• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.9
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• pp.1282-1289
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• 2020

Previously, we performed an in silico analysis of the Periplaneta americana transcriptome. Antimicrobial peptide candidates were selected using an in silico antimicrobial peptide prediction method. It was found that periplanetasin-5 had antimicrobial activity against yeast and gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. In the present study, we demonstrated the anti-inflammatory activities of periplanetasin-5 in mouse macrophage Raw264.7 cells. No cytotoxicity was observed at 60 ㎍/ml periplanetasin-5, and treatment decreased nitric oxide production in Raw264.7 cells exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS). In addition, quantitative RT-PCR and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay revealed that periplanetasin-5 reduced cytokine (tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6) expression levels in the Raw264.7 cells. Periplanetasin-5 controlled inflammation by inhibiting phosphorylation of MAPKs, an inflammatory signaling element, and reducing the degradation of IκB. Through LAL assay, LPS toxicity was found to decrease in a periplanetasin-5 dose-dependent manner. Collectively, these data showed that periplanetasin-5 had anti-inflammatory activities, exemplified in LPS-exposed Raw264.7 cells. Thus, we have provided a potentially useful antibacterial peptide candidate with anti-inflammatory activities.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.110-117
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• 2018

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a leading cause of chronic liver disease and is closely associated with metabolic syndrome. In the present study, we observed the effect of ethanol extract of Allium fistulosum (EAF) on NAFLD and have suggested the possibility of using EAF as a natural product for application in the development of a treatment for NAFLD. MATERIALS/METHODS: The preventive effect on hepatic lipid accumulation was estimated by using an oleic acid (OA)-induced NAFLD model in vitro and a Western diet (high-fat high-sucrose; WD)-induced obese mouse model. Animals were divided into three groups (n = 7): normal diet group (ND), WD group, and WD plus 1% EAF group. RESULTS: EAF reduced OA-stimulated lipid accumulation in HepG2 cells in the absence of cellular cytotoxicity and significantly blocked transcriptional activation of sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1 and fatty acid synthase genes. Subsequently, we investigated these effects in vivo in mice fed either ND or WD in the presence or absence of EAF supplementation. In comparison to the ND controls, the WD-fed mice exhibited increases in body weight, liver weight, epididymal fat weight, and accumulation of fat in hepatocytes, and these effects were significantly attenuated by EAF supplementation. CONCLUSIONS: Allium fistulosum attenuates the development of NAFLD, and EAF elicits anti-lipogenic activity in liver. Therefore, EAF represents a promising candidate for use in the development of novel therapeutic drugs or drug combinations for the prevention and treatment of NAFLD.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.99-110
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• 1999

The method of moments, a Lagrangian scheme, considers the zeroth, first, and second moments of the grid cell spatial distributions of the concentration and then advects the concentration by maintaining conservation of the moments. The reasonable inital description of the first and second moments as well as the mean concentration, the zeroth moments, in grid element is important in the method of moments. In this study, the description methods of each initial moment are reviewed, and the method of moments is extended to overcome the restrictions of Courant number. Its performance is compared with those of available Eulerian and Lagrangian schemes. As the results, the method is successfully extended to overcome the stability restriction and is an accurate scheme for the advection simulation of concentration distribution, especially of which the gradient is steep. In addition, the method is very promising scheme in terms of computational efficiency when the mixing is confined in a relatively small region to the entire domain in two-dimensional problem.

• Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.375-379
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• 2018

In the present study, we have investigated whether methylated marliolide could induce NRF2 thereby exerting anti-oxidant effects. MTT assay showed that methylated marliolide did not exhibit cytotoxicity on HaCaT cells. Methylated marliolide induced a higher ARE-dependent luciferase activation in HaCaT ARE-GFP-luciferase cells, compared with resveratrol. In addition, exposure of methylated marliolide to HaCaT cells significantly induced NRF2 and transcriptionally activated HO-1 and NQO1, both of which are target genes of NRF2. Finally, methylated marliolide protected HaCaT cells against TPA-induced oxidative damages on nucleotides and lipids. Together, results shows that methylated marliolide could suppress oxidative damages through induction of NRF2 which implies that methylated marliolide might serve as a good candidate for novel cosmetic ingredient with anti-oxidant effects.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.488-495
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• 2019

Background: Timosaponin AIII (TA3) is a steroidal saponin extracted from Anemarrhena asphodeloides. Here, we investigated the anticancer effects of TA3 in MG63 human osteosarcoma cells. TA3 attenuates migration and invasion of MG63 cells via regulations of two matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), MMP-2 and MMP-9, which are involved with cancer metastasis in various cancer cells. TA3 reduced enzymatic activities and transcriptional expressions of MMP-2 and MMP-9 in MG63 cells. TA3 also inhibited Src, focal adhesion kinase, extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK1/2), c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), p38, ${\beta}-catenin$, and cAMP response element binding signaling, which regulate migration and invasion of cells. TA3 induced apoptosis of MG63 cells via regulations of caspase-3, caspase-7, and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP). Then, we tested several ginsenosides to be used in combination with TA3 for the synergistic anticancer effects. We found that ginsenosides Rb1 and Rc have synergistic effects on TA3-induced apoptosis in MG63 cells. Methods: We investigated the anticancer effects of TA3 and synergistic effects of various ginseng saponins on TA3-induced apoptosis in MG63 cells. To test antimetastatic effects, we performed wound healing migration assay, Boyden chamber invasion assays, gelatin zymography assay, and Western blot analysis. Annexin V/PI staining apoptosis assay was performed to determine the apoptotic effect of TA3 and ginsenosides. Results: TA3 attenuated migration and invasion of MG63 cells and induced apoptosis of MG63 cells. Ginsenosides Rb1 and Rc showed the synergistic effects on TA3-induced apoptosis in MG63 cells. Conclusions: The results strongly suggest that the combination of TA3 and the two ginsenosides Rb1 and Rc may be a strong candidate for the effective antiosteosarcoma agent.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-17
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• 2021

Pseudo relevance feedback (PRF) is a powerful query expansion (QE) technique that prepares queries using the top k pseudorelevant documents and choosing expansion elements. Traditional PRF frameworks have robustly handled vocabulary mismatch corresponding to user queries and pertinent documents; nevertheless, expansion elements are chosen, disregarding similarity to the original query's elements. Word embedding (WE) schemes comprise techniques of significant interest concerning QE, that falls within the information retrieval domain. Deep averaging networks (DANs) defines a framework relying on average word presence passed through multiple linear layers. The complete query is understandably represented using the average vector comprising the query terms. The vector may be employed for determining expansion elements pertinent to the entire query. In this study, we suggest a DANs-based technique that augments PRF frameworks by integrating WE similarities to facilitate Arabic information retrieval. The technique is based on the fundamental that the top pseudo-relevant document set is assessed to determine candidate element distribution and select expansion terms appropriately, considering their similarity to the average vector representing the initial query elements. The Word2Vec model is selected for executing the experiments on a standard Arabic TREC 2001/2002 set. The majority of the evaluations indicate that the PRF implementation in the present study offers a significant performance improvement compared to that of the baseline PRF frameworks.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.23 no.10
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• pp.1269-1274
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• 2019

The paper presents a design of simple four-element microstrip-patch array antenna that is suitable for 5G applications. The proposed array consists of four rectangular microstrip patch elements with semicircular etches made on both sides of each elements. The antenna is fed using the combination of series and corporate feeding networks. The size of the ground is also changed to improve the antenna frequency. Finally, yagi elements are also added to improve the directive gain of the antenna. The presented microstrip patch array is able to achieve wide frequency bandwidth of 21.95-31.86 GHz. The antenna has also attained gain of 9.7 dB at 28 GHz and has maintained high gain and high directivity throughout the frequency band. The proposed array antenna fed by series-corporate feeding network, with low profile and simple structure is a good candidate for 5G applications.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.53-59
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• 2022

DEXA, as the standard areal bone mineral density (aBMD) measurement method, often shows an insuficient correlation between aBMDs of the measured bones and referring bones and is inaccurate due to the mass effect. In contrast, quantitative computer tomography (QCT), as a volumetric BMD (vBMD) measurement method, is being advanced so that it uses less radiation before, owing to improved CT device and computer imaging technology. Because dual-energy CTs can modulate the image signals showing tumor or specific chemicals as well as the ability to measure vBMD, they are expanding their application. For pre-checking vBMD of surgeon-specific bone volume at implantation candidate sites, a finite element creation-based local vBMD measurement technique was developed. The local vBMD measurement function for surgeon-specific shape volumes will be added to clinical imaging systems.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.3
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• pp.293-304
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• 2022

In this work, a novel reliability approach for combined high and low cycle fatigue (CCF) estimation is developed by combining active learning strategy with least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM) (named as ALS-SVM) surrogate model to address the multi-resources uncertainties, including working loads, material properties and model itself. Initially, a new active learner function combining LS-SVM approach with Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is presented to improve computational efficiency with fewer calls to the performance function. To consider the uncertainty of surrogate model at candidate sample points, the learning function employs k-fold cross validation method and introduces the predicted variance to sequentially select sampling. Following that, low cycle fatigue (LCF) loads and high cycle fatigue (HCF) loads are firstly estimated based on the training samples extracted from finite element (FE) simulations, and their simulated responses together with the sample points of model parameters in Coffin-Manson formula are selected as the MC samples to establish ALS-SVM model. In this analysis, the MC samples are substituted to predict the CCF reliability of turbine blades by using the built ALS-SVM model. Through the comparison of the two approaches, it is indicated that the reliability model by linear cumulative damage rule provides a non-conservative result compared with that by the proposed one. In addition, the results demonstrate that ALS-SVM is an effective analysis method holding high computational efficiency with small training samples to gain accurate fatigue reliability.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2174-2183
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• 2021

Helium cooled solid breeder blanket as an important blanket candidate of the Tokamak fusion reactor uses ceramic pebble bed for tritium breeding. Considering the poor effective thermal conductivity of the ceramic breeder pebble bed, thin structure of tritium breeder pebble bed is usually adopted in the blanket design. The container wall has a great influence on the thin pebble bed packing structure, especially for the assembly of mono-sized particles, and thin pebble bed will appear anisotropic effective thermal conductivity phenomenon. In this paper, thin ceramic pebble beds composed of 1 mm diameter Li₄SiO₄ particles are generated by the EDEM 2.7. The effective thermal conductivity of different thickness pebble beds in the three-dimensional directions are analyzed by three-dimensional thermal network method. It is observed that thin Li₄SiO₄ pebble bed showing anisotropic effective thermal conductivity under the practical design size. Normally, the effective thermal conductivity along the bed vertical direction is higher than the horizontal direction due to the gravity effect. As the thickness increases from 10 mm to 40 mm, the effective thermal conductivity of the pebble bed gradually increases.