Objective: To evaluate item-factor structures of the 15 sensory items from the Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services (Pathways) and examine the best fitting model. Methods: The study subjects were 1,968 children aged 6-17 years, who had ever been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or Intellectual Disability (ID). Factor analyses and item response theory models were used to determine the best fitting item-factor structure of the sensory items. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires (SDQ) was used to test the concurrent validity of the sensory severity estimates. Results: A bifactor MIRT model (a general and four sensory factors) was selected as the best fitting model. All items statistically fitted to the bifactor model (p > .01) and showed moderate correlations with all five subscales of the SDQ (r s = .31 ~.51, p < .0001). The general sensory score differentiated the four different diagnostic groups (ASD, ID, ASD with ID, and no current symptoms) [F (3,1961) = 207.4, p < .0001]. Conclusion: The Pathways sensory items yielded reliable estimates of the general and each corresponding sensory factor by applying a bifactor MIRT model. The sensory score can be used as a valid sensory measure in the population survey.

Potato leafroll virus (PLRV) can be transmitted permanently to potato plants by only several species of aphids. Myzuz persicae (Sulzer) is well-known to having the highest transmitting capability of PLRV. In order to investigate the PLRV transmission of aphids migrated to highland area in 2018, aphids caught in the yellow water-pan trap were inoculated on the young leaf of indicator plant, Physalis floridana, and inspected by visually and ELISA after 2~4 weeks. As a result, 2.8% of the totally migrated aphids showed virus infected symptom on the indicator plant. PLRV transmission rate of M. persicae and Macrosiphum euphorbiae was 15.4% and 9.1%, respectively. Also, seven aphids out of 265 unidentified aphids showed PLRV symptom in the leaves. PLRV-borne aphids started to fly into the fields from late May, and the virus infection rate was highest of 10.4% in mid-June. M. persicae caught in mid-June showed higher infection rate of 46.7%, but unidentified aphid of 8.3%. Compared with past years, PLRV transmission rate in 2018 has slightly dropped.

In recent 10 years, mushroom cultivation area and number of cultivators have decreased, but mushroom production tends to increase. This shows that mushroom cultivation is being transformed from log and bed cultivation to bottle cultivation using automated facilities with high productivity per unit area. The bottle cultivation is possible to mechanized and automated, which can save manpower, less damage to pests, can be cultivated throughout the year, and is uniform in quality and advantageous for mass production. However, the investment in production facilities and farm materials is very large compared to the production of logs and bed cultivars, which can lead to large losses in the case of failure to grow. Therefore, it is necessary for the farmers who want to start the bottle cultivation to make careful management decisions by carefully examining the investment cost, the operating cost, and the expected income that are put into the bottle cultivation system. This study was conducted to analyze the management performance of bottle cultivation in mushroom farm and use it as farming decision making data. As a result of analysis of the management performance through farmers' survey, it was found that such as cost of spawn, substrate materials, other material, employment effort, and fuels & electricity power cost accounted for a large proportion of the cost of bottle cultivation.

Chinese longhorned beetle (CLB; Anoplophora chinensis) and Asian longhorned beetle (ALB; A. glabripennis) were accidentally introduced into the US from the Asia back in 90s’ and have been causing economic damage on hardwood species in the US. An international cooperative team made field surveys in Korea to find parasitoids of CLB and ALB using sentinel logs that were infested with eggs of the two cerambycids.. As a result, two parasitic wasps of Anopolophora species were newly recognised from Korea: Aprostocetus anoplophorae Delvare (Eulophidae) as an egg parasitoid of CLB and Leluthia honshuensis Belokobylskij & Maeto (Braconidae) as a larval parasitoid of ALB. Identification was made using both morphological and molecular data. Morphological information was provided along with images of developmental stages and adults.

The Horizon Run 4 is a cosmological N-body simulation designed for the study of coupled evolution between galaxies and large-scale structures of the Universe, and for the test of galaxy formation models. Using 63003 gravitating particles in a cubic box of Lbox = 3150 h−1Mpc, we build a dense forest of halo merger trees to trace the halo merger history with a halo mass resolution scale down to Ms = 2.7 × 1011h−1M⊙. We build a set of particle and halo data, which can serve as testbeds for comparison of cosmological models and gravitational theories with observations. We find that the FoF halo mass function shows a substantial deviation from the universal form with tangible redshift evolution of amplitude and shape. At higher redshifts, the amplitude of the mass function is lower, and the functional form is shifted toward larger values of ln(1/σ). We also find that the baryonic acoustic oscillation feature in the two-point correlation function of mock galaxies becomes broader with a peak position moving to smaller scales and the peak amplitude decreasing for increasing directional cosine μ compared to the linear predictions. From the halo merger trees built from halo data at 75 redshifts, we measure the half-mass epoch of halos and find that less massive halos tend to reach half of their current mass at higher redshifts. Simulation outputs including snapshot data, past lightcone space data, and halo merger data are available at http://sdss.kias.re.kr/astro/Horizon-Run4.

The genus Sphathius is belong to the subfamily Doryctinae in the family Braconidae and are described with >300 species in the world (Shenefelt and Marsh, 1976). This genus is distinguished from other winged Doryctinae by 1) forewings with three submarginal cells; 2) first subdiscal cell of forewing closed; and 3) first metasomal segment petiolate, widening apically, lacking basal wing-like projections, and inserted on propodeum near coxal bases (Marsh, 1997). For the purpose of finding the biological agent for Asian longhorned beetle (ALB; Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky)) and Citrus longhorned beetle (CLB; A. chinensis (Förster)), we had installed the ALB- and CLB-infested sentinel logs to attract parasitoids at experimental field of the Korea National Arboretum during summer season in 2014. Several L1 and L2 CLB larvae were found attacked by braconid larvae that were reared to adult stage. Their larvae are identified to Spathius gwangneungensis sp. nov. belong to the Spathius exarator species group. This new species has special characteristics as following; Body reddish brown or dark reddish brown, body length 2.5~3.7mm and forewing length 2.2~3.0mm in female and body length 2.1~2.6mm and forewing length 1.5~2.0mm in male, hind femur distinctly transversely aciculate dorsally, forewing more or less infuscate with a longitudinal hyaline band medially, vein m-cu of hind wing interstitial, second tergite entirely sculptured without striation, and third to fifth tergites basally sculptured. Ovipositor sheath 0.6 times as long as metasoma.

The insecticidal activity of cinnamon essential oils, cinnamon bark, cinnamon technical, cinnamon green leaf oils and their constituents and structurally related compounds against citrus flatid planthopper, Metcalfa pruinosa, was examined using a direct contact application. At 500 mg litre-1 very strong mortality (100%) was observed in cinnamon technical, cinnamon bark, cinnamon green leaf, mortality against flatid planthopper M. pruinosa. The cinnamon oils constituents were identified by GC-MS. The active principles were determined to be hydrocinnamic acid (24 h LC50, 30.66 mg/L), geranic acid (24 h LC50, 31.23 mg/L), cinnamaldehyde (24 h LC50, 32.65 mg/L), hydrocinnamaldehyde (24 h LC50, 39.11 mg/L) and trans-cinnamaldehyede (24 h LC50, 39.54 mg/L) were the most toxic against both nymph and adult of citrus flatid planthopper, M. pruinosa. The moderate activity was observed with cinnamyl acetate, dibutyl pthalate, anethole, α -cyano cinnamic acid, cinnamyl alcohol, methyl cinnamaldehyde, eugenol, 2.4-dihydrocyl cinnamic acid, bornyl acetate (24 h LC50, 53.35- 97.17 mg/L) respectively. The other constituents were showed less or no activity against adult of M. pruinosa. Global efforts to reduce the level of highly toxic synthetic insecticides in the agricultural environment justify further studies on the active cinnamon oils active principles act as potential insecticides for the control of M. pruinosa populations as direct spray with contact action.

Cloned calves derived from somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) have been frequently lost by sudden death at 1 to 3 month following healthy birth. To address whether placental anomalies are responsible for the sudden death of cloned calves, we compared protein patterns of 2 placentae derived from SCNT of Korean Native calves died suddenly at two months after birth and those of 2 normal placentae obtained from AI fetuses. Placental proteins were separated using 2-Dimensional gel electrophoresis. Approximately 800 spots were detected in placental 2-D gel stained with coomassie-blue. Then, image analysis of Malanie III (Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics) was performed to detect variations in protein spots between normal and SCNT placentae. In the comparison of normal and SCNT samples, 8 spots were identified to be up-regulated proteins and 24 spots to be down-regulated proteins in SCNT placentae, among which proteins were high mobility group protein HMG1, apolipoprotein A-1 precursor, bactenecin 1, tropomyosin beta chain, H+-transporting ATPase, carbonic anhydrase II, peroxiredoxin 2, tyrosine-rich acidic matrix protein, serum albumin precursor and cathepsin D. These results suggested that the sudden death of cloned calves might be related to abnormal protein expression in placenta.