• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 1998

Objectives : The change of sleep patterns commonly occurs in association with the pregnancy. This study was to investigate sleep habits during the course of normal pregnancy. Methods : Sleep habits questionnaire was administered to healthy women in their first trimester(TR1) of pregnancy and then the same questionnaire was repeatedly administered during their second(TR2) and third(TR3) trimesters. The following aspects were assessed : patterns of night sleep, daytime status, sleep posture, reasons for sleep alteration, and the experience of any particular parasomnias, as well as sleep problem-related treatment or medication. Data analysis was based on 26 women who maintaind good health throughout their pregnancy and completed the questionnaire three times. Results : In comparisons between each trimester and non-pregnant state, total night sleep time, daytime tiredness, and sleepiness were significantly increased in all trimesters. Sleep latency was significantly decreased in TR1 and TR2, but not in TR3. In addition, refreshed feeling on waking the following day was significantly decreased and the number of awakenings during night sleep was significantly increased in TR3, but not in TR1 and TR2. In comparisons between trimesters, there was a significant increase in sleep latency, daytime sleepiness and the number of awakenings during night sleep and a significant decrease in refreshed feeling on waking the following day in TR3 compared to TR1 and TR2. Over the course of pregnancy, the rate of lateral position during sleep was gradually increased and all the pregnant women took the lateral sleeping posture in TR3. The major reasons for sleep pattern alteration were nausea, vomiting and heartburn in TR1, urinary frequency, fetal movement and ache in hips in TR2, and urinary frequency, fetal movement, cramp in legs and backache in TR3. Conclusion : These findings are expected to be useful for educating pregnant women about sleep hygiene. In future studies, the underlying factors and mechanisms regarding sleep patterns during pregnancy will need to be clarified.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.73-94
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• 2010

The attending system is a medical system that allows doctors in clinics to use the extra equipment in hospitals-beds, laboratory, operating room, etc-for their patient's care under a contract between the doctors and hospitals. Therefore, the system is very beneficial in terms of the efficiency of the usage of medical resources. However, it is necessary to develop a strong support system to strengthen its weaknesses and supplement its merits. If doctors use hospital beds under the attending system of hospitals, they would be able to check a patient's condition often and provide them with nursing care services. However, the current attending system lacks delivery and assistance support. Thus, for the successful performance of the attending system, a networking system should be developed to facilitate communication between the doctors and nurses. In particular, the nursing records in the attending system could help doctors monitor the patient's condition and provision of nursing care services. A nursing record is the formal documentation associated with nursing care. It is merely a data repository that helps nurses to track their activities; nursing records thus represent a resource of primary information that can be reused. In order to maximize their usefulness, nursing records have been introduced as part of computerized patient records. However, nursing records are internal data that are not disclosed by hospitals. Moreover, the lack of standardization of the record list makes it difficult to share nursing records. Under the attending system, nurses would want to minimize the amount of effort they have to put in for the maintenance of additional records. Hence, they would try to maintain the current level of nursing records in the form of record lists and record attributes, while doctors would require more detailed and real-time information about their patients in order to monitor their condition. Therefore, this study developed a system for assisting in the maintenance and sharing of the nursing records under the attending system. In contrast to previous research on the functionality of computer-based nursing records, we have emphasized the practical usefulness of nursing records from the viewpoint of the actual implementation of the attending system. We suggested that nurses could design a nursing record dictionary for their convenience, and that doctors and nurses could confirm the definitions that they looked up in the dictionary through negotiations with intelligent agents. Such an agent-based system could facilitate networking among medical institutes. Multi-agent systems are a widely accepted paradigm for the distribution and sharing of computation workloads in the scientific community. Agent-based systems have been developed with differences in functional cooperation, coordination, and negotiation. To increase such communication, a framework for a multi-agent based system is proposed in this study. The agent-based approach is useful for developing a system that promotes trade-offs between transactions involving multiple attributes. A brief summary of our contributions follows. First, we propose an efficient and accurate utility representation and acquisition mechanism based on a preference scale while minimizing user interactions with the agent. Trade-offs between various transaction attributes can also be easily computed. Second, by providing a multi-attribute negotiation framework based on the attribute utility evaluation mechanism, we allow both the doctors in charge and nurses to negotiate over various transaction attributes in the nursing record lists that are defined by the latter. Third, we have designed the architecture of the nursing record management server and a system of agents that provides support to the doctors and nurses with regard to the framework and mechanisms proposed above. A formal protocol has also been developed to create and control the communication required for negotiations. We verified the realization of the system by developing a web-based prototype. The system was implemented using ASP and IIS5.1.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.319-329
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• 1990

Effects of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) on blood pressure, plasma lenin activity, aldosterone and renal excretion were compared in conscious spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar rats fed low, medium or high sodium diet (2, 10, 25 mmol NaCl/100g diet) for 6 weeks. ANP infusion (380 ng/kg/min for 20 min) produced reductions in blood pressure, plasma renin activity, and aldosterone level, but marked increases in hematocrit, urine flow, and excretions of sodium and potassium. The low sodium group showed a significantly enhanced aldosterone lowering effect of ANP than the high sodium group. However, three salt groups showed no difference in effects of ANP on blood pressure, plasma renin activity, hematocrit and diuresis. Natriuretic response to ANP was significantly greater in the high salt-than in the low sait-SHR, but was not different between the Wistar salt groups. There were strain differences in effects of ANP: SHR showed greater responses of blood pressure and natriuresis than Wistar rats. Above results indicate that aldosterone-lowering and natriuretic effects of ANP were modifed by different dietary sodium intakes. However, blood pressure- and renin-lowering, or diuretic effects of ANP were not affected by dietary sodium intakes. The mechanisms whereby dietary sodium intakes alter the effects of ANP in the pathogenesis of hypertension are not clear.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.73-81
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• 2014

Salsola collina, also known as Russian thistle, is widely distributed in and around waste facilities, roadsides, and drought and semi-drought areas, and is used as a traditional folk remedy in Chinese medicine for the treatment of hypertension. In this study, we have evaluated the anti-oxidative and anti-cancer activities of the ethanol extract of S. collina Pall. (EESC), and the molecular mechanisms of its anti-cancer effects on human colon carcinoma HT29 cells. EESC exhibited anti-oxidative activity through DPPH radical scavenging capacity and showed cytotoxic activity in a dose-dependent manner in HT29 cells. After EESC treatment, HT29 cells altered their morphology, becoming smaller and irregular in shape. EESC also induced cell accumulation in the G2/M phase in a dose-dependent manner, accompanied by a decrease of cell population in the G1 phase. The G2/M arrest by EESC was associated with the increased expression of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor p21 and Wee1 kinase, which phosphorylates, or inactivates, Cdc2. EESC treatment induced the phosphorylation of Cdc2 and Cdc25C, and inhibited cyclin A and Cdc25C protein expression. In addition, S arrest was induced by the highest concentration of EESC treatment, associated with a decrease of cyclin A and Cdk2 expression. These findings suggest that EESC may possess remarkable anti-oxidative activity and exert an anti-cancer effect in HT29 cells by cell cycle regulation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.61-71
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• 2000

When irradiate the power ultrasound into the aqueous solutions, water vapor is decomposed by the heat of very high temperature in the cavitation bubble to produce OH (hydroxyl radical) and H (hydrogen radical), and these radicals play a role in decomposing the substances in aqueous solution by oxidation and/or reduction, and in producing the hydrogen peroxide. Accordingly it is possible to predict that the quantity of hydrogen peroxide produced may correlate with the sonolysis mechanism of the substance in aqueous solution. Thus to confirm this prediction, the quantities of hydrogen peroxide produced from each of the air saturated distilled water and three aqueous solutions of TCE, benzene, and 2,4-DCP that are prepared by dissolving them into distilled water are measured. As a result, it showed that the quantity of hydrogen peroxide produced from the distilled water and three aqueous solutions are increased in order of distilled water>TCE solution>2,4-DCP solution>benzene solution, and decrease with decrease in concentration of organic substance, which coincide with the sonolysis mechanisms reported that TCE in aqueous solution is decomposed directly by the pyrolysis in and around the cavitation bubbles when its concentration is high and by the radical reaction when low, however, benzene and 2,4-DCP are decomposed not only by the pyrolysis but also by the radical reactions. Effects of such experimental parameters as the acoustic frequency and power and as the concentration showed that the higher the acoustic frequency and the lower the acoustic power, the less the quantity of hydrogen peroxide was produced. This result coincide with the theory of ultrasound for the relation between the cavitation that is the energy source of the power ultrasound in aqueous solution and these experimental parameters.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.557-561
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• 1994

Q estimates are made by direct measurements of energy loss per cycle from primary P and S waves, as a function of frequency. Assuming that intrinsic Q is frequency independent and scattering Q is frequency dependent over the frequencies of interest, the relative contributions of each, to a total observed Q, may be estimated. Test examples are produced by computing viscoelastic synthetic seismograms using a pseudo spectral solution with inclusion of relaxation mechanisms (for intrinsic Q) and a fractal distribution of scatterers (for scattering Q). The composite theory implies that when the total Q for S-waves is smaller than that for P-waves (the usual situation), intrinsic Q is dominating; when it is larger, scattering Q is dominating. In the inverse problem, performed by a global least squares search, intrinsic $Q_p$ and $Q_s$ estimates are reliable and unique when their absolute values are sufficiently low that their effects are measurable in the data. Large $Q_p$ and $Q_s$ have no measurable effect and hence are not resolvable. Standard deviation of velocity $({\sigma})$ and scatterer size (A) are less unique as they exhibit a tradeoff as predicted by Blair's equation. For the P-waves, intrinsic and scattering contributions are of approximately the same importance, for S-waves, the intrinsic contributions dominate.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.165-176
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• 2011

The femoral nerve innervates the quadriceps muscles and its dermatome supplies anteromedial thigh and medial foot. Paralysis of the quadriceps muscles due to the injury of the femoral nerve results in disability of the knee joint extension and loss of sensory of the thigh. A child could walk independently even though he had injured his femoral nerve severely due to the penetrating wound in the medial thigh. We measured and analyzed his gait performance in order to find the mechanisms that enabled him to walk independently. The child was eleven-year-old boy and he could not extend his knee voluntarily at all during a month after the injury. His gait analysis was performed five times (GA1~GA5) for sixteen months. His temporal-spatial parameters were not significantly different after the GA2 or GA3 test, and significant asymmetry was not observed except the single support time in GA1 results. The Lower limb joint angles in affected side had large differences in GA1 compared with the normal normative patterns. There were little knee joint flexion and extension motion during the stance phase in GA1 The maximum ankle plantar/dorsi flexion angles and the maximum knee extension angles were different from the normal values in the sound side. Asymmetries of the joint angles were analyzed by using the peak values. Significant asymmetries were found in GA1with seven parameters (ankle: peak planter flexion angle in stance phase, range of motion; ROM, knee: peak flexion angles during both stance and swing phase, ROM, hip: peak extension angle, ROM) while only two parameters (maximum hip extension angle and ROM of hip joint) had significant differences in GA5. The mid-stance valleys were not observed in both right and left sides of vertical ground reaction force (GRF) in the GA1, GA2. The loading response peak was far larger than the terminal stance peak of vertical ground reaction curve in the affected side of the GA3, GA4, GA5. The measured joint moment curves of the GA1, GA2, GA3 had large deviations and all of kinetic results had differences with the normal patterns. EMG signals described an absence of the rectus femoris muscle activity in the GA1 and GA2 (affected side). The EMG signals were detected in the GA3 and GA4 but their patterns were not normal yet, then their normal patterns were detected in the GA5. Through these following gait analysis of a child who had selective injuries on the knee extensor muscles, we could verify the actual functions of the knee extensor muscles during gait, and we also could observe his recovery and asymmetry with quantitative data during his rehabilitation.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.442-454
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• 2017

Biological weapon is manipulated and produced from microorganisms such as bacteria, virus, rickettsia, fungi etc. It is classified as one of the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) along with chemical weapon and radiological weapon. Biological weapon has a number of operational advantages over the other WMDs including ease of development and production, low cost and possibility of covert dissemination. In this study we analyze the history of biological weapon's development and the existing biological threats. Then, we predict the social impact of biological attack based on the physical properties of biological agent and infection mechanisms. By analyzing the recognition, dispersion pattern of agents, characteristics of the diseases in the biological weapon related historical events such as Sverdlovsk anthrax accident, 2001 anthrax attack, we found out some of the facts that biological attack would not likely to be recognized rapidly, produce large number of the exposed, increase number of paients who suffed from severe respiratory illness. It would lead the public health and medical service providers to be struggled with hugh burden. Base on the facts that we found from this case study, we suggested the main capabilities of public health required to respond to bioterrorism event efficiently. Syndromic surveillance and other reporting system need to be operated effeciently so that any suspicious event should be detected promptly. the pathogen which suspected to be used should be identified through laboratory diagnostic system. It is critical for the public health agency to define potentially exposed population under close cooperation with law enforcement agencies. Lastly, massive prophylaxis should be provided rapidly to the people at need by operating human and material resources effeciently. If those capacities of public health are consistantly fortified we would be able to deal with threat of bioterrorism successfully.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.685-695
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• 2009

Background: Calcification is the most frequent cause of clinical failure of bioprosthetic tissues that are fabricated from Glutaraldehyde (GA)-fixed porcine valve or bovine pericardium. We recently used a multi-factorial approach of employing different mechanisms to investigate how to reduce the calcification of bioprosthetic tissues. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the synchronized synergism using ethanol, L-lysine and $NaBH_4$ in glutaraldehyde treated porcine pericardium from the standpoint of calcification and tissue elasticity. Material and Method: Porcine pericardium was fixed with 0.625% GA (commercial fixation). An interim step of ethanol (80%; 1 day at room temperature) or L-lysine (0.1 M; 2 days at $37^{\circ}C$) or $NaBH_4$ (0.1 M; 2 days at room temperature) was followed by completion of the GA fixation (2 days at $4^{\circ}C$ and 7 days at room temperature). The tensile strength and thickness of the samples were measured. The treated pericardiums were implanted subcutaneously into three-week old Sprague-Dawley rats for 8 weeks. The calcium content was assessed by atomic absorption spectroscopy and the histology of the samples. Result: The amount of calcium in the pericardium pretreated with ethanol (13.6${\pm}$10.0 ug/mg, p=0.008), L-lysine (15.3${\pm}$1.0 ug/mg, p=0.002) and both (16.1${\pm}$11.1 ug/mg, p=0.012) was significantly reduced compared with the control (51.2${\pm}$8.5 ug/mg). However, $NaBH_4$ pretreatment (65.7${\pm}$61.8 ug/mg, p=0.653) and combined pretreatment that including ethanol, L-lysine and $NaBH_4$ (92.9${\pm}$58.3 ug/mg, p=0.288) were not significantly different from the controls(51.2${\pm}$8.5 ug/mg). Both the combined pretreatment using ethanol and L-lysine (7.60${\pm}$1.55, p=0.76) and the combined pretreatment that included ethanol, L-lysine and $NaBH_4$ (7.47${\pm}$1.85, p=0.33) increased the tensile strength/thickness ratio compared with that of the controls (4.75${\pm}$1.88). Conclusion: The combined pretreatment using ethanol and L-lysine seemed to decrease the calcification of porcine pericardium fixed with glutaraldehyde, as compared to single pretreatment, and it increase the tissue elasticity, but to the degree that showed synchronized synergism. $NaBH_4$ pretreatment seemed to increase the calcification of porcine pericardium, irrespective of whether single or combined pretreatment was used.

• Journal of Trauma and Injury
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2008

Purpose: This study was conducted to examine the clinical significance IV-contrasted helical abdomen computed tomography (CT) as a diagnostic screening tool to evaluate hollow viscus injury in blunt abdominal trauma patients. Methods: This is a retrospective study encompassing 108 patients, presenting to Korea University Medical Center (KUMC) Emergency Department (ED) from January 2007 to December 2007, with an initial CT finding suggestive of intra-abdominal injury. An initial non-enhanced abdomen CT was taken, followed by an enhanced CT with intravenous contrast. Patients' demographic data, as well as the mechanisms of injury, were inquired upon and obtained, initial diagnosis, as dictated by specialized radiologists, were added to post-operational (post-OP) findings and to additional CT findings acquired during their hospital stays, and all were combined to arrive at final diagnosis. Initial CT findings were further compared with the final diagnosis, yielding values for sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy, as well as positive and negative predictive values. Patients were further divided into two groups, namely, those that underwent operational intervention and those that did not. The initial CT findings of each group were subsequently compared and analyzed. Results: Initial CT scans revealed abnormal findings in a total of 212 cases - solid organ injuries being the most common finding, as was observed in 97 cases. Free fluid accumulation was evident in another 69 cases. Based on the CT findings, 77 cases (71.3%) were initially diagnosed as having a solid organ injury, 20 cases (18.5%) as having a combined (solid organ + hollow viscus) injury, and 11 cases (10.2%), as having an isolated hollow viscus injury. The final diagnosis however, were somewhat different, with only 67 cases (62.0%) attributed to solid organ injury, 31 cases (28.7%) to combined injury (solid + hollow), and 10 cases (9.3%) to hollow viscus injury. The sensitivity (CI 95%) of the initial helical CT in diagnosing hollow viscus injury was 75.6%, and its specificity was 100%. The accuracy in diagnosing hollow viscus injury was also meaningfully lower compared to that in diagnosis of solid organ injury. Among patients initially diagnosed with solid organ injuries, 10 patients (2 from follow-up CT and 8 from post-OP finding) turned out to have combined injuries. A total of 38 patients underwent an operation, and the proportion of initial CT findings suggesting free air, mesenteric hematoma or bowel wall thickening turned out to be significantly higher in the operation group. Conclusion: Abdominal CT was a meaningful screening test for hollow viscus injury, but the sensitivity of abdominal CT was significantly lower in detecting hollow viscus injury as compared to solid organ injury. This calls for special consideration and careful observation by the ED physicians when dealing with cases of blunt abdominal trauma.