• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.557-564
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• 2018

Along with the aging society, the prevalence of dementia is also increasing. Dementia causes short-term memory loss as well as difficulties of performing daily activities and gradually causes suffering of the patients and their family. In spite of various programs for prevention of dementia of older people are being implemented, there is a lack of developing natural-based program for physical and mental health promotion. Therefore, it is necessary to develop programs for the elderly living alone who are more vulnerable to dementia because of their social and economic isolation. The purpose of this study was to develop a natural-based program and investigate the effects of 10 weeks forest therapy program for dementia prevention to improve the psychological and physical health of the elderly living alone. The experimental subjects were 30 elderly (aged 65 or older) and 31 elderly participated in control group. The Stress response, depressive symptoms, weight, body mass index (BMI), fat mass and muscle mass were measured for pre and post test. The results showed that the experimental group showed subjective stress relief (t=5.249, p=.000), improvement in symptoms of depression (t=4.152, p=.000), and decreases in weight (t=2.686, p=.012), BMI (t=2.629, p=.014) and fat mass (t=2.918, p=.007) after the forest therapy program. The experimental group showed lower stress reactions(t=-7.185, p=.000) and less depressive symptoms (t=-5.303, p=.000) than control group after participating the program. These results suggest that periodic forest exposure can help having less stressful and depressive status than non-forest exposure and the forest therapy program can reduce participants' psychological and physical risk factors of dementia.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.127-139
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• 2019

Residual drifts after an earthquake can incur huge repair costs and might need to replace the infrastructure because of its non-reparability. Proper functioning of bridges is also essential in the aftermath of an earthquake. In order to mitigate pounding and unseating damage of bridges subjected to earthquakes, a self-adaptive Ni-Ti shape memory alloy (SMA)-cable-based frictional sliding bearing (SMAFSB) is proposed considering self-adaptive centering, high energy dissipation, better fatigue, and corrosion resistance from SMA-cable component. The developed novel bearing is associated with the properties of modularity, replaceability, and earthquake isolation capacity, which could reduce the repair time and increase the resilience of highway bridges. To evaluate the super-elasticity of the SMA-cable, pseudo-static tests and numerical simulation on the SMA-cable specimens with a diameter of 7 mm are conducted and one dimensional (1D) constitutive hysteretic model of the SMAFSB is developed considering the effects of gap, self-centering, and high energy dissipation. Two types of the SMAFSB (i.e., movable and fixed SMAFSBs) are applied to a two-span continuous reinforced concrete (RC) bridge. The seismic vulnerabilities of the RC bridge, utilizing movable SMAFSB with the constant gap size of 60 mm and the fixed SMAFSBs with different gap sizes (e.g., 0, 30, and 60 mm), are assessed at component and system levels, respectively. It can be observed that the fixed SMAFSB with a gap of 30 mm gained the most retrofitting effect among the three cases.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.208-214
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• 2019

Trigonella foenum-graceum L. (fenugreek) is a phytoestrogen, a nonsteroidal organic chemical compound from plants which has similar mechanism of action to sex hormone estradiol-$17{\beta}$. This study aims to assess the effectivity of fenugreek seeds extract on collagen type I alpha 1 (COL1A1) and collagen type III alpha 1 (COL3A1) which are both decreased in aging skin and become worsen after menopause. This in vitro experimental study used old human dermal fibroblast from leftover tissue of blepharoplasty on a postmenopausal woman (old HDF). As a control of the fenugreek's ability to trigger collagen production, we used fibroblast from preputium (young HDF). Subsequent to fibroblast isolation and culture, toxicity test was conducted on both old and young HDF by measuring cell viability on fenugreek extract with the concentration of 5 mg/mL to $1.2{\mu}g/mL$ which will be tested on both HDF to examine COL1A1 and COL3A1 using ELISA, compared to no treatment and 5 nM estradiol. Old HDF showed a 4 times slower proliferation compared to young HDF (p<0.05). Toxicity test revealed fenugreek concentration of $0.5-2{\mu}g/mL$ was non-toxic to both old and young HDF. The most significant fenugreek concentration to increase COL1A1 and COL3A1 secretion was $2{\mu}g/mL$ (p<0.05).

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.441-449
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• 2019

Recently, interest in the seismic safety of structures is rising in South Korea due to the occurrences of earthquakes of 5.0 or greater magnitudes such as Gyeongju earthquake (September 2016) and Pohang earthquake (November 2017). In particular, the importance of living facilities that cause human injuries and property losses is more emphasized. Representative living facilities include gas and oil storage facilities and water tanks. In this study, the seismic performance of liquid storage tanks is improved by applying the lead rubber bearing, which is a seismic isolation method. The lead rubber bearing was designed considering the foundation of liquid storage tanks, and the general properties of the lead rubber bearing were verified through compression and shear tests using fabricated specimens. Furthermore, the behaviors of liquid storage tanks according to seismic and non-seismic isolations were analyzed through durability test, shaking table test and finite element analysis using ANSYS.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.143-152
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• 2022

In our study, sixteen known phenolic compounds, including quercetin (1), methyl gallate (2), caesalpiniaphenol C (3), 8S,8'S,7'R-(-)-lyoniresinol (4), 7,3',5'-trihydroxyflavanone (5), sappanchalcone (6), sappanone A (7), taxifolin (8), fisetin (9), fustin (10), (+)-catechin (11), brazilin (12), 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl β-ᴅ-glucopyranoside (13), 1-(2-methylbutyryl)phloroglucinol-glucopyranoside (14), (+)-epi-catechin (15), and astragalin (16) and one mixture of two conformers of protosappanin B (17/18) were isolated from the stems of Caesalpinia decapetala var. japonica. Their structures were elucidated based on a comparison of their physicochemical and spectral data with those of literature. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first isolation of compounds 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10 from C. decapetala and compounds 13 and 14 from the Caesalpinia genus. All the isolated compounds were evaluated for their inhibitory effect against the α-glucosidase enzyme. Among them, two flavonols (1 and 9), one chalcone (6), and one homoisoflavanone (7) exhibited an inhibitory effect on α-glucosidase action with an IC₅₀ range value of 5.08-15.01 μM, stronger than that of the positive control (acarbose, IC₅₀ = 152.22 μM). Kinetic analysis revealed that compounds 1 and 9 showed non-competitive α-glucosidase inhibition, while the inhibition type was mixed for compounds 6 and 7.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.9-18
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• 2023

Due to the deepening of COVID-19, high-intensity social distancing has been prolonged and many social problems have been cured. In particular, physical and psychological isolation occurred due to the non-face-to-face system and a lot of damage occurred. The various social problems caused by Corona acted as severe stress for all those affected by Corona 19, and eventually acted as a factor threatening mental health such as depression. While the number of people suffering from mental illness is increasing, the actual use of mental health services is low. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a system for people suffering from mental health problems. Therefore, in this study, depression detection and emergency detection models were constructed based on sensor information using smartphones from depressed subjects and general subjects. For the detection of depression and emergencies, VAE, DAGMM, ECOD, COPOD, and LGBM algorithms were used. As a result of the study, the depression detection model had an F1 score of 0.93 and the emergency situation detection model had an F1 score of 0.99. direction.

• 한국정책학회보
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.337-361
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• 2012

This study is conducted to provide empirical evidences which support that the problems of social isolation and loneliness of elderly can be alleviated by intervening the inter-generational relationship of the elderly by means of active ageing policy. The major empirical challenge to address this question is the possibility of selection bias caused by reversed causal relationship. To address this challenge, I constructed comparison group with 'Eligible Non-Participants' (ENP), and used instrumental variable method to estimate the empirical model. My findings indicate that inter-generational relationship, both in the aspects of economical solidarity and associational solidarity, is significantly improved as time use pattern of the elderly becomes more active. The improvement effect is intensively observed for the group of elderly who do not live with their adult children. The important policy implication of these findings is that the improvement of inter-generational relationship can be added as a new benefit of active ageing policy.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.31-40
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• 2023

Objectives: This study investigated the effect of cognitive impairment on the association between social network properties and mortality among older Korean adults. Methods: This study used data from the Korean Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. It obtained 814 older adults' complete network maps across an entire village in 2011-2012. Participants' deaths until December 31, 2020 were confirmed by cause-of-death statistics. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess the risks of poor social network properties (low degree centrality, perceived loneliness, social non-participation, group-level segregation, and lack of support) on mortality according to cognitive impairment. Results: In total, 675 participants (5510.4 person-years) were analyzed, excluding those with missing data and those whose deaths could not be verified. Along with cognitive impairment, all social network properties except loneliness were independently associated with mortality. When stratified by cognitive function, some variables indicating poor social relations had higher risks among older adults with cognitive impairment, with adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of 2.12 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.34 to 3.35) for social nonparticipation, 1.58 (95% CI, 0.94 to 2.65) for group-level segregation, and 3.44 (95% CI, 1.55 to 7.60) for lack of support. On the contrary, these effects were not observed among those with normal cognition, with adjusted HRs of 0.73 (95% CI, 0.31 to 1.71), 0.96 (95% CI, 0.42 to 2.21), and 0.95 (95% CI, 0.23 to 3.96), respectively. Conclusions: The effect of social network properties was more critical among the elderly with cognitive impairment. Older adults with poor cognitive function are particularly encouraged to participate in social activities to reduce the risk of mortality.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.87-100
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• 2023

Purpose: This study aimed to develop a nursing simulation learning module for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patient-care and examine its effects on clinical reasoning competence, clinical competence, performance confidence, and anxiety in COVID-19 patient care for nursing students. Methods: A non-equivalent control group pre- and post-test design was employed. The study participants included 47 nursing students (23 in the experimental group and 24 in the control group) from G City. A simulation learning module for COVID-19 patient-care was developed based on the Jeffries simulation model. The module consisted of a briefing, simulation practice, and debriefing. The effects of the simulation module were measured using clinical reasoning competence, clinical competence, performance confidence, and anxiety in COVID-19 patient-care. Data were analyzed using χ²-test, Fisher's exact test, t-test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Mann-Whitney U test. Results: The levels of clinical reasoning competence, clinical competence, and performance confidence of the experimental group were significantly higher than that of the control group, and the level of anxiety was significantly low after simulation learning. Conclusion: The nursing simulation learning module for COVID-19 patient-care is more effective than the traditional method in terms of improving students' clinical reasoning competence, clinical competence, and performance confidence, and reducing their anxiety. The module is expected to be useful for educational and clinical environments as an effective teaching and learning strategy to empower nursing competency and contribute to nursing education and clinical changes.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.203-207
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• 2023

The N₂O-reducing rhizobacterium, Pseudomonas sp. M23, was isolated from maize rhizosphere soil. The maximum N₂O reduction rate of the strain M23 was 15.6 mmol·g-dry cell weight^-1·h^-1. Its N₂O reduction activity was not inhibited by diesel contaminant, and it was enhanced by the addition of the root exudates of maize and tall fescue. The remediation efficiency of diesel-contaminated soil planted with maize or tall fescue was not inhibited by inoculating with the strain M23. Root weights in the soil inoculated with the strain M23 were greater than those in the non-inoculated soil. These results suggest that Pseudomonas sp. M23 is a promising bacterium to mitigate N₂O emissions during the remediation of diesel-contaminated soil.