• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.1036-1045
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• 2023

Sarcopenia, a condition characterized by the insidious loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, represents a significant and growing healthcare challenge, impacting the mobility and quality of life of aging populations worldwide. This study investigated the therapeutic potential of soybean leaf extract (SL) for dexamethasone (Dexa)-induced muscle atrophy in vitro and in an in vivo model. In vitro experiments showed that SL significantly alleviated Dexa-induced atrophy in C2C12 myotube cells, as evidenced by preserved myotube morphology, density, and size. Moreover, SL treatment significantly reduced the mRNA and protein levels of muscle RING-finger protein-1 (MuRF1) and muscle atrophy F-box (MAFbx), key factors regulating muscle atrophy. In a Dexa-induced atrophy mouse model, SL administration significantly inhibited Dexa-induced weight loss and muscle wasting, preserving the mass of the gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior muscles. Furthermore, mice treated with SL exhibited significant improvements in muscle function compared to their counterparts suffering from Dexa-induced muscle atrophy, as evidenced by a notable increase in grip strength and extended endurance on treadmill tests. Moreover, SL suppressed the expression of muscle atrophy-related proteins in skeletal muscle, highlighting its protective role against Dexa-induced muscle atrophy. These results suggest that SL has potential as a natural treatment for muscle-wasting conditions, such as sarcopenia.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-11
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• 2009

In this paper, we present a prism-based mesh culling method to improve effectiveness of continuous collision detection which is a major bottleneck in a simulation using polygonal mesh models. A prism is defined based on two matching triangles between a sequence of times m a polygonal model. In order to detect potential colliding set(PCS) of prism between two polygonal models in a unit time, we apply the visibility test based on the occlusion query to two sets of prisms which are defined from two polygonal models in a unit time. Moreover, we execute the narrow band culling based on SAT(Separating Axis Test) to define potential colliding prism pairs from PCS of prisms extracted as a result of the visibility test. In the SAT, we examine one axis to be perpendicular to a plane which divides a 3D space into two half spaces to include each prism. In the experiments, we applied the proposed culling method to pairs of polygonal models with the different size and compared the number of potential colliding prism pairs with the number of all possible prism pairs of two polygonal models. We also compared effectiveness and performance of the visibility test-based method with those of the SAT-based method as the second narrow band culling. In an experiment using two models to consist of 2916 and 2731 polygons, respectively, we got potential colliding prism pairs with 99 % of culling rate.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.493-503
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• 2019

This study presents a new method of estimating the size distribution of river bed gravel through image processing. The analysis was done in two steps; first the individual grain images were analyzed and then the grain particle segmentation of river-bed images were processed. In the first part of the analysis, the relationships (long axes, intermediate axes and projective areas) between grain features from images and those measured were compared. For this analysis, 240 gravel particles were collected at three river stations. All particles were measured with vernier calipers and weighed with scales. The measured data showed that river gravel had shape factors of 0.514~0.585. It was found that the weight of gravel had a stronger correlation with the projective areas than the long or intermediate axes. Using these results, we were able to establish an area-weight formula. In the second step, we calculated the projective areas of the river-bed gravels by detecting their edge lines using the ImageJ program. The projective areas of the gravels were converted to the grain-size distribution using the formula previously established. The proposed method was applied to 3 small- and medium- sized rivers in Korea. Comparisons of the analyzed size distributions with those measured showed that the proposed method could estimate the median diameter within a fair error range. However, the estimated distributions showed a slight deviation from the observed value, which is something that needs improvement in the future.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.292-302
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• 2019

This study conducted a hierarchy analysis based on a questionnaire survey of experts in park management, ecosystem survey, and ecological environment planning to establish evaluation items and a weighing value of each item to develop ecological connectivity in Baekdudaegan mountain range neighboring the Taebaeksan National Park using the AHP approach. We selected four high-level evaluation indexes and 13 low-level evaluation indexes through literature review and interview with the people in the field and calculated weights for each question through the consistency analysis. The analysis showed that increasing the ecological value was the most important item with the index of 0.474 among the high-level evaluation items, followed by the mitigation of human-nature conflict at 0.247, participation by local residents at 0.165, and the economic perspective at 0.114. Among the low-level evaluation indexes, the movement route of wildlife was the highest at 0.116, followed by the connectivity of landscape ecological patch at 0.112, and functional habitat at 0.099. The comparison of the evaluation items in each working group and the weight factors showed that the movement route of wildlife was the most important at 0.116 in ecosystem survey, the functional habitat was the most important at 0.110 in park management, and the regional preservation and distribution of resources was the most important at 0.123 in ecological environment planning. The results of this study is useful to identify evaluation items for developing ecological network with a diverse source of the actual environmental data in the Taebaeksan National Park.

• Korean Journal of School Psychology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.121-151
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• 2021

This study aimed to identify the factors that helped and hindered secondary school teachers who experienced student suicide using the concept-mapping approach. Seven South Korean middle and high school teachers were interviewed from which 113 core statements were elicited. The participants sorted these core statements into categories by meaning. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis were conducted to identify the underlying structure of the teachers' experiences. Four hindering factor clusters emerged: (1) regret over failing to prevent the suicide, (2) an apathetic atmosphere in the school, (3) a sense of helplessness related to suicide survivors, and (4) approach-avoidance conflicts related to suicide survivors. Six helpful factor clusters emerged: (1) cooperation and care offered between suicide survivors, (2) focusing on the present, busy life, (3) spiritual activity, (4) social support, (5) overcoming grief through altruistic behaviors, and (6) sympathy for the deceased. Two dimensions were found for both the hindering and helpful factors. The hindering factor dimensions were external system-internal experiences and related to suicide survivors-related to suicide decedents. The helpful factor dimensions were distancing from the loss-approaching the loss and professional activities-personal activities. The present study empirically explored and described the underlying structure of teachers' bereavement experiences after student suicides.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.602-614
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• 2023

Purpose: The balance between synthesis and degradation of proteins plays a critical role in the maintenance of skeletal muscle mass. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been closely associated with skeletal muscle atrophy caused by aging, cancer, and chemotherapy. Polygalacin D is a saponin derivative isolated from Platycodon grandiflorum (Jacq.) A. DC. This study aimed to investigate the effects of polygalacin D on myoblast differentiation and muscle atrophy in association with mitochondrial function in in vitro and in zebrafish models in vivo. Methods: C2C12 myoblasts were cultured in differentiation media containing different concentrations of polygalacin D, followed by the immunostaining of the myotubes with myosin heavy chain (MHC). The mRNA expression of markers related to myogenesis, muscle atrophy, and mitochondrial function was determined by real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Wild type AB^* zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos were treated with 5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, and irinotecan (FOLFIRI) with or without polygalacin D, and immunostained to detect slow and fast types of muscle fibers. The Tg(Xla.Eef1a1:mitoEGFP) zebrafish expressing mitochondria-targeted green fluorescent protein was used to monitor mitochondrial morphology. Results: The exposure of C2C12 myotubes to 0.1 ng/mL of polygalacin D increased the formation of MHC-positive multinucleated myotubes (≥ 8 nuclei) compared with the control. Polygalacin D significantly increased the expression of MHC isoforms (Myh1, Myh2, Myh4, and Myh7) involved in myoblast differentiation while it decreased the expression of atrophic markers including muscle RING-finger protein-1 (MuRF1), mothers against decapentaplegic homolog (Smad)2, and Smad3. In addition, polygalacin D promoted peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator (Pgc1α) expression and reduced the level of mitochondrial fission regulators such as dynamin-1-like protein (Drp1) and mitochondrial fission 1 (Fis1). In a zebrafish model of FOLFIRI-induced muscle atrophy, polygalacin D improved not only mitochondrial dysfunction but also slow and fast muscle fiber atrophy. Conclusion: These results demonstrated that polygalacin D promotes myogenesis and alleviates chemotherapy-induced muscle atrophy by improving mitochondrial function. Thus, polygalacin D could be useful as nutrition support to prevent and ameliorate muscle wasting and weakness.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.1195-1207
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• 2004

Schema matching is prerequisite to an automated transformation of XML documents. Because previous works about schema matching compute all semantically-possible matchings, they produce many-to-many matching relationships. Such imprecise matchings are inappropriate for an automated transformation of XML documents. This paper presents an efficient schema matching algorithm that computes precise one-to-one matchings between two schemas. The proposed algorithm consists of two steps: preliminary matching relationships between leaf nodes in the two schemas are computed and one-to-one matchings are finally extracted based on a proposed path similarity. Specifically, for a sophisticated schema matching, the proposed algorithm is based on a domain ontology as well as a lexical database that includes abbreviations and synonyms. Experimental results with real schemas from an e-commerce field show that the proposed method is superior to previous works, resulting in an accuracy of 97% in average.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.392-398
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• 2017

The point-cloud representation of an object is performed by scanning a space through a laser scanner that is extracting a set of points, and the points are then integrated into the same coordinate system through a registration. The set of the completed registration-integrated point clouds is classified into meaningful regions, shapes, and noises through a mathematical analysis. In this paper, the aim is the matching of a curved area like a cylinder shape in 3D point-cloud data. The matching procedure is the attainment of the center and radius data through the extraction of the cylinder-shape candidates from the sphere that is fitted through the RANdom Sample Consensus (RANSAC) in the point cloud, and completion requires the matching of the curved region with the Catmull-Rom spline from the extracted center-point data using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Not only is the proposed method expected to derive a fast estimation result via linear and curved cylinder estimations after a center-axis estimation without constraint and segmentation, but it should also increase the work efficiency of reverse engineering.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.70-76
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• 2002

In this paper, we proposed a personal identification algorithm using the iris region which has discriminant features. First, we acquired the eye image with the black and white CCD camera and extracted the iris region by using a circular edge detector which minimizes the search space for real center and radius of the iris. And then, we localized the iris region into several circles and extracted the features by filtering signals on the perimeters of circles with one dimensional Gabor filter We identified a person by comparing ,correlation values of input signals with the registered signals. We also decided threshold value minimizing average error rate for FRR(Type I)error rate and FAR(Type II)error rate. Experimental results show that proposed algorithm has average error rate less than 5.2%.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.816-823
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• 2003

In this paper, we propose a blind audio watermarking using the tonal characteristic. First, we explain the perceptional effect of tonal on the existed researches and shout the experimental result that tonal characteristic is more stable than other characteristics used in previous watermarking studies against several signal processing. On the base of the result, we propose the blind audio watermarking using the relation among the signals on the frequency domain which compose a tonal masker. To evaluate the sound quality of our watermarked audios, we used the SDG(Subjective Diff-Grades) and got the average SDG 0.27. This result says the watermarking using the perceptional effect of tonal is available from the viewpoint of non-perception. And we detected the watermark hits from the watermarked audios which were changed by several signal processing and the detection ratios with exception of the time shift processing were over 98%. About the time shift processing, we applied the new method that searched the most proper position on the time domain and then detected the watermark bits by the ratio of 90%.