Porous carbon nanofiber (CNF) electrodes for supercapacitors were prepared by using polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and cucurbituril (CB), which is a macrocyclic compound comprising glycoluril units containing hollow cores. Mixture of PAN and CB in dimethyl sulfoxide was electrospun, and thermally treated to produce CNF electrodes. Their thermal stability, surface morphology, carbon microstructures, and surface porosity were investigated. Electrochemical properties were measured using three-electrode with synthesized CNFs without further treatment as a working electrode and 1 M Na2SO4 as an electrolyte. CNFs derived from PAN and CB exhibited a high specific capacitance of 183.5 F g− 1 and an energy density of 25.4 Wh kg− 1 at 0.5 A g− 1 with stable cyclic stability during 1000 cycles, which is significantly higher than those for CNFs derived from PAN only. This demonstrated that the introduction of CB successfully improved the energy storage performance of CNF electrodes.

Since rice is the main food in Korea, there are no regulations on corn milling yet. Corn is known as one of the world's top three food crops along with wheat and rice, and it is known that 3.5 billion people worldwide use corn for food. In addition, corn mills are not developed or sold in Korea, but the use of corn mills is increasing significantly in many countries in Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, as Korea's rice mill import increases, Korea's KAMICO (Korea Agricultural Machinery Industry Cooperative) and domestic company A agreed to develop a corn mill jointly with PHilMech, an organization affiliated with the Philippine Ministry of Agriculture. However, research on corn milling was very insignificant, so the development was carried out based on the technology of Korea's rice mill. Rice milling is performed by peeling off the skin of rice and producing brown or white rice, so it is carried out by removing the skin and cutting the skin. On the other hand, in the corn mill, the skin of the corn is peeled, pulverized and selected to produce main products suitable for edible use. Therefore, in order to develop a corn mill, processes such as peeling, transfer, grinding, sorting, and by-product separation are required, and suitable parts must be developed. In addition, the performance must be gradually improved through experiments in which corn is repeatedly milled. The Philippines produces 7.98 million tons/year of corn, which is about 100 times that of Korea, and is mostly consumed as a staple food. This is about 10% of the total crop production in the Philippines. In addition, the main cultivation complexes of corn are the mountainous regions of Tarlac or Pangasinan, and the produced corn is 72.4% of the so-called yellow corn called Arabel and Sarangani, and the remaining 27.6% are known as white corn. In this study, it was intended to produce grains of 2.5 mm or less suitable for food for yellow corn and to develop a corn mill for 200 kg per hour. Detailed conditions for development are stipulated as more than 55% of the main product recovery rate, more than 31% of the by-product recovery rate, less than 5% of the raw material loss rate, and more than 80% of the embryo dislocation rate. In this study, to achieve this, the overall process of the corn mill was developed, and the optimal conditions for the corn mill were obtained through the development of parts and empirical tests to improve performance. In addition, it was intended to achieve the development goal by evaluating and analyzing the performance of each part so that it did not conflict.

Recently, the importance of preventive maintenance has been emerging since failures in a complex system are automatically detected due to the development of artificial intelligence techniques and sensor technology. Therefore, prognostic and health management (PHM) is being actively studied, and prediction of the remaining useful life (RUL) of the system is being one of the most important tasks. A lot of researches has been conducted to predict the RUL. Deep learning models have been developed to improve prediction performance, but studies on identifying the importance of features are not carried out. It is very meaningful to extract and interpret features that affect failures while improving the predictive accuracy of RUL is important. In this paper, a total of six popular deep learning models were employed to predict the RUL, and identified important variables for each model through SHAP (Shapley Additive explanations) that one of the explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Moreover, the fluctuations and trends of prediction performance according to the number of variables were identified. This paper can suggest the possibility of explainability of various deep learning models, and the application of XAI can be demonstrated. Also, through this proposed method, it is expected that the possibility of utilizing SHAP as a feature selection method.

The acaricidal activity of a methanolic extract and fractions from the rhizome of Cnidium officinale against Dermanyssus gallinae adults was investigated. The C. officinale methanolic extract exhibited 100% acaricidal activity after 48 h of treatment at a dose of 4,000 ppm. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy revealed (Z)-ligustilide as a constituent of C. officinale. Acaricidal activity was examined in three experimental tests (spray, fumigation and contact), with the spraying method being the most effective. The methanolic extract of C. officinale showed both contact and fumigant activities, though only fumigant activity was observed with (Z)-ligustilide. These results suggest that C. officinale derived material can be used for the development of a control agent for D. gallinae.

The susceptibility of Dermanyssus gallinae adults, collected from poultry farms in 5 regions, to 11 acaricides was investigated. When bifenthrin and formic acid with pyridaben were diluted 100 times, bifenthrin showed 100% acaricidal activity; however, formic acid with pyridaben showed less than 20% acaricidal activity for poultry farms in 3 regions (Gyeongju, Chilgok, and Geumsan) except Yeoncheon and Anseong. Clothianidin, thiamethoxam, fenitrothion, and formic acid with pyridaben showed differences in acaricidal activity among regions. Therefore, farmers should concentrate during the selection of these acaricides. However, carbaryl, cartap hydrochloride, dichlorvos, and bifenthrin showed high activity against D. gallinae collected from poultry farms in five regions. To control D. gallinae effectively, the alternation of acaricides is necessary, and indiscriminate pesticide use should be avoided. Therefore, this study can serve as a basis for controlling D. gallinae.

We demonstrated an effective way of preparing melt spinnable mesophase pitches via catalytic hydrogenation of petroleum residue (fluidized catalytic cracking-decant oil) and their subsequent thermal soaking. The mesophase pitches thus obtained were analyzed in terms of their viscosity, elemental composition, solubility, molecular weight, softening point and optical texture. We found that zeolite-induced catalytic hydrogenation under high hydrogen pressure contributed to a large variation in the properties of the pitches. As the hydrogen pressure increased, the C/H ratio decreased, and the solubility in n-hexane increased. The mesophase pitch with entirely anisotropic domains of flow texture exhibited good meltspinnability. The mesophase carbon fibers obtained from the catalytically hydrogenated petroleum residue showed moderate mechanical properties.