• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.145-153
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• 2022

Background: Postoperative analgesia (POA) is an important determinant of successful treatment. Dexmedetomidine (DEX) has recently gained attention as a promising adjuvant to local anesthetics (LA). The present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of levobupivacaine (LB) as an adjuvant during inferior alveolar nerve block (IANB) in the extraction of lower impacted third molars (LITM). Methods: A prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, triple-blind, parallel-arm, and clinical study was performed on 50 systemically healthy participants who required removal of an asymptomatic LITM. Using a 1:1 distribution, the participants were randomized into two groups (n = 25). Group L (control group) received 1.8 mL of 0.5% LB and 0.2 mL normal saline (placebo) and Group D (study group) received a blend of 1.8 mL of 0.5% LB and 0.2 mL (20 ㎍) DEX. The primary outcome variable was the duration of POA and hemodynamic stability, and the secondary variable was the total number of analgesics required postoperatively for up to 72 h. The participants were requested to record the time of rescue analgesic use and the total number of rescue analgesics taken. The area under the curve was plotted for the total number of analgesics administered. The pain was evaluated using the visual analog scale. Data analysis was performed using paired students and unpaired t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, Chi-square test, and receiver operating characteristic analysis. Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. Results: The latency, profoundness of anesthesia, and duration of POA were statistically significant (P < 0.05). The differences between mean pain scores at 6, 12, 24, 48, and 72 h were found to be significant (each P = 0.0001). Fewer analgesics were required by participants in group D (2.12 ± 0.33) than in L (4.04 ± 0.67), with a significant difference (P = 0.0001). Conclusion: Perineurally administered LA with DEX is a safe, effective, and therapeutic approach for improving latency, providing profound POA, and reducing the need for postoperative analgesia.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.339-352
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• 2023

Prediction of the time-related traits of pebble flow inside pebble-bed HTGRs is of great significance for reactor operation and design. In this work, an image-driven approach with the aid of a convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed to predict the remaining time of initially loaded pebbles and the time interval of paired flow images of the pebble bed. Two types of strategies are put forward: one is adding FC layers to the classic classification CNN models and using regression training, and the other is CNN-based deep expectation (DEX) by regarding the time prediction as a deep classification task followed by softmax expected value refinements. The current dataset is obtained from the discrete element method (DEM) simulations. Results show that the CNN-aided models generally make satisfactory predictions on the remaining time with the determination coefficient larger than 0.99. Among these models, the VGG19+DEX performs the best and its CumScore (proportion of test set with prediction error within 0.5s) can reach 0.939. Besides, the remaining time of additional test sets and new cases can also be well predicted, indicating good generalization ability of the model. In the task of predicting the time interval of image pairs, the VGG19+DEX model has also generated satisfactory results. Particularly, the trained model, with promising generalization ability, has demonstrated great potential in accurately and instantaneously predicting the traits of interest, without the need for additional computational intensive DEM simulations. Nevertheless, the issues of data diversity and model optimization need to be improved to achieve the full potential of the CNN-aided prediction tool.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.29 no.spc1
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• pp.145-146
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• 1996

We have estimated a metal abundance of [Fe/H]= -0.04 $\pm$ 0.05 dex, a reddening of E(B- V)= 0.28 mag, an age of 1.1 $\pm$ 0.1 Gyr, and a distance of 2.5 $\pm$ 0.2 kpc for NGC 1245 using the Washington filter system.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.29 no.spc1
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• pp.147-148
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• 1996

We have estimated a metal abundance of [Fe/H]= -0.48 $\pm$ 0.14 dex, a reddening of E(B- V)= 0.30 mag, an age of 2.0 $\pm$ 0.4 Gyr, and a distance of 7.9 $\pm$ 0.8 kpc for Tombaugh 2 using the Washington filter system.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.1615-1622
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• 2011

A factorial ($4{\times}2{\times}2$) experimental design was employed to determine apparent digestibilities of dry matter (DM), protein, lipid, energy and nitrogen-free extract (NFE) of the test diets containing either ${\alpha}$-potato starch (A-PS), ${\beta}$-potato starch (B-PS), ${\beta}$-corn starch (B-CS) or dextrin (DEX) as dietary carbohydrate energy for juvenile (average weight 30 g) and grower (average weight 300 g) rockfish reared at 13$^{\circ}C$ and 20$^{\circ}C$. Chromic oxide was used as an inert marker. Feces were collected by fecal collectors attached to rearing tanks from triplicate groups of juvenile and grower rockfish. Digestibilities of DM, energy and NFE of the test diets were significantly affected by dietary carbohydrate and water temperature (p<0.01), but not by fish size. DM digestibility of the fish fed the A-PS diet was significantly higher than that of fish fed other treatments, except for the DEX diet at 20$^{\circ}C$. DM digestibility of rockfish fed the B-CS diet was significantly lower than that of other diets. A similar pattern was observed in apparent digestibility of energy. NFE digestibility of fish fed the test diets was significantly affected by carbohydrate and significantly correlated to DM (r = 0.97, p<0.01) and energy (r = 0.99, p<0.01) digestibilities, regardless of water temperature and fish size. NFE digestibility of the fish fed the ${\beta}$-starch diets was relatively lower compared to that of the ${\alpha}$-starch diets, and ranged from 35 to 43% and 20 to 27% for B-PS and B-CS, respectively. The present findings indicate that carbohydrate and water temperature significantly affected digestibilities of dry matter, energy and nitrogen-free extract of rockfish. Among dietary carbohydrates, ${\alpha}$-potato starch could be effectively used as dietary carbohydrate energy for rockfish at 13$^{\circ}C$ and 20$^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.176-182
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• 2011

The study objective was to prepare biodegradable branched dextran microspheres encapsulated with His-tagged interferon-alpha (BDM-hIFN-${\alpha}$) and evaluate its activity in vitro and in vivo. The glycidyl methacrylate derivatized dextrans (Dex-GMA) as precursor was primarily synthesized by substituting hydroxyl groups of either the branched or linear type of dextran with GMA. Dex-GMA microspheres loaded with hIFN-${\alpha}$ was then prepared by the water-in-water emulsion technique. In vitro release and Western blotting experiments demonstrated the retained activity of hIFN-${\alpha}$ released from branched dextran microspheres at 24 h by inducing phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator transcription-1 (STAT-1), a down-stream effector of IFN-${\alpha}$, in HepG2 cells. Animal data further revealed a peak of plasma levels of IFN-${\alpha}$ in rats injected intravenously with BDM-hIFN-${\alpha}$ at 10 min post-injection, but a sharp decline at 2 h. High plasma levels of neopterin, a plasma protein induced by IFN-${\alpha}$, were also detected in rats injected with BDM-hIFN-${\alpha}$ at 10 min post-injection. Notably, plasma levels of neopterin remained high at 4 h, but largely declined thereafter.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.39 no.8
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• pp.631-638
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• 2016

Glutathione peroxidase 3 (GPx3), an antioxidant enzyme, acts as a modulator of redox signaling, has immunomodulatory function, and catalyzes the detoxification of reactive oxygen species (ROS). GPx3 has been identified as a tumor suppressor in many cancers. Although hyper-methylation of the GPx3 promoter has been shown to down-regulate its expression, other mechanisms by which GPx3 expression is regulated have not been reported. The aim of this study was to further elucidate the mechanisms of GPx3 regulation. GPx3 gene analysis predicted the presence of ten glucocorticoid response elements (GREs) on the GPx3 gene. This result prompted us to investigate whether GPx3 expression is regulated by the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which is implicated in tumor response to chemotherapy. The corticosteroid dexamethasone (Dex) was used to examine the possible relationship between GR and GPx3 expression. Dex significantly induced GPx3 expression in H1299, H1650, and H1975 cell lines, which exhibit low levels of GPx3 expression under normal conditions. The results of EMSA and ChIP-PCR suggest that GR binds directly to GRE 6 and 7, both of which are located near the GPx3 promoter. Assessment of GPx3 transcription efficiency using a luciferase reporter system showed that blocking formation of the GR-GRE complexes reduced luciferase activity by 7-8-fold. Suppression of GR expression by siRNA transfection also induced down-regulation of GPx3. These data indicate that GPx3 expression can be regulated independently via epigenetic or GR-mediated mechanisms in lung cancer cells, and suggest that GPx3 could potentiate glucocorticoid (GC)-mediated anti-infla-mmatory signaling in lung cancer cells.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.481-486
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• 2013

Macrophages play a role in innate immune responses to various foreign antigens. Many products from primary tumors influence the activation and transmigration of macrophages. Here, we investigated a migration of macrophages stimulated with cancer cell culture-conditioned medium (CM). Macrophage activation by treatment with CM of B16F10 cells were judged by the increase in protein levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2). The location where macrophages were at 4 h-incubation with control medium or CM was different from where they were at 5 h-incubation in culture dish. Percentage of superimposed macrophages at every 1 h interval was gradually increased by CM treatment as compared to control. Total coverage of migrated track expressed in coordinates was smaller and total distance of migration was shorter in CM-treated macrophages than that in control. Rac1 activity in CM-treated macrophages was also decreased as compared to that in control. When macrophages were treated with CM in the presence of dexamethasone (Dex), an increase in COX2 protein levels, and a decrease in Rac1 activity and total coverage of migration were reversed. In the meanwhile, biphasic changes were detected by Dex treatment in section distance of migration at each time interval, which was more decreased at early time and then increased at later time. Taken together, data demonstrate that macrophage motility could be reduced in accordance with activation in response to cancer cell products. It suggests that macrophage motility could be a novel marker to monitor cancer-associated inflammatory diseases and the efficacy of anti-inflammatory agents.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.79-79
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• 2010

To investigate whether the present-day active galaxies follow the same black hole mass vs. stellar velocity dispersion (MBH-$\sigma*$) relation as quiescent galaxies, we measured the velocity dispersions of a sample of local Seyfert 1 galaxies, for which black hole masses were measured via reverberation mapping. We measured stellar velocity dispersions from high S/N optical spectra centered on the Ca II triplet region (${\sim}8500^{\circ}A$), obtained at the Keck, Palomar, and Lick Observatories. For two objects, in which the Ca II triplet region was contaminated by nuclear emission, we used high-quality H-band spectra obtained with the OH-Suppressing Infrared Imaging Spectrograph and laser-guide star adaptive optics at the Keck-II Telescope. Combining our new measurements with data from the literature, we assemble a sample of 24 active galaxies with stellar velocity dispersions and reverberation MBH in the range of black hole mass 106< MBH /$M{\odot}$ < 109,toobtainthefirstreverberationmappingconstraintsontheslopeandintrinsicscatteroftheMBH- $\sigma*$ relation of active galaxies. Assuming a constant virial coefficient f for the reverberation MBH, we find a slope ${\beta}=3.55{\pm}0.60$ and the intrinsic scatter ${\sigma}int=0.43{\pm}0.08$ dex in the relation log (MBH/M${\odot}$)=$\alpha+\beta$ log(${\sigma}*$/200 km s-1), which are consistent with those found for quiescent galaxies. We derive an updated value of the virial coefficient f by finding the value which places the reverberation masses in best agreement with the MBH - $\sigma*$ relation of quiescent galaxies; using the quiescent MBH - $\sigma*$ relation determined by Gultekin et al. we find log f=0.72+0.09 (or $0.71{\pm}0.10$) with an intrinsic scatter of $0.44{\pm}0.07$ (or 0.46+0.07) dex. No correlations between f and parameters connected to the physics of accretion (such as the Eddington ratio or line-shape measurements) are found. The uncertainty of the virial coefficient remains one of the main sources of the uncertainty in black hole mass determination using reverberation mapping, and therefore also in single-epoch spectroscopic estimates of black hole masses in active galaxies.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.83-90
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose an algorithm for analyzing personal health log information in android environment, providing personal health log information in android environment, providing personalized exercise information and monitoring the condition of pedestrians. Personal health log data collection is performed based on raw data of user using MPU6050 sensor based on Arduino. Noise was removed and age threshold was applied to distinguish movement information. In addition, to protect personal information, safety is enhanced by providing anti-compilation prevention and encryption/decryption of APK file, and the result of movement information collection is measured according to sensor location. Experimental results showed that the MPU6050 sensor mounted one the ankle wsa measured 98.97% more accurately then the wrist. In addition, the loading time of SEED 128 bit encryption based DEX file has the average time of 0.55ms, minimizing the overhead.