• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.111 no.1
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• pp.125-135
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• 2022

In this study, growth changes of the diameter at breast height (DBH), height, basal area, volume, and biomass of Korean white pine (Pinus koraiensis Siebold & Zucc.) on a plantation were examined via long-term monitoring. In addition, this study was performed to provide the basic data for timber production in line with DBH class by comparing the growth of the relative DBH size. Growth characteristics according to DBH class were analyzed by categorizing trees into five classes based on sorted DBH rankings: class I (1%-20%; upper 20%), class II (21%-40%), class III (41%-60%), class IV (61%-80%), class V (81%-100%; lower 20%). A total class (0%-100%) was also used. Total increment and mean annual increment (MAI) were calculated using data from nine measurements taken over 39 years. Tree characteristics based on average values and stand characteristics based on unit area per hectare were examined. According to the total increments of variables, the differences in DBH, basal area, volume, and biomass among classes I-V increased over time, whereas the height difference did not continually increase. According to MAI, the maximum DBH value was 0.92 cm·yr^-1 at age 23 in class I, whereas the maximum value in all trees was 0.69 cm·yr^-1 at age 17. The maximum value of height MAI for class I was 0.52 m·yr^-1 at age 23, whereas that for all trees was 0.49 m·yr^-1 at age 20. In terms of basal area, volume, and biomass growth at tree-and stand-level, the maximum MAI of class I and all trees was not observed during the measurement period. Therefore, additional long-term monitoring data are required to determine the maximum MAI of the variables.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.203-211
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• 2022

Melanogenesis is the production of melanin from tyrosine by a series of enzyme-catalyzed reactions, in which tyrosinase and DOPA oxidase play key roles. The melanin content in the skin determines skin pigmentation. Abnormalities in skin pigmentation lead to various skin pigmentation disorders. Recent research has shown that the expression of EMP2 is much lower in melanoma than in normal melanocytes, but its role in melanogenesis has not yet been elucidated. Therefore, we investigated the role of EMP2 in the melanogenesis of MNT1 human melanoma cells. We examined TRP-1, TRP-2, and TYR expression levels during melanogenesis in MNT1 melanoma cells by gene silencing of EMP2. Western blot and RT-PCR results confirmed that the expression levels of TYR and TRP-2 were decreased when EMP2 expression was knocked down by EMP2 siRNA in MNT1 cells, and these changes were reversed when EMP2 was overexpressed. We verified the EMP2 gene was knocked out of the cell line (EMP2 CRISPR/Cas9) by using a CRISPR/Cas9 system and found that the expression levels of TRP-2 and TYR were significantly lower in the EMP2 CRISPR/Cas9 cell lines. Loss of EMP2 also reduced migration and invasion of MNT1 melanoma cells. In addition, the melanosome transfer from the melanocytes to keratinocytes in the EMP2 KO cells cocultured with keratinocytes was reduced compared to the cells in the control coculture group. In conclusion, these results suggest that EMP2 is involved in melanogenesis via the regulation of TRP-2 expression.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.1002-1014
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• 2023

The root of Cirsium japonicum var. maackii (Maxim.) has long been used in traditional medicine to prevent the onset and progression of various diseases and has been reported to exert a wide range of physiological effects, including antioxidant activity. However, research on its effects on hepatocytes remains scarce. This study used the human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cell line to investigate the antioxidant activity of ethanol extract of C. japonicum root (EECJ) on hepatocytes. Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) was used to mimic oxidative stress. The results showed that EECJ significantly reverted the decrease in cell viability and suppressed the release of lactate dehydrogenase in HepG2 cells treated with H₂O₂. Moreover, an analysis of changes in cell morphology, flow cytometry, and microtubule-associated protein light chain 3 (LC3) expression showed that EECJ significantly inhibited HepG2 cell autophagy induced by H₂O₂. Furthermore, it attenuated H₂O₂-induced apoptosis and cell cycle disruption by blocking intracellular reactive oxygen species and mitochondrial superoxide production, indicating strong antioxidant activity. EECJ also restored the decreased levels of intracellular glutathione (GSH) and enhanced the expression and activity of superoxide dismutase and GSH peroxidase in H₂O₂-treated HepG2 cells. Although an analysis of the components contained in EECJ and in vivo validation using animal models are needed, these findings indicate that EECJ is a promising candidate for the prevention and treatment of oxidative stress-induced liver cell damage.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2013

This study investigated Chinese Laws on the kind of urban green spaces and the legal requirements for the green spaces of urban habitat and analyzed the specificities of them intending to provide basic data to suggest bringing in or not the relevant Chinese Laws to Korea. This study can be summarized as follows: First, the concept of Chinese urban green spaces(g.s.) classified by 5 kinds(park g.s., production g.s., protection g.s., attachment g.s., the others g.s.) placed the park and green spaces in the same category unlike the Korean urban green spaces that only distinguishes between park and green spaces. The Chinese Urban Park is classified by 4 kinds(composite park, community park, special park, linear park) at the 'Standard for urban green spaces classification' which is below in rank of the legal system. Second, in case of calculation for green spaces ratio of urban green spaces in China, the green rooftop landscaping area should not be included as a green spaces area except the rooftop of a basement or semi basement building to which residents have easy access. The green spaces requirements and compulsory secure ratio by 3 habitat kinds(habitat, small habit, minimum habitat) of when to act as a residential plan is regulated. Third, the green spaces system is obligated to establish at habitat green spaces plan and is specified to conserve and improve existing trees and green spaces. The green spaces ratio on reconstruction for old habitat is relaxed to be lower than for new habitat and a gradient of green spaces is peculiarly clarified. The details and requirements for establishment and the minimum area intending for each classes of the central green spaces(habitat park, children park, minimum habitat's green spaces) are regulated. Especially at a garden style of minimum habitat's green spaces, intervals between the south and north houses and a compulsory security for green spaces area classifying into two groups(closing type green spaces and open type green spaces) by a middle-rise or high-rise building are clarified. System of calculation for green spaces area is presented at a special regulation. Fourth, a general index(area/person) of public green spaces within habitat to achieve by 3 habitat kinds is determined, in this case, the index on reconstruction for a deterioration zone can be relaxed to be lower to the extent of a specified quantity. A location and scale, minimum width and minimum area per place of public green spaces are regulated. A space plot principle including adjacent to a road, greening area ratio against total area, security of open space and the shadow line boundary of sunshine are also regulated to intend for public green spaces. Fifth, the minimum horizontal distance between the underground cables and the surrounding greening trees are regulated as the considerable items for green spaces when setting up the underground cables. The principle to establish green spaces within public service facilities is regulated according to the kind of service contents. It shall be examined in order to import or not the special regulations that only exist in Chinese Laws but not in Korean Laws. The result of this study will contribute to gain the domestic landscape architect's' sympathy of the research related to Chinese urban green spaces laws requiring immediate attention and will be a good chance to advance into the internationalization of Korean Landscape Architectural Laws.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.141-170
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• 2010

User created content (UCC) is created and shared by common users on line. From the user's perspective, the increase of UCCs has led to an expansion of alternative means of communications, while from the business perspective UCCs have formed an environment in which an abundant amount of new contents can be produced. Despite outward quantitative growth, however, many aspects of UCCs do not meet the expectations of general users in terms of quality, and this can be observed through pirated contents and user-copied contents. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective methods for fostering production of creative user-generated content. This study proposes two core elements, namely, reward and motivation, which are believed to enhance content creativity as well as the mediating factor and users' committement, which will be effective for bridging the increasing motivation and content creativity. Based on this perspective, this research takes an in-depth look at issues related to constructing the dimensions of reward and motivation in UCC services for creative content product, which are identified in three phases. First, three dimensions of rewards have been proposed: task dimension, social dimension, and organizational dimention. The task dimension rewards are related to the inherent characteristics of a task such as writing blog articles and pasting photos. Four concrete ways of providing task-related rewards in UCC environments are suggested in this study, which include skill variety, task significance, task identity, and autonomy. The social dimensioni rewards are related to the connected relationships among users. The organizational dimension consists of monetary payoff and recognition from others. Second, the two types of motivations are suggested to be affected by the diverse rewards schemes: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people create new UCC contents for its' own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation occurs when people create new contents for other purposes such as fame and money. Third, commitments are suggested to work as important mediating variables between motivation and content creativity. We believe commitments are especially important in online environments because they have been found to exert stronger impacts on the Internet users than other relevant factors do. Two types of commitments are suggested in this study: emotional commitment and continuity commitment. Finally, content creativity is proposed as the final dependent variable in this study. We provide a systematic method to measure the creativity of UCC content based on the prior studies in creativity measurement. The method includes expert evaluation of blog pages posted by the Internet users. In order to test the theoretical model of our study, 133 active blog users were recruited to participate in a group discussion as well as a survey. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their commitment, motivation and rewards of creating UCC contents. At the same time, their creativity was measured by independent experts using Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Finally, two independent users visited the study participants' blog pages and evaluated their content creativity using the Creative Products Semantic Scale. All the data were compiled and analyzed through structural equation modeling. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the measurement model of our research. It was found that measures used in our study satisfied the requirement of reliability, convergent validity as well as discriminant validity. Given the fact that our measurement model is valid and reliable, we proceeded to conduct a structural model analysis. The results indicated that all the variables in our model had higher than necessary explanatory powers in terms of R-square values. The study results identified several important reward shemes. First of all, skill variety, task importance, task identity, and automony were all found to have significant influences on the intrinsic motivation of creating UCC contents. Also, the relationship with other users was found to have strong influences upon both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, the opportunity to get recognition for their UCC work was found to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation of UCC users. However, different from our expectation, monetary compensation was found not to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation. It was also found that commitment was an important mediating factor in UCC environment between motivation and content creativity. A more fully mediating model was found to have the highest explanation power compared to no-mediation or partially mediated models. This paper ends with implications of the study results. First, from the theoretical perspective this study proposes and empirically validates the commitment as an important mediating factor between motivation and content creativity. This result reflects the characteristics of online environment in which the UCC creation activities occur voluntarily. Second, from the practical perspective this study proposes several concrete reward factors that are germane to the UCC environment, and their effectiveness to the content creativity is estimated. In addition to the quantitive results of relative importance of the reward factrs, this study also proposes concrete ways to provide the rewards in the UCC environment based on the FGI data that are collected after our participants finish asnwering survey questions. Finally, from the methodological perspective, this study suggests and implements a way to measure the UCC content creativity independently from the content generators' creativity, which can be used later by future research on UCC creativity. In sum, this study proposes and validates important reward features and their relations to the motivation, commitment, and the content creativity in UCC environment, which is believed to be one of the most important factors for the success of UCC and Web 2.0. As such, this study can provide significant theoretical as well as practical bases for fostering creativity in UCC contents.

• Korean Journal of Breeding Science
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.214-221
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• 2019

'Aram' is a soybean cultivar developed for soy-sprout. It was developed from the crossing of 'Bosug' (Glycine max IT213209) and 'Camp' (G. max IT267356) cultivars in 2007. F₁ plants and F₂ population were developed in 2009 and 2010. A promising line was selected in the F₅ generation in 2011 using the pedigree method and it was evaluated for agronomic traits, yield, and soy-sprouts characteristics in a preliminary yield trial (PYT) in 2012 and an advanced yield trial (AYT) in 2013. Agronomic traits and yield were stable between 2014 and 2016 in the regional yield trial (RYT) in four regions (Suwon, Naju, Dalseong, and Jeju). Morphological characteristics of 'Aram' are as follows: determinate plant type, purple flowers, grey pubescence, yellow pods, and small, yellow, and spherical seeds (9.9 g 100-seeds^-1) with a light brown hilum. The flowering date was the 5^th of August and the maturity date was the 15^th of October. Plant height, first pod height, number of nods, number of branches, and number of pods were 65 cm, 13 cm, 16, 4.5, and 99, respectively. In the sprout test, germination rate and sprout characteristics of 'Aram' were comparable to that of the 'Pungsannamulkong' cultivar. The yield of 'Aram' was 3.59 ton ha^-1 and it was 12% higher than that of 'Pungsannamulkong' in southern area of Korea. The yield of 'Aram' in the Jeju region, which is the main region for soybean sprout production, was 20% higher than that of 'Pungsannamulkong'. The height of the first pod and the tolerance to lodging and pod shattering, which are connected to the adaptation to mechanized harvesting, were higher in 'Aram' compared to those in 'Pungsannamulkong'. Therefore, the 'Aram' cultivar is expected to be broadly cultivated because of its higher soybean sprout quality, and seed yield and better adaptation to mechanized harvesting. (Registration number: 7718)

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.861-869
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• 1998

Backgrounds: The injury of a tissue results in the infalmmation, and the imflammed tissue is replaced by the normal parenchymal cells during the process of repair. But, constitutional or repetitive damage of a tissue causes the deposition of collagen resulting in the loss of its function. These lesions are found in the lung of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, complicated fibrosis after diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) and inorganic dust-induced lung fibrosis. The tissue from lungs of patients undergoing episodes of active and/or end-stage pulmonary fibrosis shows the accumulation of inflammatory cells, such as mononuclear cells, neutrophils, mast cells and eosinophils, and fibroblast hyperplasia. In this regard, it appears that the inflammation triggers fibroblast activation and proliferation with enhanced matrix synthesis, stimulated by inflammatory mediators such as interleukin-1 (IL-1) and/or tumor necrosis factor (TNF). It has been well known that TGF-$\beta$ enhance the proliferation of fibroblasts and the production of collagen and fibronectin, and inhibit the degradation of collagen. In this regard, It is likely that TGF-$\beta$ undergoes important roles in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. Nevertheless, this single cytokine is not the sole regulator of the pulmonary fibrotic response. It is likely that the balance of many cytokines including TGF-$\beta$, IL-1, IL-6 and TNF-$\alpha$ regulates the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. In this study, we investigate the interaction of TGF-$\beta$, IL-1$\beta$, IL-6 and TNF-$\alpha$ and their effect on the proliferation of fibroblasts. Methods: We used a human fibroblast cell line, MRC-5 (ATCC). The culture of MRC-5 was confirmed by immunofluorecent staining. First, we determined the concentration of serum in cuture medium, in which the proliferation of MRC-5 is supressed but the survival of MRC-5 is retained. Second, we measured optical density after staining the cytokine-stimulated cells with 0.5% naphthol blue black in order to detect the effect of cytokines on the proliferation of MRC-5. Result: In the medium containing 0.5% fetal calf serum, the proliferation of MRC-5 increased by 50%, and it was maintained for 6 days. IL-1$\beta$, TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-6 induced the proliferation of MRC-5 by 45%, 160% and 120%, respectively. IL-1$\beta$ and TNF-$\alpha$ enhanced TGF-$\beta$-induced proliferation of MRC-5 by 64% and 159%, but IL-6 did not affect the TGF-$\beta$-induced proliferation. And lNF-$\alpha$-induced proliferation of MRC-5 was reduced by IL-1$\beta$ in 50%. TGF-$\beta$, TNF-$\alpha$ and both induced the proliferation of MRC-5 to 89%, 135% and 222%, respectively. Conclusions: TNF-$\alpha$, TGF-$\beta$ and IL-1$\beta$, in the order of the effectiveness, showed the induction of MRC-5 proliferation of MRC-5. TNF-$\alpha$ and IL-1$\beta$ enhance the TGF-$\beta$-induced proliferation of MRC-5, but IL-6 did not have any effect TNF-$\alpha$-induced proliferation of MRC-5 is diminished by IL-1, and TNF-$\alpha$ and TGF-$\beta$ showed a additive effect.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 1973

The results of ground vegetation experiment conducted at completely denuded forestland in the mudstone region are summerized as follows: On the reaults of soiling quantity the effect of soiling was observed where depth of soiling over 10 cm was practiced, and a plot where treated with 15cm soiling and without fertilizer showed poor growth and it was even worser than the plot where soiling was practiced only 1 cm in thikness but applied adequate amount of fertilizers. The depth of slits between 30cm and 40cm showed no significant difference in the effect. A plot where covered with vegetation bag showed somewhat better results in seed loss and early growth but no differences observed in the fall result over the none covered plot. And then, it is recommendable to have soiling over 10cm in thikness with slit of 30cm and 30cm in depth and to apply 30 gram of fertilizer (22;22:11, 50 gram) per slit. On various soiling materials trial there were no striking differences in the effect of soiling between weathered granite soil, wheathered tuffs soil and weathered mudstone soil. In the treatment with various green materials, a plot treated with straw mat showed a significant difference at 1 percent. The results show that weathered mudstone soil is effective to use as soiling materials and straw mat treatment was better. On forest fertilization trial, in the mudstone region where red and black pine trees already existing at a rate of 2,000-3,000 trees per hectare had applied 110kg of compound fertilizers (9:12:3 and 22:22:11) per hectare basis in terms of plant nutrient. As a result, the difference in effect between the compound fertilizers was not found however the leaf color and leaf length of the fertilizer added plot showed darker and longer at 30 percent over the no fertilizer received plot. Compound fertilizers, 14:37:12 and 9:12:3 were applied to alder trees at a rate of 20 gram and 40 gram per tree in terms of plant nutrient and a remarkable growth accelerantion was observed where 40 grams of plant nutrient applied. The effect difference between the compound fertilizers was not found. On investigation of tree root elongation, forty years old red pine trees showed only 15cm tap root elongation through mudstone while black pine had 23 cm tap root elongation. The total length of supporting root elongtion of red and black pines showed 20 and 13 meters, respectively. The tap roots of Black locusts were not able to elongate through mudstone, however, the supporting roots tended to develop to the underneath of pine tree where some moisture content is available. Black locusts And grown on the residual soil of mudstone normally die between 8 to 10 years. The red pine trees show flat in tree shape while black pine had triangle in the shape. With the results it can be said that in an artificial reforestation in denuded forest land of the mudstone region the adequate slit and enough amount of fertiliizer application must be provided for the succesful performance of the program. On integrated experimental results of 1972. for the establishment of ground vegetation on the completely denuded forest land in mudstone region, soiling could be effectively practiced with weathered mudstone soil and it would not specially necessiate to have either weathered granite or tuffssoil for the soiling. And the soiling depth should be more than 10 cm in thickness. Among green materials used the straw mat proved to be the most effective reatment. Three major factors which enable to establish ground vegetation by the shortest period of time: A. Physical improvement of soil is necessary to breakdown of the horizontal cracks sushas Slit, contour line plot, seeding hole and etc., and soiling with weathered mudstone soil. B. Chemical improvement of soil: is needed sufficient amount of fertilizer application 300~400kg ha, $N+P_2O_5+K_2O$), and increased production of ground covering and expedite resolution of the vegetation (ground vegetation, fallen leaves and twigs). C. Complete establishment of the basic structure for the erosion control (Prevention of surface soil erosion)