• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.19
• /
• pp.8401-8404
• /
• 2014

Background: To determine survival times of cervical cancer patients with bone metastasis related to the effect of age at the time of cervical cancer diagnosis, we performed the retrospectively analytical study. Methods: A total of 68 cervical cancer patients with bone metastasis were treated at a single hospital, during January 1998 to December 2010. Fifty-two medical records were identified and collected, the remaining sixteen medical records were not found. Main outcome measures were patient characteristics, clinical information, duration from cervical cancer diagnosis to bone metastasis diagnosis, survival time after bone metastasis and overall survival time. Results: Among fifty-two cervical cancer patients with bone metastasis, there were 13 patients who were less than 45 years old, and 39 patients were 45 years old or more at the time of cervical cancer diagnosis. The younger group had less median overall survival than the older group, with a statistically significant difference (21 months, 95% CI 19.93-22.06; 34 months, 95% CI 23.27-44.72, p = 0.021). However, they were comparable in the duration from cervical cancer diagnosis to bone metastasis diagnosis and the survival time after bone metastasis. Conclusion: Young patients with bone metastasis aged less than 45 years old at the time of cervical cancer diagnosis have a poorer prognosis than the elderly patients. Impact: To improve survival and quality of life, more intensive and novel multimodal treatments at the time of cervical cancer diagnosis should be considered in patients less than forty-five years, who can tolerate the side effects better.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.27 no.12
• /
• pp.2190-2198
• /
• 2017

Thermoactinomyces sp. strain YT06 was isolated from poultry compost and observed to degrade integral chicken feathers completely at $60^{\circ}C$, resulting in the formation of 3.24 mg/ml of free amino acids from 50 ml of culture containing 10 g/l chicken feathers. Strain YT06 could grow and secrete keratinase using feather as the only carbon and nitrogen sources without other supplement, but complementation of 10 g/l sucrose and 4 g/l $NaNO_3$ increased the production of the keratinolytic enzyme. The maximum protease activity obtained was 110 U/ml and for keratinase was 42 U/ml. The keratinase maintained active status over a broad pH (pH 8-11) and temperature ($60-75^{\circ}C$). It was inhibited by serine protease inhibitors and most metal ions; however, it could be stimulated by $Mn^{2+}$ and the surfactant Tween-20. A reductive agent (${\beta}$-mercaptoethanol) was observed to cleave the disulfide bond of keratin and improve the access of the enzyme to the keratinaceous substrate. Zymogram analysis showed that strain YT06 primarily secreted keratinase with a molecular mass of approximately 35 kDa. The active band was assessed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and was observed to be completely identical to an alkaline serine protease from Thermoactinomyces sp. Gus2-1. Thermoactinomyces sp. strain YT06 shows great potential as a novel candidate in enzymatic processing of hard-to-degrade proteins into high-value products, such as keratinous wastes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2015.08a
• /
• pp.60-60
• /
• 2015

Nanosheets of graphene and related 2D materials have attracted much attention due to excellent physical, chemical and mechanical properties. Single-layer graphene (SLG) was first synthesized by Blakely et al in 1974 [1]. Following his achievements, we initiated the growth and characterization of graphene and h-BN on metal substrates using surface segregation and precipitation in 1980s [2,3]. There are three important steps for nanosheet growth; surface segregation of dopants, surface reaction for monolayer phase, and subsequent 3-D growth (surface precipitation). Surface phase transition was clearly demonstrated on C-doped Ni(111) by in situ XPS at elevated temperatures [4]. The growth mode was clarified by inelastic background analysis [5]. The surface segregation approach has been applied to C-doped Pt(111) and Pd(111), and controllable growth of SLG has been demonstrated successfully [6]. Recently we proposed a promising method for producing SLG fully covering an entire substrate using Ni films deposited on graphite substrates [7]. A universal method for layer counting has been proposed [8]. In this paper, we will focus on the effect of competitive surface-site occupation between carbon and other surface-active impurities on the graphene growth. It is known that S is a typical impurity of metals and the most surface-active element. The surface sites shall be occupied by S through surface segregation. In the case of Ni(110), it is confirmed by AES and STM that the available surface sites is nearly occupied by S with a centered $2{\times}2$ arrangement. When Ni(110) is doped with C, surface segregation of C may be interfered by surface active elements like S. In this case, nanoscopic characterization has discovered a preferred directional growth of SLG, exhibiting a square-like shape (Fig. 1). Also the detailed characterization methodologies for graphene and h-BN nanosheets, including AFM, STM, KPFM, AES, HIM and XPS shall be discussed.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.128-133
• /
• 2008

Phase-change random access memory (PRAM) chip cell phase of amorphous state is rapidly changed to crystal state above 160 Celsius degree within several seconds during Infrared (IR) reflow. Thus, on-board programming method is considered for PRAM chip programming. We demonstrated the functional 512Mb PRAM with 90nm technology using several novel core circuits, such as metal-2 line based global row decoding scheme, PN-diode cells based BL discharge (BLDIS) scheme, and PMOS switch based column decoding scheme. The reverse-state standby current of each PRAM cell is near 10 pA range. The total leak current of 512Mb PRAM chip in standby mode on discharging state can be more than 5 mA. Thus in the proposed BLDIS control, all bitlines (BLs) are in floating state in standby mode, then in active mode, the activated BLs are discharged to low level in the early timing of the active period by the short pulse BLDIS control timing operation. In the conventional sense amplifier, the simultaneous switching activation timing operation invokes the large coupling noise between the VSAREF node and the inner amplification nodes of the sense amplifiers. The coupling noise at VSAREF degrades the sensing voltage margin of the conventional sense amplifier. The merit of the proposed sense amplifier is almost removing the coupling noise at VSAREF from sharing with other sense amplifiers.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.142-149
• /
• 2009

This paper proposes and demonstrates novel flexible contact force sensing devices for 3-dimensional force measurement. To realize the sensor, polyimide and polydimethylsiloxane are used as a substrate, which makes it flexible. Thin-film metal strain gauges, which are incorporated into the polymer, are used for measuring the three-dimensional contact forces. The force sensor characteristics are evaluated against normal and shear load. The fabricated force sensor can measure normal loads up to 4N. The sensor output signals are saturated against load over 4N. Shear loads can be detected by different voltage drops in strain gauges. The device has no fragile structures; therefore, it can be used as a ground reaction force sensor for balance control in humanoid robots. Four force sensors are assembled and placed in the four corners of the robot's sole. By increasing bump dimensions, the force sensor can measure load up to 20N. When loads are exerted on the sole, the ground reaction force can be measured by these four sensors. The measured forces can be used in the balance control of biped locomotion system.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
• /
• v.11 no.1 s.34
• /
• pp.40-45
• /
• 2007

This paper describes NDIR $CO_{2}$ gas sensor that shows the characteristics of temperature compensation. It consists of novel optical cavity that has two elliptical mirrors and a thermopile that includes ASIC chip in the same metal package for the amplification of detector output voltage and temperature sensor. The newly developed sensor module shows high accuracy ($less\;than {\pm}40\;ppm$) throughout the measuring concentration of $CO_{2}$ gas from 0 ppm to 2,000 ppm. After implementing the calculation methods of gas concentration, which is based upon the experimental results, the sensor module shows high accuracy less than ${\pm}5\;ppm$ error throughout the measuring temperature range ($15^{\circ}C\;to\;35$^{\circ}C$) and gas concentrations with self-temperature compensation.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.216-225
• /
• 2020

An esterase gene, estA1, was cloned from Alteromonas sp. 39-G1 isolated from the Beaufort Sea. The gene is composed of 1,140 nucleotides and codes for a 41,190 Da protein containing 379 amino acids. As a result of a BLAST search, the protein sequence of esterase EstA1 was found to be identical to Alteromonas sp. esterase (GenBank: PHS53692). As far as we know, no research on this enzyme has yet been conducted. Phylogenetic analysis showed that esterase EstA1 was a member of the bacterial lipolytic enzyme family IV (hormone sensitive lipases). Two deletion mutants (Δ20 and Δ54) of the esterase EstA1 were produced in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) cells with part of the N-terminal of the protein removed and His-tag attached to the C-terminal. These enzymes exhibited the highest activity toward p-nitrophenyl (pNP) acetate (C₂) and had little or no activity towards pNP-esters with acyl chains longer than C₆. Their optimum temperature and pH of the catalytic activity were 45℃ and pH 8.0, respectively. As the NaCl concentration increased, their enzyme activities continued to increase and the highest enzyme activities were measured in 5 M NaCl. These enzymes were found to be stable for up to 8 h in the concentration of 3-5 M NaCl. Moreover, they have been found to be stable for various metal ions, detergents and organic solvents. These salt-tolerant and chemical-resistant properties suggest that the enzyme esterase EstA1 is both academically and industrially useful.

• Journal of fish pathology
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.59-64
• /
• 2001

A complementary DNA encoding metallothionein(MT), a heavy metal-responsive protein was cloned from a cartilaginous shark species. Scyliorhinus torazame. An expressed sequence tag(EST)from the shark liver, which showed high similarity with a MT gene, was isolated and its full-length sequence(390bp)was determined. The putative shark MT cDNA sequence contained an open reading frame consisting 68 amino acids and 182bp of 3-untranslated region including the poly (A+) signal. The deduced amino acid sequence was 41-54% identical to those of other animals including mammals and fish species. Tiger shark MT cDNA showed high conservation in the Cys regions. however, peculiarly contained not only additional five amino acids just prior to the conserved beta-domain but also a Ser residue at C terminal, which has not been seen in other MT sequences.

• Journal of Powder Materials
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.280-284
• /
• 2013

Stress-strain curves are fundamental properties to study characteristics of materials. Flow stress curves of the powder materials are obtained by indirect testing methods, such as tensile test with the bulk materials and powder compaction test, because it is hard to measure the stress-strain curves of the powder materials using conventional uniaxial tensile test due to the limitation of the size and shape of the specimen. Instrumented nanoindentation can measure mechanical properties of very small region from several nanometers to several micrometers, so nanoindentation technique is suitable to obtain the stress-strain curve of the powder materials. In this study, a novel technique to obtain the stress-strain curves using the combination of instrumented nanoindentation and finite element method was introduced and the flow stress curves of Fe powder were measured. Then obtained stress-strain curves were verified by the comparison of the experimental results and the FEA results for powder compaction test.

• Journal of KIISE
• /
• v.41 no.9
• /
• pp.605-610
• /
• 2014

Now, virtualization is no more emerging research area, and we can easily find its application in our circumstance. Nevertheless, I/O workloads are reluctant to be applied in virtual environment since they still suffer from unacceptable performance degradation due to virtualization latency. Many previous papers identified that virtual I/O overhead is mainly caused by exits and redundant I/O stack, and proposed several techniques to reduce them. However, they still have some limitations. In this paper, we introduce a novel I/O virtualization framework which improves I/O performance by exploiting multicore architecture. We applied our framework to the virtual network, and it improves TCP throughput up to 169%, and decreases UDP latency up to 38% on the network with the 10Gbps NIC.