• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.607-611
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• 2017

Primary maternal infection with toxoplasmosis during pregnancy is frequently associated with transplacental transmission of the parasite to the fetus. This study was conducted to test the utility of PCR assay to detect recent infections with Toxoplasma in aborted women at various gestational ages who referred to Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of Alavi Hospital in Ardabil during 2014 and 2016. Two hundred women with a history of single or repeated abortion were investigated in this study. Blood samples were tested for specific anti-Toxoplasma IgM and IgG antibodies by ELISA. According to the results, 53.5% of the women under study were positive for anti-Toxoplasma antibodies: 4.0% of them had IgM, 43.0% had IgG, and 6.5% had both IgM and IgG. Subsequently, Nested-PCR analysis was used to detect T. gondii DNA in the placenta of subjects. In 10.5% of the women, the results were positive for 529 bp element of T. gondii. Among them, 5 (23.8%) cases were IgM positive, 1 (4.8%) case was IgG positive, and 11 (52.4%) were both IgM and IgG positive. In 4 (19.0%) patients, none of the antibodies were found to be positive. In total, 16 patients had positive results in both ELISA and PCR methods, and 174 cases had negative results for new infection. The findings of this study revealed that T. gondii might be one of the significant factors leading to abortion, and that the analysis of placenta can be important in order to achieve increased detection sensitivity.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.6109-6113
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• 2012

Background: Oral cancer has become one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide and human Papillomavirus is one of the risk factors for developing oral cancer. For this study HPV18 was chosen as it is one of the high risk HPV types and may lead to carcinogenesis. However, prevalence of HPV18 infection in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma in Malaysia remains unclear. Objective: This study aimed to investigate the viral load of HPV18 DNA in OSCC and potentially malignant lesions using saliva samples. Materials and Methods: Genomic DNAs of thirty saliva samples of normal subjects and thirty saliva samples compromised of 16 samples from potentially malignant lesions and 14 of OSCC patients were amplified for HPV18 DNA using a nested polymerase chain reaction analysis. All PCR products were then analyzed using the Bioanalyzer to confirm presence of HPV18 DNA. Result: From thirty patients examined, only one of 30 (3.3%) cases was found to be positive for HPV18 in this study. Conclusion: The finding of this study revealed that there is a low viral detection of HPV18 in Malaysian OSCC by using saliva samples, suggesting that prevalence of HPV18 may not be important in this group of Malaysian OSCC.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.5 no.3 s.19
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• pp.180-185
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• 2005

Purpose: Among tumor-associated antigens, MAGE (melanoma antigen) was named as cancer/testis specific antigens because they are detected exclusively in the testis or cancer cells, including gastric carcinomas. Due to the elicitation of autoimmunitiy to tumors by these antigens either in vitro or in vivo and their tumor specificity, these antigens, thus, appear to be potential targets for tumor-specific immunotherapy. Materials and Methods: The fresh tumor tissue and normal gastric tissue samples were obtained from resected surgical specimens in 53 patients with gastric carcinomas. From the obtained cells, total cellular mRNA was extracted, and RT-PCR and nested PCR were run in 30 and 35 cycles respectively, with two different kinds of primers specially designed to detect six subtypes of MAGE DNA simultaneously. Results: In the 53 normal tissue, there was no expression of MAGE, but in the 53 cancer tissues, MAGE was expressed in 13 tissues (24.5%). Our data did not exhibit any correlation with the expression of the MAGE gene and clinicopathological factors. Conclusion: In our data, since 24.5% of gastric cancer tissues expressed MAGE, it should become possible to immunize a significant proportion of patients with advanced gastric carcinomas against the antigens encoded by these genes, provided that more antigenic peptides encoded by the genes of the MAGE family can be identified in the near future. (J Korean Gastric Cancer Assoc 2005;5:180-185)

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.95-95
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• 2003

Mycoplasmas resemble H. pylori in production of ammonia and induction of inflammatory cytokines from immune and non-immne cells. In Republic of Korea infection rate of H. pylori is relatively high but only a proportion of them invite additional inflammation and progress into gastric cancers. Therefore, additional risk factors cannot be excluded. The presence and identification of mycoplasma were confirmed by semi -nested PCR and sequencing and the results were compared with pathological data. Fifty-six samples collected from Korean chronic gastritis patients were used for the study. Twenty-three (41.1%) were positive to mycoplasmas and all of them were identified as human mycoplasmas, M. faucium, M. fermentans, M. orale, M. salivarium and M. spermatophilum. Mycoplasma-infected chronic gastritis samples showed more severe, additional infiltration of neutrophils than non-infected samples and the difference was significant (P < 0.05). In conclusion human mycoplasma infection may playa role in progression of chronic gastritis to metaplasia by inducing additional inflammation.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2016.04a
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• pp.461-463
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• 2016

Information security and preservation of customer's data privacy are key factors for further wide spread adoption of microgrid (MG) technology. However, strong coupling between the operation cost of multi-microgrid (MMG) system and privacy of customer data makes it more challenging. A nested energy management system (EMS) has been proposed in this paper. The surplus/shortage information from the inner level MGs is included in processing the optimal operation of outer level MGs. This type of optimization ensures a layered privacy-preservation to customer at each MG level. The proposed EMS architecture is a better trade-off architecture between the operation cost of the MMG system and customer privacy-preservation at each level of MG.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.68 no.1
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• pp.5-22
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• 2016

We examined how public social expenditure and individual socio-demographic factors affect individual voluntary activities(volunteering, giving). Hierarchical linear model(HLM) was employed to a nested data set with 37,648 individual subjects and 16 local governments in Korea. HLM analyses yield an insignificant direct effect of public expenditure to volunteering and giving, while individual factors all have significant effects on them. Finally, this study discussed why public social expenditure factor does not have significant influence in this data, and suggested policy implications for promoting volunteering and giving.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.113-119
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• 2018

Cryptosporidium species is an important cause of gastrointestinal infections globally. This study aimed to shed light on its role in diarrheic immunocompetent patients in Beni-Suef, Egypt and to compare three diagnostic methods. Two hundred diarrheic patients, $37{\pm}16.8year$ old, were enrolled. Stool samples were examined by light microscopy, using modified Ziehl-Neelsen stain (MZN) for Cryptosporidium spp. oocysts. Coproantigens were detected by sandwich ELISA. DNA molecular diagnosis was done by nested PCR. PCR yielded the highest detection rates (21.0%), compared to ELISA (12.5%) and MZN staining method (9.5%). The higher infection rates were in 20-40 year-old group, followed by 40-60 year-old. Association between epidemiologic factors was statistically not significant; positivity and gender, clinical manifestations, residence, source or water, or contact with animals. Cryptosporidiosis is an important enteric parasitic infection in Beni-Suef and PCR remains the gold standard for diagnosis.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.19-34
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• 1989

In general, Shopping centers are located in the center of transportation, which induce more traffic concentration than other facilities. As a result, it becomes to one of the aggravating factors of urban ＆ transportation problem such as traffic conjestion, parking problems. Thus, in planning shopping-center, it is desirable that consumer\`s trip pattern is should lie more carefully analyzed in order to alleviate the above problems. This study is aimed at finding the characteristics of shopping tripes and analyzing the choice behavior of shopping center and mode-to-shop. This study has developed a nested logit model in which consumers choose shopping center and mode-to-shop with a sequential structure. The model was estimated using household data from the 1989 May, Seoul metropolitan area and the 18 alternatives of shopping center and 5 mode alternatives. The estimated model have been evaluated and it may be concluded that this model for shopping trips is effective and fesible. The conclusion of this study are as fellows. 1. Out-of-vehicle travel time is more important factor affecting behavior of mode choice than in-vehicle travel time. 2. All of direct-elasticities for mode with respect to the travel time is more elastic than travel cost. 3. Accessibility to shop is more important factor affecting the choice of shopping center than parking space. 4. The value of out-of-vehicle travel time exceeds the value of in-vesicle travel time by 1.64 times.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.12-23
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• 2018

Quantitative information on biomass and available nutrients are essential for developing sustainable forest management strategies to regulate atmospheric carbon. An attempt was made at Chilapatta Reserve Forest in Duars region of West Bengal to quantify its above and below ground carbon along with available "N", "P" and "K" in the soil. Stratified random nested quadrats were marked for soil, biomass and litter sampling. Indirect or non-destructive procedures were employed for biomass estimation. The amount of these available nutrients and organic carbon quantified in soil indicates that the forest soil is high in organic carbon and available "K" and medium in phosphorus and nitrogen. The biomass, soil carbon and total carbon (soil C＋C in plant biomass) in the forest was 1,995.98, 75.83 and $973.65Mg\;ha^{-1}$. More than 90% of the carbon accumulated in the forest was contributed by the trees. The annual litter production of the forest was $5.37Mg\;ha^{-1}$. Carbon accumulation is intricately linked with site quality factors. The estimated biomass of $1,995.98Mg{\cdot}ha^{-1}$ clearly indicates this. The site quality factor i.e. tropical moist deciduous with optimum availability of soil nutrients, heavy precipitation, high mean monthly relative humidity and optimum temperature range supported luxuriant growth which was realized as higher biomass accumulation and hence higher carbon accumulated.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.107-117
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• 2016

Objective: This study examined the construct validity of K-WPPSI-IV. Factor structures of the structures of the K-WPPSI-IV full scale as well as primary index scales for two age ranges (2 years, 6 months to 3 years, 11 months; 4 years to 7 years, 7 months) were examined. Methods: Data were collected from 1,700 children aged 2 years, 6 months to 7 years, 7 months during the K-WPPSI-IV standardization. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted using the K-WPPSI-IV subtest performances with maximum likelihood estimation using Amos 18. Results: First, the three-factor model (verbal comprehension, visual spatial, and working memory) fitted best for the younger age range. However, the five-factor model (verbal comprehension, visual spatial, fluid reasoning, working memory, and processing speed) fitted best for the older age range. Residuals suggest the presence of two nested subfactors within the verbal comprehension factor (broad/expressive and focused/simple). Second, the confirmatory factor analysis on primary index subtests identified factors that account for the intercorrelations among the reduced sets of primary index subtests. Conclusion: The findings showed that the theoretical structures of WPPSI-IV subtests were confirmed within K-WPPSI-IV.