• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.9
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• pp.1126-1133
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• 2022

This study investigated the contribution of lipoxygenase (LOX) inhibitors, nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA), tetra-O-methyl nordihydroguaiaretic acid (M₄N) and zileuton (ZIL), and thromboxane A2 (TXA₂) inhibitor 4,5-diphenylimidazole (DPI) in the proliferation of Brucella abortus infection. None of the compounds affected the uptake of Brucella into the macrophages. We determined the effect of neutralizing leukotriene B4 (LTB4) receptor and showed that the uptake of the bacteria was inhibited at 30 min post-infection. M₄N treatment attenuated intracellular survival of Brucella at 2 h post-incubation but it was not observed in the succeeding time points. DPI treatment showed reduced survival of Brucella at 24 h post-incubation while blocking LTB4 receptor was observed to have a lower intracellular growth at 48 h post-incubation suggesting different action of the inhibitors in the course of the survival of Brucella within the cells. Reduced proliferation of the bacteria in the spleens of mice was observed in animals treated with ZIL or DPI. Increased serum cytokine level of TNF-α and MCP-1 was observed in mice treated with M₄N or ZIL while a lower IFN-γ level in ZIL-treated mice and a higher IL-12 serum level in DPI-treated mice were observed at 7 d post-infection. At 14 d post-infection, ZIL-treated mice displayed reduced serum level of IL-12 and IL-10. Overall, inhibition of 5-LOX or TXA₂ or a combination therapy promises a potential alternative therapy against B. abortus infection. Furthermore, strong ligands for LTB4 receptor could also be a good candidate for the control of Brucella infection.

• Journal of Appropriate Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.37-44
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• 2020

Medical waste is any kind of waste that contains infectious material and recommended not to be transferred for infection control. As a means of disposal, incineration has better points than dumping or landfill in the quantity reduction, odorless and nonhazardous. However, open burning and incineration of health care wastes under bad circumstances, can result in the emission of environmental pollutants to air. A burial of biological waste brings pollution of soil and water. Most of sub divisional hospitals in Fiji transfer their medical wastes to divisional hospitals for incineration. In 2011, 62,518 kg of medical waste was incinerated in the three divisional hospitals. However, some medical wastes are considered as general waste and burnt or sent to landfill site, some are buried on site in some sub-divisional hospitals. In this regards, urgent education is necessary for awareness promotion to relevant personnel in medical waste treatment. On site incineration using small scale incinerator is more recommended than transportation of medical wastes treatment in Fiji. Moreover, remotely controllable and fixable small scale of incinerator is more desirable in sub-divisional hospitals. It is recommended that Fiji government to set up a legal framework for medical waste management (MWM), to develop specific guidelines for MWM, to set up a training system for MWM to ensure that all relevant personnel are trained, to develop a monitoring and supervision system for MWM, to clarify the future financing of MWM activities, and to improve the MWM infrastructure.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.64 no.6
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• pp.65-75
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• 2022

Livestock industry in Korea has been growing rapidly and has reached 23 trillion Korean won in 2021. This study focuses on broiler, which is one of the largest sectors in livestock industry. As the effects of climate change get more serious, primary industry such as livestock industry is fragile to climate change since it directly interacts with nature. Therefore, maintaining suitable rearing environment is important. One of the most frequently used ventilation type for controlling the rearing environment of broiler house, tunnel ventilation, causes frequent air velocity fluctuation which makes maintaining the rearing environment important. By measuring the air temperature, relative humidity and air velocity in various points inside the broiler house, the internal thermal environment uniformity was analyzed according to length, width and zone. The experimental house was found to have dead zone with high air temperature, relative humidity and low air velocity near the end of the inlet and at the end of the broiler house. By using heat stress index to analyze quantitatively, zone with highest heat stress index was found to increase by 7.55% compared to the lowest zone. As a result, to maintain uniform rearing environment inside the broiler house, different factors must be measured and analyzed and used to operate the environmental control facilities.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.9-24
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• 2022

Currently, a vast amount of hydrologic data is accumulated in real-time through automatic water level measuring instruments in agricultural reservoirs. At the same time, false and missing data points are also increasing. The applicability and reliability of quality control of hydrological data must be secured for efficient agricultural water management through calculation of water supply and disaster management. Considering the characteristics of irregularities in hydrological data caused by irrigation water usage and rainfall pattern, the Korea Rural Community Corporation is currently applying the Hampel filter as a water level data quality management method. This method uses window size as a key parameter, and if window size is large, distortion of data may occur and if window size is small, many outliers are not removed which reduces the reliability of the corrected data. Thus, selection of the optimal window size for individual reservoir is required. To ensure reliability, we compared and analyzed the RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) and NSE (Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient) of the corrected data and the daily water level of the RIMS (Rural Infrastructure Management System) data, and the automatic outlier detection standards used by the Ministry of Environment. To select the optimal window size, we used the classification performance evaluation index of the error matrix and the rainfall data of the irrigation period, showing the optimal values at 3 h. The efficient reservoir automatic calibration technique can reduce manpower and time required for manual calibration, and is expected to improve the reliability of water level data and the value of water resources.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.63-70
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• 2022

The essence of the definition of "tolerance" is analyzed. Motivational, knowledge and behavioral criteria for tolerance of future teachers are highlighted. Indicators of the motivational criterion are the formation of value orientations, motivational orientation, and the development of empathy. Originality and productivity of thoughts and judgments, tact of dialogue, pedagogical ethics and tact are confirmed as indicators of the knowledge criterion. The behavioral criterion includes social activity as a life position, emotional and volitional endurance, and self-control of one's own position. The formation of tolerance is influenced by a number of factors: the social environment, the information society, existing stereotypes and ideas in society, the system of education and relationships between people, and the system of values. The main factors that contribute to the education of tolerance in future teachers are highlighted. Analyzing the structure of tolerance, it is necessary to distinguish the following functions of tolerance: - motivational (determines the composition and strength of motivation for social activity and behavior, promotes the development of life experience, because it allows the individual to accept other points of view and vision of the solution; - informational (understanding the situation, the personality of another person); - regulatory (tolerance has a close connection with the strong - willed qualities of a person: endurance, selfcontrol, self-regulation, which were formed in the process of Education); - adaptive (allows the individual to develop in the process of joint activity a positive, emotional, stable attitude to the activity itself, which the individual carries out, to the object and subject of joint relations). The implementation of pedagogical functions in the information society: educational, organizational, predictive, informational, communicative, controlling, etc. provides grounds to consider pedagogical tolerance as an integrative personal quality of a representative of any profession in the field of "person-person". The positions that should become conditions for the formation of tolerance of the future teacher in the information society are listed.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.198-209
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• 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a Korean Adult Patients Delirium Screening Tool (K-APDS) for those admitted to general wards, and to verify its reliability and validity. Methods: For the development of the tool, 12 items were derived through the results of literature review and focus group interviews with general ward nurses, and the content validity was confirmed by experts. To verify the reliability and validity of the developed tool, 317 adult patients who were admitted to general wards of three tertiary general hospitals from October to November 2022 were evaluated by the attending nurse and data were collected. Results: After factor analysis for construct validity verification, two factors were extracted, which explained 60.1% of the total variance. After the validation of the control group, the difference in the delirium incidence scores calculated using the K-APDS between the delirium group and non-delirium group was very significant (Z=-10.82, p<.001). To verify the criterion validity, K-APDS, Delirium Observation Screening, and Pearson's correlation coefficient were checked and found to be .94 (p<.001). The predictive validity test reported that the sensitivity was 91.1%, specificity was 82.4%, positive predictive value was 52.6%, and negative predictive value was 97.8%. The reliability of K-APDS was found to be high with Cronbach's ⍺=.91. Conclusion: K-APDS can screen for delirium with 2 or more points, excellent validity and reliability have been verified. Therefore, this tool could be applied immediately in the clinical field, and will contribute to the early detection of delirium, enabling rapid interventions.

• Restorative Dentistry and Endodontics
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.6.1-6.14
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• 2023

Objectives: This study evaluated the effects of high-plasticity mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA-HP) on the activity of M1 and M2 macrophages, compared to white MTA (Angelus). Materials and Methods: Peritoneal inflammatory M1 (from C57BL/6 mice) and M2 (from BALB/c mice) macrophages were cultured in the presence of the tested materials. Cell viability (MTT and trypan blue assays), adhesion, phagocytosis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β production were evaluated. Parametric analysis of variance and the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test were used. Results were considered significant when p < 0.05. Results: The MTT assay revealed a significant decrease in M1 metabolism with MTA-HP at 24 hours, and with MTA and MTA-HP later. The trypan blue assay showed significantly fewer live M1 at 48 hours and live M2 at 48 and 72 hours with MTA-HP, compared to MTA. M1 and M2 adherence and phagocytosis showed no significant differences compared to control for both materials. Zymosan A stimulated ROS production by macrophages. In the absence of interferon-γ, TNF-α production by M1 did not significantly differ between groups. For M2, both materials showed higher TNF-α production in the presence of the stimulus, but without significant between-group differences. Likewise, TGF-β production by M1 and M2 macrophages was not significantly different between the groups. Conclusions: M1 and M2 macrophages presented different viability in response to MTA and MTA-HP at different time points. Introducing a plasticizer into the MTA vehicle did not interfere with the activity of M1 and M2 macrophages.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.255-262
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• 2019

The informatics curriculum which was revised in 2015 presents the growth of creative and convergent talents as a main goal, and what is essential in the growth of creative and convergent talents is Computational Thinking(CT). In this study, in line with the goal of the growth of creative and convergent talents, the subject of IoT technology and liberal arts and natural sciences integration course was combined with the contents of informatics textbook, and the teaching-learning program was developed. In order to verify the effect of the developed teaching-learning program, the experimental research was conducted, and as a result of study, the mean of the experimental group was 10 points higher than that of the control group. Therefore, it could be known that there was an effect in the teaching-learning program suggested in this study. It is expected that the teaching-learning program suggested in this study can induce the learning motive and interest in SW education by directly implementing SW skill to the various fields of a real life through CT education based on Iot as well as a programing language, and improve convergent and scientific thinking through the experience of solving the problems which are blended with many subjects through liberal arts and natural sciences integration course, and designing them creatively.

• Journal of Consumption Culture
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.67-90
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• 2012

When consumers choose healthy foods, they base their buying decisions on health-related food labeling and quality assessment of taste, health, and price. Moreover, both purchase experience and opinions of family and friends affect consumer choices. Focusing on these points, this study examined the effects of health-related food labeling on consumer choices by adding two variables-quality assessment of taste, health, and price and purchase experience-to the model of the theory of planned behavior. We also used structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses. In the study, health-related food labeling includes organic labeling, nutrient claims, and food additive labeling. We conducted a mail survey among 300 married women who buy cheese slices for their children more than once a month. It was discovered that health-related food labeling positively affected the level of quality assessment of taste, health, and price, and consequently led to positive attitudes and purchase intentions. Particularly, health-related food labeling positively influenced attitude toward using products without assessing the quality of taste, health, and price. The level of quality assessment of price positively affected attitude toward using and purchasing products, and purchase experience positively affected attitude toward using and purchasing products, and purchase intentions. The relationship between attitude to purchasing products and purchase intentions was the most positive, and the relationship between perceived behavioral control and purchase intentions was not significant. Overall, this study essentially contributes to the development of a theoretical framework of food labeling and consumer choices, which includes quality assessment of taste, health, and price and purchase experience, by using the theory of planned behavior.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.62-78
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• 2023

Objectives : This study aims to assess the impact of acupotomy on migraine through an examination of clinical studies conducted since 2015. Methods : We conducted a comprehensive search for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and non-randomized controlled trials (nRCTs) related to acupotomy treatment for migraine, utilizing five Korean online databases (OASIS, Science ON, DBPIA, KISS, RISS), as well as four foreign online databases (CNKI, PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library). We identified a total of 10 relevant studies for analysis. Participants characteristics, treatment points, combination treatments, treatment cycles or frequencies, evaluation indices, efficacy, and adverse events were analyzed. The risk of bias in the 10 RCTs was assessed using the Revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials (RoB 2.0). Results : A total of 931 participants were included in 10 studies. In the intervention group, the average duration of migraine morbidity ranged from 15.5±4.5 months to 15.9±4.2 years. Six studies based their diagnoses on the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD), while five studies relied on Chinese diagnostic criteria. All studies specified the treatment area as the region exhibiting tenderness or induration on the head and neck. Treatment cycles ranged from a minimum of 2 days to a maximum of 1 week, with the number of days per treatment course varied from 5 days to 4 weeks. The diameter of acupuncture needles used varied between 0.3 mm and 1 mm. Of the eight studies specifying needle length, the shortest was 20 mm, and the longest was 40 mm. A total of eight evaluation indices were employed, with total efficacy rate (TER) and visual analogue scale (VAS) being the most frequently used. Statistically, all intervention groups showed more significant results compared to the control groups. Adverse events were reported in only two studies within the intervention group. Overall, the risk of bias assessment for the selected RCTs ranged from 'some concerns' to 'high risk of bias.' Conclusions : This study showed that acupotomy treatments for migraine were effective.