• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.243-251
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• 2005

Objective: Low-dose aspirin have been proposed to improving endometrial receptivity and pregnancy rate in COH-IVF by increasing endometrial perfusion. However, the effect of low-dose aspirin in COH-IVF could be negligible because there have been large quantity of other important factors responsible for changing endometrial perfusion accompanied by COH procedure. In contrast, in frozen-thawed embryo transfer cycles which were not accompanied by COH procedure, the effects of low-dose aspirin in endometrial blood flow seems to be more certain than in COH-IVF cycles. In this study, we analyzed the effect of low-dose aspirin treatment on implantation and pregnancy rates in patients undergoing frozen-thawed embryo transfer Methods: From January 2003 to December 2003, total 264 cycles from 264 patients who attended infertility clinic at Samsung Cheil Hospital were enrolled in this study. All cases included in this study, embryos were frozen and thawed at the pronuclear stage and three days after incubation, at least 2 or more good quality embryos were transferred into uterus. In study group, low dose aspirin (100 mg/day) was administrated from the first or second date of menstrual day to 9 days after embryo transfer. On the other hand, control group did not take any medicine except estradiol valerate for endometrial priming. Several variables including implantation and pregnancy rates were compared in both groups. After then, each groups were stratified by endometrial thickness checked at embryo transfer (ET) day such as (28 mm versus <8 mm) and same variables above described were compared between study and control groups. Results: The mean age, infertility duration, endometrial thickness at embryo transfer day and mean number of transferred embryo were not significantly different in both groups. Also, implantation rates (study group: 15.8%, control group: 20.5%) and pregnancy rate (study group: 45.1%, control group: 43.5%) were not significantly different between two groups. (p>0.05) After we analyzed same variables stratified by endometrial thickness checked at embryo transfer day, we could not found any significant difference between study and control groups. Conclusions: Low-dose aspirin treatment seems to have no advantage of improving implantation and pregnancy rates in patients undergoing frozen-thawed embryo transfer.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.145
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• pp.351-380
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• 2018

In every society, citizens must decide how to punish criminals, uphold the virtue of justice, and preserve the security of the community. In doing so, the members of society must ask themselves how they will punish those who carry out the most abhorrent of crimes. Many common responses to such a question is that death is an acceptable punishment for the most severe crimes. But to draw some theoretical distinction between a crime that deserves incarceration and a crime that is so heinous that it deserves capital punishment is subject to three errors. First, what possible line could be drawn? To decide on a particular number of deaths or to employ any standard would be arbitrary. Second, the use of a line would trivialize and undermine the deaths of those whose murderers fell below the standard. Third, any and all executions still are unjust, as the State should not degrade the institution of justice and dehumanize an individual who, although he or she has no respect for other human life, is still a living person. Simply put, all murders are heinous, all are completely unacceptable, and deserve the greatest punishment of the land; however, death as punishment is inappropriate. Also, while this article arrives at the conclusion that the death penalty is an inappropriate form of punishment, I have not offered an acceptable alternative that would appease those who believe capital offenders deserve a punishment that differs in its quality and severity. This is a burden that, admittedly, I am unable to meet. I finally conclude that the death penalty is unjustified retribution. This is the only claim that can effectively shift the intellectual paradigms of the participants in the debate. The continued use of the death penalty in society can only be determined and influenced by the collective conscience of the members of that society. As stated at the outset of this article, it is this essentially moral conflict regarding what is just and degrading that forms the backdrop for the past changes in and the present operation of our system of imposing death as a punishment for crime.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.215-235
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• 2018

Policy concerns related to raising fertility rates are not only common interests among the OECD countries, but they are also issues of great concern to South Korea whose fertility rate is the lowest in the world. The fertility rate in South Korea continues to decline, even though most of the national budget has been spent on measures to address this and many studies have been conducted on the increase in the fertility rates. In this regard, this study aims to verify the effectiveness of the detailed factors affecting the fertility rate that have been discussed in the previous studies on fertility rates, and to investigate the overall trend toward enhancing the quality of life and increasing the fertility rate through macroscopic and structural studies under the recognition of problems related to the policy approaches through the case studies of the European countries. Toward this end, this study investigated if a high quality of life in advanced countries contributes to the increase in the fertility rate, which country serves as a state model that has a high quality of life and a high fertility rate, and what kind of social and policy environment does the country have with regard to childbirth. The analysis of the OECD Better Life Index (BLI) and CIA fertility rate data showed that the countries whose people enjoy a high quality of life do not necessarily have high fertility rates. In addition, under the recognition that a country with a high quality of life and a high birth rate serves as a state model that South Korea should aim for, the social characteristics of Iceland, Ireland, and New Zealand, which turned out to have both a high quality of life and a high fertility rate, were compared with those of Germany, which showed a high quality of life but a low fertility rate. According to the comparison results, the three countries that were mentioned showed higher awareness of gender equality; therefore, the gender wage gap was small. It was also confirmed that the governments of these countries support various policies that promote both parents sharing the care of their children. In Germany, on the other hand, the gender wage gap was large and the fertility rate was low. In a related move, however, the German government has made active efforts to a paradigm shift toward gender equality. The fertility rate increases when the synergy lies in the relationship between parents and children; therefore, awareness about gender equality should be firmly established both at home and in the labor market. For this reason, the government is required to provide support for the childbirth and rearing environment through appropriate family policies, and exert greater efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the relevant systems rather than simply promoting a system construction. Furthermore, it is necessary to help people in making their own childbearing decisions during the process of creating a better society by changing the national goal from 'raising the fertility rate' to 'creating a healthy society made of happy families'

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.314-320
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• 2021

With the increasing age of motherhood in recent years, attributed to late marriages due to social or environmental factors, the Down's syndrome screening test using biochemical markers has become essential for pregnant women. The process of diagnosing Down's syndrome pregnancy in the high-risk group subjects involves chromosomal analysis, which is performed on samples obtained through invasive procedures such as chorionic biopsy or amniotic fluid. Thus, to reduce unnecessary invasive tests and lower the risk to mother and fetus, it is important to identify a screening test with low risk and high Down's syndrome detection rate. Recently, as the average age of mothers has increased, numerous inspection agencies have classified high-risk mothers as women over the age of 35 years. This study evaluated a total of 36,436 pregnant women aged between 17 to 46 years, and who requested prenatal screening at an inspection agency in Yongin in 2018. Test (13,690 people) Four tests were conducted by applying the time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay method using the direct sandwich and indirect sandwich technology, and the immunoassay method using the sandwich method. We aimed to confirm the difference in positivity rate with increasing age of the subjects. We believe that in future, data obtained from this study will be very useful for the prevention and treatment of Down's syndrome risk at varied inspection institutions, and for prospective mothers.

• Journal of agriculture & life science
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.127-136
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• 2019

Today, as the specification of pigs increases, it is important to develop eco-friendly livestock feeds that do not add antibiotics to highly utilizable materials as feed resources, and to produce functional eco-friendly pork and processed products. The purpose of this study was to establish Rubus occidentalis (RO) byproducts containing various amounts of physiologically active substances such as anticancer, anti - inflammation and antioxidant as a raw material for pig feed. The multifaceted efficacy of the RO fermented fodder (ROFF) was confirmed by the nutrient transport factors and antioxidant activity of Berkshire pigs. ROFF was added 0.3% to the general diet and the efficacy was confirmed by feeding diets to Berkshire pigs according to each weight for 43~73 days. As a result, the total cholesterol (TC), LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) and HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) levels were decreased or were increased in the castrated male and female Berkshire pigs but not significantly. It was confirmed that the tendency was improved in nutrition physiology. The biochemical levels of female finishing pigs were not significant but increased. In the case of finishing pigs with possibility of pregnancy, it is expected that the nutrition supply for piglet production and will help in the production of the healthy piglet. Transferrin (TFE) levels tended to increase in female growing pig and 110-150 kg finishing pigs. Thus ROFF could minimize the negative effects of iron contents deficiency in female Berkshire pigs. Glutathione peroxidase 1 (GPx1) activity was increased in castrated male and female 110-150 kg finishing pigs. Therefore, ROFF tends to improve the antioxidant capacity. The results of this study suggest that ROFF is one of the most favorable dietary sources when considering the contents of RO in feed. In particular, ROFF could have a positive effect on nutrient transport and iron content of female rather than castrated male Berkshire pigs.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.111-129
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• 2022

Insomnia is a chronic disease in modern society, with the number of new patients increasing by more than 20% in the last 5 years. Insomnia is a serious disease that requires diagnosis and treatment because the individual and social problems that occur when there is a lack of sleep are serious and the triggers of insomnia are complex. This study collected 5,699 data from 'insomnia', a community on 'Reddit', a social media that freely expresses opinions. Based on the International Classification of Sleep Disorders ICSD-3 standard and the guidelines with the help of experts, the insomnia corpus was constructed by tagging them as insomnia tendency documents and non-insomnia tendency documents. Five deep learning language models (BERT, RoBERTa, ALBERT, ELECTRA, XLNet) were trained using the constructed insomnia corpus as training data. As a result of performance evaluation, RoBERTa showed the highest performance with an accuracy of 81.33%. In order to in-depth analysis of insomnia social data, topic modeling was performed using the newly emerged BERTopic method by supplementing the weaknesses of LDA, which is widely used in the past. As a result of the analysis, 8 subject groups ('Negative emotions', 'Advice and help and gratitude', 'Insomnia-related diseases', 'Sleeping pills', 'Exercise and eating habits', 'Physical characteristics', 'Activity characteristics', 'Environmental characteristics') could be confirmed. Users expressed negative emotions and sought help and advice from the Reddit insomnia community. In addition, they mentioned diseases related to insomnia, shared discourse on the use of sleeping pills, and expressed interest in exercise and eating habits. As insomnia-related characteristics, we found physical characteristics such as breathing, pregnancy, and heart, active characteristics such as zombies, hypnic jerk, and groggy, and environmental characteristics such as sunlight, blankets, temperature, and naps.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.361-367
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• 2022

This study was conducted to identify annual variation of observation and activity pattern of Korean chipmunk (Tamias sibiricus) using camera traps in the Seoraksan and Jirisan National Parks, South Korea from May 2019 to May 2021. The annual variation was identified based on the observed frequency through weekly observations. Daily activity patterns of the species were also analyzed by season. The daily activity pattern of chipmunk appeared to be constantly diurnal across the years regardless of habitat or season. The Korean chipmunks living in the two different regions were observed in different time periods throughout the year. While the chipmunks inhabiting the Seoraksan were observed from 18^th to 45^th week, the chipmunks inhabiting the Jirisan National Park were observed from 7^th to 48^th week. This may be influenced by the hibernation period of chipmunks in the two different regions. In both regions, chipmunks were most frequently observed in autumn. It is considered that seasonal variation on population dynamic and activity patterns of chipmunks were reflected in the observation frequency. Although the observation frequency of camera trap is an indirect indicator and thus having a limitation that it cannot distinguish the population density and amount of activity for the target species, camera trapping is still an effective survey technique for monitoring mammals due to its high accessibility and easy use.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2023

The objective of the study was to examine the associations of dietary carbohydrate and fat intake with the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in Korean women. A cross-sectional study was employed based on data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination (2007-2016). A total of 22,850 women aged 19 to 69 years were studied after excluding responses from pregnant or lactating women and those with missing metabolic values. Dietary intake data were collected with a 24-hour recall method. Dietary carbohydrate and fat intakes were divided into quintiles. After controlling for confounding variables, a multivariable logistic regression and general linear model were used. The findings indicated that HDL cholesterol levels were lower (p for trend<0.01), while triglyceride levels (p for trend=0.04), waist circumference (p for trend<0.01), and systolic blood pressure (p for trend<0.01) were higher among participants in the highest quintile of carbohydrate intake compared to those in the lowest quintile. Participants in the highest quintile of fat intake had lower waist circumference (p for trend=0.02), triglyceride level (p for trend<0.01), and systolic blood pressure (p for trend<0.01), while higher HDL cholesterol level (p for trend<0.01) compared to those in the lowest fat intake quintile. Metabolic syndrome was more likely to be present in the highest quintile of carbohydrates intake than in the lowest quintile (5^th quintile vs. 1^st quintile, OR: 1.32; 95% CI: 1.11 to 1.57). However, metabolic syndrome was less likely to be present in the highest quintile of fat intake than in the lowest quintile (5^th quintile vs. 1^st quintile, OR: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.61 to 0.86). This study revealed that high dietary carbohydrate intake and low dietary fat intake were associated with metabolic syndrome in Korean women.

• Korean Journal of Animal Reproduction
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.49-57
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• 2000

This study was conducted to investigate the developmental potential of cloned embryos derived from bovine fetal fibroblast cells, and the effect of quiescent treatment, passage number and origin of donor cells on in vitro development of cloned embryos. Fetal skin and liver-derived fibroblast cells were transferred to enucleated oocytes after serum starvation or nontreatment (cycling). After electrofusion. reconstituted embryos were activated with $Ca^{＋＋}$-ionophore and cycloheximide, and cocultured for 7~9 days with BRL cells. Some blastocysts were transferred to recipient cows 7~8 days post estrus. The development rate to the blastocyst stage of serum starved cell-derived embryos was higher (25.3%) than that of actively dividing cells-derived embryos (15.9%), The rates of blastocyst formation were 23.1~25.0% after transfer of cell passaged 4 to 6 times, and 23.8 and 25.2% after transfer of fetal skin and liver cells, respectively. After embryo transfer, 34.4% and 15.6% of recipient cows were pregnant on Day 60 and 120, respectively, and one male calf was produced from skin-derived vitrified blastocyst. The result of this study showed that the development of cloned embryos. was enhanced by quiescent treatment, but did not different among the cells passaged 4 to 6 times, and between skin and liver cells. This result also confirms that offspring can be obtained from the vitrified clone embryo derived from fetal skin cell.

• The Journal of Korean Society for School & Community Health Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.45-57
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• 2024

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of artificial menopause on the diagnosis of thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and cervical cancer, and to provide basic data for cancer prevention and early diagnosis in women. Methods: Analysis was conducted using raw data from the 2011-2020 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Among the 79,262 people surveyed in the 2011-2020 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 10,207 people were selected as the final research subjects, excluding men, those under 18 years old, those over 80 years old, those who did not participate in the health survey, those with missing data, and those who were not in menopause. Among them, 248 people were diagnosed with thyroid cancer (2.7%), 225 people were diagnosed with breast cancer (2.5%), and 143 people were diagnosed with cervical cancer (21.5%). Results: First, there appeared to be differences between the thyroid cancer diagnosed group and the non-diagnosed group depending on educational level, childbirth experience, and menopause type. Second, there appeared to be differences between the breast cancer diagnosis group and the non-diagnosis group depending on educational level, menopause age, pregnancy experience, childbirth experience, subjective health status, and menopause type. Third, there appeared to be differences between the cervical cancer diagnosis group and the non-diagnosis group depending on menopause age, subjective health status, and menopause type. Fourth, compared to natural menopause, in the case of artificial menopause, the diagnosis probability of women increased by 2.010 times for thyroid cancer, 3.872 times for breast cancer, and 14.902 times for cervical cancer. Conclusion: For thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and cervical cancer, the probability of cancer diagnosis increases in the case of artificial menopause compared to natural menopause, so it is considered important to avoid experiencing artificial menopause to prevent cancer.