• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.109-119
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• 1996

Hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women has recently been a hot issue in medical fields. The author reviewed the physiology of menopause and discussed the physiological mechanism and biological management of vascular flushing and menopausal depression. The above symptoms are hard to distinguish from those of psychiatric disorders.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.235-244
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• 2001

The aim of this study was to observe morphological changes of Trichomonas vaginalis after contact with human vaginal epithelial cells, by scanning electron microscope. The vaginal epithelial cells (VEC) (menstrual, days $5\sim10$) from normal women were mixed with T. vaginalis (VEC/trichomonads ratio of 1 : 10), and incubated for 30 min. The parasitic body was changed to a more elongated shape with pseudopodia or was flattened to ameboid transformation showing highly adherence to VEC.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.1064-1072
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• 2013

Circadian rhythm is controlled by hormonal oscillations governing the physiology of all living organisms. In mammals, the main function of the pineal gland is to transform the circadian rhythm generated in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus into rhythmic signals of circulating melatonin characterized by a largely nocturnal increase that closely reflects the duration of night time. The pineal gland has lost direct photosensitivity, but responds to light via multi-synaptic pathways that include a subset of retinal ganglion cells. Rhythmic control is achieved through a tight coupling between environmental lighting and arylalkylamine-N-acetyltransferase (AANAT) expression, which is the rhythm-controlling enzyme in melatonin synthesis. Previous studies on the nocturnal expression of AANAT protein have described transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and post-translational regulatory mechanisms. Molecular mechanisms for dependent AANAT expression provide novel aspects for melatonin's circadian rhythmicity. Extensive animal research has linked pineal melatonin for the expression of seasonal rhythmicity in many mammalian species to the modulation of circadian rhythms and to sleep regulation. It has value in treating various circadian rhythm disorders, such as jet lag or shift-work sleep disorders. Melatonin, also, in a broad range of effects with a significant regulation influences many of the body's physiological functions. In addition, this hormone is known to influence reproductive, cardiovascular, and immunological regulation as well as psychiatric disorders.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.243-250
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• 2008

Mast cells containing a variety of mediators in their cytoplasmic granules are widely distributed in connective tissues and mucosal surfaces of skin, airways, and guts. Within these tissues, mast cells are involved in the pathophysiological conditions such as inflammation, self-defense, tissue-remodeling, and autoimmunity. In order to understand the functional roles of master cells in the uterus, we histologically examined the distribution and density of uterine mast cells in the different aged mice. Until 6 weeks mast cells were sparsely detected in the uterus. But at 7 weeks after birth, when estrous cycle begins, the number of mast cells within uterine tissues increased dramatically and the increment of mast cell density continued up to 32 weeks-age. After then, uterine glandular tissue degenerated gradually and density of uterine mast cell decreased. Uterine mast cells were mainly found in the myometrium and they were closely associated with smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts, and collagens, which contents were changed according to the uterine development in the myometrium. These results suggest that uterine mast cells could be involved in myometrial contractions mediated by smooth muscle cells and tissue reconstitution or remodeling during estrous cycle and parturition including the various immunological functions.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.273-280
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• 2007

The study is to examine the psychophysiological responses evoked by negative emotions(fear and disgust) in children. 47 children(11-13 years old, 23 boys) participated in the study. While the children were experiencing fear or disgust emotion induced by audio-visual film clips, ECG, EDA, PPG and SKT are measured. Emotion assessment scale was used to confirm that emotions elicited by the film clips were significantly noticeable, which was measured self-report. The results turned out to be 100% and 89.4% of appropriate for fear and disgust emotions, respectively. Emotional intensity the children had experienced was rated as 4.05, 4.07 on 1-5 scale based on effectiveness of measurement of fear and disgust emotion. ANS reponses by fear and disgust were significantly between the resting state and emotional state induced. The result obtained from the fear emotion showed significant increases in SCL, NSCR, HR, RSA, RESP and HF. There was a significant difference in SCL and NSCR between the two emotions.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.123-129
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• 2002

Leptin, a product of the obese gene, is associated not only with obesity but also with female reproductive function, but it has not yet been ascertained whether leptin acts directly on the ovary or indirectly via the hypothalamus-pituitary pathway. Therefore, the object of this study was to investigate the expession of leptin and its receptor in the rat ovary by immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR during the estrous cycle. Immunohistochemistry results showed that leptin was stained in the theca cells and in part of granulosa cells in atretic follicles, whereas leptin receptor was localized in the interstitial cells and ova in preantral follicies. In particular, leptin and its receptor in atretic follicles displayed more intensive staining compared to those in normal follicles. During the estrous cycle, the mRNA expression of leptin and its receptor in the ovary was detected by RT-PCR and estradiol, progesterone, and leptin levels in the serum was measured by ELISA. The leptin level in the serum on metestrous phase was significantly higher than that on estrous phase. Similar to leptin level, progesterone level increased on metestrous phase. Leptin mRNA was not detected throughout the estrous cycle, whereas leptin receptor mRNA was expressed on all phases of estrous cycle excepting the diestrous phase. These results suggest that leptin might be directly involved in the regulation of ovarian function in rat.

• The Journal of Natural Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 1997

Calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMK-II) is responsible for the phosphorylation of proteins involved in various cellular functions. Since the level of intracellular calcium ($Ca_2+$) oscillate during the cell cycle, it is expected that the activity of CaMK-II is also dependent on the cell cycle. The kinase activity in NIH3T3 cells which were arrested at or released from certain phase of the cell cycle was measured and compared to that in the normally growing asynchronous control cells to investigate whether the activity of this kinase is cell cycle-dependent. Cells were arrested at G0, G1, G1/S, G2/M and M phase, respectively by use of various drugs which do not have any effect on the kinase activity of CaMK-II at G0, G1, G1/s and G2/M phase was similar to that of the control cells, whereas lower at M. Calcium-independent activity of CaMK_II by autophosphorylation was higher at M and, thus, higher autonomy at M, which represented the physiologically relevant activity of CaMK-II. A similar pattern of activity change of the kinase was demonstrated during the cell cycle of synchronized cells which were released from G1 arrest. These results indicate that the activity of CaMK-11 is cell cycle-dependent and is activity during the mitosis.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2003

Most animals, including human beings, live in a cyclic pattern of lift that is influenced by the ambient changes of environment. The regular changes occurred by rotation of the Earth itself its revolving around the Sun, and the local environment, are reflected by the distinct behavior in the living organisms. These regular changes of environment have been imprinted into the genes within the living organisms through the evolutionary process over a long period of time. The genes are expressed by rhythms during the process of fetal development followed by growth. The environmental modifications ultimately are settled in genes, serving as a biological clock that is located putatively in the hypothalamus. Thus the biological clock governs a large number of rhythms and affects the time of birth and death lift expectancy, behavior, physiology, cell division, biochemical reaction, etc. The rhythms are readjusted to the changes of environmental cues. The biological clock has the great advantage of predicting and preparing the regular changes of environment.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.108-115
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• 2006

Objectives : Objectives of this study was to explore the relationships between anger, alexithymia and premenstrual syndrome(PMS). Methods The subjects included 125 women with PMS and 58 women with non-PMS assessed by Daily record of Severity of Problems(DRSP) and Shortened Premestrual Assessment Form(SPAE). Anger level was assessed by anger expression scale. The level of alexithymia was assessed by Toronto alexithymia scale. We compared the scores of anger, alexithymia between PMS group and no-PMS group. Results : The mean scores of anger in(p=0.04), anger total(p=0.01) were significantly higher in women with PMS compared to control subjects. and the mean scores of alexithymia(p=0.04) were also significantly higher in women with PMS compared to control subjects. Conclusions : This study showed that the level of anger and alexithymia could be higher in women with PMS compared to control subjects, and that symptoms of PMS could be associated with anger and alexithymia. therefore, It would be better to consider the level of anger and alexithymia in treating and evaluating women with PMS.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.329-342
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• 2003

Most of the existing multicast routing protocols for ad-hoc networks do not take into account the efficiency of the protocol for the cases when there are large number of sources in the multicast group, resulting in either large overhead or poor data delivery ratio when the number of sources is large. In this paper, we propose a multicast routing protocol for ad-hoc networks, which particularly considers the scalability of the protocol in terms of the number of sources in the multicast groups. The proposed protocol designates a set of sources as the core sources. Each core source is a root of each tree that reaches all the destinations of the multicast group. The union of these trees constitutes the data delivery mesh, and each of the non-core sources finds the nearest core source in order to delegate its data delivery. For the efficient operation of the proposed protocol, it is important to have an appropriate number of core sources. Having too many of the core sources incurs excessive control and data packet overhead, whereas having too little of them results in a vulnerable and overloaded data delivery mesh. The data delivery mesh is optimally reconfigured through the periodic control message flooding from the core sources, whereas the connectivity of the mesh is maintained by a persistent local mesh recovery mechanism. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol achieves an efficient multicast communication with high data delivery ratio and low communication overhead compared with the other existing multicast routing protocols when there are multiple sources in the multicast group.