Fly ash consists of various metal oxides which can remove SO2 gas by the catalyst effect. When fly ash is added in the preparation process of pitch-based activated carbon, the pitch particles aggregate and fly ash is embedded in the activated carbon. To increase SO2 gas removal performance, activated carbon was prepared by surface-treated fly ash and petroleum-based pitch. Carboxyl groups were introduced into the fly ash by malic acid treatment. The introduced carboxyl groups acted as an activation agent to create micropore around the fly ash, and created micropores were exposed to the fly ash outside of the activated carbon. The exposed fly ash increased removal amount of SO2 gas by a catalytic effect of the metal oxides. The SO2 gas removal performance improved by 34% because of the catalyst effect of the exposed fly ash and improvement in the micropore structure in the activated carbon.

To verify the progenitor of B. mori, we sequenced 14 B. mori strains preserved in Korea and one B. mandarina collected in Korea and conducted phylogenetic analysis of Bombycidae using maximum-likelihood method and concatenated sequences of 13 PCGs and 2 rRNA genes. All B. mori strains, regardless of their origin, formed a strong monophyletic group, with the highest nodal support. This B. mori group was placed as the sister to the two B. mandarina collected each from Korea and Shandong, China with the highest nodal support. Finally, the remaining two B. mandarina, which were collected in Japan were independently placed as the most basal lineage of B. mori and B. mandarina group. These results appear to indicate that an immediate ancestor for the domestic silkworm strains may have been originated from China and Korea.

This study was investigating the anti-obesity effects of diets with a mixture of cheese, red ginseng and fermented mature fruit of Rubus coreanus Miquel. We fed the experimental diets (SC5, SC10) supplemented with 5% or 10% cheese containing of fermented mixture, then orally administered the extract of fermented mixture (RB100, RB300) at a concentration of 100 or 300 mg/kg body weight to SD rats with high fat diet (HFD). The results were as follows: Sample cheese groups decreased visceral fat mass and adipocyte size of stomach compared to that of HFD group. Additionally, lipid droplets of liver in sample cheese groups were smaller than that in HFD group. The serum triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (tChol), glucose, leptin, and insulin levels in sample cheese group were lower than that in HFD group. But, the serum adiponectin and HDL-cholesterol (cHDL) levels were higher than that in HFD group. These results suggest that fermentation of red ginseng and Rubus coreanus mixed with cheese might be helpful in preventing obesity in high fat diet-fed rats.

The spotted-wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae), originally distributed across a few Asian countries, including South Korea, has invaded North America and Europe, but is absent from Australia. In order to export the South Korean grape cultivar Campbell Early to Australia, its potential to serve as oviposition and development medium for SWD must first be determined. In this study, we determined the oviposition and development potential of SWD on Campbell Early, after elucidating the SWD life cycle and establishing an artificial diet-based mass-culturing system. An investigation of the life cycle under five temperature regimes (16, 19, 22, 25, and 28°C) showed that the durations of the egg, larval, and adult stages were shorten when temperature was increased from 16, 19, 22, 25, and 28°C, but pupal duration was shortest at 25°C and extended again at 28°C. A test of oviposition and development potential of SWD on Campbell Early grape clusters showed oviposition of 30.8 ± 6.8 eggs per cluster of injured grapes and 157.7 ± 16.2 eggs on a culture dish of artificial diet. However, in a similar experiment using uninjured grape clusters, only a single egg was deposited on the grape skin, which soon dried. In light of these results, newly harvested grapes left at vineyards during daily harvests are unlikely to serve as an oviposition and development medium for SWD, as long as the grapes remain uninjured.

We newly sequenced mitogenomes of five skippers belonging to Lepidoptera to obtain further insight into characteristics of butterfly mitogenomes and performed phylogenetic reconstruction using all available gene sequences (PCGs, rRNAs, and tRNAs) from 85 species in 19 families in eight superfamilies. The general genomic features found in the butterflies also were found in the five skippers: a high A/T composition (79.3% - 80.9%), dominant usage of TAA stop codon, similar skewness pattern in various levels, consistently long intergenic spacer sequence between tRNAGln - ND2 (64-87 bp), the ATACTAA motif betweent RNASer(UCN) and ND1, and characteristic features of the A+T-rich region (the motif ATAGA, varying length of poly-T stretch, and poly-A stretch). The start codon for COI was CGA in four skippers as typical, but Lobocla bifasciatus evidently possessed canonical ATG as start codon. Phylogenetic analyses mainly yielded the consensus superfamilial relationships ((((((Bombycoidea + Noctuoidea + Geometroidea) + Pyraloidea) + Papilionoidea) + Tortricoidea) + Yponomeutoidea) + Hepialoidea) with a high support for most nodes, confirming the validity of Macroheterocera and its sister relationship to Pyraloidea. Within Rhopalocera the familial relationships (Papilionidae + (Hesperiidae + (Pieridae + ((Lycaenidae + Riodinidae) + Nymphalidae))) were strongly supported, confirming invalidity of the superfamily Hesperioidea. On the other hand, superfamilial relationships among Noctuoidea, Geometroidea, and Bombycoidea and the familial relationships among Saturniidae, Sphingidae, and Bombycidae were dubious, requiring further representative taxon sampling.