• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.17
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• pp.7105-7112
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• 2014

In this study, we investigated oxidative stress and tumor marker levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in 136 coke oven workers and in 60 control subjects, and evaluated the correlation between oxidative stress and tumor marker levels. Questionnaires on basic demographic information were also administered. Significant differences in employment time and percentages of alcohol drinkers were observed between the control and exposed groups. PAH exposure was assessed using urinary 1-hydroxy-pyrene (1-OHP) levels and was found to be significantly higher in workers than in the controls. Significant differences (P<0.001) of MDA, GST, LDH, NSE, Cyfra21-1, and of SCC and TNF-a (P<0.0001 and P<0.05, P<0.001, respectively) levels were observed among controls and coke-oven workers, except for bottom coke oven workers. Associations between age and risk of increased TNF-a, smoking and increased GST activities, and drinking with increased MDA concentrations, were marginal (P=0.055, P=0.048, P=0.057, respectively). The association between smoking with MDA (P=0.004), NSE (P=0.005), SCC (P=0.004) andTNF-a (P<0.001), and drinking with TNF-a levels was significant (P=0.012). In addition, a significant positive correlation between oxidative stress and tumor markers was found in the present study. These results suggest that a synergistic increase of oxidative stress and tumor markers induced by PAHs may play a role in toxic responses for PAHs in coke oven workers.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.3-10
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• 2017

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Sargassum horneri is an edible brown alga that grows in the subtidal zone as an annual species along the coasts of South Korea, China, and Japan. Recently, an extreme amount of S. horneri moved into the coasts of Jeju Island from the east coast of China, which made huge economic and environmental loss to the Jeju Island. Thus, utilization of this biomass becomes a big issue with the local authorities. Therefore, the present study was performed to evaluate the anti-inflammatory potential of crude polysaccharides (CPs) extracted from S. horneri China strain in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated RAW 264.7 cells. MATERIALS/METHODS: CPs were precipitated from S. horneri digests prepared by enzyme assistant extraction using four food-grade enzymes (AMG, Celluclast, Viscozyme, and Alcalase). The production levels of nitric oxide (NO) and pro-inflammatory cytokines, including tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-${\alpha}$ and interleukin (IL)-$1{\beta}$ were measured by Griess assay and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, respectively. The levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), nuclear factor (NF)-${\kappa}B$, and mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) were measured by using western blot. The IR spectrums of the CPs were recorded using a fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) spectrometer. RESULTS: The polysaccharides from the Celluclast enzyme digest (CCP) showed the highest inhibition of NO production in LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 cells ($IC_{50}$ value: $95.7{\mu}g/mL$). Also, CCP dose-dependently down-regulated the protein expression levels of iNOS and COX-2 as well as the production of inflammatory cytokines, including TNF-${\alpha}$ and IL-$1{\beta}$, compared to the only LPS-treated cells. In addition, CCP inhibited the activation of NF-${\kappa}B$ p50 and p65 and the phosphorylation of MAPKs, including p38 and extracellular signal-regulated kinase, in LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 cells. Furthermore, FT-IR analysis showed that the FT-IR spectrum of CCP is similar to that of commercial fucoidan. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that CCP has anti-inflammatory activities and is a potential candidate for the formulation of a functional food ingredient or/and drug to treat inflammatory diseases.

• Korean Medical Education Review
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.47-55
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• 2017

This study was conducted to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a 3-week family medicine clerkship program based on the results of an online survey taken by the students (N=127) and a structured interview with a focus group (n=10), aimed to improve the quality of the clerkship program. The online survey contained questions pertaining to goals, schedule, contents, arrangement, atmosphere, environment, evaluation, and satisfaction regarding the clerkship. The focus group interview addressed the schedule and achievements of the program. Scores were reported on a 5-point Likert scale. Most students were highly satisfied with the overall quality of the clerkship. The structured interview results showed that 97.6% of the clerkship program was executed according to the schedule. The focus group reported a perfect score of 5 points on several measures including: accomplishment of the educational goals of the family medicine clerkship, providing many chances to obtain medical histories and perform physical examinations on real patients, experience with various symptoms and diseases, positive attitudes of faculty members when teaching, notification of the guidelines for evaluation beforehand, well-constructed and effective clerkship schedule, and reflection of student feedback. However, the focus group gave low scores on: support for health accidents of students, access to patient information, enough opportunities to practice clinical skills, appropriate rest facilities for students, and fairness of clerkship evaluation process. In conclusion, the structured evaluation performed after the 3-week clerkship program motivated students and helped them ensure an efficient clerkship. This structured evaluation also suggested basic data to make the professor who is subject of the assessment. This study shows that structured assessment is an effective method which can be used to improve the quality of clerkships.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.581-587
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• 2022

The leather industry generates a large amount of hazardous leather waste of various types every year. Among them, shaving scrap is difficult to recycle because it contains chromium ions. Many studies in recent years have shown that shaving scraps can be processed into various types of valuable products, such as adsorbent, filler, and poultry feed. In this study, collagen peptides were extracted from shaving scraps and structurally modified to be developed as new materials with improved physicochemical properties. First, the chromium ions contained in the shaving scraps were removed using a sodium hydroxide solution, and purified through concentration and low-temperature crystallization. The purified collagen peptide was used to prepare the powder using a spray dryer. The extracted collagen peptides were structurally modified by introducing double bonds by reacting with methacrylic anhydride (MAA), and the product was confirmed by ¹H NMR spectroscopy. Next, a copolymer was prepared by redox polymerization of the modified collagen peptide (MCP) and 2-ethylhexyl acrylate (2-EHA). The structure of the copolymer was qualitatively confirmed by FT-IR. In conclusion, this study confirmed that collagen peptides can be extracted from shaving scrap and converted into new eco-friendly materials through certain treatments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Developmental Biology Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.72-73
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Fisheries Technology Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.225-226
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• 2003

Catfish (S. asotus) and bullhead (P. fulvidraco), economically important aquacultural species, belonging to order Siluriformes including two family Siluridae and Bagridae, respectively, are considered to be closely related to each other by various authors. Two fish species widely inhabit the slow river and stream that flows to the West Sea and South Sea in the Korean Peninsula. (omitted)

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.133-142
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• 2008

Respiration is induced by muscular contraction of the chest and abdomen, resulting in the abdominal volume change. Thus, continuous measurement of the abdominal dimension enables to monitor breathing activity. Conductive rubber cord has been previously introduced and tested to develop wearable application for respiratory measurements. The present study implemented wireless wearable respiratory monitoring system with the conductive rubber cord in the patient's pants. Signal extraction circuitry was developed to obtain the abdominal circumference changes reflecting the lung volume variation caused by respiratory activity. Wireless transmission was followed based on the zigbee communication protocol in a size of 65mm${\times}$105mm easily put in pocket. Successful wireless monitoring of respiration was performed in that breathing frequency was accurately estimated as well as different breathing patterns were easily recognized from the abdominal signal. $CO_2$ inhalation experiment was additionally performed in purpose of quantitative estimation of tidal volume. Air mixed with $0{\sim}5%\;CO_2$was inhaled by 4 normal males and the respiratory air flow rate, abdominal dimension change, and end tidal $CO_2$ concentration were simultaneously measured in steady state. $CO_2$ inhalation increased the tidal volume in normal physiological state with a correlation coefficient of 0.90 between the tidal volume and the end tidal $CO_2$ concentration. The tidal volume estimated from the abdominal signal linearly correlated with the accurate tidal volume measured by pneumotachometer with a correlation coefficient of 0.88 with mean relative error of approximately 8%. Therefore, the tidal volume was accurately estimated by measuring the abdominal dimension change.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.175-182
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• 2017

Microcurrent electrical stimulation(MES) has been used to accelerate recovery of atrophied skeletal muscle. However, convincing stimulation parameters for suppressing muscle atrophy due to injured sciatic nerve remains unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the effective intensity of MES on restraining muscle atrophy with rat model underwent sciatic nerve injury(SNI). Twenty-5-week-old Sprague Dawley male rats were equally assigned to five groups : Control group(Control, CON, n = 4), Denervation group(Denervation, D, n = 4), Denervation with MES of $22{\mu}A$ group(Denervation + $22{\mu}A$, D+22, n = 4), Denervation with MES of $100{\mu}A$ group (Denervation + $100{\mu}A$, D+100 n = 4), Denervation with MES of $400{\mu}A$ group(Denervation + $400{\mu}A$, D+400, n = 4). To induce muscle atrophy, all rats in the D, D+22, D+100, and D+400 groups, were subjected to sciatic nerve injury on their right hindlimb and allowed to have 1 week of resting period. Following this period, rats underwent daily MES(60 min/ a day, 5times/1week) for 4 weeks. After that, we investigate morphological changes in muscle volume by using in vivo micro-computed tomography at week 0, 1, 3 and 5. After 5 weeks, the muscle volume had the highest value in D+400 group, and also noticeably increased in D+100 group compared to it in D group. The results of this study imply that MES with current intensities between $100-400{\mu}A$ can suppress muscle atrophy effectively.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.8-13
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• 2013

Persons with sensorineural hearing impairment have troubles in hearing at noisy environments because of their deteriorated hearing levels and low-spectral resolution of the auditory system and therefore, they use hearing aids to compensate weakened hearing abilities. Various algorithms for hearing loss compensation and environmental noise reduction have been implemented in the hearing aid; however, the performance of these algorithms vary in accordance with external sound situations and therefore, it is important to tune the operation of the hearing aid appropriately in accordance with a wide variety of sound situations. In this study, a sound classification algorithm that can be applied to the hearing aid was suggested. The proposed algorithm can classify the different types of speech situations into four categories: 1) speech-only, 2) noise-only, 3) speech-in-noise, and 4) music-only. The proposed classification algorithm consists of two sub-parts: a feature extractor and a speech situation classifier. The former extracts seven characteristic features - short time energy and zero crossing rate in the time domain; spectral centroid, spectral flux and spectral roll-off in the frequency domain; mel frequency cepstral coefficients and power values of mel bands - from the recent input signals of two microphones, and the latter classifies the current speech situation. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm could classify the kinds of speech situations with an accuracy of over 94.4%. Based on these results, we believe that the proposed algorithm can be applied to the hearing aid to improve speech intelligibility in noisy environments.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.11
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• pp.1760-1768
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• 2020

Vibrio cholerae, cause of the life-threatening diarrheal disease cholera, can be divided into different serogroups based on the structure of its lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which consists of lipid-A, core-polysaccharide and O-antigen polysaccharide (O-PS). The O1 serogroup, the predominant cause of cholera, includes two major serotypes, Inaba and Ogawa. These serotypes are differentiated by the presence of a single 2-O-methyl group in the upstream terminal perosamine of the Ogawa O-PS, which is absent in the Inaba O-PS. To ensure the consistent quality and efficacy of the current cholera vaccines, accurate measurement and characterization of each of these two serotypes is highly important. In this study, we efficiently screened a phage-displayed human synthetic Fab library by bio-panning against Ogawa LPS and finally selected three unique mAbs (D9, E11, and F7) that specifically react with Ogawa LPS. The mAbs bound to Vibrio cholerae vaccine in a dose-dependent fashion. Sequence and structure analyses of antibody paratopes suggest that IgG D9 might have the same fine specificity as that of the murine mAbs, which were shown to bind to the upstream terminal perosamine of Ogawa O-PS, whereas IgGs F7 and E11 showed some different characteristics in the paratopes. To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate the generation of Ogawa-specific mAbs using phage display technology. The mAbs will be useful for identification and quantification of Ogawa LPS in multivalent V. cholerae vaccines.