• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제14권7호
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• pp.4107-4113
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• 2013

Objective: Matrix metalloproteinase-9(MMP-9) plays an important role in tumor cell invasion. Although it has been studied frequently in ovarian cancer, its prognostic impact is still equivocal. The aim of this study was to more precisely estimate its prognostic significance. Method:We searched Pubmed, Embase, OVID, Sciencedirect and CBM databases to identify eligible studies. Hazard ratios (HRs) or odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were pooled across studies using fixed-effects or random-effects models. We also performed subgroup analysis. Results: 30 studies (n=2552 patients) focusing on prognosis or expression of MM-9 were included. Increased expression of MMP-9 was associated with poor prognosis in ovarian cancer patients (HR=1.68, 95%CI 1.09-2.59, p=0.02). Besides, MMP-9 expression in ovarian cancer was significantly higher than non-malignant tumors (OR=11.46, 95%CI 8.47-15.50, P<0.00001). Moreover, increased expression of MMP-9 was significantly associated with FIGO stage (OR=4.85, 95%CI 2.60-9.04, P<0.00001), grade of differentiation (OR=3.34, 95%CI 2.46-4.54, P<0.00001), lymph node metastasis (OR=5.75, 95%CI 3.71-8.92, P<0.00001) and there was no association with histological type of ovarian cancer. Conclusions: Increased expression of MMP-9 was associated with poor prognosis in ovarian cancer patients. Down-regulation of MMP-9 is an attractive therapeutic approach which might improve outcome of ovarian cancer.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• 제49권2호
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• pp.145-151
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• 2011

The comparative efficacy of 2 anthelmintics (ivermectin and levamisole) against Baylisascaris transfuga migrating and encapsulated larvae was studied in mice. A total of 60 BALB/c mice inoculated each with about 1,000 embryonated B. transfuga eggs were equally divided into 6 groups (A-F) randomly. Mice of groups A and B were treated with ivermectin and levamisole, respectively, on day 3 post-infection (PI). Mice of groups A-C were killed on day 13 PI. Similarly, groups D and E were treated with ivermectin and levamisole, respectively, on day 14 PI, and all mice of groups D-F were treated on day 24 PI. The groups C and F were controls. Microexamination was conducted to count the larvae recovering from each mouse. The percentages of reduction in the number of migrating larvae recovered from group A (ivermectin) and B (levamisole) were 88.3% and 81.1%, respectively. In addition, the reduction in encapsulated larvae counts achieved by ivermectin (group D) and levamisole (group E) was 75.0% and 49.2%, respectively. The results suggested that, to a certain extent, both anthelmintics appeared to be more effective against migrating larvae than encapsulated larvae. However, in the incipient stage of infection, ivermectin may be more competent than levamisole as a larvicidal drug for B. transfuga.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제11권6호
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• pp.1077-1099
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• 2016

One of the main shortcomings in the current passive base isolation system is lack of adaptability. The recent research and development of a novel adaptive seismic isolator based on magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) material has created an opportunity to add adaptability to base isolation systems for civil structures. The new MRE based base isolator is able to significantly alter its shear modulus or lateral stiffness with the applied magnetic field or electric current, which makes it a competitive candidate to develop an adaptive base isolation system. This paper aims at exploring suitable control algorithms for such adaptive base isolation system by developing a close-loop semi-active control system for a building structure equipped with MRE base isolators. The MRE base isolator is simulated by a numerical model derived from experimental characterization based on the Bouc-Wen Model, which is able to describe the force-displacement response of the device accurately. The parameters of Bouc-Wen Model such as the stiffness and the damping coefficients are described as functions of the applied current. The state-space model is built by analyzing the dynamic property of the structure embedded with MRE base isolators. A Lyapunov-based controller is designed to adaptively vary the current applied to MRE base isolator to suppress the quake-induced vibrations. The proposed control method is applied to a widely used benchmark base-isolated structure by numerical simulation. The performance of the adaptive base isolation system was evaluated through comparison with optimal passive base isolation system and a passive base isolation system with optimized base shear. It is concluded that the adaptive base isolation system with proposed Lyapunov-based semi-active control surpasses the performance of other two passive systems in protecting the civil structures under seismic events.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• 제12권9호
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• pp.4467-4486
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• 2018

Trying to deal with the problem of low robustness of Copy-Move Forgery Detection (CMFD) under various transformation and degradation attacks, a novel CMFD method is proposed in this paper. The main advantages of proposed work include: (1) Discrete Analytical Fourier-Mellin Transform (DAFMT) and Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) are combined to extract the block features and detect the potential copy-move pairs; (2) The Euclidian distance is incorporated in the pixel variance to filter out the false potential copy-move pairs in the post-verification step. In addition to extracting the effective features of an image block, the DAMFT has the properties of rotation and scale invariance. Unlike the traditional lexicographic sorting method, LSH is robust to the degradations of Gaussian noise and JEPG compression. Because most of the false copy-move pairs locate closely to each other in the spatial domain or are in the homogeneous regions, the Euclidian distance and pixel variance are employed in the post-verification step. After evaluating the proposed method by the precision-recall-$F_1$ model quantitatively based on the Image Manipulation Dataset (IMD) and Copy-Move Hard Dataset (CMHD), our method outperforms Emam et al.'s and Li et al.'s works in the recall and $F_1$ aspects.

• 한국전기전자재료학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국전기전자재료학회 2002년도 추계학술대회 논문집 Vol.15
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• pp.542-545
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• 2002

High performance organic electroluminescnet(EL) devices which are composed of organic thin multilayer films are fabricated. The basic structure is ITO/Emitting layer/LiF/Al in which have a blended emitting layer. The emitting layer is consisted of a host material(N,N' diphenyl-N,N' (3-methyl phenyl)-l,l'-biphenyl-4,4'diamine)(TPD)) and a guest emitting material(poly(3-hexylthiophehe)(P3HT)). We think that the energy transfer in blending layer occurred from TPD to P3HT. Red emitting multilayer EL devices were fabricated using tris(8-hydroxyqunolinate) aluminum$(Alq_3)$ as electron transport material. The device structure of ITO/blending layer(TPD+P3HT)$/Alq_3$/LiF/Al was employed. In the Voltage-current-luminance characteristics of multilayer device, the device tum on at the 2V and the luminance of $10{\mu}W/cm^2$ obtain at l0V. Red emission peak at 640nm was observed with this device structure. We have presented evidence that the excitation energy migration between a polymeric host and guest has to be explained. And by using multilayer, the red light emitting EL device enhances not only Voltage-current-luminance characteristic but also stability of device.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권8호
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• pp.2034-2041
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• 2019

Public acceptance has become the most critical question for sustainable development of nuclear energy in recent decades. Many researches concentrated on risk and benefit perception, which were deemed as the most influential factors of Public Acceptance of Nuclear Energy (PANE). But few researches focused on psychological factors including regulatory focus. Therefore, this paper aimed to explore the moderating effect of regulatory focus on PANE based on Regulatory Focus Theory in order to find ways to increase/decrease PANE. An Internet-based survey had been carried out in China nationwide. The results indicated that trust in government was positively related to PANE and this relationship was mediated by risk and benefit perception. In addition, the strength of the associations between risk and benefit perception and PANE were moderated by regulatory focus, consisting of prevention focus and promotion focus. Prevention focus strengthened the negative relationship between risk perception and PANE, while promotion focus weakened. Moreover, promotion focus weakened the positive relationship between benefit perception and PANE, but no significant moderating effect of prevention focus was founded on the relationship between benefit perception and PANE. Some policy implications were also proposed on the basis of above-mentioned findings.

• 한국산학기술학회논문지
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• 제11권3호
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• pp.827-834
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• 2010

발광층에 도펀트가 도핑된 다층 유기발광다이오드 소자 구조에서의 발광 메카니즘을 검증하기 위해 전기적인 특성요인들을 수치해석 하였다. 본 논문에 적용한 유기발광다이오드 소자는 ITO/NPB/$Alq_3$:C545T(%)/$Alq_3$/LiF/Al으로 이루어져 있으며 도펀트인 C545T의 도핑 농도를 변화시킨 4종류의 소자 구조에 대해 특성 변화를 검토하였다. 그 결과 도펀트의 도핑 농도 변화에 따라서 전압-전류 특성이 변화되어짐을 확인하였고, 이는 참고 문헌에 제시되어 있는 전압-전류밀도 실험 데이터와 매우 잘 일치되었다. 또한 도펀트를 도핑시킨 소자 구조들에서 전압-휘도 특성이 대폭 향상되어 발광효율이 3배정도 향상되었다. 이와 같은 guest-host system이 적용된 유기발광다이오드 소자의 동작 메카니즘을 분석하기 위하여 소자 내부에서의 전계분포, 전하분포, 재결합율 등의 전기적인 항목들에 대한 특성의 변화를 관찰하였다.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제24권3호
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• pp.303-317
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• 2019

Magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) rotatory dampers are normally used for controlling the constant rotation of machines and engines. In this research, such a device is proposed to act as variable stiffness device to alleviate the rotational oscillation existing in the many engineering applications, such as motor. Under such thought, the main purpose of this work is to characterize the nonlinear torque-angular displacement/angular velocity responses of an MRF based variable stiffness device in oscillatory motion. A rotational hysteresis model, consisting of a rotatory spring, a rotatory viscous damping element and an error function-based hysteresis element, is proposed, which is capable of describing the unique dynamical characteristics of this smart device. To estimate the optimal model parameters, a modified whale optimization algorithm (MWOA) is employed on the captured experimental data of torque, angular displacement and angular velocity under various excitation conditions. In MWOA, a nonlinear algorithm parameter updating mechanism is adopted to replace the traditional linear one, enhancing the global search ability initially and the local search ability at the later stage of the algorithm evolution. Additionally, the immune operation is introduced in the whale individual selection, improving the identification accuracy of solution. Finally, the dynamic testing results are used to validate the performance of the proposed model and the effectiveness of the proposed optimization algorithm.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• 제26권5호
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• pp.347-355
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• 2022

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a life-threatening disorder worldwide. Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) was shown to display a high level in the plasma of patients with AAA; however, its detailed functions underlying AAA pathogenesis are unclear. An in vitro AAA model was established in human aortic vascular smooth muscle cells (HASMCs) by angiotensin II (Ang-II) stimulation. Cell counting kit-8, wound healing, and Transwell assays were utilized for measuring cell proliferation and migration. RT-qPCR was used for detecting mRNA expression of FGF21 and activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4). Western blotting was utilized for assessing protein levels of FGF21, ATF4, and markers for the contractile phenotype of HASMCs. ChIP and luciferase reporter assays were implemented for identifying the binding relation between AFT4 and FGF21 promoters. FGF21 and ATF4 were both upregulated in Ang-II-treated HASMCs. Knocking down FGF21 attenuated Ang-II-induced proliferation, migration, and phenotype switch of HASMCs. ATF4 activated FGF21 transcription by binding to its promoter. FGF21 overexpression reversed AFT4 silencing-mediated inhibition of cell proliferation, migration, and phenotype switch. ATF4 transcriptionally upregulates FGF21 to promote the proliferation, migration, and phenotype switch of Ang-II-treated HASMCs.

• 농촌계획
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• 제22권1호
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• pp.57-67
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to review of animal-assisted therapy. Method: Animal-assisted therapies (AATs) in domestic and international studies (68 cases) were analyzed by searching databases, KERIS & KISS, and the Pub MED(NCBI). Result: In AATs, a few animals were used for the various disease or disorder. Dog centered therapies were most common.. AATs were used in the various disorder and disease. For the psychological effect, majority of the outcome variables were depression and anxiety. For the physical effect, the most outcome variables were blood pressure, heart rate, and stress hormone. However, These results show that AATs were confined to specific areas such as sensation-centered therapies. Conclusion: AATs had positive effects both in physical and psychological factors even if the study areas have not been applied to the various condition. The further research is needed to identify scientific grounds for the effects of the interventions through various therapies.