• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.211-222
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• 2022

After more than two years of efforts to end the corona pandemic, a gradual recovery is starting in countries with high vaccination rates. Easing public health policies for a full-fledged post-corona era, such as lifting the mandatory use of outdoor mask and quarantine measures in entry have been considered in Korea. However, the continuous emergence of new variants of SARS-CoV-2 and limitations in vaccine efficacy still remain challenging. Fortunately, T cells and memory T cells, which are key components of adaptive immunity appear to contribute substantially in COVID-19 control. SARS-CoV-2 specific CD4⁺/CD8⁺ T cells are induced by natural infection or vaccination, and rapid induction and activation of T cells is mainly associated with viral clearance and attenuated clinical severity. In addition, T cell responses induced by recognition of a wide range of epitopes were minimally affected and conserved against the highly infectious subsets of omicron variants. Polyfunctional SARS-CoV-2 specific T cell memory including stem cell-like memory T cells were also developed in COVID-19 convalescent patients, suggesting long lasting protective T cell immunity. Thus, a robust T-cell immune response appears to serve as a reliable and long-term component of host protection in the context of reduced efficacy of humoral immunity and persistent mutations and/or immune escape.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.28.1-28.18
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• 2022

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) is a major cause of infantile diarrhea in developing countries. However, sporadic outbreaks caused by this microorganism in developed countries are frequently reported recently. As an important zoonotic pathogen, EPEC is being monitored annually in several countries. Hallmark of EPEC infection is formation of attaching and effacing (A/E) lesions on the small intestine. To establish A/E lesions during a gastrointestinal tract (GIT) infeciton, EPEC must thrive in diverse GIT environments. A variety of stress responses by EPEC have been reported. These responses play significant roles in helping E. coli pass through GIT environments and establishing E. coli infection. Stringent response is one of those responses. It is mediated by guanosine tetraphosphate. Interestingly, previous studies have demonstrated that stringent response is a universal virulence regulatory mechanism present in many bacterial pathogens including EPEC. However, biological signficance of a bacterial stringent response in both EPEC and its interaction with the host during a GIT infection is unclear. It needs to be elucidated to broaden our insight to EPEC pathogenesis. In this review, diverse responses, including stringent response, of EPEC during a GIT infection are discussed to provide a new insight into EPEC pathophysiology in the GIT.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.28 no.11
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• pp.1771-1781
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• 2018

The emergence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms, as well as fungal infectious diseases that further threaten health, especially in immunodeficient populations, is a major global problem. The development of new antifungal agents in clinical trials is inferior to the incidence of drug resistance, and the available antifungal agents are restricted. Their mechanisms aim at certain characteristics of the fungus in order to avoid biological similarities with the host. Synthesis of the cell wall and ergosterol are mainly targeted in clinical use. The need for new approaches to antifungal therapeutic agents or development alternatives has increased. This review explores new perspectives on mechanisms to effectively combat fungal infections and effective antifungal activity. The clinical drug have a common feature that ultimately causes caspase-dependent cell death. The drugs-induced cell death pathway is associated with mitochondrial dysfunction, including mitochondrial membrane depolarization and cytochrome c release. This mechanism of action also reveals antimicrobial peptides, the primary effector molecules of innate systems, to highlight new alternatives. Furthermore, drug combination therapy is suggested as another strategy to combat fungal infection. The proposal for a new approach to antifungal agents is not only important from a basic scientific point of view, but will also assist in the selection of molecules for combination therapy.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.222-230
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• 2017

Background: Varicella is the most common infectious disease reported despite the high vaccination rate. Interventions that target humans are particularly effective for varicella because humans are its only natural host. On the other hand, the existing national varicella surveillance systems lack the information to identify an outbreak. Therefore, a new index to assess varicella outbreaks was developed. Methods: The residential addresses of 2,718 varicella cases reported in Daegu in 2016 were converted to geographic coordinates and the distances between new varicella case and previous cases within 21 days were calculated from the date analyzed. Two cases were considered to be adjacent if the distance between them was less than 1 km. Finally, a proximity index was introduced by dividing the number of adjacent cases by the number of new cases on the date analyzed. Results: First, time-series charts and scatter plots were used to verify that the proximity index reflected the spatial closeness of the different varicella cases. The proximity index is helpful in identifying outbreaks from a list of single varicella cases. In addition, in this study, a new epidemic characteristic of varicella based on the proximity index was shown. Conclusion: The proximity index introduced in this study can be used to determine the likelihood of an outbreak from a single case of varicella, and it can be embedded in a web-based national varicella surveillance system that is currently in operation.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.301-306
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• 2017

The discovery of new luminescent materials for use in light-emitting diodes(LEDs) has been of great interest, since LED-based solid state lighting applications are attracting a lot of attention in the energy saving and environmental fields. Recent research trends have centered on the discovery of new luminescent materials rather than on fine changes in well-known luminescent materials. In a sense, the novelty of our study beyond simple modification or improvement of existing phosphors. A good strategy for the discovery of new fluorescent materials is to introduce activators that are appropriate for conventional inorganic compounds, that have well-defined structures in the crystal structure database, but have not been considered as phosphor hosts. Another strategy is to discover new host compounds with structures that cannot be found in any existing databases. We have pursued these two strategies at the same time using composite search technology with particle swarm optimization(PSO). In this study, using PSO, we have tracked down a search space composed of Sr-Al-Si-O-N and have discovered a new phosphor structure with yellow luminescence; this material is a potential candidate for UV-LED applications.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.599-617
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• 2017

Due to the rapid growth and expansion of the Internet, the digital multimedia such as image, audio and video are available for everyone. Anyone can make unauthorized copying for any digital product. Accordingly, the owner of these products cannot protect his ownership. Unfortunately, this situation will restrict any improvement which can be done on the digital media production in the future. Some procedures have been proposed to protect these products such as cryptography and watermarking techniques. Watermarking means embedding a message such as text, the image is called watermark, yet, in a host such as a text, an image, an audio, or a video, it is called a cover. Watermarking can provide and ensure security, data authentication and copyright protection for the digital media. In this paper, a new watermarking method of still image is proposed for the purpose of copyright protection. The procedure of embedding watermark is done in a transform domain. The discrete cosine transform (DCT) is exploited in the proposed method, where the watermark is embedded in the selected coefficients according to several criteria. With this procedure, the deterioration on the image is minimized to achieve high invisibility. Unlike the traditional techniques, in this paper, a new method is suggested for selecting the best blocks of DCT coefficients. After selecting the best DCT coefficients blocks, the best coefficients in the selected blocks are selected as a host in which the watermark bit is embedded. The coefficients selection is done depending on a weighting function method, where this function exploits the values and locations of the selected coefficients for choosing them. The experimental results proved that the proposed method has produced good imperceptibility and robustness for different types of attacks.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.3490-3499
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• 2000

There are two approaches, HA(Home Agent)-based and FA(Froegn Agent)-based mulicasting in mobile computing environments based on mobile IP. If we consider efficiency of routing and bandwidth the FA-based model is better than the HA-based model. But in the case of a MH(Mobile Host) moves frequently it shows bad connection durability because of join and graph delays. To overcome this and to support effective mobile multicasting we propose an extended FA-based multicast routing. In our model previous FA for wards multicast packets to MH. while new FA processes a jion request from MH. That is in general case our model supports FA-based multicasting for efficiency but it provides unicast-based mulicasting for connection durability when MH moves to new FN(Roreign Network). To evaluate our model, we analyze connecction durability, bandwidth, overheads and routing sosts in many situations and compare with previous works.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2000

Worldwide, rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe grisea (Hebert) Barr. (anamorph, Pyricularia grisea Sacc.), is one of the most economically devastating crop diseases. Management of rice blast through the breeding of blast-resistant varieties has had only limited xuccess due to the frequent breakdown of resistance under field conditions (Bonman etal., 1992; Correa-Victoria and Zeigler, 1991; Kiyosawa, 1982). The frequent variation of race in pathogen populations has been proposed as the principal mechanism involved in the loss of resistance (Ou, 1980). Although it is generally accepted that race change in M. grisea occurs in nature, the degree of its variability has been a controversial subject. A number of studies have reported the appearance of new races at extremely high rates (Giatgong and Frederiksen, 1968; Ou and Ayad, 1968; Ou et al., 1970; Ou et al., 1971). Various potential mechanisms, including heterokaryosis (Suzuki, 1965), parasexual recombination (Genovesi and Magill, 1976), and aneuploidy (Kameswar Row et al., 1985; Ou, 1980), have been proposed to explain frequent race changes. In contrast, other studies have shown that although race change could occur, its frequency was much lower than that predicted by earlier studies (Bonman et al., 1987; Latterell and Rossi, 1986; Marchetti et al., 1976). Although questions about the frequency of race changes in M. grisea remain unanswered, the application of molecular genetic tools to study the fungus, ranging from its genes controlling host specificity to its population sturctures and dynamics, have begun to provide new insights into the potential mechanisms underlying race variation. In this review we aim to provide an overview on (a) the molecular basis of host specificity of M. grisea, (b) the population structure and dynamics of rice pathogens, and (c) the nature and mechanisms of genetic changes underpinning virulence variation in M. grisea.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.217-224
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• 2016

This paper presents a new technique for monitoring the concrete curing process using embedded piezoelectric transducers via admittance measurements. When a piezoelectric transducer is embedded in a structure, the electrical impedance (admittance) of the transducer is coupled with the mechanical impedance of the host structure, which allows monitoring of the structural condition. In this study, the admittance signatures are used for monitoring the concrete curing process. This new method is based on an admittance-based sensor diagnostic process, in which the capacitance values of the piezoelectric transducers are dependent on the strength of the host structure. We numerically and experimentally investigated the variations in capacitive value during the curing process. The results demonstrate that there is a clear relationship between the concrete curing status and the slope, this indicates that the proposed method could be efficiently used for monitoring the curing status of a concrete structure.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.844-861
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• 2019

Over the last few years, marine environment was found to be a source of surplus natural products and microorganisms with new bioactive secondary metabolites of interest which can divulge nutritional and biological impact on the host. This study aims to assess the possible, inherent and functional probiotic properties of a novel probiotic strain Enterococcus durans F3 (E. durans F3) isolated from the gut of fresh water fish Catla catla. Parameters for evaluating and describing the probiotics described in FAD/WHO guidelines were followed. E. durans F3 demonstrated affirmative results including simulated bile, acid and gastric juice tolerance with exhibited significant bactericidal effect against pathogens Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella Typhi, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This can be due to the enterocin produced by E. durans F3 strain, which was resolute by sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) gel with amplification of the anticipated fragment of a structural gene; enterocin A, followed by antibiotic susceptibility assessment. Effective antioxidant potentiality against ${\alpha}$-diphenyl-${\alpha}$-picrylhydrazyl free radicals including lipase, bile salt hydrolase activity with auto-aggregation and cell surface hydrophobicity was similarly observed. Results are proving the potentiality of E. durans F3, which can also be used as probiotic starter culture in dairy industries for manufacturing new products that imparts health benefits to the host. Finding the potent and novel probiotic strains will also satisfy the current developing market demand for probiotics.