Hydrangea is widely grown as an ornamental plant with a high commercial value owing to its appealing features. Although many cultivars exist as genetic resources, they cannot be effectively used for breeding due to insufficient information regarding their genetic relationships and breeding compatibility. Intraspecific and intergeneric hybridizations within the family, Hydrangeaceae present opportunities to create cultivars with desirable traits, however, breeding efforts in Hydrangea through interspecific hybridization have achieved limited success. The low viability of interspecific hybrids may be attributed to cytogenetic incompatibility between the species. Therefore, a deeper cytogenetic understanding of this genus could enhance future breeding programs. This review focuses on the importance of cytogenetic data in the breeding of hydrangeas and the different cytogenetic techniques utilized in this genus. Future directions for cytogenetic research in Hydrangea are also discussed.

Echeveria is a genus belonging to the Crassulaceae family that comprises approximately 170 species. It is a representative plant known as a succulent with economic potential in the floriculture industry. Echeveria plants are widely distributed in dry environments and endemic to Mexico. These plants have a rosette formation and varied leaf colors and shapes, which are characteristics of interest for landscaping, cut flowers, or interior decoration. Given their range of locations in different climates or indoor conditions, it is important to have an understanding and knowledge of their leaf morphology and anatomy and how they function to provide optimum care and management. Owing to high demand in horticultural markets, many breeders have crossed their desired species. However, this method has progressively increased the number of species without proper records of parents or other natural unintended crossings, creating phylogenetic problems and identification issues. The use and understanding of phenotypes, anatomical data, and/or research to aid in taxonomic issues and improve cultural management practices have been reviewed and discussed in this paper. In this review, we have provided a brief background of Echeveria species, focusing on the challenges and studies that have attempted to address these issues.

Pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) is known as an important biomarker for fetal abnormality during first trimester and has a pivotal role in follicle development and corpus luteum formation. And also, it is being revealed that an expression of PAPP-A in various cells and tissues such as cancer and lesion area. PAPP-A is the major IGF binding protein-4 (IGFBP-4) protease. Cleavage of IGFBP-4 results in loss of binding affinity for IGF, causing increased IGF bioavailability for proliferation, survival, and migration. Additionally, PAPP-A can be used as a promising therapeutic target for healthy longevity. Despite growing interest, almost nothing is known about how PAPP-A expression is regulated in any tissue. This review will focus on what is currently known about the zinc metalloproteinase, PAPP-A, and its role in cells and tissues. PAPP-A is expressed in proliferating cells such as fetus in uterus, granulosa cells in follicle, dermis in wound, cancer cells, and Sertoli cells in testis. They have common characteristics of proliferation faster than normal cells with stimulating IGFs action and inhibiting IGFBPs. The PAPP-A functions and expression studies in livestock have not yet been conducted much. Further studies are needed to use PAPP-A as a marker for healthy longevity in animal science.

Veronica L., the largest genus in the family Plantaginaceae, is widespread in various habitats. Due to their long-blooming flowers, Veronica species have high horticultural value as indoor potted, garden, and landscape plants. Furthermore, Veronica plants are extremely important owing to their notable diversity in habitat usage, ploidy level, and evolution. Several native taxa, which are of key interest in breeding programs and phylogenetic studies, have been identified in Korea. The genome sizes and chromosomal characteristics are basic cytogenetic features of all taxa, and their knowledge is a prerequisite when commencing genome sequencing projects. It can provide essential information for cytogenetic, taxonomic, phylogenetic, and evolutionary studies. Thus, cytogenetic analysis and genome size estimation of seven Veronica taxa native to Korea were conducted in this study. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) karyotype analysis and chromosome counting was conducted using metaphase chromosomes probed with 5S and 45S rDNA. Nuclear DNA content and genome size were determined using flow cytometry. FISH karyotype analysis revealed a common number of 5S loci and varying 45S signals that create distinctive rDNA distribution patterns in each taxon. The results indicated that the seven investigated Veronica taxa have calculated genome sizes (1C values) ranging from 517.1 to 862.0 Mbp. This study is the first to report the chromosome number and karyomorphology of seven Veronica taxa native to Korea, as well as the use of rDNA markers for identifying individual chromosomes. These findings contribute to the crucial understanding the genomic characteristics of species within the genus Veronica, serve as a basis for studying Veronica phylogeny and evolution, and provide valuable information for future breeding programs.

This study was aimed to evaluate the dose-response the effects of nano-encapsulated conjugated linoleic acids(CLAs) on in vitro ruminal fermentation profiles. A fistulated Holstein cow was used as a donor of rumen fluid. Nano-encapsulated CLAs(LF, 5% of nano-encapsulated CLA-FFA; HF, 10% of nano-encapsulated CLA-FFA; LT, 5% of nano-encapsulated CLA-TG; HT, 10% of nano-encapsulated CLA-TG) were added to the in vitro ruminal fermentation experiment. In the in vitro ruminal incubation test, the total gas production on incubation with nano-encapsulated CLAs was increased significantly according to the incubation time, compared with the control(p<0.05). The tVFA concentrations on addition of LF and HT were significantly higher than that of the control(p<0.05). Thus, nano-encapsulated CLAs might improve the ruminal fermentation characteristics without adverse effects on the incubation process. In addition, the population of Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens which is closely related to ruminal biohydrogenation was increased by adding HT, while decreased by adding LF at 12 h incubation. These results showed that nano-encapsulated CLA-FFA could be applied to enhance CLA levels in ruminants by maintaining the stability of CLA without causing adverse effects on ruminal fermentation profiles considering the optimal dosage.

We introduce a depth scaling strategy to improve the accuracy of frequency-domain elastic full waveform inversion (FWI) using the new pseudo-Hessian matrix for seismic data without low-frequency components. The depth scaling strategy is based on the fact that the damping factor in the Levenberg-Marquardt method controls the energy concentration in the gradient. In other words, a large damping factor makes the Levenberg-Marquardt method similar to the steepest-descent method, by which shallow structures are mainly recovered. With a small damping factor, the Levenberg-Marquardt method becomes similar to the Gauss-Newton methods by which we can resolve deep structures as well as shallow structures. In our depth scaling strategy, a large damping factor is used in the early stage and then decreases automatically with the trend of error as the iteration goes on. With the depth scaling strategy, we can gradually move the parameter-searching region from shallow to deep parts. This flexible damping factor plays a role in retarding the model parameter update for shallow parts and mainly inverting deeper parts in the later stage of inversion. By doing so, we can improve deep parts in inversion results. The depth scaling strategy is applied to synthetic data without lowfrequency components for a modified version of the SEG/EAGE overthrust model. Numerical examples show that the flexible damping factor yields better results than the constant damping factor when reliable low-frequency components are missing.

This study compared the effects of the initial head position (i.e., a HHP versus a relaxed head position) of subjects with and without a FHP on the thickness of the deep and superficial neck flexor muscles during CCF. The study recruited 6 subjects with a FHP and 10 subjects without a FHP. The subjects performed CCF in two different head positions: a HHP, with the head aligned so that the forehead and chin formed a horizontal line, and a relaxed head position (RHP), with the head aligned in a self-selected comfortable position. During the CCF exercise, the thickness of the longus colli (LCo) and the thickness of the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) were recorded using ultrasonography. The thickness of each muscle was measured by Image J software. The statistical analysis was performed with a two-way mixed-model analysis of variance. The thickness of the SCM differed significantly (p<.05) between the subjects with and without FHP. According to a post hoc independent t-test, the change in thickness of the SCM increased significantly during CCF in the subjects with FHP while adopting a HHP compared to that in the subjects without FHP. The change in thickness of the SCM was not significantly different between the two positions in subjects without FHP, and there was no significant change in thickness of the LCo muscle during the CCF exercise according to the initial position in both subjects with and without FHP. The results suggest that CCF should be performed in RHP to minimize contraction of the SCM in subjects with a FHP.

차 중에 있는 살균제 tridemorph의 잔류량을 검사하기 위해 LC-ESI-MS/MS를 이용한 정확하고 감도가 좋은 분석방 법을 개발하였다. Tridemorph 잔류물은 샘플을 수화한 후 acetonitrile로 추출하고, NaCl을 이용한 액-액 분배, NH2 카트리지 정제를 거쳐 기기분석을 수행하였다. 직선성은 0.02~1.0 μgmL−1 범위에서 상관계수(r2) 0.9999로 높은 직선 성을 보였다. 0.02와 0.05 mgkg−1 처리수준으로 회수율을 실험한 결과는 75.0~84.7% 이었으며, 상대표준편차는 10% 미만이었다. 분석방법의 검출한계와 정량한계는 각각 0.01 와 0.02 mgL−1 이었다. 이러한 결과들을 통해 확립된 분석법은 차 중 tridemorph의 잔류량 분석에 적합함을 확인할 수 있었다.

A cell formation approach based on cluster analysis is developed for the configuration of manufacturing cells. Cell formation, which is to group machines and parts into machine cells and the associated part families, is implemented to add the flexibility and efficiency to manufacturing systems. In order to develop an efficient clustering procedure, this paper proposes a cluster analysis-based approach developed by incorporating and modifying two cluster analysis methods, a hierarchical clustering and a non-hierarchical clustering method. The objective of the proposed approach is to minimize intercellular movements and maximize the machine utilization within clusters. The proposed approach is tested on the cell formation problems and is compared with other well-known methodologies available in the literature. The result shows that the proposed approach is efficient enough to yield a good quality solution no matter what the difficulty of data sets is, ill or well-structured.