• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2020

Nicotine, primary component of tobaco produces craving and withdrawal effect both in humans and animals. Nicotine shows a close resemblance to other addictive drugs in molecular, neuroanatomical and pharmacological, particularly the drugs which enhances the cognitive functions. Nicotine mainly shows its action through specific nicotinic acetylcholine receptors located in brain. It stimulates presynaptic acetylcholine receptors thereby enhancing Ach release and metabolism. Dopaminergic system is also stimulated by it, thus increasing the concentration of dopamine in nuclear accumbens. This property of nicotine according to various researchers is responsible for reinforcing behavioral change and dependence of nicotine. Various researchers have also depicted that some non dopaminergic systems are also involved for rewarding effect of nicotinic withdrawal. Neurological systems such as GABAergic, serotonergic, noradrenergic, and brain stem cholinergic may also be involved to mediate the actions of nicotine. Further, the neurobiological pathway to nicotine dependence might perhaps be appropriate to the attachment of nicotine to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, peruse by stimulation of dopaminergic system and activation of general pharmacological changes that might be responsible for nicotine addiction. It is also suggested that MAO A and B both are restrained by nicotine. This enzyme helps in degradation dopamine, which is mainly responsible for nicotinic actions and dependence. Various questions remain uninsurable to nicotine mechanism and require more research. Also, various genetic methods united with modern instrumental analysis might result for more authentic information for nicotine addiction.

• Food Science and Biotechnology
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.53-59
• /
• 2009

This study was performed to investigate the taste composition and antioxidant properties of cheonggukjang containing Korean red ginseng (RGC), as compared to either general cheonggukjang (GC) or non-fermented boiled soybeans (BS). Amylase activity was the highest (576.7 unit/g) in RGC, whereas protease activity was the highest (326.0 unit/g) in GC. The total soluble sugar contents of BS, GC, and RGC were 2,027.5, 905.5, and 837.5 mg/100 g, respectively. RGC had the highest amount of total amino acids (2,127.4 mg/100 g) and essential amino acid (50.9%) among the samples. The ratio of sweet to bitter components was higher in RGC than in GC. Although the extracts of RGC had higher radical scavenging activity for 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) than BS or GC, regardless of the extract concentration, the ethanol extract of RGC showed the highest scavenging ability (92.4%) at 2.0 mg/mL. The chloroform extracts from GC and RGC showed their greatest superoxide dimutase-like activities at 17.2 and 19.7% at a concentration of 2 mg/mL, respectively. Regardless of the samples, the nitrite scavenging ability was positively correlated to the extract concentration, and RGC had highest ability among samples under the same extract concentrations.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.31 no.6C
• /
• pp.575-581
• /
• 2006

In this paper, we first define one-dimensional component symbol error function (ODSEF) from the exact expression of the pairwise error probability of orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBC). Using the ODSEF and the general bit error probability (BEP) expression for quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) introduced by Cho and Yoon, the exact closed form expressions for the BEP of linear OSTBCs with QAM in slow-varying Rayleigh fading channel are derived.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.9 no.5
• /
• pp.427-439
• /
• 2012

The present paper deals with the analytical solution of a functionally graded piezoelectric (FGP) cylinder in the magnetic field under mechanical, thermal and electrical loads. All mechanical, thermal and electrical properties except Poisson ratio can be varied continuously and gradually along the thickness direction of the cylinder based on a power function. The cylinder is assumed to be axisymmetric. Steady state heat transfer equation is solved by considering the appropriate boundary conditions. Using Maxwell electro dynamic equation and assumed magnetic field along the axis of the cylinder, Lorentz's force due to magnetic field is evaluated for non homogenous state. This force can be employed as a body force in the equilibrium equation. Equilibrium and Maxwell equations are two fundamental equations for analysis of the problem. Comprehensive solution of Maxwell equation is considered in the present paper for general states of non homogeneity. Solution of governing equations may be obtained using solution of the characteristic equation of the system. Achieved results indicate that with increasing the non homogenous index, different mechanical and electrical components present different behaviors along the thickness direction. FGP can control the distribution of the mechanical and electrical components in various structures with good precision. For intelligent properties of functionally graded piezoelectric materials, these materials can be used as an actuator, sensor or a component of piezo motor in electromechanical systems.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.11
• /
• pp.1113-1122
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study is to examine how the Indian banks have adjusted their risk-based capital ratios during 2009-2018 to meet the regulatory requirements. Banks can, in principle, increase their risk-based regulatory capital ratio, either by increasing their levels of regulatory capital or by shrinking their risk-weighted assets by adjusting asset growth or risk in the portfolio. We investigate banks' capital behavior by decomposing the change in the capital ratio into the contribution of its components and analyzing their variance across regulatory regimes and banks' ownerships. We further investigate how each component of the capital ratio is adjusted by the banks by breaking down them into balance sheet items. We find that the banks' capital behavior significantly differed between public and private sector banks and between the two regulatory regimes. During Basel II, banks, in general, followed a strategy of aggressive asset growth with increased risk-taking. The decline in the CRAR because of such an expansionary strategy was adjusted by augmenting additional capital. However, during Basel III, due to higher capital requirements, both in terms of quantity and quality, banks followed a strategy of cutting back their asset growth and reducing the risk in their portfolio to maintain their CRAR.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.13-21
• /
• 2004

The thermal-hydraulic model ARTS which was based on the RETRAN-3D code adopted in the domestic full-scope power plant simulator which was provided in 1998 by KEPRI. Since ARTS is a generalized code to model the components with control volumes, the smaller time-step size should be used even if converged solution could not get in a single volume. Therefore, dedicated models which do not force to reduce the time-step size are sometimes more suitable in terms of a real-time calculation and robustness. In the case of PRT(Pressurizer Relief Tank) model, it is consist of subcooled water in bottom and non-condensable gas in top. The sparger merged under subcooled water enhances condensation. The complicated thermal-hydraulic phenomena such as condensation, phase separation with existence of non-condensable gas makes difficult to simulate. Therefore, the PRT volume can limit the time-step size if we model it with a general control volume. To prevent the time-step size reduction due to convergence failure for simulating this component, we developed a dedicated model for PRT. The dedicated model was expected to provide substantially more accurate predictions in the analysis of the system transients. The results were resonable in terms of accuracy, real-time simulation, robustness and education of operators, complying with the ANSI/ANS-3.5-1998 simulator software performance criteria and RETRAN-3D results.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.31-48
• /
• 2014

The concept of Health Related Quality of Life and its determinants have evolved since the 1980s. Although many researchers have published articles of technology usage in hospitals and the installation of technology based healthcare system, the research about applying the information technology to improve the patients' perceived quality of healthcare services is still limited. In general, services are deeds, processes and performances that are essentially concerns of the consumer. The healthcare service quality depends on tangible factors, such as equipments, facilities, and the quality of hospital staff and also the intangible ones. The main purpose of this work is to establish new model and find out the contribution of information technology to enhance the patients' perceived quality of healthcare service. We attempted to examine the main information technology related factors in 3 aspects, namely quality of information, the technology accessibility and the community that can improve patients' perceived quality of healthcare services. Offline and online questionnaires were used to measure the patients' perceived quality and were distributed to 384 people in 2 countries, Laos and South Korea. A principle component analysis and multiple regressions were used to verify our model. Results show that the use of information technology has partial positive effect on patient-physician interaction in both countries. However, patient knowledge and patient autonomy which are the 2 dimensions of patient-physician interaction has significant positive effect on patients' perceived quality of healthcare service.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.57 no.12
• /
• pp.2263-2268
• /
• 2008

We investigated the malfunction and destruction characteristics of microcontroller devices under high power electromagnetic(HPEM) wave by magnetron. HPEM was rated at a microwave output of 0 to 1,000 W, at a frequency of 2,450${\pm}$50 MHz and was radiated from the open-ended standard rectangular waveguide(WR-340) to free space. The influence of different reset-, clock-, data-, and power supply-line lengths has been tested. The variation of the line length was done with flat cables. The susceptibility of the tested microcontroller devices was in general much influenced by clock-, reset-, and power supply-line length, little influenced by data-line length. Further the line length was increased, the malfunction threshold was decreased as expected, because more energy couples to the devices. The surfaces of the destroyed microcontroller devices were removed and the chip conditions were investigated with microscope. The microscopic analysis of the damaged devices showed component and bondwire destructions such as breakthroughs and melting due to thermal effects. The obtained results are expected to provide fundamental data for interpreting the combined mechanism of microcontroller devices in an intentional microwave environment.

• IE interfaces
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.170-177
• /
• 2012

Process control is essential to operate the semiconductor process efficiently. This paper consider fault classification of semiconductor based cyclic signal for process control. In general, process signal usually take the different pattern depending on some different cause of fault. If faults can be classified by cause of faults, it could improve the process control through a definite and rapid diagnosis. One of the most important thing is a finding definite diagnosis in fault classification, even-though it is classified several times. This paper proposes the method that one-class classifier classify fault causes as each classes. Hotelling T2 chart, kNNDD(k-Nearest Neighbor Data Description), Distance based Novelty Detection are used to perform the one-class classifier. PCA(Principal Component Analysis) is also used to reduce the data dimension because the length of process signal is too long generally. In experiment, it generates the data based real signal patterns from semiconductor process. The objective of this experiment is to compare between the proposed method and SVM(Support Vector Machine). Most of the experiments' results show that proposed method using Distance based Novelty Detection has a good performance in classification and diagnosis problems.

• International Journal of Reliability and Applications
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.1-16
• /
• 2002

In reliability engineering, the bathtub-shaped hazard rates play an important role in survival analysis and many other applications as well. For the bathtub-shaped, initially the hazard rate decreases from a relatively high value due to manufacturing defects or infant mortality to a relatively stable middle useful life value and then slowly increases with the onset of old age or wear out. In this paper, we present a new two-parameter lifetime distribution function, called the Loglog distribution, with Vtub-shaped hazard rate function. We illustrate the usefulness of the new Vtub-shaped hazard rate function by evaluating the reliability of several helicopter parts based on the data obtained in the maintenance malfunction information reporting system database collected from October 1995 to September 1999. We develop the S-Plus add-in software tool, called Reliability and Safety Assessment (RSA), to calculate reliability measures include mean time to failure, mean residual function, and confidence Intervals of the two helicopter critical parts. We use the mean squared error to compare relative goodness of fit test of the distribution models include normal, lognormal, and Weibull within the two data sets. This research indicates that the result of the new Vtub-shaped hazard rate function is worth the extra function-complexity for a better relative fit. More application in broader validation of this conclusion is needed using other data sets for reliability modeling in a general industrial setting.