• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.228-240
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• 2023

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Cocoa consumption is associated with health benefits due to its high content of polyphenols. However, the effects of short-term cocoa consumption remain unclear. We aimed to determine the effects generated by cocoa consumption (for 7 days) in young adults in normoweight and class II obesity. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Before-and-after study was carried out in normoweight (NW) (n = 15) and class II obesity (CIIO) (n = 15) young adults. The NW and CIIO participants consumed 25 and 39 g of cocoa, respectively, per day for 7 days. The effect of cocoa consumption was evaluated on the lipid profile, insulin resistance (IR), and inflammation. Oxidative damage was also examined by assessing the biomarkers of oxidative damage in plasma. In addition, recombinant human insulin was incubated with blood obtained from the participants, and the molecular damage to the hormone was analyzed. RESULTS: Cocoa consumption resulted in decreased low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol in both groups (P = 0.04), while the total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides were maintained at the recommended levels. Initially, IR was detected in the CIIO group (homeostasis model assessment [HOMA] = 4.78 ± 0.4), which is associated with molecular damage to insulin. Interestingly, intervention with cocoa resulted in improved IR (HOMA = 3.14 ± 0.31) (P = 0.0018) as well as molecular damage to insulin. Finally, cocoa consumption significant decreased the arginase activity (P = 0.0249) in the CIIO group; this is a critical enzymatic activity in the inflammatory process associated with obesity. CONCLUSIONS: The short-term consumption of cocoa improves the lipid profile, exerts anti-inflammatory effects, and protects against oxidative damage. Results of this study indicate that cocoa consumption can potentially improve IR and restore a healthy redox status.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.4A
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• pp.647-657
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• 2006

Probabilistic Risk Assessment considering statistically random variables is performed for the preliminary design of a Cable Stayed Bridge, which is Prestressed Concrete Bridge consisted of cable and plate girders, based on the method of Working Stress Design and Strength Design. Component reliabilities of cables and girders have been evaluated using the response surface of the design variables at the selected critical sections based on the maximum shear, positive and negative moment locations. Response Surface Method (RSM) is successfully applied for reliability analyses for this relatively small probability of failure of the complex structure, which is hard to obtain through Monte-Carlo Simulations. or through First Order Second Moment Method that can not easily calculate the derivative terms of implicit limit state functions. For the analysis of system reliability, parallel resistance system consisting of cables and plate girder is changed into series connection system and the result of system reliability of total structure is presented. As a system reliability, the upper and lower probabilities of failure for the structural system have been evaluated and compared with the suggested prediction method for the combination of failure modes. The suggested prediction method for the combination of failure modes reveals the unexpected combinations of element failures in significantly reduced time and efforts compared with the previous permutation method or system reliability analysis method, which calculates upper and lower bound failure probabilities.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.135-156
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• 2010

In the 1640's and 1650's, Milton wrote many prose works on a variety of topics such as education, church polity, divorce, censorship, regicide, tithing, civil liberty, and blindness. Much of his prose shows us turbulent decades of English history. In this period, he also published his first collection of poems and wrote sonnets. He wrote 23 sonnets in his life, and many sonnets Milton wrote after he had become Latin secretary are occasional poems in historical time. Milton's sonnets, as Annabel Patterson says, are a marker in his personal development, in his life, in his career as a writer, and in the history of his time. Four sonnets (15, 16, 17, 23), written between 1648 and 1655, were not published in the collected edition of Milton's poem in 1673. These sonnets, addressed to leaders of the Parliamentary party during the English revolution, Thomas Fairfax, Oliver Cromwell, and Henry Vane, and to his friend Cyriack Skinner, have been known as "commonwealth" sonnets. They are also called as "heroic sonnets" because they have the common style and theme with his later heroic epic poems. These sonnets were finally published in 1694 by Milton's nephew John Phillips. Milton was interested in religious, domestic, and political liberty for his lifetime, and his heroic sonnets also deal with these ideas of liberty. Milton asks civil liberty from Fairfax, freedom in religion from Cromwell, and from Vane for the reconciliation of both. The aim of this article is to examine how the rhetorical strategies of his "left-handed" prose interact with those of his "right-handed" poetry. This paper explores the relationship between Milton's heroic sonnets and his prose works, such as The Second Defense of the People of England, A Treatise of Civil Power, and The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings. Milton deals with the critical issues of religious tolerance, the separation of church and state, liberty of conscience and defense of his blindness, and attempts to define the statesman's role in peacetime England in these heroic sonnets and prose works.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.241-265
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• 2010

This study reviewed the present state and differences of rehabilitation programs of the gambling addiction by comparing with other psychiatric disorder(including psychotic disability and alcohol addiction). This study also intended to suggest necessities, meanings and inherent fields of the rehabilitation in gambling addiction. First of all, the government and a few gambling industries run clinic centers for gamblers and their families, but have been lacked rehabilitation services for social comeback and adaptation or devaluated rehabilitation services than therapies. Gambling addict didn't have impairments of the cognitive function and their daily abilities was better than any other psychiatric disorders. But Damage of social role or function of gambling addiction was severe. And it is caused by nonadaptive nature of gambling behavior, personality/emotional change through gambling addiction process, and previous personality problem etc. There are many severe failure of social role and its attendant bankrupcy, family's problems and social poverty in gambling addiction, Therefore, important fields in the rehabilitation of gambling addiction should be services for basic social comeback support service, credit recovery support, monetary management, support of rehabilitation of family and vocational rehabilitation. Finally, the significance and critical points of the current study has been discussed as well.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.41-48
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• 2023

Recently, there has been a sharp increase in the damages caused by ransomware across various sectors of society, including individuals, businesses, and nations. Ransomware is a malicious software that infiltrates user computer systems, encrypts important files, and demands a ransom in exchange for restoring access to the files. Due to its diverse and sophisticated attack techniques, ransomware is more challenging to detect than other types of malware, and its impact is significant. Therefore, there is a critical need for accurate detection and mitigation methods. To achieve precise ransomware detection, an inference engine of a detection system must possess knowledge of ransomware features. In this paper, we propose a model to extract and classify the characteristics of ransomware for accurate detection of ransomware, calculate the similarity of the extracted characteristics, reduce the dimension of the characteristics, group the reduced characteristics, and classify the characteristics of ransomware into attack tools, inflow paths, installation files, command and control, executable files, acquisition rights, circumvention techniques, collected information, leakage techniques, and state changes of the target system. The classified characteristics were applied to the existing ransomware to prove the validity of the classification, and later, if the inference engine learned using this classification technique is installed in the detection system, most of the newly emerging and variant ransomware can be detected.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.218-230
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• 2024

Recently, many studies have been conducted for safety management in construction sites by incorporating computer vision. Anchor box parameters are used in state-of-the-art deep learning-based object detection and segmentation, and the optimized parameters are critical in the training process to ensure consistent accuracy. Those parameters are generally tuned by fixing the shape and size by the user's heuristic method, and a single parameter controls the training rate in the model. However, the anchor box parameters are sensitive depending on the type of object and the size of the object, and as the number of training data increases. There is a limit to reflecting all the characteristics of the training data with a single parameter. Therefore, this paper suggests a method of applying multiple parameters optimized through data split to solve the above-mentioned problem. Criteria for efficiently segmenting integrated training data according to object size, number of objects, and shape of objects were established, and the effectiveness of the proposed data split method was verified through a comparative study of conventional scheme and proposed methods.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.34 no.7
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• pp.520-530
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• 2024

Tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) play a crucial role in maintaining cellular homeostasis. When the function of these genes is lost, it can lead to cellular plasticity that drives the development of various cancers, including small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), which is known for its aggressive nature. SCLC is primarily driven by numerous loss-of-function mutations in TSGs, often involving genes that encode epigenetic regulators. These mutations pose a significant therapeutic challenge as they are not directly targetable. However, understanding the molecular changes resulting from these mutations might provide insights for developing tumor intervention strategies. We propose that despite the heterogeneous genomic landscape of SCLC, the effects of mutations in patient tumors converge on a few critical pathways that drive malignancy. Specifically, alterations in epigenetic regulators lead to transcriptional dysregulation, pushing mutant cells toward a highly plastic state that makes them immune evasive and highly metastatic. This review will highlight studies showing how an imbalance of epigenetic regulators with opposing functions leads to the loss of immune recognition markers, effectively hiding tumor cells from the immune system. Additionally, we will discuss the role of epigenetic regulators in maintaining neuroendocrine features and how aberrant transcriptional control promotes epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition during tumor development. Although these pathways seem distinct, we emphasize that they often share common molecular drivers and mediators. Understanding the connection among frequently altered epigenetic regulators will provide valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying SCLC development, potentially revealing preventive and therapeutic vulnerabilities for SCLC and other cancers with similar mutations.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.272-281
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• 2023

Ecosystem observatories are burgeoning globally in an endeavour to detect national and global scale trends in the state of biodiversity and ecosystems in an era of rapid environmental change. In this paper we highlight the additional importance of regional scale outcomes of such infrastructure, through an introduction to the Great Western Woodlands TERN (Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network) SuperSite, and key findings from three gradient plot networks that are part of this infrastructure. The SuperSite was established in 2012 in the 160,000 km² Great Western Woodlands region, in a collaboration involving 12 organisations. This region is globally significant for its largely intact, diverse landscapes, including the world's largest Mediterranean-climate woodlands and highly diverse sandplain shrublands. The dominant woodland eucalypts are fire-sensitive, requiring hundreds of years to regrow after fire. Old-growth woodlands are highly valued by Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and managing impacts of climate change and the increasing extent of intense fires are key regional management challenges. Like other TERN SuperSites, the Great Western Woodlands TERN SuperSite includes a core eddy-covariance flux tower measuring exchanges of carbon, water and energy between the vegetation and atmosphere, along with additional environmental and biodiversity monitoring around the tower. The broader SuperSite incorporates three gradient plot networks. Two of these represent aridity gradients, in sandplains and woodlands, informing regional climate adaptation and biodiversity management by characterising biodiversity turnover along spatial climate gradients and acting as sentinels for ecosystem change over time. For example, the sandplains transect has demonstrated extremely high spatial turnover rates in plant species, that challenge traditional approaches to biodiversity conservation. The third gradient plot network represents a 400-year fire-age gradient in Eucalyptus salubris woodlands. It has enabled characterisation of post-fire recovery of vegetation, birds and invertebrates over multi-century timeframes, and provided tools that are directly informing management to reduce stand-replacing fires in eucalypt woodlands. By building regional partnerships and applying globally or nationally consistent methodologies to regional scale questions, ecological observatories have the power not only to detect national and global scale trends in biodiversity and ecosystems, but to directly inform environmental decisions that are critical at regional scales.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.329-346
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• 2024

In this study, it is aimed to investigate the vertical seismic performance of reinforced concrete (R/C) frame buildings in two different building stocks, one of which consists of those designed as per the previous Turkish Seismic Code (TSC-2007) that does not consider the vertical earthquake load, and the other of which consists of those designed as per the new Turkish Seismic Code (TSCB-2018) that considers the vertical earthquake load. For this aim, three R/C buildings with heights of 15 m, 24 m and 33 m are designed separately as per TSC-2007 and TSCB-2018 based on some limitations in terms of seismic zone, soil class and structural behavior factor (Rx/Ry) etc. The vertical earthquake motion effects are identified according to the linear time-history analyses (LTHA) that are performed separately for only horizontal (H) and combined horizontal+vertical (H+V) earthquake motions. LTHA is performed to predict how vertical earthquake motion affects the response of the designed buildings by comparing the linear response parameters of the base shear force, the base overturning, the base axial force, top-story vertical displacement. Nonlinear time-history analysis (NLTHA) is generally required for energy dissipative buildings, not required for design of buildings. In this study, the earthquake records are scaled to force the buildings in the linear range. Since nonlinear behavior is not expected from the buildings herein, the nonlinear time-history analysis (NLTHA) is not considered. Eleven earthquake acceleration records are considered by scaling them to the design spectrum given in TSCB-2018. The base shear force is obtained not to be affected from the combined H+V earthquake load for the buildings. The base overturning moment outcomes underline that the rigidity of the frame system in terms of the dimensions of the columns can be a critical parameter for the influence of the vertical earthquake motion on the buildings. In addition, the building stock from TSC-2007 is estimated to show better vertical earthquake performance than that of TSCB-2018. The vertical earthquake motion is found out to be highly effective on the base axial force of 33 m building rather than 15 m and 24 m buildings. Thus, the building height is a particularly important parameter for the base axial force. The percentage changes in the top-story vertical displacement of the buildings designed for both codes show an increase parallel to that in the base axial force results. To extrapolate more general results, it is clear to state that many buildings should be analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.75-93
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• 2024

This study examines the impact of moving to an opportunity-rich area on an individual's wage income to identify the relationship between regional disparities in opportunities throughout a person's life cycle and life outcomes. Based on the Graduate Occupational Mobility Survey (GOMS) provided by the Korea Employment Information Service, individuals with similar life experience prior to regional mobility were selected and analyzed using the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method. Specifically, the life cycle was classified into stages such as pre-high school, university entrance period, and employment period. Then, a path model was established to analyze regional mobility, education, employment, and wage income by life cycle stage. The analysis results indicate that the life cycle stage where regional mobility had the greatest impact on an individual's economic performance, that is, the stage where the impact of opportunity disparities was most unequal, was the university entrance period. Additionally, moving to an opportunity-rich area was a critical factor that cumulatively affected subsequent life. Hence, pre-high school mobility was also noteworthy as it induced life in the central area later on. Lastly, while parental income itself was influential, but when combined with regional mobility, it could act as a means of transferring wealth to the next generation. These results suggest that the state should strive to alleviate the regional imbalance around universities by fostering universities outside the capital region and reduce the possibility of the influence of parents' socio-economic background on regional mobility.