• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.3403-3410
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• 2014

Context: Interest exits in whether TNF-alpha antagonists increase the risk of breast cancer and total malignancies in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Objectives: To analyze the risk of malignancies, especially breast cancer, in patients with RA enrolled in randomized control trials (RCTs). Methods: A systematic literature search for RCTs from 1 January 1998 to 1 July 2013 from online databases, such as PubMed, WILEY, EMBASE, ISI web of knowledge and Cochrane Library was conducted. Studies included RCTs that compared the safety of at least one dose of the five TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists with placebo or methotrexate (MTX) (or TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists plus MTX vs placebo plus MTX) in RA patients for more than 24 weeks and imported all the references into document management software EndNote${\times}6$. Two independent reviewers selected studies and extracted the data about study design, patients' characteristics and the type, number of all malignancies. Results: 28 RCTs from 34 records with 11,741 patients were analyzed. Of the total, 97 developed at least one malignancy during the double-blind trials, and breast cancer was observed in 17 patients (17.5% of total malignancies). However, there was no statistically significant increased risk observed in either the per protocol (PP) model (OR 0.65, 95%CI [0.22, 1.93]) or the modified intention to treat (mITT) model (OR 0.75, 95%CI [0.25, 2.21]). There were also no significant trend for increased risk of total malignancies on anti-TNF-${\alpha}$ therapy administered at approved doses in either model (OR, 1.06, 95%CI [0.64, 1.75], and OR, 1.30, 95%CI [0.80, 2.14], respectively). As to the two models, modified intention to treat model analysis led to higher estimation than per protocol model analysis. Conclusions: This study did not find a significantly increased risk of breast cancer and total malignancies in adults RA patients treated with TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists at approved doses. However, it cannot be ignored that more patients developed malignancies with TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists therapy compared with patients with placebo or MTX, in spite of the lack of statistical significance, so that more strict clinical trials and long-term follow-up are needed, and both mITT and PP analyses should be used in such safety analyses.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.5973-5981
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• 2013

At present, the most common cause of cancer-related death in women is breast cancer. In a large proportion of breast cancers, there is the overexpression of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). This receptor is a 185 KDa growth factor glycoprotein, also known as the first tumor-associated antigen for different types of breast cancers. Moreover, HER2 is an appropriate cell-surface specific antigen for passive immunotherapy, which relies on the repeated application of monoclonal antibodies that are transferred to the patient. However, vaccination is preferable because it would stimulate a patient's own immune system to actively respond to a disease. In the current study, several bioinformatics tools were used for designing synthetic peptide vaccines. PEPOP was used to predict peptides from HER2 ECD subdomain III in the form of discontinuous-continuous B-cell epitopes. Then, T-cell epitope prediction web servers MHCPred, SYFPEITHI, HLA peptide motif search, Propred, and SVMHC were used to identify class-I and II MHC peptides. In this way, PEPOP selected 12 discontinuous peptides from the 3D structure of the HER2 ECD subdomain III. Furthermore, T-cell epitope prediction analyses identified four peptides containing the segments 77 (384-391) and 99 (495-503) for both B and T-cell epitopes. This work is the only study to our knowledge focusing on design of in silico potential novel cancer peptide vaccines of the HER2 ECD subdomain III that contain epitopes for both B and T-cells. These findings based on bioinformatics analyses may be used in vaccine design and cancer therapy; saving time and minimizing the number of tests needed to select the best possible epitopes.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.3117-3122
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• 2016

Background: Health-care research is a neglected discipline in Pakistan and research related to esophageal cancer (ranks 9th in Pakistani males and 5th in females) is no exception in this regard. Particularly, there are no data available to delineate the overall status of esophageal cancer epidemiological studies in Pakistan. This study describes the first ever effort to make a systematic quantification, in an attempt to provide a road-map to all stakeholders for designing appropriate epidemiological, diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Materials and Methods: International (PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge) and local (PakMedinet) scientific databases as well as Google search engine were searched using specified keywords to extract relevant publication. Well-defined inclusion criteria were implemented to select publications for final analyses. All data were recorded by at least 3 authors and consensus data were entered into and analyzed for descriptive statistics (such as frequencies, percentages and annual growth rates) using Microsoft Excel and SPSS software. Results: A total of 79 publications fulfilled the inclusion criteria including 20 publications for which full texts were not available. Of the 79 publications, 59 (74.6%) were original/research publications, 5 (6.3%) were case reports, 4 (5.1%) were research communications, 2 (2.5%) were review articles, 1 was (1.2%) correspondence and 8 (10.1%) were undefined categories. Only 13 (<20%) cities of Pakistan contributed towards the 79 publications. On average, only 1.9 relevant publications/year were published from 1976 (year of first publication) to the present. Alarmingly, a decline in the annual growth at -4.1% was recorded in the last six years. Conclusions: Esophageal cancer research is largely unfathomed in Pakistan. Urgent/dramatic steps are required by all concerned to address this common (and under reported) cancer of Pakistan.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.355-375
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• 2011

This paper was designed for the purpose of helping the functional comprehension on the concept of a circumcenter and an incenter of triangle and offering the help for teaching-learning process on their definitions. We analysed the characteristic of the definition on a circumcenter and an incenter of triangle and studied the context, mean and purpose on the definition. The definition focusing on the construction is the definition stressed on the consistency of the concept through the fact that it is possible to draw figure of the concept. And this definition is the thing that consider the extend of the concept from triangle to polygon. Meanwhile this definition can be confused because the concept is not connected with the terminology. The definition focusing on the meaning is easy to memorize the concept because the concept is connected with the terminology but is difficult to search for the concept truth. And this definition is the thing that has the grounds on the occurrence but is taught in a made-knowledge. The definition focusing on both the construction and meaning is the definition that the starting point is vague in the logical proof process. We hope that the results are used to improve the understanding the concept of a circumcenter and an incenter of triangle in the field of mathematical education.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.451-458
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• 2015

Previous multimodal learning methods focus on problem-solving aspects, such as image and video search and tagging, rather than on knowledge acquisition via content modeling. In this paper, we propose the Multimodal Concept Hierarchy (MuCH), which is a content modeling method that uses a cartoon video dataset and a character-based subtitle generation method from the learned model. The MuCH model has a multimodal hypernetwork layer, in which the patterns of the words and image patches are represented, and a concept layer, in which each concept variable is represented by a probability distribution of the words and the image patches. The model can learn the characteristics of the characters as concepts from the video subtitles and scene images by using a Bayesian learning method and can also generate character-based subtitles from the learned model if text queries are provided. As an experiment, the MuCH model learned concepts from 'Pororo' cartoon videos with a total of 268 minutes in length and generated character-based subtitles. Finally, we compare the results with those of other multimodal learning models. The Experimental results indicate that given the same text query, our model generates more accurate and more character-specific subtitles than other models.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.16B no.3
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• pp.225-232
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• 2009

Author name disambiguation is essential for improving performance of document indexing, retrieval, and web search. Author name disambiguation resolves the conflict when multiple authors share the same name label. This paper introduces a novel approach which exploits ontologies and WordNet-based category utility for author name disambiguation. Our method utilizes author knowledge in the form of populated ontology that uses various types of properties: titles, abstracts and co-authors of papers and authors' affiliation. Author ontology has been constructed in the artificial intelligence and semantic web areas semi-automatically using OWL API and heuristics. Author name disambiguation determines the correct author from various candidate authors in the populated author ontology. Candidate authors are evaluated using proposed WordNet-based category utility to resolve disambiguation. Category utility is a tradeoff between intra-class similarity and inter-class dissimilarity of author instances, where author instances are described in terms of attribute-value pairs. WordNet-based category utility has been proposed to exploit concept information in WordNet for semantic analysis for disambiguation. Experiments using the WordNet-based category utility increase the number of disambiguation by about 10% compared with that of category utility, and increase the overall amount of accuracy by around 98%.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.649-665
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• 2018

In this study, we extracted the core competencies of makers through the analysis of critical incident technique and behavioral event interview to explore the nature and attributes of maker education, and then we developed a maker competency model based on these core competencies. As a result, six competency groups and 23 sub-competencies were extracted. In other words, we were able to confirm the existence of integrated thinking competency group consisting of four competencies made up of 'analytic thinking', 'intuitive thinking', 'visual thinking', and 'empirical thinking' and that of collaborative competency group with four competencies of 'sharing', 'communication', 'conflict management', and 'scrupulosity'. In addition, we could also confirm the existence of making mind competency group, which is composed of four competencies namely 'interest in various areas', 'challenge consciousness', 'failure management', and 'pleasure of the making process'. We could also confirm that human-centered competence group consisting of two competencies of 'humanity' and 'user-oriented' and the problem-finding competence group consisting of two competencies of 'observation' and 'recognition of discomfort in daily life'. Lastly, the making practice competency group is composed of seven competencies: 'understanding making tool', 'understanding electricity', 'understanding programming', 'planning', 'hand knowledge', 'information search', and 'direct execution'. We discussed educational implications of these findings.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.36-61
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• 2019

While smart devices can have a positive impact on work efficiency and productivity by reducing time-space constraints and enabling rapid processing of tasks, side effects can arise from the imbalances between work and personal life. In recent years, as smart devices are increasingly used in work environments, it is more necessary than ever to understand the related phenomenon, find the cause of negative effects, and search for appropriate solutions. This study has developed and verified a theoretical model that shows how the technical characteristics known as the utility of smart devices are converted into negative results such as work-life conflict. As a result of analyzing the collected data from the employees, our study provides significant implications for the researchers, as well as the practitioners and policy makers, regarding various relationships among IT-enabled work flexibility, after-hours work connectivity and work-life conflict, and the new knowledge about the important role of segmentation supplies from the organization.

• 한국균학회소식:학술대회논문집
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.11-11
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• 2014

Fungal pathogens have huge impact on health and economic wellbeing of human by causing life-threatening mycoses in immune-compromised patients or by destroying crop plants. A key determinant of fungal pathogenesis is their ability to undergo developmental change in response to host or environmental factors. Genetic pathways that regulate such morphological transitions and adaptation are therefore extensively studied during the last few decades. Given that epigenetic as well as genetic components play pivotal roles in development of plants and mammals, contribution of microbial epigenetic counterparts to this morphogenetic process is intriguing yet nearly unappreciated question to date. To bridge this gap in our knowledge, we set out to investigate histone modifications among epigenetic mechanisms that possibly regulate fungal adaptation and processes involved in pathogenesis of a model plant pathogenic fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. M. oryzae is a causal agent of rice blast disease, which destroys 10 to 30% of the rice crop annually. Since the rice is the staple food for more than half of human population, the disease is a major threat to global food security. In addition to the socioeconomic impact of the disease it causes, the fungus is genetically tractable and can undergo well-defined morphological transitions including asexual spore production and appressorium (a specialized infection structure) formation in vitro, making it a model to study fungal development and pathogenicity. For functional and comparative analysis of histone modifications, a web-based database (dbHiMo) was constructed to archive and analyze histone modifying enzymes from eukaryotic species whose genome sequences are available. Histone modifying enzymes were identified applying a search pipeline built upon profile hidden Markov model (HMM) to proteomes. The database incorporates 22,169 histone-modifying enzymes identified from 342 species including 214 fungal, 33 plants, and 77 metazoan species. The dbHiMo provides users with web-based personalized data browsing and analysis tools, supporting comparative and evolutionary genomics. Based on the database entries, functional analysis of genes encoding histone acetyltransferases and histone demethylases is under way. Here I provide examples of such analyses that show how histone acetylation and methylation is implicated in regulating important aspects of fungal pathogenesis. Current analysis of histone modifying enzymes will be followed by ChIP-Seq and RNA-seq experiments to pinpoint the genes that are controlled by particular histone modifications. We anticipate that our work will provide not only the significant advances in our understanding of epigenetic mechanisms operating in microbial eukaryotes but also basis to expand our perspective on regulation of development in fungal pathogens.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.464-470
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• 2017

Three Korean native cattle (KNC) and seven exotic breeds (Chikso, Hanwoo, Jeju black, Holstein, Japanese black, Charolais, Angus, Hereford, Simmental, and Cross breed) were characterized by using five microsatellite (MS) markers (INRA30, TGLA325, UMN0803, UMN0905, and UMN0929) from the sex chromosome. Genetic diversity was evaluated across the 10 breeds by using the number of alleles per locus, allele frequency, heterozygosity, and polymorphism information content (PIC) to search for locus and/or breed specific alleles, allowing a rapid and cost-effective identification of cattle samples, avoiding mislabeling of commercial beef. It was divided into two main groups from STRUCTURE analysis, one corresponding to KNC and the other to exotic cattle breeds. These results also showed specific genetic differences between KNC and exotic breeds. Nei's standard genetic distance was calculated and used in the construction of a neighbor-joining tree. Results evidenced a correspondence between genetic distance, breeds' history, and their geographic origin, and a clear separation between KNC and exotic breeds. Overall, this study evidenced that DNA markers can discriminate between domestic and imported beef, contributing to the knowledge on cattle breeds' genetic diversity and relationships by using MS markers of the sex chromosome. These markers would be useful for inhibitory effect about false sales and for building an effective tracking system.