• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.47
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• pp.163-190
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• 2017

This paper studies the recent surge in the number of faith-based films in Hollywood, with the aim to explore the context and implications of this new trend. By using the theoretical framework of the study of the Tilich and Van der Leeuw, who have explored the relationship between religion, culture and art, this article discusses the meaning of the spiritual theme in the film. A couple of common points can be found among the faith-based films that have been produced since the 2010s. While these films attempt a universal approach to the fundamental theme of spirituality through popular narratives familiar to the audience, they also stress 'historical truthfulness and credibility' by representing the reality, such as a featuring real person or a true story in the film. The main characters are depicted as "victorious losers" that are distinguished from the typical Hollywood superhero and the films repeatedly show the human being constantly 'asking' questions to God. By analyzing these characteristics, the paper demonstrates that recent Hollywood faith-based films have successfully differentiated themselves from existing religious films while symbolizing the universal beliefs and values beyond the religious message so as to attract more audiences to this field. The paper also suggests that despite the advances in modern science and knowledge, the public will always yearn for a spiritual recovery and salvation through the film medium, serving as a potential source that provides an outlet for spiritual experience.

• The Korean journal of internal medicine
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1182-1193
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• 2018

Background/Aims: Elderly patients (${\geq}80years$) with colorectal cancer (CRC) tend to avoid active treatment at the time of diagnosis despite of recent advances in treatment. The aim of this study was to determine treatment propensity of elderly patients aged ${\geq}80years$ with CRC in clinical practice and the impact of anticancer treatment on overall survival (OS). Methods: Medical charts of 152 elderly patients (aged ${\geq}80years$) diagnosed with CRC between 1998 and 2012 were retrospectively reviewed. Patients' clinical characteristics, treatment modalities received, and clinical outcome were analyzed. Results: Their median age was 82 years (range, 80 to 98). Of 152 patients, 148 were assessable for the extent of the disease. Eighty-two of 98 patients with localized disease and 28 of 50 patients with metastatic disease had received surgery or chemotherapy or both. Surgery was performed in 79 of 98 patients with localized disease and 15 of 50 patients with metastatic disease. Chemotherapy was administered in only 24 of 50 patients with metastatic disease. Patients who received anticancer treatment according to disease extent showed significantly longer OS compared to untreated patients (localized disease, 76.2 months vs. 15.4 months, p = 0.000; metastatic disease, 9.9 months vs. 2.6 months, p = 0.001). Along with anticancer treatment, favorable performance status (PS) was associated with longer OS in multivariate analysis of clinical outcome. Conclusions: Elderly patients aged ${\geq}80years$ with CRC tended to receive less treatment for metastatic disease. Nevertheless, anticancer treatment in patients with favorable PS was effective in prolonging OS regardless of disease extent.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.391-398
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• 2018

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are an attractive resource for refractory patients because of their anti-inflammatory/immunomodulatory capability and multi-lineage differentiation potential. The transplantation of MSCs has led to positive results in preclinical and clinical application to various diseases, including autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, liver cirrhosis, and ischemic stroke. On the other hand, studies have shown that paracrine factors, not direct cell replacement for damaged cells or tissue, are the main contributors in MSC-based therapy. More recently, evidence has indicated that MSC-derived exosomes play crucial roles in regulating the paracrine factors that can mediate tissue regeneration via transferring nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids to the local microenvironment and cell-to-cell communication. The use of these exosomes is likely to be beneficial for the therapeutic application of MSCs because their use can avoid harmful effects, such as tumor formation involved in cell transplantation. Therefore, therapeutic applications using MSC-derived exosomes might be safe and efficient strategies for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. This review summarizes the recent advances and provides a comprehensive understanding of the role of MSC-derived exosomes as a therapeutic agent.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.1536-1544
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• 2018

Depression is a common, serious, and recurring mental disorder. The pathogenesis of depression involves many factors such as environmental factor, genetic factor and alteration of structure and function in neurobiological systems. Increasing evidence supports that epigenetic alteration may be associated with depression. The epigenetics is explained as the mechanisms by which environmental factor causes changes in chromatin structure and alters gene expression without changing DNA base sequence. DNA methylation and histone modification involving histone acetylation and methylation are the main epigenetic mechanisms. Animal studies have shown that stressful environment such as early life stress can leave persistent epigenetic marks in the genome, which alter gene expression and influence neural and behavioral function through adulthood. A potentially important gene in depression is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF plays a central role in depression and antidepressant action. In studies of the rodent, exposure to stress at prenatal, postnatal, and adult stages alters BDNF expression through histone modification and DNA methylation of the BDNF gene which results in anxiety and depressive-like behavior. This review discusses recent advances in the study of the epigenetic mechanisms that contribute to depression, particularly histone modification and DNA methylation of the BDNF gene, that may help in the development of new targets for depression treatment.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.15-21
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• 2019

Research in detecting fake information gained a lot of interest after the US presidential election in 2016. Information from unknown sources are produced in the shape of news, and its rapid spread is fueled by the interest of public drawn to stimulating and interesting issues. In addition, the wide use of mass communication platforms such as social network services makes this phenomenon worse. Poynter Institute created the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) to provide guidelines for judging the facts of skilled professionals and releasing "Code of Ethics" for fact check agencies. However, this type of approach is costly because of the large number of experts required to test authenticity of each article. Therefore, research in automated fake news detection technology that can efficiently identify it is gaining more attention. In this paper, we investigate fake news detection systems and researches that are rapidly developing, mainly thanks to recent advances in deep learning technology. In addition, we also organize shared tasks and training corpus that are released in various forms, so that researchers can easily participate in this field, which deserves a lot of research effort.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.607-618
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• 2019

A new and interesting task in statistics is to effectively analyze functional data that frequently comes from advances in modern science and technology in areas such as meteorology and biomedical sciences. Functional linear regression with scalar response is a popular functional data analysis technique and it is often a common problem to determine a functional association if a functional predictor variable affects the scalar response in the models. Recently, Kong et al. (Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, 28, 813-838, 2016) established classical testing methods for this based on functional principal component analysis (of the functional predictor), that is, the resulting eigenfunctions (as a basis). However, the eigenbasis functions are not generally suitable for regression purpose because they are only concerned with the variability of the functional predictor, not the functional association of interest in testing problems. Additionally, eigenfunctions are to be estimated from data so that estimation errors might be involved in the performance of testing procedures. To circumvent these issues, we propose a testing method based on fixed basis such as B-splines and show that it works well via simulations. It is also illustrated via simulated and real data examples that the proposed testing method provides more effective and intuitive results due to the localization properties of B-splines.

• Food Science and Industry
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.261-271
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• 2019

Gut microbiome have recently provided evidence that the gut microbiota are capable of greatly influencing all aspects of physiology and immunology. Although a number of recent studies have shown that probiotics can modulate gut microbiota structure, the mechanism underlying this effect remains to be elucidated. In a disease state, the relative abundances of beneficial gut bacteria are generally reduced, which is restored by constant probiotic supplementation. Oral administration of probiotics improved the disease state by (1) inducing differentiation and function of regulatory T cells, (2) reducing inflammatory response, (3) modulating the gut environment, and (4) increasing the proportions of short-chain fatty acid- or beneficial metabolite-producing gut microbiota including the genera Bifidobacterium, Faecalibacterium, Akkermansia, etc. In this review, current knowledge on how probiotics can influence host's health by altering gut microbiota structure and on how probiotics and beneficial gut bacteria can be applied as next-generation probiotics will be discussed.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.165-182
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• 2019

This study investigated the consumer acceptance process of the fourth industrial revolution new product to be introduced into the market in the future. The 4th Industrial Revolution new products are technological advances compared to the existing ones. The technology acceptance model that was used in the past has been modified to reflect variables like the social effects of the 4th Industrial Revolution, expected experience, and perceived risk. Modified models were proposed and verified. Six representative new products of the 4th Industrial Revolution were selected and examined by 40 respondents, and the hypotheses were verified using programs such as SPSS and AMOS. And conclusions and implications are as follows. First, the innovativeness of the fourth industrial revolution new products influences positive evaluation factors such as expected experience and perceived usefulness and it also affect positively to the perceived risk. In addition, the expected experience of the fourth industrial revolution new products has a great effect on the perceived usefulness and social influence, but it didn't affect to the perceived risk. Like the results of the TAM model, purchase intention of the fourth industrial revolution new products are strongly influenced by perceived usefulness. Finally, the perceived risk of the new product of the 4th Industrial Revolution had no statistically significant effect on the purchase intention, and the social influence of the 4th Industrial Revolution had a significant effect on the purchase intention. In general, respondents are highly aware of the social impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and seem to be very positive in this respect.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.1-18
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• 2019

Due to the great advances in e-Marketplace and changes in type of items purchased from the online market, it has been dramatically increased the demand of the storage and transportation under the special conditions such as restricted temperature. Especially, the cold chain needs the way to transparently measure and monitor the entire network in realtime because it has a very complicated structure and requires totally different criteria at the every different steps and items. In this research, it has been presented the performance evaluation metrics to make contract using service level agreement (SLA), the way to apply the smart contract based on blockchain, the structure of blocks, service platform and application in order to build cold chain which can prevent the risk factors by measuring and sharing information in realtime using block chain technology. In addition, we have proposed the way to store the measured performance and reputation of each player in the block using smart contract based on SLA. With the presented framework, all players including service providers as well as users can secure the information for making the rational decisions. When the service platform is actually built and operated, it seems possible to secure the information in transparently and realtime. Also, it is possible to prevent the risk factors or prepare the preemptive plans to react on them.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.39-49
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• 2019

Advances in IoT data analysis technology have made it easier to analyze situation and provide interactive services based on the context. Most of digital signage application have been used to provide information uni-directionally, but in the future it will evolve to provide personalized content according to the individual user situation and responses. However, it is not easy to modify or apply the existing interactive digital signage platforms due to their hardware dependency. The proposed platform is modularized by dividing main functions into two, the cloud and the edge, so that advertisement resources can be easily generated and registered. Thus, interactive advertisement can be rendered in a timely manner based on sensor analysis results. At the edge, personal data can be processed to minimize privacy issues, and real-time IoT sensor data can be analyzed for quick response to the signage player. The cloud is easier to access and manage by multiple users than edge. Therefore, the signage content generation module improves accessibility and flexibility by handling advertisement contents in the cloud so that multiple users can work together on the cloud platform. The proposed platform was developed and simulated in two aspects. First is the provider who provides the signage service, and second is the viewer who uses the content of the signage. Simulation results show that the proposed platform enables providers to quickly construct interactive signage contents and responses appropriately to the context changes in real-time.