Pseudorabies virus (PRV), a member of the Alphaherpesviridae, is the causative agent of Aujeszky’s disease in pigs. Glycoprotein B (gB) of PRV, a major constituent of the viral envelope, consists of 916 amino acids. We continuously combined three gB epitopes, E1 (aa 62-129), E2 (aa 217-282), and E3 (aa 543-737). The DNA fragment containing the PRV gB epitopes was fused with polyhedrin gene in order to generate recombinant baculovirus that expresses the recombinant polyhedra with PRV gB epitopes under the control of the Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus polyhedrin promoter. Recombinant baculoviruses were injected into fifth-instar B. mori larvae. SDS-PAGE and Western blot analyses revealed that recombinant polyhedra constitute polyhedrin and PRV gB epitopes, and that the recombinant PRV gB epitopes showed cross-reactivity against antiserum of PRV gB produced from pig. To examine the immunogenicity of recombinant PRV gB epitopes, we injected into mice as model animals. ELISA results indicated that antibody production is increased in a similar manner in the injection of recombinant polyhedra with PRV gB epitopes, either injected recombinant polyhedra as a granule form antigen without adjuvant or injected recombinant polyhedrin as a soluble form antigen with adjuvant. Taken together, these data show that PRV gB epitopes were produced as a granule form antigen by fusing recombinant polyhedra in baculovirus-infected silkworm larvae and displayed the immunogenicity in mice, indicating the efficacy of the granule form antigen as a PRV gB vaccine.

Present study investigates whether the syntactic constraints of English reflexives and pronouns originally proposed in Standard Binding Theory (SBT; Chomsky 1980, 1981, 1986) are well-reflected in written corpus data in British English by using the ICE-GB corpus. Four linguistic factors including structural relations between the reflexives/pronouns and their antecedents were used to analyze 1,000 sentences (400 reflexives and 600 pronouns) extracted from the ICE-GB corpus. The results demonstrated the following: i) The linguistic factors related to binding conditions showed structural differences between reflexives and pronouns in English; ii) English reflexives showed more cases of discourse binding (i.e., binding outside the sentential boundary) than the original expectation of SBT; iii) With the domain of sentential binding, structural constraints such as c-commanding and binding domain (Governing Category: SSC and TSC) were nearly violated with reflexives.

Mathematical models have been developed to evaluate methane emission from landfills. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) have provided first-order decay (FOD) models to estimate methane emission from landfills. The methane generation potential (L0) and the methane generation rate constant (k) are the two primary parameters in the FOD model. A major challenge in landfill gas modeling is estimating these parameters. The IPCC recommended that every country should develop country-specific emission factors appropriate for its circumstances and characteristics. The k value represents the rate constant associated with waste decomposition. In general, there are two different approaches for estimating a k value for a landfill. One uses actual field data in comparison with modeled data. However, this approach is limited by the spatial and temporal characteristics of landfill. Another approach is to collect samples of landfilled waste and then measure their biodegradability of waste as a function of waste age. As biodegradability is a surrogate for landfilling age, lower biodegradability would be expected in order samples. The objective of this study was to determine a k value using an anaerobic test (GB21). To achieve this objective, the GB21 which is used in Germany was conducted to estimate biodegradability of waste samples, and k value was determined based on FOD equation. Waste samples were collected at a landfill located in A City, Korea. The landfill is a valley-type landfill. It received municipal solid waste from 1990 to 2010. Food and paper wastes were the major fractions, constituting about 62.9% of the total amount disposed. However, the Ministry of Environment in Korea banned direct landfilling of food wastes in 2005, since then, food waste has no longer been disposed into landfills. In this study, the landfill site was separated into four areas based on landfilling age, and four samples were collected from each area. Cumulative biogas production for the waste excavated from the landfill varied from 6.9 to 35.8 Nl/kg-Dry Matter. Cumulative biogas production for landfilling age of 1 year was 35.8 Nl/kg-DM and it decreased to 6.9 Nl/kg-DM after 14 years. The k value obtained from this study was 0.156 yr-1 and was higher than the default k prescribed by the IPCC, which is 0.09 yr-1 in boreal and temperate climates. The higher k values obtained in this study can be explained by the high proportion of food waste disposed into the studied landfill. The default k values of rapidly degrading wastes including food waste and sludge are 0.185 yr-1. In addition a higher k value will result in predictions of more methane generation in the early years after waste burial, resulting in higher estimates of uncollected methane in greenhouse gas inventories. This work contributes to understanding decomposition rate of landfilled waste by examining biodegradability determination and providing k value for landfill.

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the serviceability of two-way hollow core slab with the distinguishingly donut shaped hollow named as GB-SLABTM(Green Ball based lightweight biaxial concrete SLAB) developed by Samsung and patented internationally. One of engineering issues in the long-span concrete slab structure is definitely how to evaluate the long-term deflection considering the cracked section. To evaluate the long-term deflection of GB-SLAB, the immediate deflection after concrete form removal is measured and then the long-term cracked deflection is predicted using finite element analysis