• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.394-400
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• 2023

Unlike advancements on land, the maritime industry has been slow to embrace new technologies, primarily due to user apprehension toward unproven innovations in the development process. The existing paradigm of technology development, marked by expert-oriented and laboratory-centric test environments, often leads to a stagnation of progress at the research stage, as the applicability of the technology remains uncertain. This study departed from the conventional research system and introduced a novel methodology known as a "living lab." This approach aimed to ensure applicability by actively involving field-oriented users throughout the entire lifecycle of technology development, encompassing planning, development, verification, and evaluation. The presentation of a plan for the construction and operation of such a living lab in this study is expected to contribute to establishing an efficient experimentation system for ships that can reflect user opinions in the future and to secure technology applicability in the maritime field.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.150-157
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• 2024

In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for predicting the number of apples on an apple tree using a deep learning-based object detection model and a polynomial regression model. Measuring the number of apples on an apple tree can be used to predict apple yield and to assess losses for determining agricultural disaster insurance payouts. To measure apple fruit load, we photographed the front and back sides of apple trees. We manually labeled the apples in the captured images to construct a dataset, which was then used to train a one-stage object detection CNN model. However, when apples on an apple tree are obscured by leaves, branches, or other parts of the tree, they may not be captured in images. Consequently, it becomes difficult for image recognition-based deep learning models to detect or infer the presence of these apples. To address this issue, we propose a two-stage inference process. In the first stage, we utilize an image-based deep learning model to count the number of apples in photos taken from both sides of the apple tree. In the second stage, we conduct a polynomial regression analysis, using the total apple count from the deep learning model as the independent variable, and the actual number of apples manually counted during an on-site visit to the orchard as the dependent variable. The performance evaluation of the two-stage inference system proposed in this paper showed an average accuracy of 90.98% in counting the number of apples on each apple tree. Therefore, the proposed method can significantly reduce the time and cost associated with manually counting apples. Furthermore, this approach has the potential to be widely adopted as a new foundational technology for fruit load estimation in related fields using deep learning.

• BMB Reports
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.281-286
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• 2024

Adult hippocampal neurogenesis plays a pivotal role in maintaining cognitive brain function. However, this process diminishes with age, particularly in patients with neurodegenerative disorders. While small, non-coding microRNAs (miRNAs) are crucial for hippocampal neural stem (HCN) cell maintenance, their involvement in neurodegenerative disorders remains unclear. This study aimed to elucidate the mechanisms through which miRNAs regulate HCN cell death and their potential involvement in neurodegenerative disorders. We performed a comprehensive microarray-based analysis to investigate changes in miRNA expression in insulin-deprived HCN cells as an in vitro model for cognitive impairment. miR-150-3p, miR-323-5p, and miR-370-3p, which increased significantly over time following insulin withdrawal, induced pronounced mitochondrial fission and dysfunction, ultimately leading to HCN cell death. These miRNAs collectively targeted the mitochondrial fusion protein OPA1, with miR-150-3p also targeting MFN2. Data-driven analyses of the hippocampi and brains of human subjects revealed significant reductions in OPA1 and MFN2 in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Our results indicate that miR-150-3p, miR-323-5p, and miR-370-3p contribute to deficits in hippocampal neurogenesis by modulating mitochondrial dynamics. Our findings provide novel insight into the intricate connections between miRNA and mitochondrial dynamics, shedding light on their potential involvement in conditions characterized by deficits in hippocampal neurogenesis, such as AD.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.298-305
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• 2023

Burkitt's lymphoma is a distinct subtype of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma originating from B-cells that is notorious for its aggressive growth and association with immune system impairments, potentially resulting in rapid and fatal outcomes if not addressed promptly. Optimizing the use of Food and Drug Administration-approved medications, such as combining known safe drugs, can lead to time and cost savings. This method holds promise in accelerating the progress of novel treatments, ultimately facilitating swifter access for patients. This study explores the potential of a dual-targeted therapeutic strategy, combining the bruton tyrosine kinase-targeting drug Ibrutinib and the epidermal growth factor receptor/human epidermal growth factor receptor-2-targeting drug Lapatinib. Ramos and Daudi cell lines, well-established models of Burkitt's lymphoma, were used to examine the impact of this combination therapy. The combination of Ibrutinib and Lapatinib inhibited cell proliferation more than using each drug individually. A combination treatment induced apoptosis and caused cell cycle arrest at the S and G2/M phases. This approach is multifaceted in its benefits. It enhances the efficiency of the drug development timeline and maximizes the utility of currently available resources, ensuring a more streamlined and resource-effective research process.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2024

Forest management is known to beneficially influence stand structure and wood production, yet quantitative understanding as well as an illustrative depiction of the effects of different management approaches on tree growth and stand dynamics are still scarce. Long-term management of beech forests must balance public interests with ecological aspects. Efficient forest management requires the reliable prediction of tree growth change. We aimed to develop a novel hybrid simulation approach, which realistically simulates short- as well as long-term effects of different forest management regimes commonly applied, but not limited, to German low mountain ranges, including near-natural forest management based on single-tree selection harvesting. The model basically consists of three modules for (a) natural seedling regeneration, (b) mortality adjustment, and (c) tree growth simulation. In our approach, an existing validated growth model was used to calculate single year tree growth, and expanded on by including in a newly developed simulation process using calibrated modules based on practical experience in forest management and advice from the local forest. We included the following different beech forest-management scenarios that are representative for German low mountain ranges to our simulation tool: (1) plantation, (2) continuous cover forestry, and (3) reserved forest. The simulation results show a robust consistency with expert knowledge as well as a great comparability with mid-term monitoring data, indicating a strong model performance. We successfully developed a hybrid simulation that realistically reflects different management strategies and tree growth in low mountain range. This study represents a basis for a new model calibration method, which has translational potential for further studies to develop reliable tailor-made models adjusted to local situations in beech forest management.

• International Journal of Stem Cells
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.203-216
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• 2022

Background and Objectives: Epidemiological investigations have shown positive correlations between increased diesel exhaust particles (DEP) in ambient air and adverse health outcomes. DEP are the major constituent of particulate atmospheric pollution and have been shown to induce proinflammatory responses both in the lung and systemically. Here, we report the effects of DEP exposure on the properties of human Wharton's jelly-derived mesenchymal stem cells (WJ-MSCs), including stemness, regeneration, and immunomodulation. Methods and Results: Non-apoptotic concentrations of DEP (10 ㎍/ml) inhibited the migration and osteogenic differentiation capacity of WJ-MSCs. Gene expression profiling showed that DEP increased intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and expression of pro-inflammatory and metabolic-process-related genes including cFos. Furthermore, WJ-MSCs cultured with DEP showed impaired suppression of T cell proliferation that was reversed by inhibition of ROS or knockdown of cFos. ERK inhibition assay revealed that DEP-induced ROS regulated cFos through activation of ERK but not NF-κB signaling. Overall, low concentrations of DEP (10 ㎍/ml) significantly suppressed the stemness and immunomodulatory properties of WJ-MSCs through ROS/ERK/cFos signaling pathways. Furthermore, WJ-MSCs cultured with DEP impaired the therapeutic effect of WJ-MSCs in experimental colitis mice, but was partly reversed by inhibition of ROS. Conclusions: Taken together, these results indicate that exposure to DEP enhances the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and immune responses through a mechanism involving the ROS/ERK/cFos pathway in WJ-MSCs, and that DEP-induced ROS damage impairs the therapeutic effect of WJ-MSCs in colitis. Our results suggest that modulation of ROS/ERK/cFos signaling pathways in WJ-MSCs might be a novel therapeutic strategy for DEP-induced diseases.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.245-252
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• 2007

FTA (fault tree analysis), an analytical method for system failure management, was employed in the management of faults in running PCR analysis. PCR is executed through several processes, in which the process of PCR machine operation was selected for the analysis by FTA. The reason for choosing the simplest process in the PCR analysis was to adopt it as a first trial to test a feasibility of the FTA approach. First, fault events-top event, intermediate event, basic events-were identified by survey on expert knowledge of PCR. Then those events were correlated deductively to build a fault tree in hierarchical structure. The fault tree was evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively, yielding minimal cut sets, structural importance, common cause vulnerability, simulation of probability of occurrence of top event, cut set importance, item importance and sensitivity. The top event was 'errors in the step of PCR machine operation in running PCR analysis'. The major intermediate events were 'failures in instrument' and 'errors in actions in experiment'. The basic events were four events, one event and one event based on human errors, instrument failure and energy source failure, respectively. Those events were combined with Boolean logic gates-AND or OR, constructing a fault tree. In the qualitative evaluation of the tree, the basic events-'errors in preparing the reaction mixture', 'errors in setting temperature and time of PCR machine', 'failure of electrical power during running PCR machine', 'errors in selecting adequate PCR machine'-proved the most critical in the occurrence of the fault of the top event. In the quantitative evaluation, the list of the critical events were not the same as that from the qualitative evaluation. It was because the probability value of PCR machine failure, not on the list above though, increased with used time, and the probability of the events of electricity failure and defective of PCR machine were given zero due to rare likelihood of the events in general. It was concluded that this feasibility study is worth being a means to introduce the novel technique, FTA, to the management of faults in running PCR analysis.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.15-24
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• 2018

Despite the recognition of the need for productivity information and its importance, the feedback of productivity information is not well-established in the construction industry. Effective use of productivity information is required to improve the reliability of construction planning. However, in many cases, on-site productivity information is hardly management effectively, but rather it relies on the experience and/or intuition of project participants. Based on the literature review and expert interviews, the authors recognized that one of the possible solutions is to develop a systematic approach in dealing with productivity information of the construction job-sites. It is required that the new system should not be burdensome to users, purpose-oriented information management, easy-to follow information structure, real-time information feedback, and productivity-related factor recognition. Based on the preliminary investigations, this study proposed a framework for a novel system that facilitate the effective management of construction productivity information. This system has utilized Sketchup software which has good user accessibility by minimizing additional data input and related workload. The proposed system has been designed to input, process, and output the pertinent information through a four-stage process: preparation, input, processing, and output. The inputted construction information is classified into Task Breakdown Structure (TBS) and Material Breakdown Structure (MBS), which are constructed by referring to the contents of the standard specification of building construction, and converted into productivity information. In addition, the converted information is also graphically visualized on the screen, allowing the users to use the productivity information from the job-site. The productivity information management system proposed in this study has been pilot-tested in terms of practical applicability and information availability in the real construction project. Very positive results have been obtained from the usability and the applicability of the system and benefits are expected from the validity test of the system. If the proposed system is used in the planning stage in the construction, the productivity information and the continuous information is accumulated, the expected effectiveness of this study would be conceivably further enhanced.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.460-479
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• 2007

When culture took large part in industrial area, every country has tried to utilize own cultural contents for educational or commercial purpose and the various cultures and histories are recognized as a main concept or subject so that a number of scholars who study history increase. In video game field, special characteristics of interface that audiences participate in the game to complete story-telling is considered as efficient material for learning process. As observed above, it is important to analyze the games that every country makes and export to the world in which the video games is understood as a play of human in general. This Paper has firstly analyzed the most favorite historical games developed in Korea, the USA, Japan, Taiwan and Germany from 1980 to 2005 and secondly, compared that wars and historical origin appears in game scenario, a world view and background story and finally after point out the preferable era and genre of the countries then propose the promising way of design for historical video games. In the process of analysis of a view and heroes in historical games, we compared the real persons, the real historical events and novel in which 11.8% only employed the real persons in 8 out of 68 games. Also the real history and background story are appeared in 37 games which is 54.4% of them. We discovered that the main material that is popular for each country is the historical backing rather than real persons where the favorite historical background is chosen at which they are proud of; 3-Throne era with strong ancient Gogurye for Korea, the 1st and 2nd World Wars and the Independence War for the USA, the tide of war around Middle age for Japan, ancient history of Europe for Germany. The favorite age for video games is Ancient times with 37 games for 54.4%, Middle Age with 7 games fer 10.3%, the prehistoric age with 5 games for 7.35%, remote age with 1 for 1.47%, while current historical games favor Ancient or Modern Age.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.83-98
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• 2015

Many TV viewers use mainly portal sites in order to retrieve information related to broadcast while watching TV. However retrieving information that people wanted needs a lot of time to retrieve the information because current internet presents too much information which is not required. Consequentially, this process can't satisfy users who want to consume information immediately. Interactive video is being actively investigated to solve this problem. An interactive video provides clickable objects, areas or hotspots to interact with users. When users click object on the interactive video, they can see additional information, related to video, instantly. The following shows the three basic procedures to make an interactive video using interactive video authoring tool: (1) Create an augmented object; (2) Set an object's area and time to be displayed on the video; (3) Set an interactive action which is related to pages or hyperlink; However users who use existing authoring tools such as Popcorn Maker and Zentrick spend a lot of time in step (2). If users use wireWAX then they can save sufficient time to set object's location and time to be displayed because wireWAX uses vision based annotation method. But they need to wait for time to detect and track object. Therefore, it is required to reduce the process time in step (2) using benefits of manual annotation method and vision-based annotation method effectively. This paper proposes a novel annotation method allows annotator to easily annotate based on face area. For proposing new annotation method, this paper presents two steps: pre-processing step and annotation step. The pre-processing is necessary because system detects shots for users who want to find contents of video easily. Pre-processing step is as follow: 1) Extract shots using color histogram based shot boundary detection method from frames of video; 2) Make shot clusters using similarities of shots and aligns as shot sequences; and 3) Detect and track faces from all shots of shot sequence metadata and save into the shot sequence metadata with each shot. After pre-processing, user can annotates object as follow: 1) Annotator selects a shot sequence, and then selects keyframe of shot in the shot sequence; 2) Annotator annotates objects on the relative position of the actor's face on the selected keyframe. Then same objects will be annotated automatically until the end of shot sequence which has detected face area; and 3) User assigns additional information to the annotated object. In addition, this paper designs the feedback model in order to compensate the defects which are wrong aligned shots, wrong detected faces problem and inaccurate location problem might occur after object annotation. Furthermore, users can use interpolation method to interpolate position of objects which is deleted by feedback. After feedback user can save annotated object data to the interactive object metadata. Finally, this paper shows interactive video authoring system implemented for verifying performance of proposed annotation method which uses presented models. In the experiment presents analysis of object annotation time, and user evaluation. First, result of object annotation average time shows our proposed tool is 2 times faster than existing authoring tools for object annotation. Sometimes, annotation time of proposed tool took longer than existing authoring tools, because wrong shots are detected in the pre-processing. The usefulness and convenience of the system were measured through the user evaluation which was aimed at users who have experienced in interactive video authoring system. Recruited 19 experts evaluates of 11 questions which is out of CSUQ(Computer System Usability Questionnaire). CSUQ is designed by IBM for evaluating system. Through the user evaluation, showed that proposed tool is useful for authoring interactive video than about 10% of the other interactive video authoring systems.