An environmentally friendly and low-cost chitosan-containing polysaccharide (CP) composite ZIF-8/CP was designed and prepared based on the difficulty of separating the traditional adsorbent from the water phase. ZIF-8/CP was synthesized through in-situ growth approach. The physical, chemical and structure properties of ZIF-8/CP were determined through a series of characterization methods, including SEM, FT-IR and PXRD. The effects of touch time, pH, temperature, and coexisting ions on adsorption were assessed. In addition, kinetics, isotherms of adsorption and thermodynamics were examined. The data of isotherms for adsorption indicated that the adsorption of ZIF-8/CP on MG was similar to the Langmuir model, with a maximum adsorption capacity of 1428.57 mg/g. Moreover, the kinetic parameters were consistent with the pseudo- 2nd-order equation. Thermodynamic studies (ΔG < 0, ΔH > 0) demonstrated a heat-absorbing and spontaneous adsorption process. Our study reveals that ZIF-8/CP has good adsorption properties and environmental properties.

This study aimed to prepare kombucha, a fermented tea beverage, containing Dendropanax morbiferus (DM) leaves and roots, and analyze its antioxidant and intracellular activities. We compared the pH change, total acidity, radical scavenging activity, and oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) of kombucha fermented with black tea alone and that with added DM leaves or roots during fermentation. Using RAW 264.7, we evaluated the effects of kombucha containing different DM parts on nitric oxide (NO) production and inflammation-related cytokine content in cells. Kombucha containing ethanol extracts of DM leaves (BTK-E-DML) and roots (BTK-E-DMR) showed higher radical scavenging activity and ORAC 3 d after fermentation than that prepared from black tea alone (BTK-Ori). In an in vitro experiment using RAW 264.7, samples were treated with 8 mg/mL kombucha considering cytotoxicity; the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced NO content significantly reduced after BTK-E-DML and BTK-EDMR treatments compared with that after BTK-Ori treatment. Additionally, the levels of interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha, which were LPS-stimulated inflammatory cytokines, significantly decreased in cells treated with BTK-E-DML and BTK-E-DMR 15 d after fermentation compared with those treated with BTK-Ori. In conclusion, these results demonstrate that kombucha fermented with the leaves and roots of DM increases antioxidant activity and can significantly regulate inflammatory responses at the cellular level.

The purpose of this study was to examine job competencies for sales training program development to maximize profits in fashion retailing. An empirical online survey was conducted from September to December 2019, and data was collected from 200 salespeople and store managers working in fashion stores. Results were analyzed using frequency analysis, factor analysis, variance analysis, and regression analysis with SPSS 25.0. The major findings of this study were as follows. First, the most important job competencies identified by fashion store managers were: sales sense know-how, customer service skills, and sales person’s fashion style sense, product knowledge, fashion marketing and customer management. The job competency factors for sales training programs included empathy with the customer, product knowledge, communications and networking, basic job requirement, and sales skills. These five factors positively influenced the employment intentions and expectations of work performance of graduates. These factors also had a positive influence on the need of sales training program and intention to participate in retraining. Store managers in fashion retail thought the most appropriate period for on-the-job training was either 2-4 days or more than 1 week. The results of this study can be used as a base to develop training programs for job efficiency for salespeople in fashion retailing.

21세기 초부터 중국의 해외관광산업이 많이 활발해졌고, 운남성도 이러한 배경 하에 주변국가와 관광산업분야에서 협력의 폭과 깊이를 넓힐 수 있었다. 중국-미얀마 경제회랑은 중국이 설립 된 두 번째 무역회랑이며 이는 란창-메콩 지역발전에 중요한 역할을 하고 있다. 학술계는 운남 및 미얀마 양측의 관광산업을 중심으로 한 협력이 더욱더 활성화 될 거라고 전망하고 있다. 본 논문은 중국-미얀마 경제 회랑 건설을 기반으로 중국 Dehong지역과 미얀마 간의 관광산업협력 현황 및 협력 메커니즘, 인프라 구축, 국경 간 관광 상품 개발 및 관광 서비스 등을 분석하였고, 또한 Dehong과 미얀마 간 관광 협력에 적합한 친환경적인 협력모델을 탐색하였다.

This study examines when high tech firms are better off specializing in either exploration or exploitation learning strategy. Drawing on the organizational learning literature, we hypothesize that a firm’s imbalance between exploration and exploitation (or specialization strategy) has differential impacts on firm performance depending on its structural characteristics and external environment. A survey data of 180 high tech firms in China shows that firm age and scarcity of R&D resources moderate the relationship between specialization and business performance. Moreover, specialization strategy works better when competitive intensity is low.

The study aims to tind out the patterns of negotiation of meaning among non-native speakers in CMC environment, particularly in video conference mode. The two Chinese students and two Korean students participated in 12 video conference sessions and accomplished infonnation gap tasks for 6 weeks. The researchers compared the patterns of negotiation of meaning occurred during video conferencing of two group settings: the same ethnic group and the different ethnic group settings. The research results show that in the same ethnic groups, lexical errors and content triggered most meaning negotiations while content and phonological errors in the different ethnic group settings. There is a clear tendency to indicate non-understanding of a lexical trigger through a local indicator in the same ethnic group while global nonunderstanding indicators caused by phonological and content triggers occurred more frequently in the different ethnic groups. At the response stage, in the same ethnic groups, rephrasing and elaboration were the most commonly used strategies to minimize non-understanding whereas in different ethnic groups, about half the responses fa ll in the category of minimal. The effects of video conferencing as a CMC tool and the advantages of non-native interactions as a way to promote cross-cultural understanding were discussed based on research resu lts.

Salt is the major factor limiting crop productivity in saline soils. Development of genetic basis of high salt-tolerant rice is necessary to satisfy urgent needs in rice breeding. In this study, 295 rice accessions from a Korean authentic core set were used to identify the evolution associated genes regarding salt tolerance. By using McDonald-Kreitman Test (MKT), we detected orthologous genes in rice (Oryza sativa) using Brachypodium as an outgroup to investigate fast evolved genes that express differentially based on distinct phenotypic groups. Three groups which represented the salt sensitive (group 1), salt medium tolerant (group 2) and salt tolerant (group 3) were separated and each group was examined with the outgroup in neutral and non-neutral polymorphism together with the divergence levels. Total 53 fast evolutionary genes that have a positive selection with FDR ≤ 0.05 were found in the three groups. Among them, 15, 31 and 7 genes were included exclusively in group 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Annotation of these genes showing the predicted functions were checked. Two genes were found to be related to high salt tolerance based on the previous studies. Besides, association study of the candidate gene alleles and salt tolerance phenotype was carried out, indicating that these genes were correlated with salt tolerance. All these result support that using this type of evolution study, we may find some important candidate genes which are related to important traits in rice, such as the salt tolerance, providing important information for future gene based molecular breeding and functional analysis in rice.

Although the overall structure of the chloroplast genome is generally conserved, a number of sequence variations have been identified, which are valuable for plant population and evolutionary studies. Here, we constructed a chloroplast variation map of 30 landrace rice strains of Korean origin, using the Oryza rufipogon chloroplast genome (Genbank: NC_017835) as a reference. Differential distribution of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and indels across the rice chloroplast genome is suggestive of a region-specific variation. Population structure clustering revealed the existence of two clear subgroups (indica and japonica) and an admixture group (aus). Phylogenetic analysis of the 30 landrace rice strains and six rice chloroplast references suggested and supported independent evolution of O. sativa indica and japonica. Interestingly, two “aus” type accessions, which were thought to be indica type, shared a closer relationship with the japonica type. One hypothesis is that “Korean aus” was intentionally introduced and may have obtained japonica chloroplasts during cultivation. We also calculated the nucleotide diversity of 30 accessions and compared to six rice chloroplast references, which shown a higher diversity in the indica and aus groups than in the japonica group in lower level substitution diversity.

BADH1 and BADH2 are two homology genes, encoding betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase in rice. In the present study, we scanned BADHs sequences of 295 rice cultivars, and 10 wild rice accessions to determine the polymorphisms, gene functions and domestication of these two genes. A total of 16 alleles for BADH1 and 10 alleles for BADH2 were detected in transcription region of cultivars and wild species. Association study showed that BADH1 has significant correlation with salt tolerance in rice during germination stage, the SNP P11483(T/A)ishighlycorrelatedwithsalttoleranceindex(STI)(P<10-4). While, BADH2 was only responsible for rice fragrance, of which two BADH2 alleles (P23036, P25390) explain 97% of aroma variation in our germplasm. It indicated that there are no overlapping functions between the two homology genes. In addition, a large LD block was detected in BADH2 region, however, no large LD blocks in a 4-Mb region of BADH1. Only BADH2 region shown significant bias Tajima’s D value from the balance. Extended haplotype homozygosity study revealed fragrant accessions had a large LD block that extended around the mutation site (P23036) of BADH2, while both of the BADH1 alleles (SNP P11483(T/A)) did not show large extended LDblock. All these results suggested that BADH2 was identified as a domesticated gene during rice evolution, while BADH1 was not selected by human beings.

Rice germplasm collections continue to grow in number and size around the world. Since maintaining and screening such massive resources remain as a great challenge, it is important to establish piratical ways to manage them. A core collection, by definition, refers to a subset of entire population but preserves most of the possible genetic diversity, enhancing the efficiency for germplasm utilizations. Here we reports the whole genome resequencing of the 137 Korean rice core set (KRICE_CORE) that represents 25,604 rice germplasms deposited in Korean genebank of Rural Development Administration (RDA). We implemented the Illumna HiSeq 2000 and 2500 platform to produce short reads and then assembled those with 9.8x depth using Nipponbare as a reference. Comparisons of the sequences with the reference genome yield more than 15 million(M) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 1.3M insertion/deletion (INDELs). Phylogenetic and population analyses using 2,046,529 high quality SNPs successfully assigned each rice accessions to the relevant subgroups, suggesting those SNPs comprehensively capture evolutionary signatures accumulated in rice subpopulations. Furthermore, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for 4 exemplary agronomic traits from the KRIC_CORE manifest the utility of KRICE_CORE, identifying previously defined gene or novel genetic polymorphisms that potentially regulate the important phenotypes. This study provides strong evidences that the size of KRICE_CORE is small but contains such a high genetic and functional diversity across the genome. Thus those resequencing results will be useful for future breeding, functional and evolutionary studies in the post-genomic era.

As one of the most important crop, rice is not only a staple food of half world’s population but a wonderful model plant, which has been leading the evolution and functional genomics study. The next-generation sequencing technology are expediting rice genomic study, by providing a simple but powerful way. In this study, we re-sequenced a core collection of 137 rice accessions from all over the world along with 158 Korean breeding varieties. Finally, 6.3G uniquely mapped reads were obtained, and about 10 million SNPs and ~1.2 million InDels were identified with average sequencing depth of 7.5X. These will help us to maximize our germplasm utilization and assists all the deep research in population dynamics and functional studies. Here, we’d like to show the approaches applied to resequencing data mining and on-going activities.

Salt toxicity is the major factor limiting crop productivity in saline soils. Rice is an important staple food crop of nearly half of the world population and is well known to be a salt sensitive crop. The completion and enhanced annotations of rice genome sequence has provided the opportunity to study functional genomics of rice. With the rapid development of the biotechnology techniques, we can use more accurate and reliable methods to study the mechanism and function in different stress conditions. In present study, 295 rice accessions of diverse origin were re-sequenced and used for genome-wide association study (GWAS) with several germination-related traits, including germination percentage (GP), germination energy (GE), germination rate (GR), germination index (GI), salt tolerance index (STI) in salt tolerant germination stage. Phenotyping of the rice accessions were carried out at 200mM NaCl to screen salt tolerance levels. GWAS was applied to detect the associated genes related to salt tolerance in rice germination stage. Variations and haplotypes of the associated genes were detected and correlation between the phenotypes and genotypes were validated using qRT-PCR.