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In this study, a new species of the genus Halichondria Fleming, 1828: Halichondria dokdoensis sp. nov. from Korea, was newly described. Morphologically distinct from each other, the new species was assigned to the genus Halichondria. Halichondria dokdoensis sp. nov. has encrusting with a chimney shape and volcano shape, reddish-purple color, and a large extensive subchoanosomal space present.

The ultra-wideband technique has shown its effectiveness for indoor target tracking. Various types of measurements have been applied to ultra-wideband systems for indoor target tracking, and the time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurement-based approaches are the most widely used methods due to their good accuracy and feasibility. Target tracking with the TDOA measurements usually encounters the problem of correlated measurement noises, as one sensor network utilizes the common reference sensor for measurement generation. The off-diagonal entries in the measurement error covariance matrix become non-zero values, which makes the standard target tracking algorithms inconvenient for practical installation of an ultra-wideband system. Another problem in sensor networks is properly exploiting the measurements obtained from multiple sensors considering practical conditions, such as storage limitations or computational resource consumption. The parallel update and the serial update are usually applied for the multi-sensor tracking problem. This paper presents a target tracking algorithm that integrates the Cholesky decomposition to decorrelate the measurement noises for the serial update, thus improving computational efficiency. The proposed algorithm is realized in an ultra-wideband system for real-time target tracking, and an experiment using real data is conducted to validate its practicability.

Airborne fine dust particles (FDPs) have been identified as major toxins in air pollution that threaten human respiratory health. While searching for an anti-FDP reagent, we found that green tea extract (GTE) and fractions rich in flavonol glycosides (FLGs) and crude tea polysaccharides (CTPs) had protective effects against FDP-stimulated cellular damage in the BEAS-2B airway epithelial cell line. The GTE, FLGs, and CTPs significantly increased viability and lowered oxidative stress levels in FDP-treated cells. Combined treatment with GTE, FLGs, and CTPs also exerted synergistic protective effects on cells and attenuated FDP-induced elevations in inflammatory gene expression. Moreover, the green tea components increased the proportion of ciliated cells and upregulated ciliogenesis in the airway in FDP-stimulated BEAS-2B cells. Our findings provide insights into how natural phytochemicals protect the airway and suggest that green tea could be used to reduce FDP-induced airway damage as an ingredient in pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and also cosmeceutical products.

The mitogenome sequence of Chiroteuthis picteti Joubin, 1894 (Oegopsida, Chiroteuthidae), a species of Oceanic squid, was first determined in the genus Chiroteuthis as well as in the family Chiroteuthidae. The circular genome of C. picteti is 20,851bp in size, has six duplicated genes (cox1, cox2, cox3, atp6, atp8, and tRNAAsp). The mitogenome of C. picteti has high A + T content (71.6%) similar to other Oegopsid (A 38.2%; C 18.3%; G 10.1%; T 33.4%). The mitogenome of C. picteti, the first reported of its genus, will be useful for inferring the phylogenetic relationships among the members of Chiroteuthidae, within the Oegopsids.

The mitogenome sequence of the epitokous Nereis species (Phyllodocida, Nereididae) was determined first in the genus Nereis. The complete mitogenome is 15,667 bp in length, containing 13 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNAs, 22 transfer RNAs and a control region, and their gene order and structure is identical to those of other nereidid species. The mitogenome consists of 33.5% A, 20.0% C, 13.3% G, 33.1% T, showing a high content of A + T similar to the other phyllodocid polychaetes. These results will be useful for inferring the phylogenetic relationships among the members of Nereididae within the phyllodocids.

Gymnogobius heptacanthus is a small intertidal species belonging to the family Gobiidae. Herein, we report the first sequencing and assembly of the complete mitochondrial genome of G. heptacanthus. The complete mitochondrial genome is 16,529 bp long and has the typical vertebrate mitochondrial gene arrangement, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and a control region. Phylogenetic analysis using mitochondrial genomes of 12 species showed that G. heptacanthus is clustered with G. urotaenia and G. petschiliensis and rooted with other Gobiidae species. This mitochondrial genome provides potentially important resources for addressing taxonomic issues and studying molecular evolution.

The mitogenome sequence of Sponge Halichondria okadai (Kadota, 1922) (Suberitida, Halichondriidae) was determined for the first time in this study. The circular genome is 20,722 bp in length, containing 14 protein coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), and 25 transfer RNAs (tRNAs). The nucleotide composition of mitogenome consists of 29.5% A, 14.2% C, 21.5% G, 34.7% T, showing a high content of A + T similar to the other Suberitid sponges. These results will be useful for inferring the phylogenetic relationships among the members of family Halichondriidae within the Suberitids.

The mitogenome of Pseudosuberites sp. (Suberitida, Suberitidae) has been determined first in the genus Pseudosuberites. Assembled mitogenome was 23,502 bp in length, including 14 protein-coding genes, 25 transfer RNA, and 2 ribosomal RNA genes. The order and structure are the same as those of other species belonging to the same family Suberitidae. Pseudosuberites sp. was clustered with Suberites domucula within the family Suberitidae. The mitogenome of Pseudosuberites sp. will be valuable for inferring phylogenetic relationships among members of suberitids.

Two new marine sponges, Haliclona (Reniera) oceanus sp. nov. and Haliclona (Reniera) juckdoensis sp. nov. of the family Chalinidae were collected from Ieodo Ocean Research Station, Ulleung-do Island, Korea by SCUBA in 2016-2017. Morphologically distinct from each other, both species are assigned to the genus Haliclona subgenus Reniera. Haliclona (Reniera) oceanus sp. nov. is similar to H. (H.) ieoensis Kim et al. 2017 in shape, habitat, growth form, but it differs in color, ectosomal, choanosomal skeleton and spicule size. Haliclona (Reniera) juckdoensis sp. nov. is similar to H. (R.) hongdoensis Kang and Sim 2007 in habitat, ectosomal, choansomal skeleton but it differs in spicule size.

In the multiple asynchronous bearing-only (BO) sensors tracking system, there usually exist two main challenges: (1) the presence of clutter measurements and the target misdetection due to imperfect sensing, (2) the out-of-sequence (OOS) arrival of locally transmitted information due to diverse sensor sampling interval or internal processing time or uncertain communication delay. This paper simultaneously addresses the two problems by proposing a novel distributed tracking architecture consisting of the local tracking and central fusion. To get rid of the kinematic state unobservability problem in local tracking for a single BO sensor scenario, we propose a novel local integrated probabilistic data association (LIPDA) method for target measurement state tracking. The proposed approach enables eliminating most of the clutter measurement disturbance with increased target measurement accuracy. In the central tracking, the fusion center uses the proposed distributed IPDA-forward prediction fusion and decorrelation (DIPDA-FPFD) approach to sequentially fuse the OOS information transmitted by each BO sensor. The track management is carried out at local sensor level and also at the fusion center by using the recursively calculated probability of target existence as a track quality measure. The efficiency of the proposed methodology was validated by intensive numerical experiments.

Background Many studies have reported that environmental pollution has become a serious public health issue. Airborne fine dust particles (FDPs) have been identified as major toxins in air pollution that threaten human respiratory health. Developing strategies for defense against FDPs is one of the primary goals of air pollution research. Results While searching for an anti-FDP reagent, we found that green tea extract (GTE) and green tea fractions rich in flavonol glycosides (FLGs) and crude green tea polysaccharides (CTPs) had protective effects against FDP-stimulated cellular damage in the BEAS-2B airway epithelial cell line. The results demonstrated that GTE, FLGs, and CTPs significantly increased viability and lowered oxidative stress levels in FDP-treated cells. Major catechin and flavonol compounds increased cell survival, and (-)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and myricetin exerted synergistic effects on cell survival under FDP stimulation. Combined treatment with GTE, FLGs, and CTPs also exerted synergistic protective effects on cells, and the green tea components attenuated FDP-induced elevations in inflammatory gene expression. Moreover, the green tea components increased the proportion of ciliated cells and upregulated ciliogenesis in the airway in FDP-stimulated BEAS-2B cells. Conclusions Our findings provide insights into how natural phytochemicals protect the airway and suggest that green tea could be used to reduce FDP-induced airway damage as an individual therapeutic agent or as an ingredient in pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical products.

The point detections obtained from radars or sonars in surveillance environments include clutter measurements, as well as target measurements. Target tracking with these data requires data association, which distinguishes the detections from targets and clutter. Various algorithms have been proposed for clutter measurement density estimation to achieve accurate and robust target tracking with the point detections. Among them, the spatial clutter measurement density estimator (SCMDE) computes the sparsity of clutter measurement, which is the reciprocal of the clutter measurement density. The SCMDE considers all adjacent measurements only as clutter, so the estimated clutter measurement density is biased for multi-target tracking applications, which may result in degraded target tracking performance. Through the study in this paper, a major source of tracking performance degradation with the existing SCMDE for multi-target tracking is analyzed, and the use of the clutter measurement probability is proposed as a remedy. It is also found that the expansion of the volume of the hyper-sphere for each sparsity order reduces the bias of clutter measurement density estimates. Based on the analysis, we propose a new adaptive clutter measurement density estimation method called SCMDE for multi-target tracking (MTT-SCMDE). The proposed method is applied to multi-target tracking, and the improvement of multi-target tracking performance is shown by a series of Monte Carlo simulation runs and a real radar data test. The clutter measurement density estimation performance and target tracking performance are also analyzed for various sparsity orders.

A marine sponge, Mycale ( Mycale ) laevis (Carter 1882), is newly reported from Korean sea waters. The specimen was collected by SCUBA diving in July 2016 from Gageocho, Gageodo, Korea. The characteristics of this specimen are similar to those of the specimens of van Soest (1984) and Pulitzer-Finali (1986); however, this specimen is slightly different in spicules size (subtylostyle, anisochela I).

The Hebei Spirit oil spill reached the west coast of Taean County, Korea, on December 7, 2007. At that time, this was the largest oil spill that had occurred in the country. The incident devastated local marine ecosystems. In this study, we examined changes in these ecosystems and the recovery pattern on impacted rocky shores. Macrobenthos monitoring of polluted and control sites was performed seasonally from January 2008 through October 2013. At polluted sites, ecological indices increased gradually from 2009, thereby providing evidence of recovery. However, the mean density of macrobenthos was still less than 50% of the level at the control site, indicating that the ecological status of the polluted sites has still not recovered to that which prevailed before the oil spill. Although densities of the most dominant species were higher in the control site than in polluted sites, the densities of Lottia spp. and Odostomia aomori were higher in polluted sites. These two taxa were found in lower numbers at the control site, where they were out-competed by Chthamalus challengeri. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination divided the macrobenthic community structure into three clusters according to differences in the abundance of dominant species over the 6 years after the oil spill. An ANOSIM test detected significant differences between the polluted and control sites. Consistent long-term differences indicate that complete recovery had not occurred during the duration of our study.

The development of passive keyless entry and start (PKES) systems in modern vehicles enables drivers to access and control their vehicles remotely using smart keys, which improves the driving conveniences. The PKES system verifies the smart key identity if the communication channel between the vehicle and the smart key is established. When the message in the communication channel is relayed by other devices, it can be manipulated by the attackers and the PKES systems become vulnerable. The distance bounding protocol, which estimates the physical proximity between the vehicle and the smart key, is one of the countermeasures against relay attacks. In this paper, the time-based distance bounding is studied. Since the effectiveness of distance bounding protocol relies heavily on the estimation accuracy, various time-based estimation algorithms are enumerated and compared in this paper.

In target tracking/fusion applications, the measurements often do not become available in the order of measurement times. Out of sequence measurements (OOSMs) are used to update state estimates for the ‘current’ time, using measurements from previous measurement times. The authors propose information filter-based OOSM update solution(s), which forward propagate the OOSMs information filter state. This allows tradeoffs between estimation performance and storage requirements.

Two new species of sponge, Clathria (Clathria) ramus sp. nov. and Clathria (Clathria) ieoensis sp. nov. are described from Jeju Island of Korea. Clathria (Clathria) ramus sp. nov. is branching with a stalk, yellow in life, with small oscules. Clathria (C.) ieoensis sp. nov. is thickly encrusting, soft and compressible texture, and color is red and dark brown after fixation in ethanol. The new species are compared to other microcionids from the Korean region, and similar species from elsewhere.

The spermatogenesis is the process by which spermatozoa are generated in the testes. The spermatozoa travel male reproductive tract during which they meet many substances secreted from reproductive organs. One of the substances is epididymal protease inhibitor (EPPIN) that is involved in the post-testicular maturation including capability of fertilizing the eggs. The expression of EPPIN gene was investigated in various tissues of sexually mature and regressed male Syrian hamsters by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The EPPIN gene was identified in the testis and epididymis of the male Syrian hamsters and compared to the genes reported previously. There was no expression of EPPIN gene in reproductively and completely regressed testes of Syrian hamster. These results suggest that the expressions of the EPPIN gene are associated with the reproductive capability in the Syrian hamsters.

The mitogenome of Pseudosuberites sp. (Suberitida, Suberitidae) has been determined first in the genus Pseudosuberites. Assembled mitogenome was 23,502 bp in length, including 14 protein-coding genes, 25 transfer RNA, and 2 ribosomal RNA genes. The order and structure are the same as those of other species belonging to the same family Suberitidae. Pseudosuberites sp. was clustered with Suberites domucula within the family Suberitidae. The mitogenome of Pseudosuberites sp. will be valuable for inferring phylogenetic relationships among members of suberitids.

The mitogenome of rockfish, Sebastes oculatus, has been determined for the first time. Assembled mitogenome was 16,767 bp in length, including 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA and two ribosomal RNA genes as well as the non-coding region. The order and structure are the same as those of other Sebastes species. S. oculatus was sister to S. nigrocinctus and this clade is closely related with S. rubrivinctus, as well as support for previously published complete mitochondrial genome trees (Sandel et al. 2018). The mitogenome of S. oculatus provides significant DNA molecular data for further identification and phylogenetic analysis within Scorpaenid.

A new marine sponge, Antho (Acarnia) seogwipoensis n. sp., of the family Microcionidae, was collected from Seo­ gwipo­si, Jeju­do, Korea, about 100 m in depth using a gill net on 1969. The genus Antho Gray, 1867 including Dem­ ospongiae, Poecilosclerida, Microcionidae, is a large group of sponges. About 100 species in Antho were reported from worldwide. The genus Antho contains five subgenera: Antho, Acarnia, Isopenectya, Jia, and Plocamia. Among them, about 30 species in Acarnia were described in world sponge. A new sponge’s body shape is branching, size up to 124 mm wide, 213 mm high, 3-8 mm thick in branch and 7-9 mm thick in stalk. Antho (Acarnia) seogwipoensis n. sp. is similar to A. (A.) novizelanicum Ridley and Duncan, 1881 based on their spicules type and skeletal structure, but differs in the spicules dimension and growth form. This new species is branched growth form and have three kinds of toxa.

Two new marine sponges, Haliclona ieoensis sp. nov. and Haliclona sumenyoensis sp. nov. from the south Korea are described. Morphologically distinct from each other, both species are assigned to the genus Haliclona subgenus Haliclona. Haliclona ieoensis sp. nov. individuals are thickly encrusting to massive, beige colour and have small oscules flush on surface. Haliclona sumenyoesis sp. nov. individuals have a cylindrical tube with flexible stalk morphology, ivory colour, and large oscules. The description of these two new species brings the species of Haliclona (Haliclona) in Korea to five.

The conventional multi-target tracking (MTT) algorithms usually suffer from computational intractability problem. The appearance of Iterative Joint Integrated Probabilistic Data Association (iJIPDA) filter solves this problem by providing a tradeoff between the tracking performance and computational cost for computational resource management of sensor systems. However, the iJIPDA filter essentially involves repetitive computation which makes it impractical to perform at high levels. Thus we provide an improved iJIPDA filter which prevents repetitive computations and increases the computational efficiency such that better performances can be obtained within limited time.

The mitogenome sequence of a marine gastropod, Umbonium thomasi (Crosse, 1863) (Trochida, Trochidae), was determined first in the genus Umbonium. The assembled mitogenome, consisting of 15,998 bp in length, has 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, and two ribosomal RNA genes. The order and structure of the genes are similar to those of other Trochid species. The overall base composition of mitogenome is 34.8% A, 22.1% C, 14.0% G, and 29.1% T with an A + T bias of 64%. The complete mitogenome of U. thomasi provides essential and important DNA molecular data for further phylogenetic and evolutionary analysis of marine gastropods.

The mitogenome sequence of sea slug, Chromodoris orientalis (Nudibranchia, Chromodorididae), has been decoded for the first time by coverage genome sequencing method. The overall base composition of C. orientalis mitogenome is 30.5% for A, 14.7% for C, 18.0% for G and 36.9% for T, and has low GC content 32.6%. The assembled mitogenome, consisting of 14,266 bp, has unique 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNAs, and two ribosomal RNAs genes. The C. orientalis mitogenome has the common mitogenome gene order and feature of Nudipleura (a clade of sea slugs and sea snails). The complete mitogenome of C. orientalis provides essential and important DNA molecular data for further phylogenetic and evolutionary analysis for sea slugs and sea snails.

Recently, the VWORLD was built to ensure competition on the advance of domestic enterprise into foreign markets with rapid expansion of spatial information industry of the world. However, the policy to secure user is insufficient because the VWORLD's service is embryonic stages. Then again, tourist industry is growing rapidly and leading the world economy and number of domestic tourists are also steadily increasing. Although the size was expanded, Korean tourist industry's competition is relatively weak, so some scholars insist that raising the tourist industry's quality. This backgrounds make a study of the tourism information service. So, this paper progressed a study on the development of the tourism information service based on a service science and used VWORLD as a test model. This paper drew the customer's demands on the tourism information service and strategic points of the development from those by using a Quality Function of Deployment of service science's new service development methodologies. After that this study prioritized those strategic points. As a result, 'Face Map' that is a service model was made. Moreover, this study have try to raise the development's effectiveness and efficiency based on service science's a new service development process.