blood sucking female mosquitoes by emitting CO2 gas (300ml/min), can count the number of the captured mosquitoes by an infra-red beam area sensor, can identify the some mosquito species by analyzing mosquito image patterns using RGB (Red, Green, and Blue), and can send the captured mosquitoes’ number and pictures through the CDMA module at the real time. We operated the smart mosquito device and we could know when any mosquito peak time was in a day as well as what the mosquito species are and the captured mosquito numbers are. We found that the accuracy of the smart device was about over 95% compared the real mosquito data including numbers and images and transmitted data by CDMA. Because we can know the mosquito occurrence peak times, locations, and mosquito species by this device, we can efficiently control mosquitoes at the right time, and we can alert the public for any mosquito-born diseases based on the mosquito occurrence data. We can improve the quality of mosquito vector control with the functions of this device and we will develop the smart device to identify more mosquito species.

The ascomycete fungus Beauveria bassiana is a wide host range entomo- pathogenic fungus, which is commonly used as an environmental friendly biopesticide. However, the molecular mechanisms of host-pathogen interaction of B. bassiana are not well understood. Here, the high throughput next generation sequencing was performed to analyze the transcriptome of B. bassiana JEF-007 infected bean bug (Riptorus pedestris). Differentially expressed gene (DEG) analysis results showed that total 4,684 genes including 2,381 up and 2,303 down regulated genes were identified. Most of the DEGs were classified into single- organism, cellular and metabolism processes by gene ontology (GO) analysis. Metabolism pathway was the most abound category of DEGs via KEGG pathway mapping. Several possible candidates of virulence factors were dramatically expressed after infection, such as cytotoxic lectin, bacterial-like toxin, and proteins related to cell wall, hyphal growth, nutrient uptake and halogenated compounds synthesis. Furthermore, we also found the highest expression of a novel small RNA virus in the infected bean bug, but the relationship between fungal virulence and the RNA virus was under determination. The functional roles of these possible virulence factors are remained unclear, but this work provides a new insight for further fungal studies. Our results reflect systemic impacts of fungal pathogenesis and these findings represent a significant advance in the fungal functional genomics.

Halo merger trees are the essential backbone of semi-analytic models for galaxy formation and evolution. Srisawat et al. (2013) show that different tree building algorithms can build different halo merger histories from a numerical simulation for structure formation. In order to understand the differences induced by various tree building algorithms, we investigate the impact of halo merger trees on a semi-analytic model. We find that galaxy properties in our models show differences between trees when using a common parameter set. The models independently calibrated for each tree can reduce the discrepancies between global galaxy properties at z=0. Conversely, with regard to the evolutionary features of galaxies, the calibration slightly increases the differences between trees. Therefore, halo merger trees extracted from a common numerical simulation using different, but reliable, algorithms can result in different galaxy properties in the semi-analytic model. Considering the uncertainties in baryonic physics governing galaxy formation and evolution, however, these differences may not necessarily be significant.

We describe a survey of quasars in the early universe, beyond z ~ 5, which is one of the main science goals of the Infrared Medium-deep Survey (IMS) conducted by the Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe (CEOU). We use multi-wavelength archival data from SDSS, CFHTLS, UKIDSS, WISE, and SWIRE, which provide deep images over wide areas suitable for searching for high redshift quasars. In addition, we carried out a J-band imaging survey at the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope with a depth of ~23 AB mag and survey area of ~120 deg2, which makes IMS a suitable survey for finding faint, high redshift quasars at z ~ 7. In addition, for the quasar candidates at z ~ 5.5, we are conducting observations with the Camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse (CQUEAN) on the 2.1m telescope at McDonald Observatory, which has a custom-designed filter set installed to enhance the effciency of selecting robust quasar candidate samples in this redshift range. We used various color-color diagrams suitable for the specific redshift ranges, which can reduce contaminating sources such as M/L/T dwarfs, low redshift galaxies, and instrumental defects. The high redshift quasars we are confirming can provide us with clues to the growth of supermassive black holes since z ~ 7. By expanding the quasar sample at 5 < z < 7, the final stage of the hydrogen reionization in the intergalactic medium (IGM) can also be fully understood. Moreover, we can make useful constraints on the quasar luminosity function to study the contribution of quasars to the IGM reionization.

The physical and chemical properties of prestellar cores, especially massive ones, are still far from being well understood due to the lack of a large sample. The low dust temperature (< 14 K) of Planck cold clumps makes them promising candidates for prestellar objects or for sources at the very initial stages of protostellar collapse. We have been conducting a series of observations toward Planck cold clumps (PCCs) with ground-based radio telescopes. In general, when compared with other star forming samples (e.g. infrared dark clouds), PCCs are more quiescent, suggesting that most of them may be in the earliest phase of star formation. However, some PCCs are associated with protostars and molecular out ows, indicating that not all PCCs are in a prestellar phase. We have identied hundreds of starless dense clumps from a mapping survey with the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) 13.7-m telescope. Follow-up observations suggest that these dense clumps are ideal targets to search for prestellar objects.

This study examines consumer reaction to different luxury advertising information (promotion-focus vs. prevention-focus). Studies examine the relationship between consumers’ face concern and individual regulatory focus, and explore the relationship between face concern and luxury advertising type with a 2 (face concerns) × 2 (advertising information) experiment design.

This study aims to investigate the effect of word-of-mouth on the purchase of genuine and counterfeit luxury brands. It also examines the roles of attitude functions and social norm in the relationship between word-of-mouth communication and consumers’ luxury brand evaluation. A 2 (information source: advertising vs. word-of-mouth) × 2 (luxury brand: genunie vs. counterfeit) between-subjects experimental design was used to collect the data. A total of 153 adult consumers from Shanghai, China were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. Prior to the conduction of the actual experiment, a pretest of 30 respondents was conducted to determine the brands and scenarios selected for the experiments. Attitude function (social-adjustive function or value-expressive function) is measured by a self-monitoring scale. Social norm, luxury brand evaluations on genuine and counterfeit luxury brands were measured. MANOVA and ANOVA were performed to examine the proposed hypotheses. Results indicated that purchase intention for counterfeit luxury brand was moderated by subjective norm. Word-of-mouth increased the subjective norm related to the disapproval of counterfeits, compared to traditional advertising. Subjective norm was found to strongly influence consumers’ counterfeit luxury brand evaluation. The relationship between subjective norm and counterfeit consumption was positively significant. The moderating effects of self-monitoring and subjective norm on consumers’ evaluations and consumption for counterfeit luxury brands were found to significant. In short, the findings support the proposed hypotheses and showed that positive word-of-mouth was an efficient way to enhance consumers’ purchase intentions for genuine luxury brands, and also an effective means to decrease purchase intentions for counterfeit luxury brands. The results reveal that social-adjustive function and value-expressive function served by luxury brand consumption can be increased by positive word-of-mouth. Furthermore, higher levels of social-adjustive function and value-expressive function served by publicly consumed product (vs. privately consumed product) are found, indicating that product categories also affect the attitude functions served by luxury brand consumption. Managerial recommendations are provided to the marketing managers for luxury brands.

We develop a new auto-guiding system for the Camera for QUasars in the EArly uNiverse (CQUEAN). CQUEAN is an optical CCD camera system attached to the 2.1-m Otto-Struve Telescope (OST) at McDonald Observatory, USA. The new auto-guiding system diers from the original one in the following: instead of the cassegrain focus of the OST, it is attached to the nder scope; it has its own lter system for observation of bright targets; and it is controlled with the CQUEAN Auto-guiding Package, a newly developed auto-guiding program. Finder scope commands a very wide eld of view at the expense of poorer light gathering power than that of the OST. Based on the star count data and the limiting magnitude of the system, we estimate there are more than 5.9 observable stars with a single FOV using the new auto-guiding CCD camera. An adapter is made to attach the system to the nder scope. The new auto-guiding system successfully guided the OST to obtain science data with CQUEAN during the test run in 2014 February. The FWHM and ellipticity distributions of stellar proles on CQUEAN, images guided with the new auto-guiding system, indicate similar guiding capabilities with the original auto-guiding system but with slightly poorer guiding performance at longer exposures, as indicated by the position angle distribution. We conclude that the new auto-guiding system has overall similar guiding performance to the original system. The new auto-guiding system will be used for the second generation CQUEAN, but it can be used for other cassegrain instruments of the OST.

The purposes of this study were 1) to determine the effects of low-dye taping on peak plantar pressure following treadmill walking exercise, 2) to determine whether the biomechanical effectiveness of low-dye taping in peak plantar pressure was still maintained following removal of the tape during treadmill walking, and 3) to determine the trend towards a medial-to-lateral shift in peak plantar pressure in the midfoot region before and after application of low-dye taping. Twenty subjects with flexible flatfoot were recruited using a navicular drop test. The peak plantar pressure data were recorded during five treadmill walking sessions: (1) un-taped, (2) baseline-taped, (3) after a 10-minute treadmill walking exercise, (4) after a 20-minute treadmill walking exercise, and (5) after removal of the taping. The foot was divided into six parts during the data analysis. One-way repeated measures analysis of variance was performed to investigate peak plantar pressure variations in the six foot parts in the five sessions. This study resulted in significantly increased medial forefoot peak plantar pressure compared to the un-taped condition (p=.017, post 10-minute treadmill walking exercise) and (p=.021, post 20-minute treadmill walking exercise). The peak plantar pressure in the lateral forefoot showed that there was a significant decrease after sessions of baseline-taped (p=.006) and 10-minute of treadmill walking exercise (p=.46) compared to the un-taped condition. The tape removal values were similar to the un-taped values in the five sessions. Thus, the findings of the current study may be helpful when researchers and clinicians estimate single taping effects or consider how frequently taping should be replaced for therapeutic purposes. Further studies are required to investigate the evidence in support of biomechanical effectiveness of low-dye taping in the midfoot region.