Salinity is a major abiotic stress for crop plants that cause reduced food production. The application of plant growth-promoting microorganisms can improve the adaptability of plants to biotic and abiotic stresses. Therefore, in the current study, we aimed to enhance the mitigation effects of artificially applied rhizobacterium Klebsiella variicola AY13 on salinity stress in Trifolium repens L. The results suggested that AY13 innately produced indole-3-acetic acid and accelerated the morphological adaptation of T. repens to salt stress conditions. Furthermore, AY13 promotes a Trp-dependent pathway for indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) production, as adding L-tryptophan (L-Trp) increased IAA production in pure culture. AY13 improved plant growth by maintaining relative water content and minimizing water loss in excised leaves. Moreover, AY13 inoculation significantly reduced the endogenous levels of abscisic acid and antioxidants such as glutathione and catalase. These results suggest that AY13 plays a crucial role in reprogramming stress-related metabolism and enhancing plant stress tolerance.

Protoplasts were isolated from the primary leaves of lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) seedlings 10 days after in vitro germination. The leaves were stripped and incubated in an enzyme mixture consisting of 1.2% Cellulase R-10 and 0.3% Macerozyme R-10 in cell and protoplast washing solution (CPW) overnight. The average protoplast yield was 8.25 x 106 protoplasts per g of fresh leaf tissue. When protoplasts were cultured at a density of 3.0 × 105 protoplasts/mL in agarose solid KM8P/KM8 medium, first and second divisions were observed in the protoplasts within a week. Protoplast-derived microcolonies formed after 4 weeks of culture, and visible colonies were present after 3 months of culture. Protoplast-derived microcalli were transferred to Murashige and Skoog medium supplemented with 2.0 mg/L kinetin and 0.1 mg/L NAA and incubated in the light for 3 weeks. They grew into callus, which then regenerated into plants after 7 weeks of culture. The regenerated plants grew as apparently normal flowering fertile plants.

담낭암은 드물지만 치명적인 악성 종양으로 초기에는 증상이 없어 대부분의 담낭암이 늦게 진단되고, 급속하게 인접 장기로 전이되기 때문에 예후가 불량하다. 따라서 담낭암을 조기에 발견하는 경우는 드물고, 담낭담석이나 용종으로 수술적 절제를 시행한 후 우연히 발견되는 때가 대부분이다. 저자들은 급성 무결석 담낭염 환자에서 초음파 내시경을 통해 비교적 조기에 담낭관암을 발견하여 성공적으로 치료할 수 있었던 증례를 경험하였다. 이에 문헌고찰과 함께 보고한다.

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute operates the Nuclear Cycle Experimental Research Facility which has radiation controlled area in the laboratory with the aim of realizing pyroprocessing technology. In this Facility, depleted Uranium feed material and a depleted Uranium mixed with some surrogate material are used for performing experiments. Therefore the facility is using uranium, users should be careful of radiation. This paper will explain the radiation protection of the Nuclear Cycle Experimental Research facility and will also explain how much alpha radiation comes out from the facility. The RMS (Radiation Monitoring System) detector is made by CANBERRA and the model name is ICAM. ICAM RMS is the detector which can detect Alpha Radiation by absorbing the air in the facility. The RMS detector is installed in the HVAC room on the third floor to check the air contamination through the chimney. The RMS is connected to the air ventilation line for detecting Alpha radiation in the whole facility. Experiment was performed for two weeks to check the radiation level and the air ventilation fan continued to operate 24 hours a day. the results are below the required value which is 0.1 Bq/m3, indicating that the facility is safe in terms of radiation safety management.

The dimensioning machine installed in the hot cell has been used for 20 years. It has been used for a long time so it was often malfunction due to aging and radiation. In addition, some parts of apparatus were discontinued and there were a lot of problems in maintenance and repair. In the old measuring system, the operator’s subjectivity was much involved. The process of control the focal length (distance between lens and specimen) by operator’s sense is a good example. The existing dimensioning machine was the Kh-7700 of Hirox Co., Ltd. As the equipment had been used for a longtime, additional utilities such as jigs, lighting module and servo motors have been customized and used. The same company’s apparatus was selected for the reasons that it did not need to manufacture a new utility so it could save the cost of radioactive waste disposal for existing utilities and its radiation resistance which has been used for 20 years in radiation environment. Lighting, standing, stage, controllers, cables and so on had been customized to provide remote control in hot cell. The installation was completed in March of this year in hot cell and has been successfully used until now. Through the improvement of dimensioning machine, an auto-focusing and multi-focusing were available. Therefore, they made it possible to produce high quality data and improve the accuracy of data. And this research could be a good example of how hot cell devices can be built and customized to achieve remote control.

As the decommissioning and decontamination (D&D) of nuclear power plants (NPPs) has actively proceeded worldwide, the management of radiation exposure of workers has become more critical. Radioactive aerosol is one of the main causes of worker exposure, contributing to internal exposure by inhalation. It occurs in the process of cutting radioactive metal structures or melting radioactive wastes during D&D, and its distribution varies according to decommissioning strategies and cutting methods. Among the dominant radionuclides in radioactive aerosols, Fe-55 is known to be the most abundant. Fe-55, which decays by electron capture, is classified as a difficult-to-measure (DTM) radionuclide because its emitted X-rays have too low energy to measure directly from outside of the container. Generally, for measuring DTM nuclides, the liquid scintillation counting (LSC) method and the scaling factor (SF) method are used. However, these methods are not suitable for continuous monitoring of the D&D workplace due to the necessity of sampling and additional analysis. The radiation measurement system that can directly measure the radionuclides collected at the aerosol filter could be more useful. In this study, as preliminary research on developing the radioactive aerosol monitoring system, we fabricated a gamma-ray spectrometer based on a NaI (Tl) scintillator and measured the energy spectrum of Fe-55. A beryllium window was applied to the scintillator for X-ray transmission, and the Fe-55 check source was directly attached to the scintillator assuming that the aerosol filter was equipped. 5.9 keV photopeak was clearly observed and the energy resolution was estimated as 44.10%. Also, the simultaneous measurement with Cs-137 was carried out and all the peaks were measured.

Plastic scintillators can be used to find radioactive sources for portal monitoring due to their advantages such as faster decay time, non-hygroscopicity, relatively low manufacturing cost, robustness, and easy processing. However, plastic scintillators have too low density and effective atomic number, and they are not appropriate to be used to identify radionuclides directly. In this study, we devise the radiation sensor using a plastic scintillator with holes filled with bismuth nanoparticles to make up for the limitations of plastic materials. We use MCNP (Monte Carlo N-particle) simulating program to confirm the performance of bismuth nanoparticles in the plastic scintillators. The photoelectric peak is found in the bismuth-loaded plastic scintillator by subtracting the energy spectrum from that of the standard plastic scintillator. The height and diameter of the simulated plastic scintillator are 3 and 5 cm, respectively, and it has 19 holes whose depth and diameter are 2.5 and 0.2 cm, respectively. As a gamma-ray source, Cs-137 which emits 662 keV energy is used. The clear energy peak is observed in the subtracted spectrum, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and the energy resolution are calculated to evaluate the performance of the proposed radiation sensor. The FWHM of the peak and the energy resolution are 61.18 keV and 9.242% at 662 keV, respectively.

Gamma spectrometry is one of the main analysis methods used to obtain information about unknown radioactive materials. In gamma-ray energy spectrometry, even for the same gamma-ray spectrum, the analysis results may be slightly different depending on the skill of the analyst. Therefore, it is important to increase the proficiency of the analyst in order to derive accurate analysis results. This paper describes the development of the virtual spectrum simulator program for gamma spectrometry training. This simulator program consists of an instructor module and trainee module program based on an integrated server, in which the instructor transmits a virtual spectrum of arbitrarily specified measurement conditions to the students, allowing each student to submit analysis results. It can reproduce a virtual gamma-ray energy spectrum based on virtual reality and augmented reality technique and includes analysis function for the spectrum, allowing users to experience realistic measurement and analysis online. The virtual gamma-ray energy spectrum DB program manages a database including theoretical data obtained by Monte Carlo simulation and actual measured data, which are the basis for creating a virtual spectrum. The currently developed database contains data on HPGe laboratory measurement as well as in-situ measurements (ground surface, decommissioned facility wall, radiowaste drum) of portable HPGe detectors, LaBr3(Ce) detector and NaI detector. The analysis function can be applied not only to the virtual spectrum, but also to the input measured spectrum. The parameters of the peak analysis algorithm are customizable so that even low-resolution spectra can be properly analyzed. The validity of the database and analysis algorithm was verified by comparing with the results derived by the existing analysis programs. In the future, the application of various in-situ gamma spectrometers will be implemented to improve the profiling of the depth distribution of deposited nuclides through dose rate assessment, and the applicability of the completed simulator in actual in-situ gamma spectrometry will be verified.