• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.450-461
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• 2022

Purpose: DNA damage and repair responses are induced by metabolic diseases and environmental stress. The balance of DNA repair response and the antioxidant system play a role in modulating the entire body's health. This study uses a high-fat and high-calorie (HFC) drink to examine the new roles of a plant-based multivitamin/mineral supplement with phytonutrients (PMP) for regulating the antioxidant system and cellular DNA repair signaling in the body resulting from metabolic stress. Methods: In a double-blind, randomized, parallel-arm, and placebo-controlled trial, healthy adults received a capsule containing either a PMP supplement (n = 12) or a placebo control (n = 12) for 8 weeks. Fasting blood samples were collected at 0, 1, and 3 hours after consuming a HFC drink (900 kcal). The blood samples were analyzed for the following oxidative stress makers: areas under the curve reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, plasma malondialdehyde (MDA), erythrocytes MDA, urinary MDA, oxidized low-density lipoprotein, and the glutathione:oxidized glutathione ratio at the time points. We further examined the related protein levels of DNA repair signaling (pCHK1 (Serine 345), p-P53 (Serine 15), and 𝛄H2AX expression) in the plasma of subjects to evaluate the time-dependent effects of a HFC drink. Results: In a previous study, we showed that PMP supplementation for eight weeks reduces the ROS and endogenous DNA damage in human blood plasma. Results of the current study further show that PMP supplementation is significantly correlated with antioxidant defense. Compared to the placebo samples, the blood plasma obtained after PMP supplementation showed enhanced DNA damage response genes such as pCHK1(Serine 345) (a transducer of DNA response) and 𝛄H2AX (a hallmark of DNA damage) during the 8 weeks trial on metabolic challenges. Conclusion: Our results indicate that PMP supplementation for 8 weeks enhances the antioxidant system against oxidative stress and prevents DNA damage signaling in humans.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.33-46
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• 2008

A series of three-dimensional numerical simulations using a generalized multidimensional hydrodynamic dispersion numerical model is performed to simulate effectively and to evaluate quantitatively impacts of fault existence on densitydependent groundwater flow and salt transport in coastal aquifer systems. A series of steady-state numerical simulations with calibration is performed first for an actual coastal aquifer system which contains a major fault. A series of steadystate numerical simulations is then performed for a corresponding coastal aquifer system which does not have such a major fault. Finally, the results of both numerical simulations are compared with each other and analyzed. The results of the numerical simulations show that the major fault produces hydrogeologically significant heterogeneity and true anisotropy in the actual coastal aquifer system, and density-dependent groundwater flow, salt transport, and seawater intrusion patterns in the coastal aquifer systems are intensively and extensively dependent upon the existence or absence of such a major fault. Especially, the major fault may act as a pathway for groundwater flow and salt transport along the direction parallel to its plane, while it may also behave as a barrier against groundwater flow and salt transport along the direction perpendicular to its plane.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.105-109
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• 2010

The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) (2000/60/EC) was transposed into Irish law by Statutory Instrument Nos. 722 of 2003, 413 of 2005 and 218 of 2009, which set out a new strategy and process to protect and enhance Ireland's water resources and water-dependent ecosystems. The Directive requires a novel, holistic, integrated, and iterative process to address Ireland's natural waters based on a series of six-year planning cycles. Key success factors in implementing the Directive include an in-depth and balanced treatment of the ecological, economic, institutional and cultural aspects of river basin management planning. Introducing this visionary discipline for the management of sustainable water resources requires a solemn commitment to a new mindset and an overarching monitoring and management regime which hitherto has never been attempted in Ireland. The WFD must be implemented in conjunction with a myriad of complimentary directives and associated legislation, addressing such key related topics as flood/drought management, biodiversity protection, land use planning, and water/wastewater and diffuse pollution engineering and regulation. The critical steps identified for river basin management planning under the WFD include: 1) characterization and classification of water bodies (i.e., how healthy are Irish waters?), 2) definition of significant water pressures (e.g., agriculture, forestry, septic tanks), 3) enhancement of measures for designated protected areas, 4) establishment of objectives for all surface and ground waters, and 5) integrating these critical steps into a comprehensive and coherent river basin management plan and associated programme of measures. A parallel WFD implementation programme critically depends on an effective environmental management system (EMS) approach with a plan-do-check-act cycle applied to each of the evolving six-year plans. The proactive involvement of stakeholders and the general public is a key element of this EMS approach.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.74-82
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• 2000

Prostate cancer initially responds and regresses in response to androgen depletion therapy, but most human prostate cancers will eventually recur, and re-grow as an androgen independent tumor. Once these tumors become hormone refractory, they usually are incurable leading to death for the patient. Little is known about the molecular details of how prostate cancer cells regress following androgen ablation and which genes are involved in the androgen independent growth following the development of resistance to therapy. Such knowledge would reveal putative drug targets useful in the rational therapeutic design to prevent therapy resistance and control androgen independent growth. The application of genome scale technologies have permitted new insights into the molecular mechanisms associated with these processes. Specifically, we have applied functional genomics using high density cDNA microarray analysis for parallel gene expression analysis of prostate cancer in an experimental xenograft system during androgen withdrawal therapy, and following therapy resistance, The large amount of expression data generated posed a formidable bioinformatics challenge. A novel template based gene clustering algorithm was developed and applied to the data to discover the genes that respond to androgen ablation. The data show restoration of expression of androgen dependent genes in the recurrent tumors and other signaling genes. Together, the discovered genes appear to be involved in prostate cancer cell growth and therapy resistance in this system. We have also developed and applied tissue microarray (TMA) technology for high throughput molecular analysis of hundreds to thousands of clinical specimens simultaneously. TMA analysis was used for rapid clinical translation of candidate genes discovered by cDNA microarray analysis to determine their clinical utility as diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic targets. Finally, we have developed a bioinformatic approach to combine pharmacogenomic data on the efficacy and specificity of various drugs to target the discovered prostate cancer growth associated candidate genes in an attempt to improve current therapeutics.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.37-43
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• 2010

When lightning surges with wide frequency spectrum and power converting devices are considered, it is desirable to evaluate grounding system performance by grounding impedances. This paper presents the measured results for frequency-dependent grounding impedance for the vertical grounding electrode and counterpoise on a scale of full size. Grounding impedances of vertical grounding electrodes and counterpoises give capacitive or inductive behaviors according to the length of grounding electrodes and soil resistivity. It is inefficient to extend the length of the grounding electrode in order to decrease the ground resistance, and when designing the grounding system, the consideration of the grounding impedance should be desirable. In order to reduce the grounding impedance of counterpoise, the grounding conductors are jointed at the center of counterpoises. It is effective to reduce the grounding impedance by connecting ground rods to counterpoises in parallel.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.103-109
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to suggest the strategical lifting postures able to alleviate imbalanced EMG amplitude leading to an increase in low back muscle fatigue while lifting asymmetric load dynamically. Eleven male subjects are required to lift symmetrically an external load with 15.8kg and load center of gravity (LCG) deviated 10cm to the right from the floor to the waist height at the speed of about 25cm/sec. The EMG amplitudes on bilateral low back muscles (Longissimus, Iliocostalis, and Multifidus) are recorded during 2sec and analyzed. Independent variables are trunk postures (No bending vs. Bending to the LCG) and feet placements (Parallel vs. Right foot in front of the other vs. Right foot behind the other). Dependent variables are EMG amplitude average on six muscles and the EMG amplitude difference between right and left muscle group. Results indicate the phenomenon showing an amplitude increase in the left muscle group is equal to an decrease in the right one is observed in dynamic as well as static lifts, bending the trunk to the LCG increases amplitude discrepancy more than no trunk bending, and the amplitude discrepancy in one foot ipsilateral to LCG in front of the other foot is lowest among other foot postures. As bilateral EMG amplitude discrepancy increases total low back muscle fatigue, the strategical combination of no trunk bending and one foot close to LCG in front of the other is recommended for preventing elevated incidence of low back pain (LBP).

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.1562-1570
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• 2003

The prediction of the inelastic behavior of the structure is an essential part of reliability assessment procedure, because most of the failures are induced by the inelastic deformation, such as creep and plastic deformation. During decades, there has been much progress in understanding of the inelastic behavior of the materials and a lot of inelastic constitutive equations have been developed. The complexity of these constitutive equations generally requires a stable and accurate numerical method. The radial return mapping is one of the most robust integration scheme currently used. Nonlinear kinematic hardening model of Armstrong-Fredrick type has recovery term and the direction of kinematic hardening increment is not parallel to that of plastic strain increment. In this case, The conventional radial return mapping method cannot be applied directly. In this investigation, we expanded the radial return mapping method to consider the nonlinear kinematic hardening model and implemented this integration scheme into ABAQUS by means of UMAT subroutine. The solution of the non-linear system of algebraic equations arising from time discretization with the generalized midpoint rule is determined using Newton method and bisection method. Using dynamic yield condition derived from linearization of flow rule, the integration scheme for elastoplastic and viscoplastic constitutive model was unified. Several numerical examples are considered to demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of the present method.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.159-167
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• 2015

We consider a wafer lot transfer/release planning problem from semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities to probing facilities with the objective of minimizing the deviation of workload and total tardiness of customers' orders. Due to the complexity of the considered problem, we propose a two-level hierarchical production planning method for the lot transfer problem between two parallel facilities to obtain an executable production plan and schedule. In the higher level, the solution for the reduced mathematical model with Lagrangian relaxation method can be regarded as a coarse good lot transfer/release plan with daily time bucket, and discrete-event simulation is performed to obtain detailed lot processing schedules at the machines with a priority-rule-based scheduling method and the lot transfer/release plan is evaluated in the lower level. To evaluate the performance of the suggested planning method, we provide computational tests on the problems obtained from a set of real data and additional test scenarios in which the several levels of variations are added in the customers' demands. Results of computational tests showed that the proposed lot transfer/planning architecture generates executable plans within acceptable computational time in the real factories and the total tardiness of orders can be reduced more effectively by using more sophisticated lot transfer methods, such as considering the due date and ready times of lots associated the same order with the mathematical formulation. The proposed method may be implemented for the problem of job assignment in back-end process such as the assignment of chips to be tested from assembly facilities to final test facilities. Also, the proposed method can be improved by considering the sequence dependent setup in the probing facilities.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.17 no.7 s.87
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• pp.905-909
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• 2007

The dual-function protein redox factor-1 (Ref-1) is essential for base excision repair of oxidatively damaged DNA and also governs the activation of many redox-sensitive transcription factors. We examined the role of Ref-1 in regulation of nitric oxide (NO) synthesis employing adenoviral-mediatedoverexpression of Ref-1 in bradykinin-stimulated endothelial cells. Intracellular NO was detected with the NO-sensitive fluorophore DAF-2. Overexpression of Ref-1 potentiates bradykinin-stimulated NO production in endothelial cells. And, cells ifected with AdRef-1 showed higher fluorescence intensity compared with uninfected or AdD1312-infected cells. In parallel with this, over expression of Ref-1 also stimulated endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) enzyme activity, compared with unifected or AdD1312-infected cells, in bradykinin-stimulated cells as well as in unstimulated cells. These results suggest that Ref-1 implicates in endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation resulting from NO production in vascular system.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.633-638
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• 2022

Rencently, neuromorphic systems of spiking neural networks (SNNs) that imitate the human brain have attracted attention. Neuromorphic technology has the advantage of high speed and low power consumption in cognitive applications and processing. Resistive random-access memory (RRAM) for SNNs are the most efficient structure for parallel calculation and perform the gradual switching operation of spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). RRAM as synaptic device operation has low-power processing and expresses various memory states. However, the integration of RRAM device causes high switching voltage and current, resulting in high power consumption. To reduce the operation voltage of the RRAM, it is important to develop new materials of the switching layer and metal electrode. This study suggested a optimized new structure that is the Metal/Al₂O₃/HfO_x/SWCNTs/N+silicon (MOCS) with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), which have excellent electrical and mechanical properties in order to lower the switching voltage. Therefore, we show an improvement in the gradual switching behavior and low-power I/V curve of SWCNTs-based memristors.