• Advances in nano research
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.215-230
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• 2017

The development of hybrid systems comprising nanoparticles and polymers is an opening pathway for engineering nanocomposites exhibiting outstanding mechanical, optical, electrical, and magnetic properties. Among inorganic counterpart, iron oxide nanoparticles (IONP) exhibit high magnetization, controllable surface chemistry, spintronic properties, and biological compatibility. These characteristics enable them as a platform for biomedical applications and building blocks for bottom-up approaches, such as the layer-by-layer (LbL). In this regard, the present study is addressed to investigate IONP synthesised through co-precipitation route (average diameter around 7 nm), with either positive or negative surface charges, LbL assembled with sodium sulfonated polystyrene (PSS) or polyaniline (PANI). The surface and internal morphologies, and electrochemical properties of these nanocomposites were probed with atomic force microscopy, UV-vis and Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy, and electrochemical measurements. The nanocomposites display a globular morphology with IONP densely packed while surface dressed by polyelectrolytes. The investigation of the effect of thermal annealing (300 up to $600^{\circ}C$) on the oxidation process of IONP assembled with PSS was performed using Raman spectroscopy. Our findings showed that PSS protects IONP from oxidation/phase transformation to hematite up to $400^{\circ}C$. The electrochemical performance of nanocomposite comprising IONP and PANI were investigated in $0.5mol{\times}L^{-1}$ $Na_2SO_4$ electrolyte solution by cyclic voltammetry and chronopotentiometry. Our findings indicate this structure as promising candidate for potential application as electrodes for supercapacitors.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.286-290
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• 2012

The majority of laboratory animals were transported from commercial breeders to a research facility by ground transportation. During the transportation, many biological functions and systems can be affected by stress. In this experiment, the change of body weight during the transportation was measured and the recovery periods from the transportation stress established based on the body weight changes. Total 676 laboratory animals which were aged between 3 to 9 wk old were studied. The transportation time taken from container packing to unpacking the container was approximately 24 h. The temperature of animal container was constantly maintained by air-conditioning and heating equipment. Rats were found to be more sensitive than mice. The body weight of rats was significantly decreased 3.71% (p<0.05) compared to the body weight of mice which decreased 0.9% There was no significant difference between the strains in the same species. When the changes of body weights were compared between delivery days, C57BL/6 mice showed the most variable changes compared to other species and strains. Consequently, C57BL/6 was more sensitive to stress than the other strains and the transportation process needs to be standardized to reduce between day variability. To establish the recovery periods from transportation stress, the body weight changes were measured during the acclimation period. Although the body weight of animals decreased during transportation, animals recovered their weight loss after the next day.

• CELLMED
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.23.1-23.6
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• 2016

With the rapid developments in nanotechnology, an increasing number of nanomaterials have been applied in various aspects of our lives. Recently, pharmaceutical nanotechnology with numerous advantages has growingly attracted the attention of many researchers. Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) are nanomaterials that are widely used in many fields including diagnostics, therapeutics, drug-delivery systems, electronics, cosmetics, sunscreens, coatings, ceramic products, paints, and food additives, due to their magnetic, catalytic, semiconducting, anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, ultraviolet-protective, and binding properties. The present review focused on the recent research works concerning role of ZnO-NP on inflammation. Several studies have reported that ZnO-NP induces inflammatory reaction through the generation of reactive oxygen species by oxidative stress and production of inflammatory cytokines by activation of nuclear factor-${\kappa}B$ ($NF-{\kappa}B$). Meanwhile, other researchers reported that ZnO-NP exhibits an anti-inflammatory effect by inhibiting the up-regulation of inflammatory cytokines and the activation of $NF-{\kappa}B$, caspase-1, $I{\kappa}B$ $kinase{\beta}$, receptor interacting protein2, and extracellular signal-regulated kinase. Previous studies reported that size and shape of nanoparticles, surfactants used for nanoparticles protection, medium, and experimental conditions can also affect cellular signal pathway. This review indicated that the anti-inflammatory effectiveness of ZnO-NP was determined by the nanoparticle size as well as various experimental conditions. Therefore, the author suggests that pharmaceutical therapy with the ZnO-NP is one of the possible strategies to overcome the inflammatory reactions. However, further studies should be performed to maximize the anti-inflammatory effect of ZnO-NP to apply as a potential agent in biomedical applications.

• Architectural research
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.83-90
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• 2016

Senescent effects are the gradual deterioration of function caused by biological aging. Senescent effects on color vision are not clearly understood even after considerable researches. Part of the reason is that the color vision is a complex phenomenon resulting from various factors such as organic systems, and the physical (neuro-optical) and the psychological (experiential) processes of color perception. We performed a field experiment on color perceptional differences due to aging vision. Our experiment was applied to two different groups in South Korea: an experimental group (46 subjects of over the age of 61 years) and a control group (49 subjects in their twenties). The experimental tools are comprised of (1) six gradual yellowing detector board (40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%); (2) pairs of vivid-strong, vivid-deep, grayish-deep, deep-dull, and bright-light tones of Blue (B) and Purple (P) colors; (3) Red (R), Yellow (Y), Green (G), Blue (B), and Purple (P) colors of dull-tones and pale-tones; and (4) a questionnaire on the semantic differential scales of the color images and color differences. A diagnosis system of gradual yellow vision, developed by the authors for this study, was adapted to generate the color detecting boards. The results are as follows. (1) There are significant differences between the two groups in detecting colors that simulate 40% and 50% of yellow vision. (2) As to the color difference detecting ability between similar tones, the experimental group shows difficulties in pairs of vivid-strong tones and deep-dull tones of the B color. And (3), the emotional responses to the dull tone and the pale tone are not stable in the red, the yellow, blue, and purple. Thus, we empirically demonstrate the specific differences in color perception between the old and young groups.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.2011-2015
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• 2015

Ginsenoside Rb2 (Gin-Rb2) was purified from the fruit extract of Panax ginseng. Its chemical structure was measured by spectroscopic analysis, including HR-FAB-MS, ¹H-NMR, and IR spectroscopy. Gin-Rb2 decreased potent melanogenesis in melan-a cells, with 23.4% at 80 μM without cytotoxicity. Gin-Rb2 also decreased tyrosinase and MITF protein expression in melan-a cells. Furthermore, Gin-Rb2 presented inhibition of the body pigmentation in the zebrafish in vivo system and reduced melanin contents and tyrosinase activity. These results show that Gin-Rb2 isolated from P. ginseng may be an effective skin-whitening agent via the in vitro and in vivo systems.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.237-241
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• 2017

Early detection of the pulmonary nodule is important for diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. Recently, CT has been used as a screening tool for lung nodule detection. And, it has been reported that computer aided detection(CAD) systems can improve the accuracy of the radiologist in detection nodules on CT scan. The previous study has been proposed a method using Convolutional Neural Network(CNN) in Lung CAD system. But the proposed model has a limitation in accuracy due to its sparse layer structure. Therefore, we propose a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to overcome this limitation. The model proposed in this work is consist of 14 layers including 8 convolutional layers and 4 fully connected layers. The CNN model is trained and tested with 61,404 regions-of-interest (ROIs) patches of lung image including 39,760 nodules and 21,644 non-nodules extracted from the Lung Image Database Consortium(LIDC) dataset. We could obtain the classification accuracy of 91.79% with the CNN model presented in this work. To prevent overfitting, we trained the model with Augmented Dataset and regularization term in the cost function. With L1, L2 regularization at Training process, we obtained 92.39%, 92.52% of accuracy respectively. And we obtained 93.52% with data augmentation. In conclusion, we could obtain the accuracy of 93.75% with L2 Regularization and Data Augmentation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.289-296
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• 2009

In this study, I presented power control unit with potential use in the magnetic stimulation of biological systems. The effect of the magnetic stimulation depends on the geometry and orientation of the induced electric field as well as on the current pulse waveform delivered by the stimulator coil. TMS is achieved from the outside of the head using pulses of electromagnetic field that induce an electric field in the brain. There are numerous possibities in the applications TMS, such as diagnosis and therapy through the brain stimulation. These factors are very important to define the equipment requirements and characteristics in that the topology of the power supply and the size and geometry of the coil. The proposed solution is the generation of current pulses with variable amplitude and duration, according to a user defined input. Another solution is the topology that uses elements to store and transfer energy from the power source to the load. In addition to proposed topology, an adequate control strategy and right set of the power circuit parameters made possible to obtain unipolar waves and bipolar waves.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.15.1-15.14
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• 2020

Background: Large rivers are ecological treasures with high human value, but most have experienced decades of degradation from industrial and municipal sewage, row-crop agricultural practices, and hydrologic alteration. We reviewed published analyses of long-term fish diversity publications from three intensively managed large river ecosystems to demonstrate the conservation potential of large river ecosystems. Results: We show how the incorporation of recent advances in river concepts will allow a better understanding of river ecosystem functioning and conservation. Lastly, we focus on the Wabash River ecosystem based on high conservation value and provide a list of actions to maintain and support the ecosystem. In the Wabash River, there were originally 66 species of freshwater mussels, but now only 30 species with reproducing populations remain. Although there were multiple stressors over the last century, the largest change in Wabash River fish biodiversity was associated with rapid increases in municipal nutrient loading and invasive bigheaded carps. Conclusions: Like similarly neglected large river systems worldwide, the Wabash River has a surprising amount of ecological resilience and recovery. For instance, of the 151 native fish species found in the 1800s, only three species have experienced local extinctions, making the modern assemblage more intact than many comparable rivers in the Mississippi River basin. However, not all the changes are positive or support the idea of recovery. Primary production underpins the productivity of these ecosystems, and the Wabash River phytoplankton assemblages shifted from high-quality green algae in the 1970s to lower less nutritional blue-green algae as nutrient and invasive species have recently increased. Our recommendations for the Wabash River and other altered rivers include the restoration of natural hydrology for the mainstem and tributaries, nutrient reductions, mechanisms to restore historical hydrologic patterns, additional sediment controls, and improved local hydraulics.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.29 no.9
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• pp.997-1002
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• 2007

The objectives of this research are to remove dissolved organic matter and nitrogen compounds by using aerated submerged bio-film(ASBF) reactors in batch systems and improve understanding of dissolved organic matter and nitrogen compounds removal rates with dynamic relationships between heterotrophic and autotrophic bacteria in the fixed-film reactor. This research explores the possibility of enhancing the performance of shallow wastewater treatment lagoons through the addition of specially designed structures. These structures are designed to encourage the growth of a nitrifying bacterial bio-film on a submerged surface. Specially, the effects of cold temperatures on the dissolved organic matter and ammonia nitrogen performance of the ASBF pilot plant was investigated for the batch system. It is anticipated thai the ASBF would be used for a design of biological treatment for removing of dissolved organic matter and nitrogen compounds in new wastewater treatment plants as well as existing wastewater treatment plants.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.165-171
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• 2020

In this study, it focuses on the development of radiographic devices for patellar imaging. On the previous X-ray examination of patella and patellofemoral joint, it analyzed the problems which could affect the results: unstable patients' pose, radiation exposure, and deterioration of image quality. The purpose of the research is to propose a future use of a developed device with an explanation of the process, function, and advantage of the device including the methods. The device is developed to focus on the diagnosis of the longitudinal and longitudinal fractures of the patella and patella/femoral joint, displacement such as dislocation, bone formation, stenosis of the patella/femorla joint, and cartilage wear. Due to the patient's anxious posture, it caused a shaking image, overlapping structures, and etcs, these factors challenge to diagnose accurately. In addition, the existing Settegast method and Hughston method, which are most frequently performed in the hospital field, are not suitable for the presence or absence of features or dislocation due to the heavy load on the patella of the patient. The developed device requires patients in a lying position and placing only their leg on the device, it increases the conveniences of the examination and decreases unnecessary radiation exposure of the patient except the patellar examination area. Moreover, one of the systems in the device fixes the detector, where the patients no longer need to hold the detector nor be in unstable posture, but describes the structure of the patella/femoral joint more clearly. Hoping the device will apply to more patients.