• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.687-694
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• 2017

Plumbagin, a hydroxy 1,4-naphthoquinone compound from plant metabolites, exhibits anticancer, antibacterial, and antifungal activities via modulating various signaling molecules. However, its effects on vascular functions are rarely studied except in pulmonary and coronary arteries where NADPH oxidase (NOX) inhibition was suggested as a mechanism. Here we investigate the effects of plumbagin on the contractility of skeletal artery (deep femoral artery, DFA), mesenteric artery (MA) and renal artery (RA) in rats. Although plumbagin alone had no effect on the isometric tone of DFA, $1{\mu}M$ phenylephrine (PhE)-induced partial contraction was largely augmented by plumbagin (${\Delta}T_{Plum}$, 125% of 80 mM KCl-induced contraction at $1{\mu}M$). With relatively higher concentrations (>$5{\mu}M$), plumbagin induced a transient contraction followed by tonic relaxation of DFA. Similar biphasic augmentation of the PhE-induced contraction was observed in MA and RA. VAS2870 and GKT137831, specific NOX4 inhibitors, neither mimicked nor inhibited ${\Delta}T_{Plum}$ in DFA. Also, pretreatment with tiron or catalase did not affect ${\Delta}T_{Plum}$ of DFA. Under the inhibition of PhE-contraction with L-type $Ca^{2+}$ channel blocker (nifedipine, $1{\mu}M$), plumbagin still induced tonic contraction, suggesting $Ca^{2+}$-sensitization mechanism of smooth muscle. Although ${\Delta}T_{Plum}$ was consistently observed under pretreatment with Rho A-kinase inhibitor (Y27632, $1{\mu}M$), a PKC inhibitor (GF 109203X, $10{\mu}M$) largely suppressed ${\Delta}T_{Plum}$. Taken together, it is suggested that plumbagin facilitates the PKC activation in the presence of vasoactive agonists in skeletal arteries. The biphasic contractile effects on the systemic arteries should be considered in the pharmacological studies of plumbagin and 1,4-naphthoquinones.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.175-182
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• 2018

As Internet of things with a large number of nodes emerges, wireless-power communication networks (WPCN) based on a random access protocol needs to be investigated. In the random access-based WPCN, a terminal accessing later in given random access (RA) slots can harvest more energy before transmission and thus can transmit data with higher power and achieve higher throughput if the access is successful. On the basis of this property, the proposed random access control protocol gives the terminals priority and distinguishes the RA slots according to the priority level, so that a near terminal with access point allows to access preferentially other than a remote terminal. This operation decreases the throughput of near terminal and increases the throughput of remote terminal, and then, the doubly near-far problem in WPCN is resolved and the user fairness is improved. Results show that the proposed random access control improves both channel throughput and user fairness according to the priority level.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.87-96
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• 2019

Low power issue is one of the most critical problems in the Internet of Things (IoT), which are powered by battery. To solve this problem, various approaches have been presented so far. In this paper, we propose a method to reduce the power consumption by reducing the numbers of accesses into the flash memory consuming a large amount of power for on-chip software execution. Our approach is based on using cooperative logging structure to distribute the sampling overhead in single sensor node to adjacent nodes in case of rare-event applications. The proposed algorithm to identify event occurrence is newly introduced with negative feedback method by observing difference between past data and recent data coming from the sensor. When an event with need of flash access is determined, the proposed approach only allows access to write the sampled data in flash memory. The proposed event detection algorithm (EDA) result in 30% reduction of power consumption compared to the conventional flash write scheme for all cases of event. The sampled data from the sensor is first traced into the random access memory (RAM), and write access to the flash memory is delayed until the page buffer of the on-chip flash memory controller in the micro controller unit (MCU) is full of the numbers of the traced data, thereby reducing the frequency of accessing flash memory. This technique additionally reduces power consumption by 40% compared to flash-write all data. By sharing the sampling information via LoRa channel, the overhead in sampling data is distributed, to reduce the sampling load on each node, so that the 66% reduction of total power consumption is achieved in several IoT edge nodes by removing the sampling operation of duplicated data.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.45-64
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• 2010

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of auricular acupuncture at the Shinmun on patients with dementia by using power spectrum analysis. Electroencephalogram(EEG) power spectrum show site-specific and state-related differences in various frequency bands. Methods : Study was carried out in 38 subjects.(31 patients with dementia and 7 normal people, 27 females and 11 males ; mean age=75.9 years old). To know the effect of auricular acupuncture at the Shinmun in patients with dementia, we measured electroencephalogram(EEG) of normal people and patients with dementia about 'before', 'after' and 'after 15 minutes' giving auricular acupuncture at the Shinmun, and compared the brain wave($\alpha$, $\beta$, $\delta$, $\theta$) of EEG 30 channels. Results : In the case of patients with dementia, in the power values of $\alpha$(alpha) band at F4, FP2, FCZ, F8, FC4 channels (p<0.05) during the Shinmun-auricular acupuncture treatment increased significantly. In $\beta$(beta) band, the power values at T8 channel(p<0.05) during the Shinmun-auricular acupuncture treatment increased significantly. In $\delta$(delta) band, the power values at F7, FP1, FZ, FP2, FCZ, C4, FC4, CP4, T8, P7, P3, O1, OZ, O2, P4, P8 channels(p<0.05) during the Shinmun-auricular acupuncture treatment decreased significantly. In $\Theta$(theta) band, the power values at O1, OZ, O2channel(p<0.05) during the Shinmun-auricular acupuncture treatment decreased significantly. Conclusions : Through these results, we concluded that auricular acupuncture at the Shinmun on patients with dementia could have effect the functional mechanism of the cerebral cortex.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.100-109
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• 2010

The study examines two different sites to analyze the difference of stream channel profile between two different landuse areas on Neponset River, Boston, MA. Landuse represents the current status of land in terms of human, agricultural or forest, industry and environmental activity types. According to the previous research, forest and urban area are significantly distinguished in chemical characteristic, shape and bed load of the stream. On the chosen sites, I look at the cross-section profile, the slope, velocity, and roughness of the channels. With the data collected at the site I determined the value for the channel bed material using Manning's equation, and compared with the result of HEC-RAS model with the cross-section profile data I measured. In the forest area, water surface elevation and bed material obtained through Manning's equation are very close to HEC-RAS model result. However, in the resident area the Manning's 'n' value calculated much higher than assumption which was considered as cobble whose 'n' value is 0.03-0.06. The difference could be caused by unusual steep elevation on the site and the dam present down further. With the steep elevation upside of dam, there is critical-depth condition occurs. The difference of Manning's 'n' value reflects the difference of depth. HEC-RAS model was run to analyze the difference and the result shows that depth is 0.36 much less than 0.688 what I computed when the Manning's n value is 0.03(cobble) instead of the result of the study (0.13292). Beside, dam is a major source of fragmentation and degradation of stream, and it's possibly inferred upstream water levels are increased and stream velocity is decreased. This study is meaningful for introduction of HEC-RAS in geography field to analyze different sites with channel bed material, and it is going to be used more actively to manage river and river side.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.405-413
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• 2011

This study was designed to elucidate high-$K^+$ induced response of circular and longitudinal smooth muscle from human gastric corpus using isometric contraction. Contraction from circular and longitudinal muscle stripes of gastric corpus greater curvature and lesser curvature were compared. Circular smooth muscle from corpus greater curvature showed high $K^+$ (50 mM)-induced tonic contraction. On the contrary, however, longitudinal smooth muscle strips showed high $K^+$ (50 mM)-induced sustained relaxation. To find out the reason for the discrepancy we tested several relaxation mechanisms. Protein kinase blockers like KT5720, PKA inhibitor, and KT5823, PKG inhibitor, did not affect high $K^+$-induced relaxation. $K^+$ channel blockers like tetraethylammonium (TEA), apamin (APA), glibenclamide (Glib) and barium ($Ba^{2+}$) also had no effect. However, N(G)-nitro-L-arginine (L-NNA) and 1H-(1,2,4) oxadiazolo (4,3-A) quinoxalin-1-one (ODQ), an inhibitor of soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) and 4-AP (4-aminopyridine), voltage-dependent $K^+$ channel (KV) blocker, inhibited high $K^+$ -induced relaxation, hence reversing to tonic contraction. High $K^+$-induced relaxation was observed in gastric corpus of human stomach, but only in the longitudinal muscles from greater curvature not lesser curvature. L-NNA, ODQ and KV channel blocker sensitive high $K^+$-induced relaxation in longitudinal muscle of higher portion of corpus was also observed. These results suggest that longitudinal smooth muscle from greater curvature of gastric corpus produced high $K^+$-induced relaxation which was activated by NO/sGC pathway and by $K_V$ channel dependent mechanism.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.611-625
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• 2018

With innovative advances in wireless communication technology, many researches for extending network lifetime in maximum by using energy harvesting have been actively performed on the area of network resource optimization, QoS-guaranteed transmission, energy-intelligent routing and etc. As known well, it is very hard to guarantee end-to-end network delay due to uncertainty of the amount of harvested energy in multi-hop RF(radio frequency) energy harvesting wireless networks. To minimize end-to-end delay in multi-hop RF energy harvesting networks, this paper proposes an energy efficient routing metric based on interference aware and protocol which takes account of various delays caused by co-channel interference, energy harvesting time and queuing in a relay node. The proposed method maximizes end-to-end throughput by performing avoidance of packet congestion causing load unbalance, reduction of waiting time due to exhaustion of energy and restraint of delay time from co-channel interference. Finally simulation results using ns-3 simulator show that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in respect of throughput, end-to-end delay and energy consumption.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.2324-2332
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• 2017

This paper presents the electrical performances of novel AlGaSb/InGaAs heterojunction-based vertical-tunneling field-effect transistor (VTFET). The device performance was investigated in views of the on-state current ($I_{on}$), drain-induced barrier thinning (DIBT), and subthreshold swing (SS) as the gate length ($L_G$) was scaled down. The proposed TFET with a $L_G$ of 5 nm operated with an $I_{on}$ of $1.3mA/{\mu}m$, a DIBT of 40 mV/V, and an SS of 23 mV/dec at a drain voltage ($V_{DS}$) of 0.23 V. The proposed TFET provided approximately 25 times lower DIBT and 12 times smaller SS compared with the conventional $L_G$ of 5 nm TFET. The AlGaSb/InGaAs VTFET showed extremely high scalability and strong immunity against short-channel effects.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.80.2-80.2
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• 2012

홀로 고립되어 존재하는 은하는 주변 은하와 상호작용을 하지 않은 채 진화하므로 은하의 진화를 연구하기에 아주 좋은 대상이다. 은하의 정량적 연구를 위해 꼭 알아야 하는 중요한 물리량으로 거리와 성간소광량이 있다. 우리는 허블 우주망원경(HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys(ACS)/High Resolution Channel(HRC)로 관측한 고립된 왜소불규칙은하 NGC 1156 ($RA_{2000}$=02:59:42.19, $DEC_{2000}$=+25:14:14.2) 중심부($26^{\prime\prime}{\times}29^{\prime\prime}$)의 archive 자료를 분석하여 이 은하의 거리와 성간소광량을 새로 구했다. 이 은하의 거리를 측정한 과거 자료는 Tully(1988, Nearby Galaxies Catalog) 목록과 Special Astrophysical Observatory 6m 망원경/VI(각 300s) 영상자료의 가장 밝은 별로 거리를 구한 Karachentsev et al. (1996) 자료 뿐이다. 우리는 HST/ACS/HRC+UBVI 자료 중 U자료를 이용하여 아주 신뢰할 만한 소광량 값($E(B-V)=0.35{\pm}0.05$)을 얻었고, 가장 밝은 빨간 별과 파란 별 자료를 이용하여 새로운 거리지수($(m-M)_0=29.39{\pm}0.20$, $d=7.6{\pm}0.7$ Mpc)를 결정했다. 이 거리 값은 과거의 값들(Tully $6.4{\pm}1.2$ Mpc; Karachentsev et al. $7.8{\pm}0.5$ Mpc)과 크게 다르지 않으며, 기존의 거리 자료들 역시 신뢰할만함을 보여준다. ACS/Wide Field Channel과 달리 ACS/HRC의 경우 등급 표준화 방정식이 완벽하지 않은데, 우리의 경우 F550M자료를 표준화할 수 없었다. 그러나 우리는 여러 파장, 많은 관측자료가 존재하는 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) 구상성단의 관측자료와 Padova 등연령곡선을 이용하여 성공적인 등급변환을 수행할 수 있었다.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.328-335
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• 2006

Imperatoxin A ($IpTx_a$), a 3.7 kDa peptide from the African scorpion Pandinus imperator, is an agonist of the skeletal muscle ryanodine receptor (RyR1). In order to study the structure of the toxin and its effect on RyR1, $IpTx_a$ cDNA was PCR-amplified using 3 pairs of primers, and the toxin was expressed in E. coli. The toxin was further purified by chromatography, and various point mutants in which basic amino acids were substituted by alanine were prepared by site-directed mutagenesis. Studies of single channel properties by the planar lipid bilayer method showed that the recombinant $IpTx_a$ was identical to the synthetic $IpTx_a$ with respect to high-performance liquid chromatography mobility, amino acid composition and specific effects on RyR1. Mutations of certain basic amino acids ($Lys^{19}$, $Arg^{23}$, and $Arg^{33}$) dramatically reduced the capacity of the peptide to activate RyRs. A subconductance state predominated when $Lys^8$ was substituted with alanine. These results suggest that some basic amino acid residues in $IpTx_a$ are important for activation of RyR1, and that $Lys^8$ plays an important role in regulating the gating mode of RyR1.