• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.452-461
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• 1994

Background: Tumor necrosis factor(TNF)-$\alpha$ and Interleukin(lL)-$1{\beta}$ are thought to play a major role in the pathogenesis of the septic syndrome, which is frequently associated with adult respiratory distress syndrome(ARDS). In spite of many reports for the role of TNF-$\alpha$ in the pathogenesis of ARDS, including human studies, it has been reported that TNF-$\alpha$ is not sensitive and specific marker for impending ARDS. But there is a possibility that the results were affected by the diversity of pathogenetic mechanisms leading to the ARDS because of various underlying disorders of the study group in the previous reports. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the roles of TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-$1{\beta}$ as a predictable marker for development of ARDS in the patients with septic syndrome, in which the pathogenesis is believed to be mainly cytokine-mediated. Methods: Thirty-six patients of the septic syndrome hospitalized in the intensive care units of the Asan Medical Center were studied. Sixteens suffered from ARDS, whereas the remaining 20 were at the risk of developing ARDS(acute hypoxemic respiratory failure, AHRF). In all patients venous blood samples were collected in heparin-coated tubes at the time of enrollment, at 24 and 72 h thereafter. TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-$1{\beta}$ was measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). All data are expressed as median with interquartile range. Results: 1) Plama TNF-$\alpha$ levels: Plasma TNF-$\beta$ levels were less than 10pg/mL, which is lowest detection value of the kit used in this study within the range of the $mean{\pm}2SD$, in all of the normal controls, 8 of 16 subjects of ARDS and in 8 in 20 subjects of AHRF. Plasma TNF-$\alpha$ levels from patients with ARDS were 10.26pg/mL(median; <10-16.99pg/mL, interquartile range) and not different from those of patients at AHRF(10.82, <10-20.38pg/mL). There was also no significant difference between pre-ARDS(<10, <10-15.32pg/mL) and ARDS(<10, <10-10.22pg/mL). TNF-$\alpha$ levels were significantly greater in the patients with shock than the patients without shock(12.53pg/mL vs. <10pg/mL) (p<0.01). There was no statistical significance between survivors(<10, <10-12.92pg/mL) and nonsurvivors(11.80, <10-20.8pg/mL) (P=0.28) in the plasma TNF-$\alpha$ levels. 2) Plasma IL-$1{\beta}$ levels: Plasma IL-$1{\beta}$ levels were less than 0.3ng/mL, which is the lowest detection value of the kit used in this study, in one of each patients group. There was no significant difference in IL-$1{\beta}$ levels of the ARDS(2.22, 1.37-8.01ng/mL) and of the AHRF(2.13, 0.83-5.29ng/mL). There was also no significant difference between pre-ARDS(2.53, <0.3-8.34ngfmL) and ARDS(5.35, 0.66-11.51ng/mL), and between patients with septic shock and patients without shock (2.51, 1.28-8.34 vs 1.46, 0.15-2.13ng/mL). Plasma IL-$1{\beta}$ levels were significantly different between survivors(1.37, 0.4-2.36ng/mL) and nonsurvivors(2.84, 1.46-8.34ng/mL). Conclusion: Plasma TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-$1{\beta}$ level are not a predictable marker for development of ARDS. But TNF-$\alpha$ is a marker for shock in septic syndrome. These result could not exclude a possibility of pathophysiologic roles of TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-$1{\beta}$ in acute lung injury because these cytokine could be locally produced and exert its effects within the lungs.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.304-314
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• 2007

Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) is to store and retrieve images using the feature description of image contents. In order to support more accurate image retrieval, it has become necessary to develop features that can effectively describe image contents. The commonly used low-level features, such as color, texture, and shape features may not be directly mapped to human visual perception. In addition, such features cannot effectively describe a single image that contains multiple objects of interest. As a result, the research on feature descriptions has shifted to focus on higher-level features, which support representations more similar to human visual perception like spatial relationships between objects. Nevertheless, the prior works on the representation of spatial relations still have shortcomings, particularly with respect to supporting rotational invariance, Rotational invariance is a key requirement for a feature description to provide robust and accurate retrieval of images. This paper proposes a high-level feature named 8AB (8 Angular Bin) that effectively describes the spatial relations of objects in an image while providing rotational invariance. With this representation, a similarity calculation and a retrieval technique are also proposed. In addition, this paper proposes a search-space pruning technique, which supports efficient image retrieval using the 8AB feature. The 8AB feature is incorporated into a CBIR system, and the experiments over both real and synthetic image sets show the effectiveness of 8AB as a high-level feature and the efficiency of the pruning technique.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.396-408
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• 2007

After the Human Genome Project finished the sequencing of a human DNA sequence, the concerns on protein functions are increasing. Since the structures of proteins are conserved in divergent evolution, their functions are determined by their structures rather than by their amino acid sequences. Therefore, if similarities between two protein structures are observed, we could expect them to have common biological functions. So far, a lot of researches on protein structure alignment have been performed. However, most of them use RMSD(Root Mean Square Deviation) as a similarity measure with which it is hard to judge the similarity level of two protein structures intuitively. In addition, they retrieve only one result having the highest alignment score with which it is hard to satisfy various users of different purpose. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel protein structure alignment algorithm based on MRPD(Maximum of Residue Pair Distance) and SG (Similarity Graph). MRPD is more intuitive similarity measure by which fast tittering of unpromising pairs of protein pairs is possible, and SG is a compact representation method for multiple alignment results with which users can choose the most plausible one among various users' needs by providing multiple alignment results without compromising the time to align protein structures.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.279-300
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• 2001

Data mining plays an important role in knowledge discovery process and usually various existing algorithms are selected for the specific purpose of the mining. Currently, data mining techniques are actively to the statistics, business, electronic commerce, biology, and medical area and currently numerous algorithms are being researched and developed for these applications. However, in a long run, only a few algorithms, which are well-suited to specific applications with excellent performance in large database, will survive. So it is reasonable to focus our effort on those selected algorithms in the future. This paper classifies about 30 existing algorithms into 7 categories - association rule, clustering, neural network, decision tree, genetic algorithm, memory-based reasoning, and bayesian network. First of all, this work analyzes systematic hierarchy and characteristics of algorithms and we present 14 criteria for classifying the algorithms and the results based on this criteria. Finally, we propose the best algorithms among some comparable algorithms with different features and performances. The result of this paper can be used as a guideline for data mining researches as well as field applications of data mining.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.613-620
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• 2018

This study was conducted to investigate of Mori Folium Water Extract (MF) on anti-inflammation activity. MF Water extracts after 24 houres cultivation were examined to ascertain the cell viability of mouse macrophage RAW 264.7 cells. The influence of the Water extracts in RAW 264.7 macrophage cells treated with LPS was investigated. nitric oxide (NO) production, nterleukin$(IL)-1{\alpha}$ IL-6 and IL-10 increased generation of cytokines. mouse macrophage RAW 264.7 cells cell viability changes were no decreas after MTT assay of MF Water extract. The MF water extracts inhibited NO generation caused by LPS in the macrophages over $25{\mu}g/mL$. The MF water extracts increased in the control group the $IL-1{\alpha}$ and IL-6 activation generated by LPS in the macrophages over $50{\mu}g/mL$. Accordingly, it was found that different MF water extract concentrations significantly influenced certain anti-inflammation activities in RAW 264.7 macrophage cells. The results of this study are expected to be highly applicable to health - friendly functional materials. Further studies are needed to confirm the signaling pathways associated with anti-inflammation of macrophages through continuous studies.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.163-176
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• 2014

Social media is becoming the platform for users to communicate their activities, status, emotions, and experiences to other people. In recent years, microblogs, such as Twitter, have gained in popularity because of its ease of use, speed, and reach. Compared to a conventional web blog, a microblog lowers users' efforts and investment for content generation by recommending shorter posts. There has been a lot research into capturing the social phenomena and analyzing the chatter of microblogs. However, measuring television ratings has been given little attention so far. Currently, the most common method to measure TV ratings uses an electronic metering device installed in a small number of sampled households. Microblogs allow users to post short messages, share daily updates, and conveniently keep in touch. In a similar way, microblog users are interacting with each other while watching television or movies, or visiting a new place. In order to measure TV ratings, some features are significant during certain hours of the day, or days of the week, whereas these same features are meaningless during other time periods. Thus, the importance of features can change during the day, and a model capturing the time sensitive relevance is required to estimate TV ratings. Therefore, modeling time-related characteristics of features should be a key when measuring the TV ratings through microblogs. We show that capturing time-dependency of features in measuring TV ratings is vitally necessary for improving their accuracy. To explore the relationship between the content of microblogs and TV ratings, we collected Twitter data using the Get Search component of the Twitter REST API from January 2013 to October 2013. There are about 300 thousand posts in our data set for the experiment. After excluding data such as adverting or promoted tweets, we selected 149 thousand tweets for analysis. The number of tweets reaches its maximum level on the broadcasting day and increases rapidly around the broadcasting time. This result is stems from the characteristics of the public channel, which broadcasts the program at the predetermined time. From our analysis, we find that count-based features such as the number of tweets or retweets have a low correlation with TV ratings. This result implies that a simple tweet rate does not reflect the satisfaction or response to the TV programs. Content-based features extracted from the content of tweets have a relatively high correlation with TV ratings. Further, some emoticons or newly coined words that are not tagged in the morpheme extraction process have a strong relationship with TV ratings. We find that there is a time-dependency in the correlation of features between the before and after broadcasting time. Since the TV program is broadcast at the predetermined time regularly, users post tweets expressing their expectation for the program or disappointment over not being able to watch the program. The highly correlated features before the broadcast are different from the features after broadcasting. This result explains that the relevance of words with TV programs can change according to the time of the tweets. Among the 336 words that fulfill the minimum requirements for candidate features, 145 words have the highest correlation before the broadcasting time, whereas 68 words reach the highest correlation after broadcasting. Interestingly, some words that express the impossibility of watching the program show a high relevance, despite containing a negative meaning. Understanding the time-dependency of features can be helpful in improving the accuracy of TV ratings measurement. This research contributes a basis to estimate the response to or satisfaction with the broadcasted programs using the time dependency of words in Twitter chatter. More research is needed to refine the methodology for predicting or measuring TV ratings.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.484-491
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• 1997

The study was attempted to investigate physicochemical and biological changes that would occur during preparation of Jeungpyun (rice cake prepared with rice wine). Furthermore, the effect of soy milk and suga. addition to Jeungpyun batters on textural changes of Jeungpyun during storage was studied in relation to physicochemical properties of Jeungpyun batters. 1. As fermentation continued, PH of Jeungpyun batters droped from 6.01 to 4.36. The addition of soy milk and 10% sugar to Jeungpyun batters resulted in significantly lower PH during fermentation. The volume of the batters with soy milk were significantly larger than those without soy milk. Jeungpyun batters with soy milk showed dramatic increase in viscosity after 2 hours of fermentation and the viscosity of other groups increased after 3 and half hours of fermentation. The reducing sugar contents of Jeungpyun batters containing 20% sugar increased rapidly during first fermentation and then decreased. The reducing sugar contents of Jeungpyun batters containing 10% sugar increased gradually during first fermentation and then rapidly increased after addition of 10％ sugar during 3rd fermentation. 2. Sensory evaluation results demonstrated that hardness of Jeungpyuns increased and tenderness, springiness, moistureness, overall acceptability decreased during storage of 4 days at 4$^{\circ}C$. QTS data showed that hardness, gumminess, chewiness of all the groups increased and adhesiveness decreased during storage. Both of sensory evaluation and QTS data demonstrated that addition of soy milk and separate addition of sugar at first and furing 3rd fermentation period induced slower changes in textural properties in Jeungpyuns during storage.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.50 no.12
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• pp.1225-1230
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• 2007

Purpose : Multiple transfusions in patients with chronic anemia can result in excessive iron deposition in tissues and organs. Effective iron chelation therapy in chronically transfused patients can only be achieved when iron chelators remove sufficient amounts of iron equivalent to those accumulated in the body from transfusions, thus leading to maintain body iron load at a non-toxic level. This study was retrospectively carried out to investigate the effect of intravenous iron chelation therapy with deferoxamine in patients who have received multiple transfusions. Methods : From March 2005 to January 2007, 15 patients who have received multiple transfusions were included in this study. Transfusion dependent patients were defined as those receiving >1 packed red blood cell (RBC) units/month for at least 6 months. They received intravenous deferoxamine for 7 days (10-30 mg/kg/day, 24 hour continuous infusions). Before and after deferoxamine infusions and 3 months later, we compared serum iron, TIBC, and ferritin in transfusion dependent patients and transfusion independent patients. Results : There were 6 males and 9 females and their age range was 5.6-21.3 (median 8.3) years. Transfusion dependent patients were 7 and 8 were transfusion independent states after stem cell transplantation or chemotherapy. There was no significant change in ferritin level after deferoxamine treatment for the transfusion dependent patients but significant falling of ferritin level was observed for the transfusion independent patients 3 months later compared with baseline ferritin level (P=0.046). Some adverse events were observed but symptoms were mild and tolerable. Conclusion : Seven days of intravenous deferoxamine was safe and effective in transfusion independent patients. In transfusion dependent patients, chelation therapy should be maintained, in order to minimize or prevent iron accumulation and storage in the tissues.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.79-86
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• 2003

This research was conducted to present reference data to be used as newly reclaimed tidal land management. We investigated vegetation succession at 4 reclaimed/reclaiming project areas and discussed relationship with soil and vegetation trhrough investigation and analysis soil chemical characteristics at 2 areas. 14 families 58 kinds were investigated. Vegetation were variou at Dea-Ho conservation polt and Seok-Mun National Industrial Area which are maintaining naturally. Vegetation were simple at Hong-Bo and Dongjin and MinKyong river areas which effected sea water. Common species that were investigated at 9 sites were Suaeda asparagoides, Aster tripolium, Phragmites australis, Suaeda maritima, Suaeda japonica, Carex scabrifolis. As soil desalinization progressing, soil classified at first saline-soidc soil, the nest saline soil and then normal soil. Chenopodiaceae revealed at about 30 dS/m of soil ECe and existed to 10 dS/m of soil ECe. At about 20 dS/m of soil ECe. Aster tripolium, Calamagrostis epigeios, and Sonchus brachyotus revealed and then non-halophytes and common plants at inland revealed at low soil ECe of about 10 dS/m. However it was not to progress vegetation sucdession and soil desalinization at the same time, owing to input of seeds or plants ect from out-ecosystem. So for promotion of vegetation at newly reclaimed tidal land, we proposed that it was very effective to plant artificially halophytes or suitable species through soil test.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.449-464
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• 2019

Purpose: North Koreans could be at higher risk for their bone health because of previous periods of severe famine and the continuing low availability of food. This study determined the bone mineral density (BMD) status and its relationship with dietary behaviors and nutrient intake of North Korean refugees (NKR) in South Korea (SK). Methods: This cross-sectional study analyzed 110 female NKR from a NORNS cohort of a non-probability sample of adult NKR in Seoul. BMD examined by DEXA was used to divide participants into the normal group (NG) and the non-normal group (NNG) according to the WHO guideline. A self-administered questionnaire included questions on age, the socioeconomic situation in North Korea (NK) and SK, the food security in NK and SK, and the health behaviors, dietary behaviors, and food frequency questionnaire administered in SK. A one-day 24-hr recall was conducted and the results were analyzed by using CanPro. SPSS was used to analyze whether BMD and related dietary behaviors and nutrient intakes differed according to the groups. Results: NG (62.7%) was significantly younger and had a lower abdominal obesity score than NNG (p < 0.001). While 14.5% of NG reported experiencing menopause, all of NNG reported experiencing menopause. The NG more frequently consumed the dairy group of foods (9.6 times a week) than did the NNG (4.8 times a week) after the statistics were adjusted for age (p < 0.007). The NG consumed significantly more animal protein and animal calcium than did the NNG (p = 0.01, p = 0.009, respectively). Calcium intake was low with 49.3% of NG, and 78.0% of the NNG reported consuming calcium lower than the estimated average requirement. Only calcium showed an index of nutrient quality lower than one in both groups. Conclusion: These results showed that NKR women and possibly all North Korean women are at high risk for bone health and they consumed low levels of bone-related nutrients, and this should be considered for the nutrition policy for NKR and North Korea.