• Korean Journal of Pharmacognosy
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.226-233
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• 2022

Ephedra herbs are defined as stem of Ephedra sinica , Ephedra intermedia and Ephedra equisetina in the Korean Pharmacopoeia. It is important to use pure herbs to derive the safety and efficacy of herbal medicine. However, the identification of these herbs by conventional taxonomic methods is difficult. Recently, many studies have applied these DNA barcoding for the identification of herbal medicinal species using standard DNA markers. In this study, we report a case study in which the identification of Ephedra species was done by DNA barcoding. For identification of Ephedra species, 17 samples were collected, and a reference DNA barcode library was developed using 6 markers (rbcL, matK, ITS2, ycf1, ycf3, and rpoC2). To develop KASP-SNP markers, we selected 4 markers (ycf1, ycf3, rpl2, and rbcL), which were able to distinguish three Ephedra species. In the result, the specific markers for each of the three Ephedra were clustered into FAM-positive section, whereas non-targeted plants were clustered either HEX-positive or negative section. Therefore, we have developed KASP assay that allow rapid and easy Ephedra species identification using three KASP markers.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.136-153
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• 2022

Objectives: The aim of this study was to find out whether east asian herbal medicine (EAHM) treatment alone is effective in improving pregnancy-related indicators compared to conventional medicine in women with Diminished Ovarian Reserve (DOR). Methods: We searched eligible studies from PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure Database, CiNii, Korean Medical Database, Korean Studies Information Service System, Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System, ScienceOn. GRADE pro was used to evaluate the current evidence of the study. Result: A total of 5 studies, 325 women with DOR were included. EAHM showed a significant effect on improvement of pregnancy rate (n=270, RR 2.13 [95% CI 1.44 to 3.15], Z=3.78, p=0.0002, I2=0%) and Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) level (n=211, SMD 0.82 [95% CI 0.40 to 1.25], Z=3.80, p=0.0001) compared to conventional medicine. In ovulation rate (n=156, RR 0.86 [95% CI 0.70 to 1.06], Z=1.43, p=0.15, I2=0%), Antral Follicle Count (n=245, SMD 0.27 [95% CI -0.25 to 0.79], Z=1.01, p=0.31), and follicle stimulating hormone (n=245, SMD 0.29 [95% CI -0.13 to 0.70], Z=1.36, p=0.17) level, EAHM showed similar effects to conventional medicine. In this study, the most frequently used herbal medicines were Cuscutae Semen, Dipsaci Radix, and Angelicae Gigantis Radix. Conclusion: This meta-analysis showed that EAHM could improve pregnancy rates and AMH levels in women with DOR. However, more well-designed RCTs will have to be performed further in the future.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.106-126
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• 2022

The digital divide issue is re-emerging in step with the rapid progress of digital transformation. Recently, the discussion of the digital divide is expanding to the point that the difference in digital access and use competency deepens economic and social inequality and discrimination. Notably, the phenomenon of the exclusion and alienation of the elderly from society is a serious matter to be addressed. Accordingly, this research was conducted to provide practical help in minimizing the digital divide through its understanding among the elderly. To this end, both the accomplished capital accumulated and experienced in the course of life and their attitudes toward technology in relation to digital competence capital by the elderly were examined in three dimensions. This analysis was conducted using the results of the '2020 The Report on the Digital Divide'. The target group of the analysis comprised 653 seniors aged 65 and above. As a result of the analysis, digital competence capital among the elderly was affected by both various types of accomplished capital such as educational, income, social, and emotional capital and digital device use attitude. Based on this, this study proposed measures to bridge the digital divide among the elderly.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.93-108
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• 2022

PURPOSE: This review sought to confirm the correlation between dual-task gait and cognitive function in cognitively impaired and healthy older adults. METHOD: We used four databases (DBs), Pubmed, Cochrane library, Kmbase, and Koreamed. Searches were carried out according to the PICOS method, P (participants) were the elderly (above 65 years) with cognitive decline, I (intervention) was walking with dual tasks, C (control group) comprised the elderly without cognitive decline, O (outcome) was the correlation between gait and cognitive function and S (study) was the cross-sectional study. For the methodological quality assessment of each study, we used the Quality Assessment Tool for Observation Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). RESULTS: A total of 10 articles were included in this systematic review. For the components of gait, we used pace, rhythm, and variability and we observed that mild cognitive impairment mostly causes low gait performance while performing dual tasks. Among the 10 articles, 9 articles studied pace, of which 7 showed significant results. However, 2 were not significant. Also, 1 article that studied rhythm and 3 articles that studied variability showed significant results. The methodological quality of the 10 studies was fair. CONCLUSION: Gait pace was found to have a high correlation between memory, which is a cognitive ability, and overall cognitive function. It was observed that older adults with mild cognitive impairment have reduced gait pace in single-task walking, and further decrease in dual-task gait pace shows the correlation between memory and gait pace during walking.

• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.323-338
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• 2022

Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is a chronic oral disorder of unknown etiology which presents therapeutic challenges. Alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) has been studied as a potential treatment for BMS. The objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the effectiveness of ALA compared to that of placebo or other interventions in individuals with BMS. Randomized controlled trials (RCT) using ALA to treat BMS were identified from MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and Web of Science up to February 3, 2021. The assessment of the risk of bias in the included studies was based on the Cochrane guidelines. The primary outcome evaluated was the visual analog scale (VAS) pain intensity. ALA was compared with placebo, clonazepam, gabapentin, pregabalin, ALA plus gabapentin, capsaicin, Biotène^®, and laser therapy. Altogether, 137 records were scanned for inclusion/exclusion, and nine RCTs (two unclear and seven at high risk of bias) were included in the qualitative and quantitative analyses, with a total of 594 patients with BMS included in this review. All studies reported an improvement in VAS pain scores ranging from -0.72 to -2.77. Meta-analysis results showed a non-significant reduction in pain intensity for ALA (P = 0.616) compared to that of placebo on a VAS of 0-10. Patients taking ALA were 1.923 times more likely to show an improvement in self-reported BMS symptoms (P = 0.031) than those in the placebo group. Clonazepam and pregabalin showed a significant VAS pain reduction of 4.08 and 4.68 (P < 0.001), respectively, compared to that with ALA. Although ALA intervention provided a non-significant improvement in the pain score and was more likely to produce a reduction in BMS symptoms, the evidence was of low quality. Further research is needed to establish clear guidelines for the use of ALA for BMS treatment.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.39-52
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• 2021

Objective : This study aimed to identify the characteristics and analyze the quality of studies on memory improvement using a single-subject research design. Methods : Six studies were selected through the Research Information Sharing Service (RISS), Korean Studies Information Service System (KISS), and National Digital Science Library (NDSL). Keywords were memory training, stroke, early dementia, mild cognitive impairment, and single-subject research design. The characteristics and quality levels were analyzed between January 2011 and October 2020. Results : Regarding the quality level, the middle level (7-10 points) was 66.7% of the four articles, and the high level (11-14 points) was 33.3% of the two articles. Reversal designs were used in all studies. Independent variables were errorless learning, smartphone application, cognitive training system (CoTras), spaced retrieval training (SRT) with errorless learning, spaced retrieval training, and iPad applications. The dependent variables included memory, attention, electroencephalogram, instrumental activities of daily living, depression etc., which increased after the intervention. The total session, study period, and intervention time were varied. Conclusion : In single-subject research design related to memory training, occupational therapy intervention was confirmed as an effective method for improving memory and attention. The quality level of single-subject research design was moderate or higher, and high-quality level of studies should be conducted by additional design to increase the validity in the future.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.15-24
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• 2022

The article clarifies the conditions for information, digital and educational accessibility for higher education seekers with disabilities in terms of distance learning caused by quarantine restrictions. It is established that such conditions are regulated by international and Ukrainian legal documents (The Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Sustainable Development Goals, Law of Ukraine "On Education", Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", Strategy for the Development of Higher Education in Ukraine 2021-2031, Development Strategy areas of innovation for the period up to 2030, Development strategy of the sphere of innovation activity for the period up to 2030). As a part of information barrierlessness, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) should provide access to information in various formats and using technologies, in particular Braille script, large-type printing, audio description (audio descriptive commenting), sign language interpretation, subtitling, a format suitable for reading by screen access programs, formats of simple speech, easy-to-read formats, means of alternative communication. The experience of Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University is described. In particular, special attention is paid to the study of sign language: in view of this, the initiative group implemented the project "Learning to hear and overcome social isolation together" with the financial support of the British Council in Ukraine. Within the framework of digital accessibility, the official website of the Faculty of Social and Psychological Education has been adapted for the visually impaired in accordance with WCAG 2.0 World Standards. In 2021, Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University implemented the project "Cultural, Recreational and Tourist Cherkasy Region: Inclusive Social 3D Map" funded by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation; a site with available content for online travel in the region to provide barrier-free access to the historical and cultural heritage of Cherkasy region was created. Educational accessibility is achieved by increasing the number of people with special educational needs, receiving education in inclusive groups; activities of the Center for Social and Educational Integration and Inclusive Rehabilitation Social Tourism "Bez barieriv" ("Without barriers"); implementation of a research topic for financing the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine: "Social and psychological rehabilitation of children and youth with special educational needs by means of inclusive tourism"; implementation of the project "Social inclusion of distance educational process"; development of information campaigns to popularize the ideas of accessibility, the need for its implementation, ongoing training programs and competitions, etc.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.99-132
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to propose AET (Augmented and Extended Topics), a novel method of synthesizing both LDA and BERTopic results, and to analyze the recently published LIS articles as an experimental approach. To achieve the purpose of this study, 55,442 abstracts from 85 LIS journals within the WoS database, which spans from January 2001 to October 2021, were analyzed. AET first constructs a WORD2VEC-based cosine similarity matrix between LDA and BERTopic results, extracts AT (Augmented Topics) by repeating the matrix reordering and segmentation procedures as long as their semantic relations are still valid, and finally determines ET (Extended Topics) by removing any LDA related residual subtopics from the matrix and ordering the rest of them by F₁ (BERTopic topic size rank, Inverse cosine similarity rank). AET, by comparing with the baseline LDA result, shows that AT has effectively concretized the original LDA topic model and ET has discovered new meaningful topics that LDA didn't. When it comes to the qualitative performance evaluation, AT performs better than LDA while ET shows similar performances except in a few cases.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.25-33
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• 2023

The fermentation process of kimchi, which is a traditional Korean food, influences the resulting compo- sition of microorganisms, such as the genera Leuconostoc, Weissella, and Lactobacillus. In addition, several factors, including the type of kimchi, fermentation conditions, materials, and ingredients, can influence the distribution of the kimchi microbial community. In this study, next-generation sequencing (NGS) of kimchi samples obtained from central (Gangwon-do and Gyeonggi-do) and southern (Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do) regions in Korea was performed, and the microbial communities in samples from the two regions were compared. Good's coverage prediction for all samples was higher than 99%, indicating that there was sufficient reliability for comparative analysis. However, in a α -diversity analysis, there was no significant difference in species richness and diversity between samples. The Firmicutes phylum was common in both regions. At the species level, Weissella kandleri dominated in central (46.5%) and southern (30.8%) regions. Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis was performed to identify biomarkers representing the microbial community in each region. The LEfSe results pointed to statistically significant differences between the two regions in community composition, with Leuconostocaceae (71.4%) dominating in the central region and Lactobacillaceae (61.0%) dominating in the southern region. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the microbial communities of kimchi are significantly influenced by regional properties and that it can provide more useful scientific data to study the relationship between regional characteristics of kimchi and their microbial distribution.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.8
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• pp.663-679
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• 2023

This review analyzes research trends related to new drug development using artificial intelligence from 2010 to 2022. This analysis organized the abstracts of 2,421 studies into a corpus, and words with high frequency and high connection centrality were extracted through preprocessing. The analysis revealed a similar word frequency trend between 2010 and 2019 to that between 2020 and 2022. In terms of the research method, many studies using machine learning were conducted from 2010 to 2020, and since 2021, research using deep learning has been increasing. Through these studies, we investigated the trends in research on artificial intelligence utilization by field and the strengths, problems, and challenges of related research. We found that since 2021, the application of artificial intelligence has been expanding, such as research using artificial intelligence for drug rearrangement, using computers to develop anticancer drugs, and applying artificial intelligence to clinical trials. This article briefly presents the prospects of new drug development research using artificial intelligence. If the reliability and safety of bio and medical data are ensured, and the development of the above artificial intelligence technology continues, it is judged that the direction of new drug development using artificial intelligence will proceed to personalized medicine and precision medicine, so we encourage efforts in that field.