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Room temperature electron mobility of >100 cm2 V–1 s–1 is achieved for a few-layer MoS2 transistor by use of a polyanionic proton conductor as the top-gate dielectric of the device. The use of a proton conductor that inherently exhibits a cationic transport number close to 1 yields unipolar electron transport in the MoS2 channel. The high mobility value is attributed to the effective formation of an electric double layer by the proton conductor, which facilitates electron injection into the MoS2 channel, and to the effective screening of the charged impurities in the vicinity of the device channel. Through careful temperature-dependent transistor and capacitor measurements, we also confirm quenching of the phonon modes in the proton-conductor-gated MoS2 channel, which should also contribute to the achieved high mobility. These devices are then used to assemble a simple resistive-load inverter logic circuit, which can be switched at high frequencies above 1 kHz.

Microorganisms found in bioaerosols from animal confinement buildings not only foster the risk of spreading diseases among livestock buildings, but also pose health hazards to farm workers and nearby residents. This study identified the various microorganisms present in the air of swine, chicken, and cattle farms with different kinds of ventilation conditions in Korea. Microbial air samples were collected onto Petri dishes with bacterial or fungal growth media using a cascade impactor. Endotoxin levels in total dust were determined by the limulus amebocyte lysate kinetic QCL method. Prevalent Gram-positive bacteria were Staphylococcus (S.) lentus, S. chromogenes, Bacillus (B.) cereus, B. licheniformis, and Enterococcus faecalis, while the dominant fungi and Gram-negative bacteria were Candida albicans and Sphingomonas paucimobilis, respectively. Considering no significant relationship between the indoor dust endotoxin levels and the isolation of Gram-negative bacteria from the indoor air, monitoring the indoor airborne endotoxin level was found to be also critical for risk assessment on health for animals or workers. The present study confirms the importance of microbiological monitoring and control on animal husbandry indoor air to ensure animal and worker welfare.

A real-time photoacoustic tomography (PAT) system is developed using a linear array probe and phantom images are acquired with a pattern of line structure. Moreover, it is attempted to detect line structures from the acquired images by Hough transform. This effort leads to the measurement of a process of magenta passing through a tube and acquisition of images at a speed of about 2 frame/sec. Besides, it is confirmed that the Hough transform applied on the acquired PAT images has the detection rate of about 50% for delineating a line structure.

The rapid dissemination of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Escherichia coli has significantly contributed to public health hazard globally. A total of 281 E. coli strains recovered from pigs and chickens between 2009 and 2015 in South Korea were analyzed for ESBL production. ESBL phenotypes were recognized in 14 E. coli isolates; ten and three ESBLproducing isolates carried only blaCTX-M and blaCMY genes, respectively, and one isolate harbored both genes. The predominant CTX-M and CMY types were CTX-M-15 (n = 8) and CMY-2 (n = 3). We also detected ESBL-producing isolates harboring blaCTX-M-65, blaCTX-M-14, blaCMY-6, blaDHA-1, and blaTEM-1 genes. All ESBL-producing isolates showed resistance to the extent of the fourth generation cephalosporins, along with multidrug resistance. CTX-M-15- producing isolates showed higher MIC values than CTX-M-14- and CTX-M-65-producing isolates. The blaCTX-M and blaCMY genes have the potential to be transferable. The spreading of blaCMY and blaCTX-M genes was arbitrated mainly v ia F rep a nd I ncI1 plasmids. Our i solates showed clonal diversity in PFGE analysis. This is the first report of E. coli isolates carrying blaCMY-6 in chicken from South Korea. The emergence of CMY-6 ESBLs in a population of poultry suggests that extensive screening with long-term surveillance is necessary to prevent the dissemination of ESBL from chicken to human.

Since the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in South Korea in 2010-2011, a trivalent vaccine has been used as a routine vaccination. Despite the high efficacy of the trivalent vaccine, low antibody formation was reported in the pig industry and there is considerable concern about the ability of the vaccine to protect against the Andong strain responsible for recent outbreaks in South Korea. To overcome these problems, immunostimulators have been widely used to improve vaccine efficacy in South Korea, although without any scientific evidence. Based on the current situation, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of germanium biotite, a feed supplement used to enhance the immune system, on the immune responses to FMD vaccination through the Andong strain challenge experiment in trivalent vaccinated pigs. Following the challenge, the germanium biotite-fed pigs showed high levels of IL-8 in serum, and increased cellular immune responses to stimulation with the Andong strain antigen compared to nonsupplemented pigs. In addition, higher FMD virus (FMDV) neutralizing antibody titers were detected in the germanium biotite-fed group than in the nonsupplemented group before the challenge. The findings of this study indicate that germanium biotite supplement might enhance immune responses to the FMD vaccine in pigs.

In this study, a novel Graphic User Interface (GUI) software development system is suggested so that it can be applied to diagnose breast cancer with utilizing 3~4.2 GHz microwave radiometric data. The estimated inner and surface temperature values on the patient`s right and left breast in terms of microwave radiometry are visualized in HSV color mapping space and their relevant contour regions and lines are depicted by Marching Square graphic algorithm. Also the database system is implemented in terms of patient and diagnostic module to support the medical decisions concerning the breast cancer diagnosis.

Underwater wireless communication systems can be useful for underwater environment observation, catastrophe prevention, ocean resources exploration, ocean organism research, vessel sinking exploration, and so on. However, unlike terrestrial wireless communication, underwater wireless communication should consider factors such as long propagation delay, limited transmission capacity, high bit-error rate due to potential loss in power, ambient noise, man-made noise, multi-path, etc., because of the inherent characteristics of water. Thus, in this paper, we propose a suitable media access control(MAC) protocol that applies a combination of the ALOHA MAC protocol and the CSMA/CA MAC protocol to underwater environment. We further propose a mathematical analysis model to evaluate performance. We also verify performance improvement in the proposed scheme in comparison with existing MAC protocols.

In this study, the novel digital filtering algorithms are implemented to suppress the noisy characteristics embedded in ambulatory electrocardiogram signals by an android smartphone platform. With this aim, Graphical User Interface (GUI) is designed and implemented by utilizing multithread-Java programming to realize Finite Impulse Response and Infinite Impulse Response filter. With simulating our implemented digital filters built in an android smartphone, we can find the fact that we can efficiently suppresses the noisy characteristics due to baseline wandering and 60 Hz powerline source fluctuations especially in electrocardiograms.

In this study, ambulatory electrocardiogram(ECG) signal and the rhythms of heart beats are visualized in terms of R-R intervals and Heart Rate Variability(HRV) in the environment of an android plaform. With this aim, Graphical User Interface(GUI) is implemented by executing multi-thread Java programming modules including ECG, heart-beats, tachogram and visualization unit. ECG signals are acquired in an android device by receiving the data from ambulatory ECG sensory system. Finite Impulse Response(FIR) filters are implemented to eliminate the baseline wandering noises contained in the ambulatory signals and DC-offset level in R-R interval data. With simulating the normal or stress emotional state of a subject, we can find the fact that HRV can be successfully estimated and visualized in an android smart phone platform.

It is quite important to improve the visual acuity of a medical image by suppressing noisy parts and simultaneously keeping the details of signal components to draw the accurate diagnostics. With this aim, we suggest a novel method to generate Rotational Kernel Transformation (RKT) filter mask with applying Bresenham`s algorithm and implement an nonlinear filtering algorithm to eliminate noises. As a result, we can find the fact that RKT filter mask can be automatically created and the visual acuity of a corrupted image can be elevated in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with applying the RKT filter.

Underwater wireless network can be useful in various fields such as underwater environment observation, catastrophe prevention, ocean resources exploration, ocean organism research, and vessel sinking exploration. We need to develop an efficient design for Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to improve multiple data communication in underwater environment. Aloha protocol is one of the basic and simple protocols, but it has disadvantage such as collision occurs oftenly in communication. If there is collision occured in RF communication, problem can be solved by re-sending the data, but using low frequency in underwater, the re-transmission has difficulties due to slow bit-rate. So, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based MAC protocol is going to be used to avoid collisions, but if there is no data to send in existing TDMA, time slot should not be used. Therefore, this paper proposes dynamic TDMA protocol mechanism with reducing the time slots by sending short “I Have No Data” (IHND) message, if there is no data to transmit. Also, this paper presents mathematic analysis model in relation to data throughput, channel efficiency and verifies performance superiority by comparing the existing TDMA protocols.

With the advent of ubiquitous healthcare technology to provide a patient with the necessary medical services in anywhere and anytime scheme, the importance of securing safe communication without tampering the medical data by the unauthorized users is getting more emphasized. With this aim, a novel method for constructing encryption keys on the basis of biometrical measurement of electrocardiogram (ECG) is suggested in this study. The experiments on MIT/BIH database show that our proposed method can achieve safe communication by successfully ciphering and deciphering ECG data including premature ventricular contraction arrhythmia signal with compromising its fiducial features as biometric key to transmit the data via the internet network.

An efficient calibration algorithm for an ambulatory audiometric test system is proposed. This system utilizes a personal digital assistant (PDA) device to generate the correct sound pressure level (SPL) from an audiometric transducer such as an earphone. The calibrated sound intensities for an audio-logical examination can be obtained in terms of the sound pressure levels of pure-tonal sinusoidal signals in eight-banded frequency ranges (250, 500, 1 000, 2 000, 3 000, 4 000, 6 000 and 8 000 Hz), and with mapping of the input sound pressure levels by the weight coefficients that are tuned by the delta learning rule. With this scheme, the sound intensities, which evoke eight-banded sound pressure levels by 5 dB steps from a minimum of 25 dB to a maximum of 80 dB, can be generated without volume displacement. Consequently, these sound intensities can be utilized to accurately determine the hearing threshold of a subject in the ambulatory audiometric testing environment.

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB), caused primarily by Mycobacterium bovis, continues to exert an economic loss, even in countries with active control measures, and is one of zoonotic diseases enable to be transmitted to human. The control and eradication of bTB are mainly based on a test and slaughter policy and/or abattoir surveillance. Various factors including limitation of diagnostic tests have been considered as major constraints to eradication. Single intradermal test (SIT) is the official diagnostic test. New diagnostic methods are needed to be developed, because of limitations of the test. In the present study SIT was compared with single intradermal comparative cervical test (SICCT) and interferon (IFN)-γ assay. There was very low correlation between SIT and SICCT. However, high correlation was shown between SIT and IFN-γ assay while no correlation was observed between SICCT and IFN-γ assay. Therefore, our results suggest the possibility of replacement of SIT with IFN-γ assay for the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis.

In this study, we propose the unsupervised image segmentation algorithm to estimate dental plaque accumulations on digital imaging with methylene blue disclosed plaque. With this aim, RGB color plane is mapped into HSI coordinates and the circular histogram of Hue is reconstructed by applying Otsu's threshold level. The histogram distribution on Saturation features is also analyzed by maximizing the variance between a plaque candidate and non-plaque one. The dental plaque regions are resolved by applying the composite decision logics based on the threshold level of Hue and Saturation.

The very first step to process electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is to eliminate baseline wandering interference that is usually caused by electrode-skin impedance mismatch, motion artifacts due to a patient's body moment or respiratory breathing. A new method is thus suggested to remove baseline wandering in ECG by improving the detrending method that was originally proposed for eliminating slow non-stationary trends from heart rate variability (HRV). In our proposed method, a global trend is estimated in terms of baseline wandering by merging the local trend based on an ECG segment that represents a part of the ECG signal. The experimental results show that the improved detrending method can efficiently resolve baseline wandering without distorting any morphological characteristic embedded in the ECG signal in no time delay manner.

Background After the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Korea, a vaccination policy has been applied to control the disease. In addition, several non-specific immune stimulators have been used without any scientific evidence that they would enhance the immune response after FMD vaccination and/or protect against FMD. Based on the current situation, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the non-specific immune stimulator germanium biotite on FMD vaccination and immune responses in cattle. To achieve our goal, immune responses to FMD vaccination, such as levels of IgG and IgA, antibody duration, and virus-neutralizing titers were investigated after germanium biotite feeding. The PBMC typing and proliferative response after stimulation with mitogens, the cytokines expression level of PBMC, and the lysozyme activity in the serum were measured to evaluate the immune enhancing effects of germanium biotite following its administration. Results Following the first vaccination, high level of IgG (at 4 weeks) and IgA (at 2 and 31 weeks) titers in serum and saliva were observed in the germanium biotite-feeding group (p

In this paper, we propose an underwater media access control (MAC) protocol based on flexible request-to-send waiting time (RWT) with a three-way handshaking mechanism. To support underwater mobile ad-hoc networks where each node has one-hop communication, our proposed MAC protocol is designed for data reliability, energy efficiency, node mobility, and network scalability. First, the order of transmission is decided by prioritizing messages to ensure data reliability. We determine the priority of messages based on the messages' content and urgency levels. We can also receive multiple RTS during an RWT and then reserve a channel to send data by transmitting one clear-to-send (CTS). This results in high energy efficiency by reducing the number of data transmissions in harsh underwater environments. Our proposed MAC protocol ensures a scalable, efficient network to accommodate extended or reduced networks with node mobility. Then we can manage efficiently underwater environment monitoring system based on underwater mobile ad-hoc networks.

Underwater wireless communication systems can be useful for underwater environment observation, catastrophe prevention, ocean resources exploration, ocean organism research, vessel sinking exploration, and so on. However, unlike terrestrial wireless communication, underwater wireless communication should consider factors such as long propagation delay, limited transmission capacity, high bit-error rate due to potential loss in power, ambient noise, man-made noise, multi-path, etc., because of the inherent characteristics of water. Thus, in this paper, we propose a suitable media access control (MAC) protocol that applies a combination of the ALOHA MAC protocol and the handshaking MAC protocol to underwater environment. We further propose a mathematical analysis model that considers end-to-end delay and throughput to evaluate performance. We also verify performance improvement in the proposed scheme in comparison with existing MAC protocols.

This paper describes an environmental impact analysis to design an adaptive media access control protocol for underwater vehicle control system based on underwater acoustic channel estimation. In underwater acoustic communication, data transmission is strongly influenced by environmental impacts, such as signal strength, hydraulic pressure, water temperature, noise, and etc. One of the main considerable points in underwater acoustic communication is signal strength of underwater acoustics as it has interdependent relationship between the distance and the power. An impact analysis of signal strength can be usefully employed in utilizing mobile ad-hoc network, which is used in underwater vehicle control systems. For efficiency we studied an impact analysis of signal strength in underwater vehicle control system.

UMO (Underwater Moving Object) based on underwater acoustic communication can be useful for underwater environment observation, catastrophe prevention, ocean resources exploration, ocean organism research, vessel sinking exploration, and etc. But, for controlling the UMO underwater acoustic communication has constraints due to limited transmission capacity, propagation delay, a lot of collisions occurred by multi-path propagation and of course, battery changing impossibility. So, it is essential to develop the firmware which will consider above-mentioned underwater acoustic communication limitations. In this paper, we consider constraints and problems of underwater acoustic communication. Recently years, we have constructed adaptive simplex communication firmware and we have upgraded it with half-duplex communication firmware. We have also built the test-bed theoretically similar to real underwater environment for real implementation and data monitoring which was gathered by the sensors.

In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm of extracting the multiple facial features such as eyes, nose, and mouth. The face candidates are first obtained based on skin-color filtering inYCbCr color domain and skin-temperature values and then the elliptic measures are applied to extract a true face candidate and its boundary. A Sobel edge mask is performed and consequently horizontal projection operation is applied to locate the eyes referring to the maximum horizontal projection value in Y component. Once two eyes are located, the distance that crosses the center of eyes and extends to the face boundary, D1 is determined. A heteroassociative memory neural network model is utilized to find the facial features. An input neuron vector X accepts D1 and the output neurons vector Y maps it to the facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth.

In vitro immune-stimulating activities of Bordetella bronchiseptica dermonecrotoxin (BBD)-loaded in chitosan microspheres (CMs) were reported with a mouse alveolar macrophage cell line (RAW264.7). Based on the report, in vivo activity of immune-induction was investigated by intranasal administration of the BBD-loaded CMs into mice. BBD was loaded into the CMs prepared by an ionic gelation process with tripolyphosphate. Mice were immunized by direct administration of the BBD-loaded CMs into the nasal cavity. After immunization of the mice, BBD-specific immune responses (IgG and IgA titers) were measured in sera, nasal wash, and saliva by ELISA. BBD-specific IgA titers in the nasal cavity were time- and dose-dependently increased by the administration. Similar phenomena were observed in the analysis of systemic IgA and IgG in sera. However, the antibody in saliva was undetectable by ELISA. These results suggested that direct vaccination via the nasal cavity was effective for targeting nasal-associated lymphoid tissues, and that CMs were an efficient adjuvant in nasal mucosal immunity for atrophic rhinitis vaccine.