• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.147-157
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• 2021

Coronary microembolization (CME) is associated with cardiomyocyte apoptosis and cardiac dysfunction. Puerarin confers protection against multiple cardiovascular diseases, but its effects and specific mechanisms on CME are not fully known. Hence, our study investigated whether puerarin pretreatment could alleviate cardiomyocyte apoptosis and improve cardiac function following CME. The molecular mechanism associated was also explored. A total of 48 Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into CME, CME + Puerarin (CME + Pue), sham, and sham + Puerarin (sham + Pue) groups (with 12 rats per group). A CME model was established in CME and CME + Pue groups by injecting 42 ㎛ microspheres into the left ventricle of rats. Rats in the CME + Pue and sham + Pue groups were intraperitoneally injected with puerarin at 120 mg/kg daily for 7 days before operation. Cardiac function, myocardial histopathology, and cardiomyocyte apoptosis index were determined via cardiac ultrasound, hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) and hematoxylin-basic fuchsin-picric acid (HBFP) stainings, and TdT-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL) staining, respectively. Western blotting was used to measure protein expression related to the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (Akt)/glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) pathway. We found that, puerarin significantly ameliorated cardiac dysfunction after CME, attenuated myocardial infarct size, and reduced myocardial apoptotic index. Besides, puerarin inhibited cardiomyocyte apoptosis, as revealed by decreased Bax and cleaved caspase-3, and up-regulated Bcl-2 and PI3K/Akt/GSK-3β pathway related proteins. Collectively, puerarin can inhibit cardiomyocyte apoptosis and thus attenuate myocardial injury caused by CME. Mechanistically, these effects may be achieved through activation of the PI3K/Akt/GSK-3β pathway.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.248-261
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is that the blood nutrient indicator in adult women, is the depressive indicator. This study recruited 77 pre-menopausal women, and excluding missing values, 53 (mean age 44.2±6.5 years) blood indexes were statistically confirmed and then analyzed the effect of indexes on the Beck Depression Inventory. The Beck's Depression Inventory(BDI)'s average of the study subjects was 7.6±7.2, and most of the depression symptoms were within the normal range. Only two women were very serious and other two women were serious state. As a result of this study, 21 questions of BDI was classified into 5 sub-factors. Of these, 2 factors were considered physical depression, 1 factor was mood depression, 1 factor was cognitive depression, and 1 factor undecided. As a result of the correlation analysis, triglyceride, LDL(low density lipoprotein) cholesterol and potassium showed statistically significant positive relationship with depressive factors. On the other hand, HDL(high density lipoprotein) cholesterol, sodium and chloride ions showed negative relationship with depressive factors. When multiple regression analysis was performed. Considering the depression factors was dependent variable, and triglyceride, cholesterol, blood sugar, and ketone bodies was considered as independent variables. HDL(high density lipoprotein) cholesterol had a statistically significant negative effect on the depression factor 3. Considering the depression factors was dependent variable, and minerals were considered as independent variables. Potassium had a positive effect, and chloride ions had a negative effect on the depressive factor 3. This study was limited to 77 pre-menopausal women. In the future, post-menopausal women, men, and clinical neurological disorders group will be possible.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.227-235
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association factors of dental infection control by applying the health belief model in the dental hygienists. This study subject was 142 dental hygienists from 15 to July 5, 2020. Data were analyzed by chi-square test ANOVA, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis using SPSS version 23.0. The performance of dental infection control in accordance with the general characteristics of research subjects was high in case when they had educational experiences of infection control, and when they 'always' did medical examinations by interview about infectious diseases(p<0.01). The group of dental hygienists working for dental clinics with less than average 50 patients a day showed the highest rate of wearing a mask and latex gloves as personal protective gears(p<0.05),(p<0.01). When the wearing of protective goggles(face shield) and the frequency of exchanging masks after the outbreak of COVID-19 were more, the performance for infection control was increasing(p<0.05),(p<0.01),(p<0.001). In this study, it is difficult to generalize the results of the study because the research area and the subject are limited by selecting the subjects by convenience extraction, and focusing on the degree of awareness of infection control by dental hygienists, the actual status of infection control in dentistry is carefully illuminated. What you didn't do can be seen as a limitation. Considering the results of this study, the performance of infection control could be increased by removing obstacles and increasing the importance and perceived benefits of infection control of dental hygienists.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.71-80
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to explore the structural relationships among parents' educational involvement and parental efficacy on students' school life satisfaction and school achievement and to determine whether there are any differences depending on family type and school level. Using data from 2,497 families that participated in the 2018 National Survey on Children's Life, t-tests and structural equation modeling were conducted. The results of this study demonstrated that two-parent families reported higher levels of educational involvement than single-parent families and custodial grandparent families. Also, two-parent families raising children in elementary schools showed higher educational involvement than two-parent families raising children attending middle schools. Second, parental efficacy was found to mediate the effects of parents' educational involvement on students' school life satisfaction and school achievement. Third, the path coefficients between parents' educational involvement, students' school life satisfaction, and school achievement showed statistically significant differences depending on family type, with two-parent families having greater involvement than single-parent families and custodial grandparent families. Fourth, multiple group analysis reported a statistically significant difference in the relationship between parents' educational involvement and school achievement as well as parental efficacy and school achievement depending on the school level.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.490-502
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• 2021

Horticultural facility farmers subscribe to crop accident insurance and insurance products secured by horticultural facilities in preparation for possible risks in the facility. Insurance is purchased to prepare for natural disasters such as typhoons, hail, frostbite, heavy rain, and strong wind damage covered by the product. In order to find out the effect of risk perception, which is a subjective perception of the risks of a given situation, on horticultural facility farmers' intention to purchase horticultural facility insurance products, the risk perception and insurance purchase intention were analyzed. A t-test was conducted to determine the impact relationship between farm size, insurance coverage, and risk perception, and multiple regression analysis was conducted to verify the effect of personal characteristics and behavioral factors such as subjective perception, reference group, media exposure, and compensation understanding. In addition, a three-step regression analysis by Baron & Kenny was conducted to confirm the mediating role of personal characteristics and behavioral factors in the relationship between risk perception and insurance purchase intention. As a result of the study, although there was no difference in farm size, it was analyzed that policy holders had a higher degree of risk perception than non-subscribers, and that compensation understanding had the greatest influence and subjective knowledge had the smallest influence. In addition, these four factors were verified to have a mediating effect on the relationship between risk perception and insurance purchase intention. These results are expected to provide practical help to the development and marketing activities of horticultural facility insurance products.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.64 no.5
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• pp.937-949
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• 2022

Health concern of dogs is the most important issue for pet owners. People who have companied the dogs long-term provide the utmost cares for their well-being and healthy life. Recently, it was revealed that the population and types of gut microbiota affect the metabolism and immunity of the host. However, there is little information on the gut microbiome of dogs. Hericium erinaceus (H. erinaceus; HE) is one of the well-known medicinal mushrooms and has multiple bioactive components including polyphenol, β-glucan, polysaccharides, ergothioneine, hericerin, erinacines, etc. Here we tested a pet food that contained H. erinaceus for improvement in the gut microbiota environment of aged dogs. A total of 18 dogs, each 11 years old, were utilized. For sixteen weeks, the dogs were fed with 0.4 g of H. erinaceus (HE-L), or 0.8 g (HE-H), or without H. erinaceus (CON) per body weight (kg) with daily diets (n = 6 per group). Taxonomic analysis was performed using metagenomics to investigate the difference in the gut microbiome. Resulting from principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) to confirm the distance difference between the groups, there was a significant difference between HE-H and CON due to weighted Unique fraction metric (Unifrac) distance (p = 0.047), but HE-L did not have a statistical difference compared to that of CON. Additionally, the result of Linear discriminate analysis of effect size (LEfSe) showed that phylum Bacteroidetes in HE-H and its order Bacteroidales increased, compared to that of CON, Additionally, phylum Firmicutes in HE-H, and its genera (Streptococcus, Tyzzerella) were reduced. Furthermore, at the family level, Campylobacteraceae and its genus Campylobacter in HE-H was decreased compared to that of CON. Summarily, our data demonstrated that the intake of H. erinaceus can regulate the gut microbial community in aged dogs, and an adequate supply of HE on pet diets would possibly improve immunity and anti-obesity on gut-microbiota in dogs.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2023

Robots are expected to expand their scope of application to the military field and take on important missions such as surveillance and enemy detection in the coming future warfare. Swarm robots can perform tasks that are difficult or time-consuming for a single robot to be performed more efficiently due to the advantage of having multiple robots. Swarm robots require mutual recognition and collaboration. So they send and receive vast amounts of data, making it increasingly difficult to verify SW. Hardware-in-the-loop simulation used to increase the reliability of mission verification enables SW verification of complex swarm robots, but the amount of verification data exchanged between the HILS device and the simulator increases exponentially according to the number of systems to be verified. So communication overload may occur. In this paper, we propose a digital twin-based communication optimization technique to solve the communication overload problem that occurs in mission verification of swarm robots. Under the proposed Digital Twin based Multi HILS Framework, Network DT can efficiently allocate network resources to each robot according to the mission scenario through the Network Controller algorithm, and can satisfy all sensor generation rates required by individual robots participating in the group. In addition, as a result of an experiment on packet loss rate, it was possible to reduce the packet loss rate from 15.7% to 0.2%.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

Objectives This study was designed to evaluate the healing effect of Cordyceps Militaris (CM) on collagen II-induced arthritis rats. Methods Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 6 groups (normal, control, positive control, CM with low/medium/high dosage each). Type II collagen mixed with complete Freund's adjuvant (with 1:1 v/v) was injected subcutaneously, and the mixture was injected in a same manner one week after the first injection to boost arthritis. Arthritis index, paw thickness and von Frey test were conducted to observe physical changes. hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining was performed to observe knee cartilage. The levels of messenger RNA (mRNA) expressions of interleukin (IL)-1𝛽, IL-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-𝛼) in spleen were assessed by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that occurs on multiple joints and can lead to temporary shape change of bones or organ failure in severe cases. Here, we aimed to determine the effect of CM extract on rheumatoid arthritis by measuring paw thickness, arthritis index, conducting von Frey test and H&E staining, and evaluating the level of IL-1𝛽, IL-6, TNF-𝛼. As a result, paw thickness, arthritis index significantly decreased in low concentration group, hind leg became less sensitive in all expermental groups. Also, histological analysis showed that the damage of knee cartilage was prevented in all experimental groups. The level of mRNA of IL-1𝛽, IL-6, and TNF-𝛼 in spleen was analyzed to decide the effectiveness of CM extract. IL-1𝛽 did not show significant change, but IL-6 and TNF-𝛼 showed significant decrease in at least one of the experimental groups. Conclusions CM showed protective effect on knee tissue destruction and improved the physical conditions of the leg involving arthritis. Also, it showed that CM has anti-inflammatory effect on specific cytokines inducing rheumatoid arthritis. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the therapeutic potential of CM for the treatment rheumatoid arthritis, and set the foundation for the further studies.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.79-88
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• 2022

Modern production requires production staff who have design competence, experience and skills to work in various types of work integrated into professional activities. Possession of digital design methods significantly expands the opportunities for professional activities of qualified workers. The purpose of our study was to study the impact of pedagogical conditions on the formation of design competence of future qualified workers in a group work. We have identified a set of pedagogical conditions that promote the development of professionally oriented artistic and technical creativity of workers in the conditions of curricular and extracurricular activities, which include motivational-target, procedural-semantic, organizational-technological, and subject-oriented. It is shown that the formation of design competence is determined by motivational, informational-active and reflection criteria, which are aimed at motivational-value, cognitive, operational-active, creative, social and emotional components of this competence. The methodology of the research is highlighted, which includes the use of the following methods: determination of the personality's motivational sphere in order to identify strong and weak motives of students activity; multiple intelligence to identify students talents in the direction of practical intelligence, which is important for design competence; determining the level of creative activity to identify manifestations of students creative abilities; identifying the type of students innovative thinking in order to develop motivation for success; factor-criterion model, developed on the basis of a qualimetric approach, which is used to identify the level of design competence formation in accordance with its components. The results of the study showed that the creation of separate pedagogical conditions in the institution of vocational education and training (VET) had a positive impact on the development of design competence, which shows the potential of artistic and technical design in the development of professional creativity of future qualified workers taking into account the environmental approach.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.295-307
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• 2022

We studied the Cretaceous Jeonggaksan Formation to determine depositional processes of pyroclastic density currents entering into the lacustrine environments. This formation is composed largely of sandstone-mudstone couplets and (tuffaceous) normally graded sandstones deposited in lacustrine environments, interbedded with two pyroclastic beds: welded massive lapilli tuff and normally graded lapilli tuff. The welded massive lapilli tuff (10 m thick) is composed of poorly sorted, structureless lapilli supported by a welded ash matrix. The normally graded lapilli tuff (4 m thick) is characterized by moderately to well sorted natures and multiple normally graded divisions in the lower part of the bed with internal boundaries. The contrasting depositional features between these lapilli tuff are suggestive of different physical characteristics and depositional processes of pyroclastic density currents in the lake. Overall poorly sorted and massive natures of the thick, welded massive lapilli tuff are interpreted to have been formed by rapid settling of pyroclastic sediments from highly concentrated and sustained pyroclastic density currents. In this case, the pyroclastic density currents were able to displace lake water from shoreline and the pyrolclastic density currents preserved their own heat except for frontal parts of the currents. As a result, welded textures can be formed despite entrance of pyroclastic density currents into the lake. The internal boundaries of the normally graded lapilli tuff reflect unsteady natures of the pyroclastic density currents at the time of the deposition and the pyroclastic density currents can not provide sufficient pressure to displace lake water. As a consequence, the pyroclastic density currents transformed into water-saturated turbidity currents, forming relatively well sorted, normally graded lapilli tuff.