The present study examined the effects of functional electrical stimulus( group 1), proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation(group 2) and combined training of functional electrical stimulus and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation(group 3) with scapula adductor muscles on scapula movement, upper limb function and gait in fifteen subjects stroke patients. The training was thirty minutes a day, five times a week for six weeks, obtained result as follow, upper limb function was significant difference in the group 2(p<.05) but no significant difference in other groups. The change of weight bearing were significant difference in all the groups(p<.05), and increase of gait velocity were significant difference in all the group(p<.05). In conclusion, when applied with functional electrical stimulus, proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation and combined training to the scapular adductor muscles, it was oberved in the course of the experiment that proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation was the most effective treatment among the three methods applied to the scapula adductors.

Bioremediation in situ is heavily dependent on the oxygenic environment which would privide the dwelling microorganism with sufficient oxygen. The situation could be easily resolved with supply of an Oxygen Releasing Compound (ORC). In this paper we prepared that sort of material out of oyster shell powder (mostly calcium carbonate) that prevails every shore areas of the country. We used two different oxidizing methods in the first step of the whole manufacturing process–conventional heating in a furnace and an ultrasound generator to obtain calcium oxide. Then that calcium oxide was further oxidized into calcium peroxide which may release oxygen under a moisturized condition. The oxygen releasing experiments were run to test the performance of our products, and to determine the gas kinetics during the experiments. Interestingly, calcium peroxide derived from ultrasound treatment was much more energy-effective as ORC than that from furnace heating although the heat derived process was better than that of ultrasound in terms of oxygen content and its releasing rate. We also found that most of the data collected from the gas releasing experiments fairly supported an ordinary 1st order kinetics to oxygen concentration, which shaped a sharp discharge of oxygen at the very early moment of each test.

We manufactured PVA-derived hydrogels using a foam generation technique that has been widely used to prepare colloidal gas aphrons(CGA). These gels were differentiated to the conventional gels such as for medical or pharmaceutical applications, which have tiny pores and some crystalline structure. Rather these should be used in de-pollution devices or adhesion of cells or biomolecules. The crosslinkers used in this work were amino acid, organic acid, sugars and lipids(vitamins). The structures of the gels were observed in a scanned electron microscope. Amino acids gels showed remarkably higher swelling ratios probably because their typical functional groups help constructing a highly crosslinked network along with hydrogen bonds. Boric acid and starch would catalyze dehydration while structuring to result in much lower water content and accordingly high gel content, leading to less elastic, hard gels. Bulky materials such as ascorbic acid or starch produced, in general, large pores in the matrices and also nicotinamide, having large hydrophobic patches was likely to enlarge pore size of its gels as well since the hydrophobicity would expel water molecules, thus leading to reduced swelling. Hydrophilicity(or hydrophobicity), functional groups which are involved in the reaction or physical linkage, and bulkiness of crosslinkers were found to be more critical to gel's crosslinking structure and its density than molecular weights that seemed to be closely related to pore sizes. Microscopic observation revealed that pores were more or less homogeneous and their average sizes were 20 μm for methionine, 10-15 μm for citric acid, 50-70 μm for L-ascorbic acid, 30-40 μm for nicotinamide, and 70-80 μm for starch. Also a sensory test showed that amino acid and glucose gels were more elastic meanwhile acid and nicotinamide gels turned out to be brittle or non-elastic at their high concentrations. The elasticity of a gel was reasonably correlated with its water content or swelling ratio. In addition, the PVA gel including 20% ascorbic acid showed fair ability of cell adherence as 0.257mg/g-hydrogel and completely degraded phenanthrene(10 mM) in 240 h.

A variety of fungal species are known to degrade cyanide through the action of cyanide hydratase, a specialized nitrilases which hydrolyze cyanide to formamide. This work is a report on two unknown and uncharacterized members from Neurospora crassa and Aspergillus nidulans. Recombinant forms of three cyanide hydratases (CHT) originated from N. crassa, Gibberella zeae, and A. nidulans were prepared after their genes were cloned with N-terminal hexahistidine purification tags, expressed in E. coli and purified using immobilized metal affinity chromatography. These enzymes were compared according to their pH activity profiles, and kinetic parameters. Although all three were similar, the N. crassa CHT has the widest pH range of activity above 50% and highest turnover rate (6.6×108 min-1) among them. The CHT of A. nidulans has the highest Km value of the three nitrilases evaluated in here. Expression of CHT in both N. crassa and A. nidulans were induced by the presence of KCN, regardless of any presence of nitrogen sources. These data can be used to determine optimal procedures for the enzyme uses in the remediation of cyanide-containing wastes.

PAHs are major pollutants that are widely distributed in soil and groundwater environment, so that may be regarded as carcinogens. We investigated the degradation kinetics of PAH in aqueous solution when low pressure UV energy and ultrasonic irradiation were applied. Phenanthrene and pyrene were used as model compounds. The degrees of degradation of these compounds with time were analyzed with a GC/MSD (SIM-mode). UV photolysis experiments showed that phenanthrene was reduced by 90～67% at initial concentrations of 1 ppm to 8ppm whilst it decreased to 50% at 10 ppm. Under the same conditions pyrene was degraded up to about 75% at lower initial concentrations but the reduction efficiency dropped to a level of 34 to 29% at the higher concentrations above 8 ppm. The reaction orders for phenanthrene and pyrene were found to be zero-th and ca. -0.4th order, respectively, thus implying that the reported assumption of pseudo 1st order reaction for some PAHs would be no longer valid. PAH degradation was roughly proportional to the intensity of UV (number of lamps), exhibiting maximum 92.5% of the degradation efficiency. The solution pH was lowered to 4.4 from 6.4 during the experiments partially because the carbons decomposed by the energy reacted with oxygen radicals to produce carbon dioxides. Ultrasonic irradiation on phenanthrene solutions gave relatively poor results which matched to 50 to 70% of degradation efficiency even at 2 ppm of initial concentration. Phenanthrene was found to be degraded more efficiently than pyrene for the two energy sources. Ultrasound also followed the same reaction kinetics as UV energy on PAH degradation.

A packed bed of volcanic rock was used as deodorizing material to remove hydrogen sulfide(H2S) from air in a laboratory-scale column, and was inoculated with Thiobacillus sp. as H2S oxidizer. The effects of volcanic rock particle size distribution on system pressure drop were examined. Various tests have been conducted to evaluate the effect of H2S inlet concentration and EBCT(Empty Bed Contact Time) on H2S elimination. The pressure drop for particles of size range from 5.6 to 10 ㎜ was 14 ㎜H2O/m at a representative gas velocity of 0.25m/s. Biofilter using scoria and Thiobacillus sp. could get the stable removal efficiencies more than 99.9% under H2S inlet concentrations in the range from 30 to 1,100ppm at a constant gas flow rate of 15.2 ℓ/min. H2S removal efficiencies greater than 99% were observed as long as EBCT was longer than 8sec at the 250ppm of H2S inlet concentration. When EBCT was reduced to 5.5 sec, H2S removal efficiency decreased by about 12 percent. The maximum H2S elimination capacity was determined to be 269g-H2S/㎥·hr.