• Animal Bioscience
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.570-583
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• 2023

Objective: Fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) play critical roles in embryo development, and immune responses to infectious diseases. In this study, to investigate the roles of FGFs, we performed genome-wide identification, expression, and functional analyses of FGF family members in chickens. Methods: Chicken FGFs genes were identified and analyzed by using bioinformatics approach. Expression profiles and Hierarchical cluster analysis of the FGFs genes in different chicken tissues were obtained from the genome-wide RNA-seq. Results: A total of 20 FGF genes were identified in the chicken genome, which were classified into seven distinct groups (A-F) in the phylogenetic tree. Gene structure analysis revealed that members of the same clade had the same or similar exon-intron structure. Chromosome mapping suggested that FGF genes were widely dispersed across the chicken genome and were located on chromosomes 1, 4-6, 9-10, 13, 15, 28, and Z. In addition, the interactions among FGF proteins and between FGFs and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) proteins are limited, indicating that the remaining functions of FGF proteins should be further investigated in chickens. Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes pathway analysis showed that FGF gene interacts with MAPK genes and are involved in stimulating signaling pathway and regulating immune responses. Furthermore, this study identified 15 differentially expressed genes (DEG) in 21 different growth stages during early chicken embryo development. RNA-sequencing data identified the DEG of FGFs on 1- and 3-days post infection in two indigenous Ri chicken lines infected with the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 (HPAIV). Finally, all the genes examined through quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and RNA-Seq analyses showed similar responses to HPAIV infection in indigenous Ri chicken lines (R² = 0.92-0.95, p<0.01). Conclusion: This study provides significant insights into the potential functions of FGFs in chickens, including the regulation of MAPK signaling pathways and the immune response of chickens to HPAIV infections.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.7-15
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• 2023

The electric submersible pump (ESP) has been operating in production wells around the world because of its high applicability and operational efficiency among artificial lift techniques. When operating an ESP in a reservoir, variables such as temperature, pressure, gas/oil ratio, and flow rate are factors that affect ESP performance. In particular, free gas in the production fluid is a major factor that reduces the life and operational efficiency of ESP. This study presents the flow loop system which can implement the performance and damage tests of ESP considering field operating conditions to quantitatively analyze the variables that affect ESP performance. The developed apparatus in an integrated system that can diagnose the failure and causes of ESP, and detect leak of tubing by linking ESP and tubing as one system. In this study, the flow conditions for stable operation of ESP were identified through single phase and two phase flow experiments related to evaluation for the performance of ESP. The results provide the basic data to develop the failure prediction and diagnosis program of ESP, and are expected to be used for real-time monitoring for optimal operating conditions and failure diagnosis for ESP operation.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.71-81
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• 2023

This study examined the transition process of clinical laboratory technologists' national examination and job definition in Korea and compared the differences in the national examination between Korea and neighboring countries, such as Japan and Taiwan. In Korea, the number of questions made for it was 200 (1965), 200 (1977), 300 (1982), 250 (1992), 330 (2006), and 280 (2015). The practice of clinical physiology is important for real-time monitoring, given the characteristics of physiological testing. On the other hand, there are conflicts between other occupations in the working area. Clinical molecular biology needs to be established as a new major subject considering the diagnostic importance of molecular biological tests and the speed of science and technology development. Clinical laboratory operations provide policy and guidance recommendations to technologist staff. The proposed clinical laboratory technologists' national examination comprises major subjects: clinical biochemistry, clinical hematology, clinical transfusionology, clinical immunology, clinical microbiology, clinical molecular biology, clinical histology, clinical cytology, clinical physiology, and clinical laboratory operations. In addition, this study proposes the job definition of clinical laboratory technologists, revising various chemical or physiological testing to biomedical or physiological testing required for medical practice.

• Journal of the Korean neurological association
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.8-15
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• 2017

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), a noninvasive optical method, utilizes the characteristic absorption spectra of hemoglobin in the near-infrared range to provide information on cerebral hemodynamic changes in various clinical situations. NIRS monitoring have been used mainly to detect reduced perfusion of the brain during orthostatic stress for three common forms of orthostatic intolerance (OI); orthostatic hypotension, neurally mediated syncope, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Autonomic function testing is an important diagnostic test to assess their autonomic nervous systems for patients with symptom of OI. However, these techniques cannot measure dynamic changes in cerebral blood flow. There are many experimentations about study of NIRS to reveal the pathophysiology of patients with OI. Research using NIRS in other neurologic diseases (stroke, epilepsy and migraine) are ongoing. NIRS have been experimentally used in all stages of stroke and may complement the established diagnostic and monitoring tools. NIRS also provide pathophysiological approach during rehabilitation and secondary prevention of stroke. The hemodynamic response to seizure has long been a topic for discussion in association with the neuronal damage resulting from convulsion. One critical issue when unpredictable events are to be detected is how continuous NIRS data are analyzed. Besides, NIRS studies targeting pathophysiological aspects of migraine may contribute to a deeper understanding of mechanisms relating to aura of migraine. NIRS monitoring may play an important role to trend regional hemodynamic distribution of flow in real time and also highlights the pathophysiology and management of not only patients with OI symptoms but also those with various neurologic diseases.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.75-82
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• 2023

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has been revolutionized with deep learning-based approaches, among which self-supervised learning methods have proven to be particularly effective. In this study, we aim to enhance the performance of OpenAI's Whisper model, a multilingual ASR system on the Korean language. Whisper was pretrained on a large corpus (around 680,000 hours) of web speech data and has demonstrated strong recognition performance for major languages. However, it faces challenges in recognizing languages such as Korean, which is not major language while training. We address this issue by fine-tuning the Whisper model with an additional dataset comprising about 1,000 hours of Korean speech. We also compare its performance against a Transformer model that was trained from scratch using the same dataset. Our results indicate that fine-tuning the Whisper model significantly improved its Korean speech recognition capabilities in terms of character error rate (CER). Specifically, the performance improved with increasing model size. However, the Whisper model's performance on English deteriorated post fine-tuning, emphasizing the need for further research to develop robust multilingual models. Our study demonstrates the potential of utilizing a fine-tuned Whisper model for Korean ASR applications. Future work will focus on multilingual recognition and optimization for real-time inference.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.11
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• pp.823-835
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• 2023

Recently, due to the increase in abnormal climate, rainfall intensity is increasing and drought periods are continuing. These environmental changes lead to prolonged drought conditions and difficulties in real-time recognition. In general, drought can be judged by the amount of precipitation and the number of days without rainfall. In determining the impact of drought, it is divided into meteorological drought, agricultural drought, and hydrological drought and evaluation is made using the drought index, but environmental drought evaluation is insufficient. The river water quality managed through the total water pollution cap system is vulnerable to the effects of such drought. In this study, we aim to determine the drought impact on river water quality and quantify the impact of prolonged drought on water quality. The impact of rain-free days and accumulated precipitation on river water quality was quantitatively evaluated. The Load Duration Curve (LDC), which is used to evaluate the water quality of rivers, was used to evaluate water pollution occurring at specific times. It has been observed that when the number of consecutive rainless days exceeds 14 days, the target water quality in the mid-basin is exceeded in over 60% of cases. The cumulative rainfall is set at 28 days as the criteria, with an annual average rainfall of 3%, which is 32.1 mm or less. It has been noted that changes in water quality in rivers occur when there are 14 or more rainless days and the cumulative rainfall over 28 days is 32.1 mm or less in the Gamcheon Mid-basin. Based on the results of this study, it aims to quantify the drought impact and contribute to the development of a drought water quality index for future environmental droughts.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.207-228
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• 2023

After COVID-19, organizations have widely adopted platforms such as zoom or developed their proprietary online real-time systems for remote work, with recent forays into incorporating the metaverse for meetings and publicity. While ongoing studies investigate the impact of avatar customization, expansive virtual environments, and past virtual experiences on participant satisfaction within virtual reality or metaverse settings, the utilization of the metaverse as a dedicated workspace is still an evolving area. There exists a notable gap in research concerning the factors influencing the performance of the metaverse as a workspace, particularly in non-immersive work-type metaverses. Unlike studies focusing on immersive virtual reality or metaverses emphasizing immersion and presence, the majority of contemporary work-oriented metaverses tend to be non-immersive. As such, understanding the factors that contribute to the success of these existing non-immersive metaverses becomes crucial. Hence, this paper aims to empirically analyze the factors impacting personal outcomes in the non-immersive metaverse workspace and derive implications from the results. To achieve this, the study adopts the Embodied Social Presence (ESP) model as a theoretical foundation, modifying and proposing a research model tailored to the non-immersive metaverse workspace. The findings validate that the impact of presence on task engagement and task involvement exhibits a moderating effect based on the metaverse platform used. Following interviews with participants engaged in non-immersive metaverse workplaces (specifically Gather Town and Ifland), a survey was conducted to gather comprehensive insights.

• Animal Bioscience
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.965-981
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• 2024

Objective: Milk composition varies considerably and depends on paratypical, genetic, and epigenetic factors. MiRNAs belong to the class of small non-coding RNAs; they are one of the key tools of epigenetic control because of their ability to regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. We compared the relative expression levels of miR-106b, miR-191, and miR-30d in milk to demonstrate the relationship between the content of these miRNAs with protein and fat components of milk in Holstein and Ayrshire cattle. Methods: Milk fat, protein, and casein contents were determined in the obtained samples, as well as the content of the main fatty acids (g/100 g milk), including: saturated acids, such as myristic (C14:0), palmitic (C16:0), and stearic (C18:0) acids; monounsaturated acids, including oleic (C18:1) acid; as well as long-, medium- and short-chain, polyunsaturated, and trans fatty acids. Real-time stem-loop one-tube reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction with TaqMan probes was used to measure the miRNA expression levels. Results: The miRNA expression levels in milk samples were found to be decreased in the first two months in Holstein breed, and in the first four months in Ayrshire breed. Correlation analysis did not reveal any dependence between changes in the expression level of miRNA and milk fat content, but showed a multidirectional relationship with individual milk fatty acids. Positive associations between the expression levels of miR-106b and miR-30d and protein and casein content were found in the Ayrshire breed. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that miR-106b and miR-30d expression levels can cause changes in fatty acid and protein composition of milk in Ayrshire cows, whereas miR-106b expression level determines the fatty acid composition in Holsteins. Conclusion: The data obtained in this study showed that miR-106b, miR-191, and miR-30d expression levels in milk samples have peculiarities associated with breed affiliation and the lactation period.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.49-62
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• 2024

Purpose : This study was conducted to compare two non-face-to-face exercise interventions depending on whether mobile applications and wearable exercise aids are used to find out which interventions are more effective in improving senile sarcopenia. Ultimately, it was conducted to provide basic data for developing non-face-to-face intervention methods to improve sarcopenia. Method : In this study, 18 elderly sarcopenia and possible sarcopenia aged 65 or older were randomly assigned to the digital and self-exercise intervention groups. The digital exercise intervention group performed eight exercise programs with mobile applications and wearable exercise aids to record and manage the elderly performing the programs in real time. And the self-exercise intervention group performed the same program on its own as implemented in the digital exercise group. The intervention was applied for 8 weeks, and before and after the intervention, sarcopenia evaluation and physical function evaluation were performed. Results : In the digital exercise intervention group, arm muscle mass, skeletal muscle index, SPPB, 5TSTS, and BBS were improved, and in the self-exercise intervention group, grip strength, SPPB, 5TSTS, and BBS were improved. Conclusion : It was confirmed that both groups are effective in improving physical performance and physical function, the digital exercise intervention is effective in improving muscle mass and self-exercise intervention is effective in improving muscle strength. Therefore, this study proposes to apply intervention methods separately according to the indicators to improve and prevent sarcopenia, and also simplify the instructions of applications used to improve sarcopenia and to create an environment where users can be trained regularly on how to use it. And, In the future, studies for the development of devices to be designed to help non-face-to-face exercise interventions or studies on the differences between face-to-face and non-face-to-face exercise interventions should be conducted in terms of the effect of improving sarcopenia.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.17.1-17.14
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• 2022

We aimed to investigate associations of dietary diversity (DD) with gut microbial diversity and the development of hen's egg allergy (HEA) in infants. We enrolled 68 infants in a high-risk group and 32 infants in a control group based on a family history of allergic diseases. All infants were followed from birth until 12 months of age. We collected infant feeding data, and DD was defined using 3 measures: the World Health Organization definition of minimum DD, food group diversity, and food allergen diversity. Gut microbiome profiles and expression of cytokines were evaluated by bacterial 16S rRNA sequencing and real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. High DD scores at 3 and 4 months were associated with a lower risk of developing HEA in the high-risk group, but not in the control group. In the high-risk group, high DD scores at 3, 4, and 5 months of age were associated with an increase in Chao1 index at 6 months. We found that the gene expression of IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, and IL-8 were higher among infants who had lower DD scores compared to those who had higher DD scores in high-risk infants. Additionally, high-risk infants with a higher FAD score at 5 months of age showed a reduced gene expression of IL-13. Increasing DD within 6 months of life may increase gut microbial diversity, and thus reduce the development of HEA in infants with a family history of allergic diseases.