• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.201-210
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• 2003

Objective: The role of prostaglandin $E_2$ (PGE2) in the etiopathogenesis of immune and inflammatory diseases has become the subject of recent debate. To determine the role of PGE2 in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we tested the effect of exogenous PGE2 on the production of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) by rheumatoid synoviocytes. Methods: Fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) were prepared from the synovial tissues of RA patients, and cultured in the presence of PGE2. The COX-2 mRNA and protein expression levels were determined by RT-PCR and Western blot analysis, respectively. The PGE2 receptor subtypes in the FLS were analyzed by RT-PCR. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) was used to measure the NF-${\kappa}B$ binding activity for COX-2 transcription. The in vivoeffect of PGE2 on the development of arthritis was also tested in collagen induced arthritis (CIA) animals. Results: PGE2 ($10^{-11}$ to $10^{-5}M$) dose-dependently inhibited the expression of COX-2 mRNA and the COX-2 protein stimulated with IL-$1{\beta}$, but not COX-1 mRNA. NS-398, a selective COX-2 inhibitor, displayed an additive effect on PGE2-induced COX-2 downregulation. The FLS predominantly expressed the PGE2 receptor (EP) 2 and EP4, which mediated the COX-2 suppression by PGE2. Treatment with anti-IL-10 monoclonal antibodies partially reversed the PGE2-induced suppression of COX-2 mRNA, suggesting that IL-10 may be involved in modulating COX-2 by PGE2. Experiments using an inducer and an inhibitor of cyclic AMP (cAMP) suggest that cAMP is the major intracellular signal that mediates the regulatory effect of PGE2 on COX-2 expression. EMSA revealed that PGE2 inhibited the binding of NF-${\kappa}B$ in the COX-2 promoter via a cAMP dependent pathway. In addition, a subcutaneous injection of PGE2 twice daily for 2 weeks significantly reduced the incidence and severity of CIA as well as the production of IgG antibodies to type II collagen. Conclusion: Our data suggest that overproduced PGE2 in the RA joints may function as an autocrine regulator of its own synthesis by inhibiting COX-2 production and may, in part, play an anti-inflammatory role in the arthritic joints.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.64-73
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• 2009

Background: 15d-$PGJ_2$ has been known to act as an anti-inflammatory agent and has anti-hypertensive effects. As a result of these properties, we examined the effect of 15d-$PGJ_2$ on the LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 mRNA expression in VSMCs from SHR. Methods: Effect and action mechanism of 15d-$PGJ_2$ on the expression of LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 mRNA in VSMCs from SHR and WKY were examined by using real-time polymerase chain reaction, electrophoretic mobility shift assay for NF-${\kappa}B$ avtivity, Western blotting analysis for ERK and p38 phosphorylation and flow cytometry for NAD(P)H oxidase activity. Results: 15d-$PGJ_2$ decreased the expression of LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 mRNA in WKY VSMCs, but increased the expression of LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 mRNA in SHR VSMCs. The upregulatory effect of 15d-$PGJ_2$ in SHR VSMCs was mediated through PPAR${\gamma}$, and dependent on NF-${\kappa}B$ activation and ERK phosphorylation. However, inhibition of the p38 signaling pathway augmented the upregulatory effect of 15d-$PGJ_2$ on LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 mRNA. A NAD(P)H oxidase inhibitor inhibited the upregulatory effect of 15d-$PGJ_2$ on LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 mRNA expression in SHR VSMCs, and an increase in NAD(P)H oxidase activity was detected in SHR VSMCs treated with 15d-$PGJ_2$/LPS. Conclusion: Our results indicate that the upregulatory effect of 15d-$PGJ_2$ on LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 expression in SHR VSMCs is mediated through the PPAR${\gamma}$ and ERK pathway, and may be related to NAD(P)H oxidase activity. However, p38 inactivation may also play an important role in 15d-$PGJ_2$/LPS-induced IL-8/CXCL8 expression in SHR VSMCs.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.53-64
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• 2009

Inter-vehicular communication that propagates information without infrastructures has drawn a lot of interest. However, it is difficult to apply conventional ad-hoc routing protocols directly in inter-vehicular communication due to frequent changes in the network topology caused by high mobility of the vehicles. MMFP(Multi-hop MAC Forwarding) is a unicast forwarding protocol that transport packets based on the reachability information instead of path selection or position information. However, delivering public safety messages informing road conditions such as collision, obstacles and fog through inter-vehicular communication requires broadcast rather than unicast since these messages contain information valuable to most drivers within a close proximity. Flooding is one of the simplest methods for multi-hop broadcast, but it suffers from reduced packet delivery-ratio and high transmission delay due to an excessive number of duplicated packets. This paper presents two multi-hop broadcast protocols for inter-vehicular communication that extend the MMFP. UMHB(Unreliable Multi-Hop Broadcast) mitigates the duplicated packets of MMFP by limiting the number of nodes to rebroadcast packets. UMHB, however, still suffers from low delivery ratio. RMHB(Reliable Multi-Hop Broadcast) uses acknowledgement and retransmission in order to improve the reliability of UMHB at the cost of increase in transmission delay, which we show through simulation is within an acceptable range for collision avoidance application.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartC
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• v.11C no.7 s.96
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• pp.889-894
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• 2004

Most ad-hoc routing protocols such as AODV(Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector) and DSR(Dynamic Source Routing) do not try to search for new routes if the network topology does not change. Hence, with low node mobility, traffic may be concentrated on several nodes, which results in long end-to-end delay due to congestion at the nodes. Furthermore, since some specific nodes are continuously used for long duration, their battery power may be rapidly exhausted. Expiration of nodes causes connections traversing the nodes to be disrupted and makes many routing requests be generated at the same time. Therefore, we propose a load balancing approach called Simple Load-balancing Approach (SLA), which resolves the traffic concentration problem by allowing each node to drop RREQ (Route Request Packet) or to give up packet forwarding depending on its own traffic load. Meanwhile, mobile nodes nay deliberately give up forwarding packets to save their own energy. To make nodes volunteer in packet forwarding. we also suggest a payment scheme called Protocol-Independent Fairness Algorithm (PIEA) for packet forwarding. To evaluate the performance of SLA, we compare two cases where AODV employs SLA or not. Simulation results show that SLA can distribute traffic load well and improve performance of entire ad-hoc networks.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.2604-2611
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• 2013

The Personal Rapid Transit(PRT) system has been highly interested in future transportation developments due to its on-demand and optimized door-to-door transport capability. However, the major impediments to the commercialization of PRT are the high cost for construction of infrastructures as opposed to the small transport capacity and difficulty in defining the role of PRT in building a balanced transportation system. In this study, the vertical transfer device for the PRT vehicle is developed to provide more flexible and better compatible urban mobility services between means of transportation, which is expected to meet particular demands in a particular environment. This apparatus was initially designed based on the basis of vertical circulating conveyors with steel chains, which is frequently used in logistics. Its advantages are capable of the non-stop loading and reduced head-way time. Most importantly, it was intensified by the additional idea to ensure the stable and reliable transfer of the PRT vehicle fully loaded with passengers. The 1/10-scale prototype was successfully tested to demonstrate a fundamental mechanism of vertical transfer and identify unexpected user requirements prior to a real manufacturing process.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.107-122
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• 2016

This study aims to develop a framework to estimate mobile source emissions with the macroscopic travel demand model including enhanced estimates of intra-zonal travel emissions using Space Syntax analysis. It is acknowledged that "the land-use and transportation interaction model explains the influence of urban structure on accessibility and mobility pattern". Based upon this theory, the estimation model of intra-zonal travel emissions is presented with the models of total travel distance, total travel demand, and average travel speed of intra-zonal trips. Thess statistical models include several spatial indices derived from the Space Syntax analysis. It explains that urban spatial structure is a critical factor for intra-zonal travel emissions, which is lower in compact zone with smaller portion of land area, lower sprawl indicator, and more grid-type of road network. Also the suggested framework is applied in the evaluation of the effectiveness of bicycle lane project in Suwon, Korea. The estimated emissions including intra-zonal travel is as double as the results only with inter-zonal demands, which shows better performance of the suggested framework for more realistic outcomes. This framework is applicable to the estimation of mobile source emissions in nation-wide and the assessment of transportation-environment policies in regional level.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.415-426
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• 2005

Wireless internet, which becomes a hot social issue, has limitations due to the following characteristics, as different from wired internet. It has low bandwidth, frequent disconnection, low computing power, and small screen in user terminal. Also, it has technical issues to Improve in terms of user mobility, network protocol, security, and etc. Wireless internet server should be scalable to handle a large scale traffic due to rapidly growing users. In this paper, wireless internet proxy server clusters are used for the wireless Internet because their caching, distillation, and clustering functions are helpful to overcome the above limitations and needs. TranSend was proposed as a clustering based wireless internet proxy server but it has disadvantages; 1) its scalability is difficult to achieve because there is no systematic way to do it and 2) its structure is complex because of the inefficient communication structure among modules. In our former research, we proposed the All-in-one structure which can be scalable in a systematic way but it also has disadvantages; 1) data sharing among cache servers is not allowed and 2) its communication structure among modules is complex. In this paper, we proposed its improved scheme which has an efficient communication structure among modules and allows data to be shared among cache servers. We performed experiments using 16 PCs and experimental results show 54.86$\%$ and 4.70$\%$ performance improvement of the proposed system compared to TranSend and All-in-one system respectively Due to data sharing amount cache servers, the proposed scheme has an advantage of keeping a fixed size of the total cache memory regardless of cache server numbers. On the contrary, in All-in-one, the total cache memory size increases proportional to the number of cache servers since each cache server should keep all cache data, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Fiber Society Conference
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• 1990.06b
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• pp.36-37
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• 1990

In the past, facile dissolution of cellulose has been hampered by the lack of suitable nondegrading solvents. Recently, this problem has been solved in our laboratory by the discovery of an inexpensive, convenient solvent system, that is the mixture of $NH_3\;and\;NH_4SCN$, for cellulose. Also, the $cellulose/NH_3/NH_4SCN$ solution system has been found to form the anisotropic, i.e., liquid crystalline phase. It is believed that both the cholesterio and the nematic phase occur. This finding has prompted extensive on-going researoh on the formation of the liquid crystalline phase from an inexpensive natural source such as cellulose since the nematic phase is envisioned as an excellent precursor sources for products with desirable properties, for example, high modulus and high strength. This interest naturally leads to a desire to understand the theological properties of the nematic phase so that the transformation of the nematic phase to the solid state with desirable properties can be efficiently accomplished, ;From this point of view, the theological behavior of the $cellulose/NH3_/NH_4SCN$ system has been studied as a function of shear rate and shear stress over a wide range of solvent compositions, cellulose concentration, centrifugation and urea contents, Results indicate that the viscosity decreases with increasing shear rate. A marked shear thinning behavior and a quasi-Newtonian behavior were observed in the low shear rate region and in the high shear rate region, respectively for all solvent compositions. The $cellulose/NH_3/NH_4SCN$ solution system only exhibited the viscosity increase with increasing cellulose concentration and failed to show the viscosity drop generally observed at the point of incipience of liquid crystal formation, This may be due to the gel-like nature of the solution by the association of the rodlike molecules into bundles which may serve as crosslinking points giving the cellulose solution a network structure. Also, simply hydrogen bonding may be so restrictive of molecular mobility that a viscosity drop is blocked. In addition to the above results, yield stress and thixotropy were also observed in the $cellulose/NH_3/NB_4SCN$ solution system which are characteristics of liquid crystal and gel, The results of the effect of centrifugation on viscosity show that viscosity decreases by the application of centrifugation. This may be explained by the change of the piled polydomain structure to the dispersed polydomain structure due to the pressure gradient generated during centrifugation.ation.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartC
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• v.15C no.4
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• pp.297-302
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• 2008

In case of display a lot of information from mobile devices, those systems are being developed that display the information from mobile devices on remote devices such as TV using the mobile devices as remote controllers because it is difficult to display a lot of information on mobile devices due to their limited bandwidth and small screen sizes. A lot of cost is required to design and develop interfaces for these systems corresponding to each of remote display devices. In this paper, a mobile environment based remote display system for displays at real times is proposed for continuous monitoring of status data for unique 'Mote IDs'. Also, remote data are collected and monitored through sensor network devices such as ZigbeX by applying status perception based remote displays at real times through processing ubiquitous computing environment data, and remote display applications at real times are implemented through PDA wireless mobiles. The system proposed in this paper consists of a PDA for remote display and control, mote embedded applications programming for data collections and radio frequency, server modules to analyze and process collected data and virtual prototyping for monitoring and controls by virtual machines. The result of the implementations indicates that this system not only provides a good mobility from a human oriented viewpoint and a good usability of accesses to information but also transmits data efficiently.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.207-214
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• 2005

This paper presents a channel structure for promising high performance pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor(pHEMT) switching device for design and fabricating of microwave control circuits, such as switches, phase shifters, attenuators, limiters, for application in personal mobile communication systems. Using the designed epitaxial channel layer structure and ETRI's $0.5\mu$m pHEMT switch process, single pole double throw (SPDT) Tx/Rx monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) switch was fabricated for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band wireless local area network (WLAN) systems. The SPDT switch exhibits a low insertion loss of 0.849 dB, high isolation of 32.638 dB, return loss of 11.006 dB, power transfer capability of 25dBm, and 3rd order intercept point of 42dBm at frequency of 5.8GHz and control voltage of 0/-3V These performances are enough for an application to 5 GHz band WLAN systems.