• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.93-108
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• 2014

To support business decision making, interests and efforts to analyze and use transaction data in different perspectives are increasing. Such efforts are not only limited to customer management or marketing, but also used for monitoring and detecting fraud transactions. Fraud transactions are evolving into various patterns by taking advantage of information technology. To reflect the evolution of fraud transactions, there are many efforts on fraud detection methods and advanced application systems in order to improve the accuracy and ease of fraud detection. As a case of fraud detection, this study aims to provide effective fraud detection methods for auction exception agricultural products in the largest Korean agricultural wholesale market. Auction exception products policy exists to complement auction-based trades in agricultural wholesale market. That is, most trades on agricultural products are performed by auction; however, specific products are assigned as auction exception products when total volumes of products are relatively small, the number of wholesalers is small, or there are difficulties for wholesalers to purchase the products. However, auction exception products policy makes several problems on fairness and transparency of transaction, which requires help of fraud detection. In this study, to generate fraud detection rules, real huge agricultural products trade transaction data from 2008 to 2010 in the market are analyzed, which increase more than 1 million transactions and 1 billion US dollar in transaction volume. Agricultural transaction data has unique characteristics such as frequent changes in supply volumes and turbulent time-dependent changes in price. Since this was the first trial to identify fraud transactions in this domain, there was no training data set for supervised learning. So, fraud detection rules are generated using outlier detection approach. We assume that outlier transactions have more possibility of fraud transactions than normal transactions. The outlier transactions are identified to compare daily average unit price, weekly average unit price, and quarterly average unit price of product items. Also quarterly averages unit price of product items of the specific wholesalers are used to identify outlier transactions. The reliability of generated fraud detection rules are confirmed by domain experts. To determine whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, normal distribution and normalized Z-value concept are applied. That is, a unit price of a transaction is transformed to Z-value to calculate the occurrence probability when we approximate the distribution of unit prices to normal distribution. The modified Z-value of the unit price in the transaction is used rather than using the original Z-value of it. The reason is that in the case of auction exception agricultural products, Z-values are influenced by outlier fraud transactions themselves because the number of wholesalers is small. The modified Z-values are called Self-Eliminated Z-scores because they are calculated excluding the unit price of the specific transaction which is subject to check whether it is fraud transaction or not. To show the usefulness of the proposed approach, a prototype of fraud transaction detection system is developed using Delphi. The system consists of five main menus and related submenus. First functionalities of the system is to import transaction databases. Next important functions are to set up fraud detection parameters. By changing fraud detection parameters, system users can control the number of potential fraud transactions. Execution functions provide fraud detection results which are found based on fraud detection parameters. The potential fraud transactions can be viewed on screen or exported as files. The study is an initial trial to identify fraud transactions in Auction Exception Agricultural Products. There are still many remained research topics of the issue. First, the scope of analysis data was limited due to the availability of data. It is necessary to include more data on transactions, wholesalers, and producers to detect fraud transactions more accurately. Next, we need to extend the scope of fraud transaction detection to fishery products. Also there are many possibilities to apply different data mining techniques for fraud detection. For example, time series approach is a potential technique to apply the problem. Even though outlier transactions are detected based on unit prices of transactions, however it is possible to derive fraud detection rules based on transaction volumes.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.141-156
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• 2013

Social media is a representative form of the Web 2.0 that shapes the change of a user's information behavior by allowing users to produce their own contents without any expert skills. In particular, as a new communication medium, it has a profound impact on the social change by enabling users to communicate with the masses and acquaintances their opinions and thoughts. Social media data plays a significant role in an emerging Big Data arena. A variety of research areas such as social network analysis, opinion mining, and so on, therefore, have paid attention to discover meaningful information from vast amounts of data buried in social media. Social media has recently become main foci to the field of Information Retrieval and Text Mining because not only it produces massive unstructured textual data in real-time but also it serves as an influential channel for opinion leading. But most of the previous studies have adopted broad-brush and limited approaches. These approaches have made it difficult to find and analyze new information. To overcome these limitations, we developed a real-time Twitter trend mining system to capture the trend in real-time processing big stream datasets of Twitter. The system offers the functions of term co-occurrence retrieval, visualization of Twitter users by query, similarity calculation between two users, topic modeling to keep track of changes of topical trend, and mention-based user network analysis. In addition, we conducted a case study on the 2012 Korean presidential election. We collected 1,737,969 tweets which contain candidates' name and election on Twitter in Korea (http://www.twitter.com/) for one month in 2012 (October 1 to October 31). The case study shows that the system provides useful information and detects the trend of society effectively. The system also retrieves the list of terms co-occurred by given query terms. We compare the results of term co-occurrence retrieval by giving influential candidates' name, 'Geun Hae Park', 'Jae In Moon', and 'Chul Su Ahn' as query terms. General terms which are related to presidential election such as 'Presidential Election', 'Proclamation in Support', Public opinion poll' appear frequently. Also the results show specific terms that differentiate each candidate's feature such as 'Park Jung Hee' and 'Yuk Young Su' from the query 'Guen Hae Park', 'a single candidacy agreement' and 'Time of voting extension' from the query 'Jae In Moon' and 'a single candidacy agreement' and 'down contract' from the query 'Chul Su Ahn'. Our system not only extracts 10 topics along with related terms but also shows topics' dynamic changes over time by employing the multinomial Latent Dirichlet Allocation technique. Each topic can show one of two types of patterns-Rising tendency and Falling tendencydepending on the change of the probability distribution. To determine the relationship between topic trends in Twitter and social issues in the real world, we compare topic trends with related news articles. We are able to identify that Twitter can track the issue faster than the other media, newspapers. The user network in Twitter is different from those of other social media because of distinctive characteristics of making relationships in Twitter. Twitter users can make their relationships by exchanging mentions. We visualize and analyze mention based networks of 136,754 users. We put three candidates' name as query terms-Geun Hae Park', 'Jae In Moon', and 'Chul Su Ahn'. The results show that Twitter users mention all candidates' name regardless of their political tendencies. This case study discloses that Twitter could be an effective tool to detect and predict dynamic changes of social issues, and mention-based user networks could show different aspects of user behavior as a unique network that is uniquely found in Twitter.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.27-42
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• 2020

Traditional companies with offline stores were unable to secure large display space due to the problems of cost. This limitation inevitably allowed limited kinds of products to be displayed on the shelves, which resulted in consumers being deprived of the opportunity to experience various items. Taking advantage of the virtual space called the Internet, online shopping goes beyond the limits of limitations in physical space of offline shopping and is now able to display numerous products on web pages that can satisfy consumers with a variety of needs. Paradoxically, however, this can also cause consumers to experience the difficulty of comparing and evaluating too many alternatives in their purchase decision-making process. As an effort to address this side effect, various kinds of consumer's purchase decision support systems have been studied, such as keyword-based item search service and recommender systems. These systems can reduce search time for items, prevent consumer from leaving while browsing, and contribute to the seller's increased sales. Among those systems, recommender systems based on association rule mining techniques can effectively detect interrelated products from transaction data such as orders. The association between products obtained by statistical analysis provides clues to predicting how interested consumers will be in another product. However, since its algorithm is based on the number of transactions, products not sold enough so far in the early days of launch may not be included in the list of recommendations even though they are highly likely to be sold. Such missing items may not have sufficient opportunities to be exposed to consumers to record sufficient sales, and then fall into a vicious cycle of a vicious cycle of declining sales and omission in the recommendation list. This situation is an inevitable outcome in situations in which recommendations are made based on past transaction histories, rather than on determining potential future sales possibilities. This study started with the idea that reflecting the means by which this potential possibility can be identified indirectly would help to select highly recommended products. In the light of the fact that the attributes of a product affect the consumer's purchasing decisions, this study was conducted to reflect them in the recommender systems. In other words, consumers who visit a product page have shown interest in the attributes of the product and would be also interested in other products with the same attributes. On such assumption, based on these attributes, the recommender system can select recommended products that can show a higher acceptance rate. Given that a category is one of the main attributes of a product, it can be a good indicator of not only direct associations between two items but also potential associations that have yet to be revealed. Based on this idea, the study devised a recommender system that reflects not only associations between products but also categories. Through regression analysis, two kinds of associations were combined to form a model that could predict the hit rate of recommendation. To evaluate the performance of the proposed model, another regression model was also developed based only on associations between products. Comparative experiments were designed to be similar to the environment in which products are actually recommended in online shopping malls. First, the association rules for all possible combinations of antecedent and consequent items were generated from the order data. Then, hit rates for each of the associated rules were predicted from the support and confidence that are calculated by each of the models. The comparative experiments using order data collected from an online shopping mall show that the recommendation accuracy can be improved by further reflecting not only the association between products but also categories in the recommendation of related products. The proposed model showed a 2 to 3 percent improvement in hit rates compared to the existing model. From a practical point of view, it is expected to have a positive effect on improving consumers' purchasing satisfaction and increasing sellers' sales.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.224-236
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• 1999

Background: To evaluate the short-term effect of dynamic cardiomyoplasty on circulatory function and detect the related factors that can affect it, experimental cardiomyoplasties were performed under the state of normal cardiac function and heart failure. Material and Method: A total of 10 mongrel dogs weighing 20 to 30kg were divided arbitrarily into two groups. Five dogs of group A underwent cardiomyoplasty with latissimus dorsi(LD) muscle mobilization followed by a 2-week vascular delay and 6-week muscle training. Then, hemodynamic studies were conducted. In group B, doxorubicin was given to 5 dogs in an IV dose of 1 mg/kg once a week for 8 weeks to induce chronic heart failure, and simultaneous muscle training was given for preconditioning during this period. Then, cardiomyoplasties were performed and hemodynamic studies were conducted immediately after these cardiomyoplasties in group B. Result: In group A, under the state of normal cardiac function, only mean right atrial pressure significantly increased with the pacer-on(p<0.05) and the left ventricular hemodynamic parameters did not change significantly. However, with pacer-on in group B, cardiac output(CO), rate of left ventricular pressure development(dp/dt), stroke volume(SV), and left ventricular stroke work(SW) increased by 16.7${\pm}$7.2%, 9.3${\pm}$3.2%, 16.8${\pm}$8.6%, and 23.1${\pm}$9.7%, respectively, whereas left ventricular end-diastole pressure(LVEDP) and mean pulmonary capillary wedge pressure(mPCWP) decreased by 32.1${\pm}$4.6% and 17.7${\pm}$9.1%, respectively(p<0.05). In group A, imipramine was infused at the rate of 7.5mg/kg/hour for 34${\pm}$2.6 minutes to induce acute heart failure, which resulted in the reduction of cardiac output by 17.5${\pm}$2.7%, systolic left ventricular pressure by 15.8${\pm}$2.5% and the elevation of left ventricular end-diastole pressure by 54.3${\pm}$15.2%(p<0.05). With pacer-on under this state of acute heart failu e, CO, dp/dt, SV, and SW increased by 4.5${\pm}$1.8% and 3.1${\pm}$1.1%, 5.7${\pm}$3.6%, and 6.9${\pm}$4.4%, respectively, whereas LVEDP decreased by 11.7${\pm}$4.7%(p<0.05). Comparing CO, dp/dt, SV, SW and LVEDP that changed significantly with pacer-on, both under the state of acute and chronic heart failure, augmentation widths of these left ventricular hemodynamic parameters were significantly larger under the state of chronic heart failure(group B) than acute heart failure(group A)(p<0.05). On gross inspection, variable degrees of adhesion and inflammation were present in all 5 dogs of group A, including 2 dogs that showed no muscle contraction. No adhesion and inflammation were, however, present in all 5 dogs of group B, which showed vivid muscle contractions. Considering these differences in gross findings along with the following premise that the acute heart failure state was not statistically different from the chronic one in terms of left ventricular parameters(p>0.05), the larger augmentation effect seen in group B is presumed to be mainly attributed to the viability and contractility of the LD muscle. Conclusion: These results indicate that the positive circulatory augmentation effect of cardiomyoplasty is apparent only under the state of heart failure and the preservation of muscle contractility is important to maximize this effect.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.37-46
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• 2011

Since the Korean retail industry was made accessible to the big conglomerates and foreign retail companies, local traditional markets have faced serious problems. To sustain the local traditional markets' survival, the Korean government established various remedial policies for addressing, and many scholars published articles to suggest how to find solutions to, the problem. Unfortunately, the results have not been satisfactory. The purpose of this study is to find another way to help the Korean traditional retail market, from the view point of the Green Growth Policy, an initiative designed to address environmentally balanced economic growth in Korea. In order to survive and to maintain sustainable growth, it is incumbent upon retailers in the traditional market to understand the concept of the Green Growth Policy. A survey was conducted as a means of testing the degree of awareness of the Green Growth Policy, as well as determining the relationship between the degree of awareness and the degree of organizational commitment by the retailers in the local traditional markets. Interestingly, we were able to detect some of the features (e.g., they were distinguished by the elderly and the young, as well as low level of education and high level of education) in the traditional market retailers' demographic characteristics. We utilized the analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical method to simultaneously compare the differences in retailers' demographic characteristics; the results were as follows: Overall, the results showed that the awareness of the Green Growth Policy, the degree of trust in the government's policy, levels of self-efficacy, and levels of organizational commitment were higher with the older traditional market retailers than the younger traditional market retailers. Specifically, the degree of trust in government policies (F=9.964,p < .05), levels of self-efficacy (F=5.532,p < .05), and levels of organizational commitment (F=5.697,p < .05) were statistically significant. Moreover, in the portion of the study that addressed the difference between education levels, all the variables were averaged in the higher education category of the traditional market retailers. Specifically, awareness levels of the Green Growth Policy (F=8.564,p < .005) and levels of self-efficacy (F=6.754,p < .005) were statistically significant. These results revealed that the traditional market retailers' demographic characteristics should be considered important factors in order to realize their policy. The results of the study showed the following: 1) The degree of awareness of the government's Green Growth Policy was statistically significant as it related to traditional market retailers' organizational commitment. 2) The degree of trust of the government's policy was significantly moderated between the awareness of the government's Green Growth Policy and the traditional market retailers' organizational commitment. This result demonstrates that the traditional market retailers' awareness of the government's Green Growth Policy will show more organizational commitment with higher levels of trust of the government's policy. 3) It also revealed that traditional market retailers' self-efficacy was fully mediated between the awareness of the Green Growth Policy of the government and traditional market retailers' organizational commitment. The results suggest that the government should show an interest in showing traditional market retailers how to enhance their traditional markets. Implications and future research directions are also discussed.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.257-264
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• 2014

Purpose : Photoneutron dose in high-energy photon radiotherapy at linear accelerator increase the risk for secondary cancer. The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate the dose variation of photoneutron with different treatment method, flattening filter, dose rate and gantry angle in radiation therapy with high-energy photon beam ($E{\geq}8MeV$). Materials and Methods : TrueBeam $ST{\time}TM$(Ver1.5, Varian, USA) and Korea Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (KTEPC) were used to detect the photoneutron dose out of the high-energy photon field. Complex Patient plans using Eclipse planning system (Version 10.0, Varian, USA) was used to experiment with different treatment technique(IMRT, VMAT), condition of flattening filter and three different dose rate. Scattered photoneutron dose was measured at eight different gantry angles with open field (Field size : $5{\time}5cm$). Results : The mean values of the detected photoneutron dose from IMRT and VMAT were $449.7{\mu}Sv$, $2940.7{\mu}Sv$. The mean values of the detected photoneutron dose with Flattening Filter(FF) and Flattening Filter Free(FFF) were measured as $2940.7{\mu}Sv$, $232.0{\mu}Sv$. The mean values of the photoneutron dose for each test plan (case 1, case 2 and case 3) with FFF at the three different dose rate (400, 1200, 2400 MU/min) were $3242.5{\mu}Sv$, $3189.4{\mu}Sv$, $3191.2{\mu}Sv$ with case 1, $3493.2{\mu}Sv$, $3482.6{\mu}Sv$, $3477.2{\mu}Sv$ with case 2 and $4592.2{\mu}Sv$, $4580.0{\mu}Sv$, $4542.3{\mu}Sv$ with case 3, respectively. The mean values of the photoneutron dose at eight different gantry angles ($0^{\circ}$, $45^{\circ}$, $90^{\circ}$, $135^{\circ}$, $180^{\circ}$, $225^{\circ}$, $270^{\circ}$, $315^{\circ}$) were measured as $3.2{\mu}Sv$, $4.3{\mu}Sv$, $5.3{\mu}Sv$, $11.3{\mu}Sv$, $14.7{\mu}Sv$, $11.2{\mu}Sv$, $3.7{\mu}Sv$, $3.0{\mu}Sv$ at 10MV and as $373.7{\mu}Sv$, $369.6{\mu}Sv$, $384.4{\mu}Sv$, $423.6{\mu}Sv$, $447.1{\mu}Sv$, $448.0{\mu}Sv$, $384.5{\mu}Sv$, $377.3{\mu}Sv$ at 15MV. Conclusion : As a result, it is possible to reduce photoneutron dose using FFF mode and VMAT method with TrueBeam $ST{\time}TM$. The risk for secondary cancer of the patients will be decreased with continuous evaluation of the photoneutron dose.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.30-41
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• 2007

Purpose: Bone metastasis in breast cancer patients are usually assessed by conventional Tc-99m methylene diphosphonate whole-body bone scan, which has a high sensitivity but a poor specificity. However, positron emission tomography with $^{18}F-2-deoxyglucose$ (FDG-PET) can offer superior spatial resolution and improved specificity. FDG-PET/CT can offer more information to assess bone metastasis than PET alone, by giving a anatomical information of non-enhanced CT image. We attempted to evaluate the usefulness of FDG-PET/CT for detecting bone metastasis in breast cancer and to compare FDG-PET/CT results with bone scan findings. Materials and Methods: The study group comprised 157 women patients (range: $28{\sim}78$ years old, $mean{\pm}SD=49.5{\pm}8.5$) with biopsy-proven breast cancer who underwent bone scan and FDG-PET/CT within 1 week interval. The final diagnosis of bone metastasis was established by histopathological findings, radiological correlation, or clinical follow-up. Bone scan was acquired over 4 hours after administration of 740 MBq Tc-99m MDP. Bone scan image was interpreted as normal, low, intermediate or high probability for osseous metastasis. FDG PET/CT was performed after 6 hours fasting. 370 MBq F-18 FDG was administered intravenously 1 hour before imaging. PET data was obtained by 3D mode and CT data, used as transmission correction database, was acquired during shallow respiration. PET images were evaluated by visual interpretation, and quantification of FDG accumulation in bone lesion was performed by maximal SUV(SUVmax) and relative SUV(SUVrel). Results: Six patients(4.4%) showed metastatic bone lesions. Four(66.6%) of 6 patients with osseous metastasis was detected by bone scan and all 6 patients(100%) were detected by PET/CT. A total of 135 bone lesions found on either FDG-PET or bone scan were consist of 108 osseous metastatic lesion and 27 benign bone lesions. Osseous metastatic lesion had higher SUVmax and SUVrel compared to benign bone lesion($4.79{\pm}3.32$ vs $1.45{\pm}0.44$, p=0.000, $3.08{\pm}2.85$ vs $0.30{\pm}0.43$, p=0.000). Among 108 osseous metastatic lesions, 76 lesions showed as abnormal uptake on bone scan, and 76 lesions also showed as increased FDG uptake on PET/CT scan. There was good agreement between FDG uptake and abnormal bone scan finding (Kendall tau-b : 0.689, p=0.000). Lesion showed increased bone tracer uptake had higher SUVmax and SUVrel compared to lesion showed no abnormal bone scan finding ($6.03{\pm}3.12$ vs $1.09{\pm}1.49$, p=0.000, $4.76{\pm}3.31$ vs $1.29{\pm}0.92$, p=0.000). The order of frequency of osseous metastatic site was vertebra, pelvis, rib, skull, sternum, scapula, femur, clavicle, and humerus. Metastatic lesion on skull had highest SUVmax and metastatic lesion on rib had highest SUVrel. Osteosclerotic metastatic lesion had lowest SUVmax and SUVrel. Conclusion: These results suggest that FDG-PET/CT is more sensitive to detect breast cancer patients with osseous metastasis. CT scan must be reviewed cautiously skeleton with bone window, because osteosclerotic metastatic lesion did not showed abnormal FDG accumulation frequently.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.71-97
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• 1974

Many studies on the changes of the materials in the water-logged paddy soil have been reported, but there will be several problems to apply them on the field soil. The main differences between the method of soil packed in beaker or column tube to that of natural field furrow slice are with or without of the rice root and the effect of water percolation. On the other hand, the mechanism of the water percolation on the changes of material in the natural field furrow slice are gradually understood. The purpose of this experiment is to know the effect of the rice cultivation on the chemical and physical changes of material in the water-logged paddy soil. Obtained results are as follows. 1. The physical and chemical changes on the water-logged paddy soil in the non-planted control-plot were nearly the same as the beaker or column tube experiment, while in the planted plot, slightly altered patterns were observed. 2. The relation between the number of tillers and total cation, $Ca^{{+}{+}}$, $Mg^{{+}{+}}$, Fe and Mn in the leachate showed very high significance. T hisresult showed that the leaching of those cation was promoted by growing of the rice r- of the rice root. 3. On the other hand, the concentration of the potassium, silica and phosphorus in leachates was gradually decreased and that of $NH_4$-N could not detect after the stage of active tillering. These facts revealed that such components were absorbed by rice plant. 4. The highly significant correlation between the number of tillers and the concentration of the total cation, $Ca^{{+}{+}}$, $Mg^{{+}{+}}$, $Fe^{{+}{+}}$, Fe and Mn in the percolated water was observed except that of $Mg^{{+}{+}}$. It was also showed that the rice root promoted the leaching of those cation. 5. The very high significance in the correlation between $HCO_3{^-}$ and the number of tillers indicated that the higher activity of the rice root was, the more $HCO_3{^-}$ concentration in the leachate was increased. 6. The relationship between the $HCO_3{^-}$ and the total cation, $Ca^{{+}{+}}$, $Mg^{{+}{+}}$, $Fe^{{+}{+}}$, Fe and Mn was appeared very highly significant. $HCO_3{^-}$, the metabolite of the rice root, promoted the leaching of $Ca^{{+}{+}}$, $Mg^{{+}{+}}$, $Fe^{{+}{+}}$ and Mn. This fact might be a result that these cations were leached as the form of bicarbonate. 7. The iron in the leachate was the form of $Fe^{{+}{+}}$ and the correlation between $Fe^{{+}{+}}$ and $HCO_3{^-}$ was very highly significant. This result indicated that it seemed to be ferrous bicarbonate when it is leached out. 8. In the rhizosphere, ferrous iron was decreased gradually and the concentration of glucose was as high as 2 to 3 times in comparison with the other parts of the soil. These facts were the same as the previous reports in which rhizosphere was oxidized by the oxigen excreted from the root, and was enriched by the organic matter which was also excreted from the root and accumulated residues of the root. 9. ${\beta}$-Glucosidase and phosphatase activity in the rhizosphere was higher than that of the other parts of the soil. This facts might be attributed to the vigorous activity of microorganism in the rhizosphere where glucose concentration was high. 10. The pH in the leachate of the planted plot was lower than that of control, and the Eh on the planted soil was elevated in the last stage.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.846-860
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• 1998

Background: Endotoxin (LPS : lipopolysaccharide), a potent activator of immune system, can induce acute and chronic inflammation through the production of cytokines by a variety of cells, such as monocytes, endothelial cells, lymphocytes, eosinophils, neutrophils and fibroblasts. LPS stimulate the mononucelar cells by two different pathway, the CD14 dependent and independent way, of which the former has been well documented, but not the latter. LPS binds to the LPS-binding protein (LBP), in serum, to make the LPS-LBP complex which interacts with CD14 molecules on the mononuclear cell surface in peripheral blood or is transported to the tissues. In case of high concentration of LPS, LPS can stimulate directly the macrophages without LBP. We investigated to detect the generation of proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1 (IL-1), IL-6 and TNF-$\alpha$ and fibrogenic cytokine, TGF-$\beta$, by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) after LPS stimulation under serum-free conditions, which lacks LBPs. Methods : PBMC were obtained by centrifugation on Ficoll Hypaque solution of peripheral venous bloods from healthy normal subjects, then stimulated in the presence of LPS (0.1 ${\mu}g/mL$ to 100 ${\mu}g/mL$ ). The activities of IL-1, IL-6, TNF, and TGF-$\beta$ were measured by bioassaies using cytokines - dependent proliferating or inhibiting cell lines. The cellular sources producing the cytokines was investigated by immunohistochemical stains and in situ hybridization. Results : PBMC started to produce IL-6, TNF-$\alpha$ and TGF-$\beta$ in 1 hr, 4 hrs and 8hrs, respectively, after LPS stimulation. The production of IL-6, TNF-$\alpha$ and TGF-$\beta$ continuously increased 96 hrs after stimulation of LPS. The amount of production was 19.8 ng/ml of IL-6 by $10^5$ PBMC, 4.1 ng/mL of TNF by $10^6$ PBMC and 34.4 pg/mL of TGF-$\beta$ by $2{\times}10^6$ PBMC. The immunoreactivity to IL-6, TNF-$\alpha$ and TGF-$\beta$ were detected on monocytes in LPS-stimulated PBMC. Some of lymphocytes showed positive immunoreactivity to TGF-$\beta$. Double immunohistochemical stain showed that IL-1$\beta$, IL-6, TNF-$\alpha$ expression was not associated with CD14 postivity on monocytes. IL-1$\beta$, IL-6, TNF-$\alpha$ and TGF-$\beta$mRNA expression were same as observed in immunoreactivity for each cytokines. Conclusion: When monocytes are stimulated with LPS under serum-free conditions, IL-6 and TNF-$\alpha$ are secreted in early stage of inflammation. In contrast, the secretion of TGF-$\beta$ arise in the late stages and that is maintained after 96 hrs. The main cells releasing IL-1$\beta$, IL-6, TNF-$\alpha$ and TGF-$\beta$ are monocytes, but also lymphocytes can secret TGF-$\beta$.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.861-869
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• 1998

Backgrounds: The injury of a tissue results in the infalmmation, and the imflammed tissue is replaced by the normal parenchymal cells during the process of repair. But, constitutional or repetitive damage of a tissue causes the deposition of collagen resulting in the loss of its function. These lesions are found in the lung of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, complicated fibrosis after diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) and inorganic dust-induced lung fibrosis. The tissue from lungs of patients undergoing episodes of active and/or end-stage pulmonary fibrosis shows the accumulation of inflammatory cells, such as mononuclear cells, neutrophils, mast cells and eosinophils, and fibroblast hyperplasia. In this regard, it appears that the inflammation triggers fibroblast activation and proliferation with enhanced matrix synthesis, stimulated by inflammatory mediators such as interleukin-1 (IL-1) and/or tumor necrosis factor (TNF). It has been well known that TGF-$\beta$ enhance the proliferation of fibroblasts and the production of collagen and fibronectin, and inhibit the degradation of collagen. In this regard, It is likely that TGF-$\beta$ undergoes important roles in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. Nevertheless, this single cytokine is not the sole regulator of the pulmonary fibrotic response. It is likely that the balance of many cytokines including TGF-$\beta$, IL-1, IL-6 and TNF-$\alpha$ regulates the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. In this study, we investigate the interaction of TGF-$\beta$, IL-1$\beta$, IL-6 and TNF-$\alpha$ and their effect on the proliferation of fibroblasts. Methods: We used a human fibroblast cell line, MRC-5 (ATCC). The culture of MRC-5 was confirmed by immunofluorecent staining. First, we determined the concentration of serum in cuture medium, in which the proliferation of MRC-5 is supressed but the survival of MRC-5 is retained. Second, we measured optical density after staining the cytokine-stimulated cells with 0.5% naphthol blue black in order to detect the effect of cytokines on the proliferation of MRC-5. Result: In the medium containing 0.5% fetal calf serum, the proliferation of MRC-5 increased by 50%, and it was maintained for 6 days. IL-1$\beta$, TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-6 induced the proliferation of MRC-5 by 45%, 160% and 120%, respectively. IL-1$\beta$ and TNF-$\alpha$ enhanced TGF-$\beta$-induced proliferation of MRC-5 by 64% and 159%, but IL-6 did not affect the TGF-$\beta$-induced proliferation. And lNF-$\alpha$-induced proliferation of MRC-5 was reduced by IL-1$\beta$ in 50%. TGF-$\beta$, TNF-$\alpha$ and both induced the proliferation of MRC-5 to 89%, 135% and 222%, respectively. Conclusions: TNF-$\alpha$, TGF-$\beta$ and IL-1$\beta$, in the order of the effectiveness, showed the induction of MRC-5 proliferation of MRC-5. TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-1$\beta$ enhance the TGF-$\beta$-induced proliferation of MRC-5, but IL-6 did not have any effect TNF-$\alpha$-induced proliferation of MRC-5 is diminished by IL-1, and TNF-$\alpha$ and TGF-$\beta$ showed a additive effect.