The nuclear fuel that melted during the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 is still being cooled by water. In this process, contaminated water containing radioactive substances such as cesium and strontium is generated. The total amount of radioactive pollutants released by the natural environment due to the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011 is estimated to be 900 PBq, of which 10 to 37 PBq for cesium. Radioactive cesium (137Cs) is a potassium analog that exists in the water in the form of cations with similar daytime behavior and a small hydration radius and is recognized as a radioactive nuclide that has the greatest impact on the environment due to its long half-life (about 30 years), high solubility and diffusion coefficient, and gamma-ray emission. In this study, alginate beads were designed using Prussian blue, known as a material that selectively adsorbs cesium for removal and detection of cesium. To confirm the adsorption performance of the produced Prussian blue, immersion experiments were conducted using Cs standard solution, and MCNP simulations were performed by modeling 1L reservoir to conduct experiments using radioactive Cs in the future. An adsorption experiment was conducted with water containing standard cesium solution using alginate beads impregnated with Prussian blue. The adsorption experiment tested how much cesium of the same concentration was adsorbed over time. As a result, it was found that Prussian blue beads removed about 80% of cesium within 10-15 minutes. In addition, MCNP simulation was performed using a 1 L reservoir and a 3inch NaI detector to optimize the amount of Prussian blue. The results of comparing the efficiency according to the Prussian volume was shown. It showed that our designed system holds great promise for the cleanup and detection of radioactive cesium contaminated seawater around nuclear plants and/or after nuclear accidents. Thus, this work is expected to provide insights into the fundamental MCNP simulation based optimization of Prussian blue for cesium removal and this work based MCNP simulation will pave the way for various practical applications.

Pregnancy is a unique event in which a fetus develops in the uterus despite being genetically and immunologically different from the mother, and the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. To analyze the differential gene expression profiles in nonpregnant and 7 days post coitus (dpc) pregnant uterus of mice, we performed a global proteomic study by 2‐D gel electrophoresis (2‐DE) and MALDI‐TOF‐MS. The uterine proteins were separated using 2‐DE. Approximately 1,000 spots were detected on staining with Coomassie brilliant blue. An image analysis using Melanie III (Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics) was performed to detect variations in protein spots between pregnant and nonpregnant uterus. Twenty‐one spots were identified as differentially expressed proteins, of which 10 were up‐regulated proteins such as alpha‐fetoprotein, chloride intracellular channel 1, transgelin, heat‐shock protein beta‐1, and carbonic anhydrase II, while 11 were down‐regulated proteins such as X‐box binding protein, glutathione S‐transferase omega 1, olfactory receptor Olfr204, and metalloproteinase‐disintegrin domain containing protein TECADAM. Most of the identified proteins appeared to be related with catabolism, cell growth, metabolism, regulation, cell protection, protein repair, or protection. Our results uncovered key proteins of mouse uterus involved in pregnancy.

The techniques of IVM, IVF and IVC of canine oocytes may provide useful information for gamete salvage programs and the conservation of endangered canidae. This investigation has been made to determine the efficiency of in vitro maturation (IVM) as a basic experiment to study the development of canine oocytes after in vitro fertilization (IVF). The rate of oocytes developing to the MII stage was higher in the hormone treated group (10 IU/ml hCG+eCG, 14.7%, p<0.05) than in the control group (0 IU/ml hCG+eCG, 10.0%). The monospermy and pronuclear rates of canine oocytes were investigated after caffeine treatment on IVF. Canine oocytes were fertilized in the Fert‐TALP medium supplemented with 0, 10, 20 or 30 mM caffeine (Fert I, Fert II, Fert III or Fert IV, respectively). The highest pronuclear formation rate was obtained in the Fert I for 24 h IVF (6.7%, 6/89). Therefore, it is believed that unlike in other mammals, caffeine in canine IVF does not increase the efficiency of fertilization rate, and is not an important factor.

In this article I review the past and current status of solar astronomy in Korea and present some future prospects. Along with a brief historical account on the introduction of modern astronomy to Korea, I describe in detail how solar astronomy in Korea has developed since its birth about 20 years ago. With education of solar astronomers at domestic universities and collaboration with foreign scientists in China, Japan and the U. S., there has been a rapid growth of solar physics in Korea in the past decade. For further advance of solar astronomy in Korea, Korean solar astronomers have to build their own observing facilities and develop instrumentation programs. Also it is very important to bring up manpower competent for these projects.

We have examined morphological change and movements of individual sunspots within a sunspot group in association with a large solar flare activity (3B/X1.5) appeared on 13 May 1981. For this purpose we measured distance among spots during the period before and after the flare activity and estimated the average velocity of their movement. Our main results are as follows: (1) The longitudinal displacement among sunspots are generally greater than the latitudinal displacement. (2) During the period the spots moved with an average velocity of 1.2 km/s in longitude and 0.86 km/s in latitude. (3) The most notable change took place in the central part placed between the two ribbons of the flare.

An attempt has been made to analyze time series of Hα, Hβ, and Hɤ line profiles taken from a 3B/X6.1 flare which occurred on Oct. 27, 1991 in an active region, NOAA 6891. A total of 22 sets of Hα, Hβ, and Hɤ taken with a low and non-uniform time resolution of 10-40 seconds were scanned by PDS with absolute intensity calibration to derive the physical characteristics of the material in the flare chromosphere. Our . results are as follows: (1) The lower Balmer lines observed during the flare activity are broadened by Stark effect. (2) At the peak of the flare activity, the electron temperature of the Balmer line emitting region reaches up to 35000K and its geometrical thickness increases to a scale of ~104km, suggesting that high energy particles penetrate deep into the photospheric level.

We propose to use the entropy of power spectra defined in the frequency domain for the deconvolution of extended images. Spatial correlations requisite for extended sources may be insured by increasing the role of power entropy because the power is just a representation of spatial correlations in the frequency domain. We have derived a semi-analytical solution which is found to severely reduce computing time compared with other iteration schemes. Even though the solution is very similar to the well-known Wiener filter, the regularizingng term in the new expression is so insensitive to the noise characteristics as to assure a stable solution. Applications have been made to the IRAS 60μm and 100 μm images of the dark cloud B34 and the optical CCD image of a solar active region containing a circular sunspot and a small pore.

We have analyzed a set of high resolution photographic line profiles of a Zeeman sensitive Fe I λ 6302.5 line taken with the Universal Birefringent Filter over a single round sunspot (SPO 5007) at the Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory. The observed spectra recorded on films are traced by PDS and the traced densities are converted to relative intensity by means of IRAF. The Stokes I and V profiles are then constructed by adding together and subtracting from each other the left and right handed circular polarizations, respectively. The reduced I and V profiles are analyzed by means of the coarse analysis(Auer et al.(1977), Skumanich and Lites(1987)) with the use of inversion technique. It is found that the umbral field strength is about 3000 gauss and the field distribution follows closely the emperical model proposed by Wittmann(1974).

An attempt has been made to examine the characteristics of acoustic and MHD waves generated in stellar convection zones( 4000 K ≤ T e f f ≤ 7000 K , 3 ≤ log g ≤ 4.5 ). With the use of wave generation theories formulated for acoustic waves by Stein (1967), for MHD body waves by Musielak and Rosner (1987, 1988) and for MHD tube waves by Musielak et al.(l989a, 1989b), the energy fluxes are calculated and their dependence on effective temperature, surface gravity and megnetic field strength are analyzed by optimization techniques. In computing magneto-convection models, the effect of magnetic fields on the efficiency of convection has been taking into account by extrapolating it from Yun's sunspot models(1968; 1970). Our study shows that acoustic wave fluxes are dominant in F and G stars, while the MHD waves dominant in K and M stars, and that the MHD wave fluxes vary as T 4 e f f ∼ T 7 e f f in contrast to the acoustic fluxes, as T 10 e f f . The gravity dependence, on the other hand, is found to be relatively weak; the acoustic wave fluxes ∝ g − 0.5 , the longitudinal tube wave fluxes ∝ g 0.3 and the transverse tube wave fluxes ∝ g 0.3 . In the case of the MHD body waves their gravity dependence is found to be nearly negligible. Finally we assesed the computed energy fluxes by comparing them with the observed fluxes F o b of CIV( λ 1549 ) lines and soft X-rays for selected main sequence stars. When we scaled the corrected wave fluxes down to F o b , it is found that these slopes are almost in line with each other.

We have investigated hydrodynamical behaviors of spicules by solving numerically the hydrodynamic equations subject to proper boundary conditions using the method of characteristics. We examined the behaviors of MHD slow mode waves propagating through rigid magnetic flux tubes which were excited by the pressure perturbations at the lower boundary. It is found that the spicules are identified as the manifestation of the movement of the transition region being pushed upward by collisions with the shock waves. One of the most important findings is the presence of the rebound shocks and their roles. We interpreted the rebound shocks in terms of the observed recurrent spicules.

In the present study a two-mode, separately concurring resonant cavity model is proposed for theoretical interpretation of the 3 minute umbral oscillation. The proposed model has been investigated by calculating the transmission coefficients of the waves propagating through the umbral photosphere (photospheric weak-field cavity) and chromosphere (chromospheric strong-field cavity) into the corona, for 3 different umbral model atmospheres by Staude (1982), Beebe et al. (1982) and Avrett (1981). In computing the transmission coefficients we made use of multi-layer approximation by representing the umbra] atmosphere by a number of separate layers with (1) temperature varying linearly with depth and (2) temperature constant within each layer. The medium is assumed to be compressible, non-viscous, perfectly conducting under gravity. The computed resonant periods, transmission spectra, phase spectra, and kinetic energy density of the waves associated with the oscillations are presented in comparison with the observations and their model dependent characteristics are discussed.