• Journal of Embryo Transfer
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.229-246
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• 1997

Implantation is a most important biological process during pregnancy whereby conceptus establishes its survival as well as maintenance of pregnancy. During the periimplantation period, both uterine endometriurn and conceptus synthesize and secrete a host of growth factors and cytokines which mediate the actions of estrogen and /or progesterone and also exert their steroid-independent actions. Growth factors expressed by the materno-conceptal unit en masse have important roles in cell migration, stimulation or inhibition of cell proliferation, cellular differentiation, maintenance of pregnancy and materno-conceptal communications in an autorcrine /paracrine manner. The present review focuses on the role of the intrauterine IGF system during periimplantation conceptus development. The IGF system comprises of IGF- I and IGF- II ligands, types I and II IGF receptors and six or more IGF-binding proteins(IGFBPs). IGFs and IGFBPs are expressed and secreted by uterine endometrium with tissue, pregnancy stage and species specificities under the influence of estrogen, progesterone and other growth factor(s). Conceptus also synthesizes components of the IGF system beginning from a period between 2-cell and blastocyst stages. Maternal IGFs are utilized by both maternal and conceptal tissues; conceptus-derived growth factors are believed to be taken up primarily by conceptus. IGFs enhance the development of both maternal and conceptal compartments in a wide range of biological processes. They stimulate proliferation and differentiation of endometrial cells and placental precursor cells including decidual transformation from stromal cells, placental formation and the synthesis of some steroid and protein hormones by differentiated endometrial cells or placenta. It is also well-documented in a number of experimental settings that both IGFs stimulate preimplantation embryo development. In slight contrast to these, prenatal mice carrying a null mutation of IGF and /or IGF receptor gene do not exhibit any apparent growth retardation until after implantation. Reason (s) for this discrepancy between the knock-out result and the in vitro ones, however, is not known. IGFBPs, in general, are believed to inhibit IGF action within the materno-conceptal unit, thereby allowing endometrial stromal cell differentiation as well as dampening ex cessive placental invasion into maternal tissue. There is evidence, however, indicating that IGFBP can enhance IGF action depending on environrnental conditions perhaps by directioning IGF ligand to the target cell. There is also a third possibility that certain IGFBPs and their proteolytic fragments may have their own biological activities independent of the IGF. In addition to IGFBPs, IGFBP proteases including those found within the uterine tissue or lumen are thought to enhance IGF bioavailability by degrading their substrates without affecting their bound ligand. In this regard, preliminary results in early pregnant pigs suggest that a partially characterized IGFBP protease activity in uterine luminal fluid enhances intrauterine IGF bioavailability during conceptus morphological development. In summary, a number of in vitro results indicate that IGFs stimulates the development of the rnaterno-conceptal unit during the periimplantation period. IGFBPs appear to inhibit IGF action by sequestering their ligands, whereas IGFBP proteases are thought to enhance intrauterine bioavailability of IGFs. Much is remaining to be clarified, however, regarding the roles of the individual IGF system components. These include in vivo evidence for the role of IGFs in early conceptus development, identification of IGF-regulated genes and their functions, specific roles for individual IGFBPs, identification and characterization of IGFBP proteases. The intrauterine IGF club house thus will be paying a lot of attention to forthcoming results in above and other areas, with its door wide-open!

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.165-172
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• 1996

A scanning slot digital mammography system Luing a plastic scintillating fiber screen (SFS) is currently being developed To improve the x-ray interaction efficiency and absorption efficiency of an SFS, high Z elements can be added into the scintillating fiber core. In this paper, we investigated theoretically the zero spatial frequency detective quantum efficiency, DQE(0), and modulation transfer function, MTF(f), of three 2 cm thick SFSs made of polystyrene, polystyrene loaded with 5% by weight of lead, and polystyrene Loaded with 10% by weight of tin scintillating fibers. X-ray interaction efficiency, scintillating light intensity distributions and line spread functions were generated using Monte Carlo simulation. DQE(0) and MTF(f) were computed for x-ray energies ranging from 15 to 50 keV. Loading high Z elements into the SFS markedly increased the DQE(0). For x-ray energies used for mammovaphy, DQE(0) values of both high Z element loaded SFSs are about a factor of three higher than the DQE(0) of an Min-R screen. At mammographic x-ray energies, MTF(f) values of all three SFSs are Venter than 50% at 25 Ip/mm spatial frequency, and were found to be dominated by the 20 um individual scintillating fiber diameter used The results show that both hiP DQE(0) and spatial resolution can be achieved with the high Z element loaded SFSs, which make these SFSs attractive for use in a scanning slot detector for digital mammography.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.313-321
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• 2003

This review summarizes the recent advances in high-density algal cultures in the field of algal biotechnology. Photobioreactor engineering for economical and effective utilization of algae and its products has made impressive and promising progress. Bioprocess engineers have expedited the design and the operation of algal cultivation systems. Many of them in use today are open systems due to cost considerations, and closed photobioreactors have recently attracted a considerable attention for the production of valuable biochemicals or for special applications. For high-density cultures, the optimization of environmental factors in the photobioreactors have been explored, including light delivery, CO$_2$and O$_2$gas transfer, medium supply, mixing and temperature. It is expected that further advanced photobioreactor engineering will enable the commercialization of noble algal products within the next decade.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.743-747
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• 2000

The coordinated mechanism of terrestrial vertebrates enables them to maneuver over all of the terrain conditions since they have a distinct ability to adapt to varying conditions. Their locomotions remain infinitely more advanced and elegant than that of present-day existing mechanical walking robots. However, the principles of existing walking robots are based more on technical rather than on biological concepts, yielding unstable locomotion with low speed. In order to apply these advanced biological phenomena to the mechanical design of 4-legged walking robot, modeling methods are introduced and mathematical equations are also introduced.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.375.1-375.1
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• 2016

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has revolutionized genetics and become one of the most popular techniques in modern biological and medical sciences. It can be used not only as an in vitro DNA amplification method but also used in many bioassay applications. The PCR can be used to exponentially produce a large number of DNA copies from a small quantity of DNA molecules in a few hours. However, as unwanted DNA fragments are also often manufactured, the amplification efficiency of PCR is decreased. To overcome this limitation, several nanomaterials have been employed to increase the specificity of the PCR reaction. Recently, graphene has attracted a great interest for its excellent electron transfer, thermal and biocompatibility. Especially, gold nanoparticle-coated graphene oxide (GO/AuNPs) led to enhance electron and thermal transfer rate and low-charge transfer resistance. Therefore, we report the development of a demonstration for the PCR efficiency using a large-scale production of the GO and combination of gold nanoparticles. Because a thermal conductivity is an important factor for improving the PCR efficiency in different DNA polymerases and different size samples. When PCR use GO/AuNPs, the result of transmission electron microscopy and real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) showed an enhanced PCR efficiency. We have demonstrated that GO/AuNPs would be simply outperformed for enhancing the specificity and efficiency of DNA amplification procedure.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.307-312
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• 2015

Transgenic rice cells using RAmy3D promoter can provide high productivity, and the production of recombinant protein is induced by sugar starvation. In this system, productivity was reduced during the scale-up processes. To ensure the influences of shear stress and oxygen transfer rate, working volume and mixing performances were investigated under various agitation speeds and working volumes. In addition, inoculation methods including suspended cells and filtered cells were compared. Working volumes and shaking speeds were 300, 450 mL and 80, 120 rpm, respectively. Hydrodynamic environment of each condition was measured numerically like mixing time and $k_La$. Good mixing performance and high shear stress were measured at high agitation speed and low volume. The highest level of hCTLA4Ig was 30.7 mg/L at 120 rpm, 300 mL. When conditioned medium was used for inoculation, increased cell growth was noticed during the day 0~4 and decreased slower than filtered cells. Compared with filtered cells, the maximum hCTLA4Ig level reached 37.8 mg/L at 120 rpm, 300 mL and lower protease activity level was observed. In conclusion mixing performance is critical factor for productivity and conditioned medium can have a positive effect on damaged cells caused by hydrodynamic shear stress.

• The Korean Journal of Pesticide Science
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.235-240
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• 2010

In order to elucidate residual characteristics of pesticides in garlic by drying, azoxystrobin and flutolanil used for garlic were treated to the garlic by dipping for 1 and 5 min into their standard diluents and then the garlic was dried with a freeze-drier. The test pesticides were analyzed with a GLC-ECD/NPD. Recoveries of the pesticides ranged from 81.96 to 98.18%. Amount of azoxystrobin and flutolanil in fresh garlic were 0.34 and 1.18 mg/kg in case of dipping for 1 min. and 0.44 and 2.15 mg/kg in case of dipping for 5 min., respectively. Also, amount of azoxystrobin and flutolanil in dried garlic were 0.80 and 4.51 mg/kg in case of dipping for 1 min. and 1.03, 5.28 mg/kg in case of dipping for 5 minute, respectively, representing that concentration of the test pesticides in garlic were increased by drying. In case of dipping for 1 and 5 min., processing factors of azoxystrobin were 2.35 and 3.34 and those of flutolanil were 1.19 and 1.17, respectively. Reduction factors of the pesticides in garlic were range from 0.94 to 0.97, indicating that few amounts of the test pesticides in garlic were dissipated by freeze-drying.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1990 no.11
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• pp.42-47
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• 1990

In this paper, a new adaptive image processing method based on human visual system has been presented. The basic idea behind the proposed method is to improve the efficiency of the information transfer channel regionally by manipulating the displayed image in order to compensate the regional inefficiency of the information transfer channel. The proposed method consists of two parts; the first part reallocates pixel values corresponding to high X-ray attenuation to that of more intense X-ray exposure by multiplying the pixel values with the local adaptive multiplcation factor, and the second part adjusts the pixel values of dark area of displayed image such as overexposed lung area to be more bright. The processed image with the proposed method shows significantly increased visibility of mediastinal and subdiaphramatic area, and also the lung area of over exposed case without any artifact.

• BioChip Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.340-347
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• 2018

$F{\ddot{o}}rster$ resonance energy transfer (FRET) is extremely sensitive to the separation distance between the donor and the acceptor which is ideal for probing such biological phenomena. Also, FRET-based probes have been developing for detecting an unamplified, low-abundance of target DNA. Here we describe the development of FRET based DNA sensor based on an accumulated QD system for detecting KRAS G12D mutation which is the most common mutation in cancer. The accumulated QD system consists of the polystyrene beads which surface is modified with carboxyl modified QDs. The QDs are sandwich-hybridized with DNA of a capture probe, a reporter probe with Texas-red, and a target DNA by EDC-NHS coupling. Because the carboxyl modified QDs are located closely to each other in the accumulated QDs, these neighboring QDs are enough to transfer the energy to the acceptor dyes. Therefore the FRET factor in the bead system is enhancing by the additional increase of 29.2% as compared to that in a single QD system. These results suggest that the accumulated nanobead probe with conjugated QDs can be used as ultrasensitive DNA nanosensors detecting the mutation in the various cancers.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2007

This review discusses the production of alpha-particle-emitting radionuclides in radioimmunotherapy. Radioimmunotherapy labeled with alpha-particle is expected to be very useful for the treatment of monocellular cancer (e.g. leukemia) and micrometastasis at an early stage, residual tumor remained in tissues after chemotherapy and tumor resection, due to the high linear energy transfer (LET) and the short path length in biological tissue of alpha particle. Despite of the expected effectiveness of alpha-particle in radioimmunotherapy, its clinical research has not been activated by the several reasons, shortage of a suitable a-particle development and a reliable radionuclide production and supply system, appropriate antibody and chelator development. Among them, the establishment of radionuclide development and supply system is a key factor to make an alpha-immunotherapy more popular in clinical trial. Alpha-emitter can be produced by several methods, natural radionuclides, reactor irradiation, cyclotron irradiation, generator system and elution. Due to the sharply increasing demand of $^{213}Bi$, which is a most promising radionuclide in radioimmunotherapy and now has been produced with reactor, the cyclotron production system should be developed urgently to meet the demand.