• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.114-119
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• 2006

Benzo[a]pyrene is a representative ecotoxicant in marine environment and a model compound of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which has an ability to bioaccumulate in aquatic organisms. This study aimed to identify molecular biomarkers suitable for assessing environmental pollution using a microarray technique. We examined the effects of benzo[a]pyrene on gene expressions in the rockfish, Sebastes schlegeli. We constructed the subtractive cDNA library with hepatic RNA from benzo[a]pyrene-exposed and non-exposed control fish. From the library 10,000 candidate clones were selected randomly and cDNA microarray was constructed. We determined benzo[a]pyrene-responsive genes using a high-density microarray. Statistical analysis showed that approximately 400 genes are significantly induced or reduced by benzo[a]pyrene treatment ($2\;{\mu}m$). Especially gene expression changes of 4 candidate clones among the up- or down-regulated genes were investigated in 6, 12 and 24 hr BaP-exposed fish groups. Many methods have been developed to monitor marine environmental status, which depend on quantifying the levels of the toxic components in polluted seawater or on ecological accessing, such as species diversity or richness. However, those methods could not provide information on physiological or genetic changes induced by such environmental stresses. Comparing with the conventional methods, these data will propose that benzo[a]pyrene-responsive genes can be useful for biological risk assessment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on marine organism at molecular level.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2011

Purpose: Blow-out fractures can be reduced using various methods. The orbital reconstruction technique using a balloon under endoscopic control has advantages over other methods. However, this method has some problems too, such as postoperative follow-up, management of the balloon catheter, and reduction of the posterior orbital floor. Thus, we developed a simple, effective method for orbital floor reduction that involves molding and shaping the antral balloon catheter. Methods: A 0, 30, or $70^{\circ}$, 4-mm endoscope was placed though a two-point, 5-mm maxillary antrostomy. The balloon catheter is placed directly at the orbital apex to reconstruct the anterior shelf (spherical shape), while it is turned in a U-shape towards the anterior maxilla for the posterior shelf (elliptical shape). Orbital floor defects, compound or comminuted fractures are reconstructed with alloplastic materials through an open lid incision under the endoscopic control. Results: This technique was applied to ten patients with orbital floor fractures: five anterior shelf and five posterior shelf fracture, respectively. Four of the patients had zygomatico-orbital fractures, while the rest had isolated orbital floor fractures. Two patients were given porous polyethylene implants Synpor$^{(R)}$) and three underwent reconstruction with a resorbable mesh plate. No complication associated with this technique was identified. Conclusion: The freestyle placement and selection of a urinary balloon catheter under endoscopic control and the preoperative estimation of the volume enhanced the stabilization of the orbital contour. This method improves the adaptation of the orbital floor without the risk of injuring the surrounding orbital contents, dissecting blindly, or using sharp traction. One drawback of this method is the patient's discomfort from the catheter during treatment.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.257-264
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• 2009

Gardenia yellow, extracted from gardenia fruit, has been widely used as a coloring agent for foods, and thus, safety of its usage is of prime importance. In the current study, short-term genotoxicity assays were conducted to evaluate the potential genotoxic effects of gardenia yellow. The gardenia yellow used was found to contain 0.057 mg/g of genipin, a known biologically active compound of the gardenia fruit extract. Ames test did not reveal any positive results. No clastogenicity was detected by a chromosomal aberration test, even on evaluation at the highest feasible concentration of gardenia yellow. Gardenia yellow was also shown to be non-genotoxic using an in vitro comet assay and a micronucleus test with L5178Y cells, although a marginal increase in DNA damage and micronuclei frequency was reported in the respective assays. Additionally, in vivo micronucleus test results clearly demonstrated that oral administration of gardenia yellow did not induce micronuclei formation in the bone marrow cells of male ICR mice. Taken together, our results indicate that gardenia yellow is not mutagenic to bacterial cells, and that it does not cause chromosomal damage in mammalian cells, either in vitro or in vivo.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.387-397
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• 2003

During the first half of twentieth century, even though the importance of non-calorie essential micronutrients of 13 vitamins and 17 minerals has been known to alleviate nutritional disorder; the primary objective of agriculture and plant breeding programs has been to increase the productivity and seed yields, and macronutrients of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates made up the bulk of foodstuff which were used primarily as an energy source. In the last decade it has been found that non-essential micronutrients encompass a vast group of phytochemicals including antioxidants that are not strictly required in the diet but when present at sufficient levels work as health-promoting chemicals. Nowadays agricultural crops are grown for health rather than for food or fiber, and modifying the nutritional compositions of plant foods has become an urgent health issue. To ensure an adequate intake of essential vitamins and minerals, and to increase the consumption of health-promoting phytochemicals, the researches on plant secondary metabolism have been made. The attempt to improve nutritional quality of crops has been blocked by a lack of basic knowledge of plant metabolism. The advent of genomics era enabled new approaches to make crossing regardless of species, family, or phylum barriers, and the accumulation in our basic knowledge on plant secondary metabolism during the coming decade would be tremendous. As the major staple crops contain insufficient amount of many micronutrients, fortification strategy will be a necessary practice. Elevated intake of specific vitamins, C, E, and $\beta$-carotene, mineral selenium, antioxidants, and phytochemicals significantly reduces the risk of chronic disease such as cancer, cardiovascular disorder, diabetis, and other degenerative disease associated with aging. As the attempt to improve the nutritional quality of crops requires the basic knowledges on plant metabolism, plant biochemistry, human physiology, and food chemistry, strong interdisplinary collaboration among plant biotechnologists, human nutritionists, and food scientists will be needed. Inhibition of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other degenerative disorder may be the biggest goal facing nutritional plant breeders. But the assumption that simply increasing dietary level of any compound will necessarily improve human health is a dangerous idea because many plant secondary products and dietary contaminants have paradoxical (hermetic) effects. Before biotechnical manipulation is undertaken to elevate or reduce any individual constituent of crops, the contribution of the micronutrient to human health must first be investigated.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2001

The main purpose of applying the chlorination process during water treatment is for disinfection. Research results, however, indicate that disinfection by-products including trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids, haloacetonitriles, haloketones, and chloropicrin can be produced by chlorination process. Some of these disinfection by-products are known to be potential human carcinogens. This three-year project is designed to establish a standard analysis procedure for disinfection by-products in drinking water and investigate the distribution and sources of specific disinfection by-products. The occurrence level of DBPs in drinking water was below 50$\mu\textrm{g}$/L in most cases. THMs in plant effluent accounted for 48% of all DBPs measured, whereas HAAs accounted for 24%, HANs 14%, haloketones 5%, chloral hydrate 7%, and chloropicrin 2%. Chloroform was found to be the major THMs compound (71%), followed by bromodichloromethane (21%), dibro-mochloromethane (7%), and bromoform (3%), The concentration of DBPs formed in distribution systems increased from those detected in plant effluent. Results would play an important role in exposure assessment as a part of the risk assessment process, and would give basic information for establishment of disinfection by-products reduction and management procedures.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.503-513
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to figure out family member's perceptions of side rail use in geriatric hospital by Cavanagh's content analysis with in-depth interview. This finding of the study suggests that the six themes of these perceptions are precautionary safety supervision, movement convenience, ritualistic nursing, physical restraint, danger of wounds, and alternative methods in an older person ward, and that the cause of recognized perceptions is not based on actual events, but rather on relatives' perceived protective value. With the transition of medical industry environment, there is a significant emphasis on efficacy and effectiveness of practice, risk management and evidence-based practice. However, the issue of side rail use and physical restraints remains unsolved in care of older people. Nurses claim the necessity of regimented protocol and clarification from professional organization regarding the side rail use.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.397-403
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• 2017

Objective : Cranioplasty using a cryopreserved skull flap is a wide spread practice. The most well-known complications of cranioplasty are postoperative surgical infections and bone flap resorption. In order to find biological evidence of cryopreserved cranioplasty, we investigated microorganism contamination of cryopreserved skulls and cultured osteoblasts from cryopreserved skulls. Methods : Cryopreserved skull flaps of expired patients stored in a bone bank were used. Cryopreserved skulls were packaged in a plastic bag and wrapped with cotton cloth twice. After being crushed by a hammer, cancellous bone between the inner and outer table was obtained. The cancellous bone chips were thawed in a water bath of $30^{\circ}C$ rapidly. After this, osteoblast culture and general microorganism culture were executed. Osteoblast cultures were done for 3 weeks. Microorganism cultures were done for 72 hours. Results : A total of 47 cryopreserved skull flaps obtained from craniectomy was enrolled. Of the sample, 11 people were women, and the average age of patients was 55.8 years. Twenty four people had traumatic brain injuries, and 23 people had vascular diseases. Among the patients with traumatic brain injuries, two had fracture compound comminuted depressed. The duration of cryopreservation was, on average, 83.2 months (9 to 161 months). No cultured osteoblast was observed. No microorganisms were cultured. Conclusion : In this study, neither microorganisms nor osteoblasts were cultured. The biological validity of cryopreserved skulls cranioplasty was considered low. However, the usage of cryopreserved skulls for cranioplasty is worthy of further investigation in the aspect of cost-effectiveness and risk-benefit of post-cranioplasty infection.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.270-272
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• 2022

Safety is one of the factors that prevent clinical drugs from being distributed on the market. In the case of neurotoxicity, which is the main cause of safety problems caused by drug side effects, risk assessment of drugs and compounds is required in advance. Currently, experiments for testing drug safety are based on animal experimetns, which have the disadvantage of being time-consuming and expensive. Therefore in order to solve the above problem, a neurotoxic prediction model through an in silico experiment was suggested. In this study, the category of neurotoxicity was expanded using a unified medical language system and various related compound data were obtained based on an integrated database. The SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System) of the obtained compounds were converted into fingerprints and it is used as input of machine learning. The model finally predicts the presence or absence of neurotoxicity. The experiment proposed in this study can reduce the time and cost required for the in vivo experiment. Furthermore, it is expected to shorten the research period for new drug development and reduce the burden of suspension of development.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2013.01a
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• pp.467-474
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• 2013

Construction contactors must continuously seek to improve their cash flows, which reside at the heart of their financial success. They require careful planning, analysis, and optimization to avoid the risk of bankruptcy, remain profitable, and secure long-term growth. Sources of cash include bank loans and retained earnings, which are conceptually similar in that they both incur a cost of capital. Financial management therefore requires accurate yet customizable modeling capabilities that can quantify all expenses, including said cost of capital. However, currently existing cash flow models in construction engineering and management have strongly simplified the manner in which interest is assessed, which may even lead to overstating it at a disadvantage to contractors. The variable nature of cash balances, especially in the early phases of construction projects, contribute to this challenging issue. This research therefore extends a new cash flow model with an accurate interest calculation. It utilizes singularity functions, so called because of their ability to flexibly model changes across any number of different ranges. The interest function is continuous for activity costs of any duration and allows the realistic case that activities may begin between integer time periods, which are often calendar months. Such fractional interest calculation has hitherto been lacking from the literature. It also provides insights into the self-referential behavior of compound interest for variable cash balances. The contribution of this study is twofold; augmenting the corpus of financial analysis theory with a new interest formula, whose strengths include its generic nature and that it can be evaluated at any fractional value of time, and providing construction managers with a tool to help improve and fine-tune the financial performance of their projects.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.185-200
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• 2022

The risk of various hazardous substances in aquatic environment comprises not only the concentration of substances in the environmental medium but also their accumulation in fish through complex food web and the health risks to humans through the fish. In Korea, the monitoring of residual toxicant in aquatic ecosystems began in 2016 following the enforcement of the Acts on registration and evaluation for the management of chemicals used in daily life (consumer chemical products), and attention has been paid to potentially hazardous substances attributed to them. Recently, studies have been carried out to investigate the distribution of these hazardous substances in the ecosystem and calculate their emission factors. These include the accumulation and transport of substances, such as detergents, dyes, fragrances, cosmetics, and disinfectants, within trophic levels. This study summarizes the results of recently published research on the inflow and distribution of hazardous substances from consumer chemical products to the aquatic environment and presents the scientific implication. Based on studies on aquatic environment monitoring techniques, this study suggests research directions for monitoring the residual concentration and distribution of harmful chemical substances in aquatic ecosystems. In particular, this study introduces the directions for research on trophic position analysis using compound specific isotope analysis and trophic magnification factors, which are needed to fulfill the contemporary requirements of selecting target fish based on the survey of major fish that inhabit domestic waters and assessment of associated health risk. In addition, this study provides suggestions for future biota monitoring and chemical research in Korea.