• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.94-94
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• 1997

The objective of this study was to generate and characterize monoclonal antibodies against rat airway mucins, and therefore, should serve as a useful tool in studying the regulation of airway mucins using various in vivo rat models that are currently available. As an antigen, we used a high molecular mass mucin preparation purified from the spent media of rat tracheal surface epithelial cells in primary culture. Seven hybridomas were obtained which secrete monoclonal antibodies against the rat mucin among which mAbRT03 showed the highest immunoreactivity against the mucin based on ELISA. All of the antibodies secreted by these hybridomas recognized carbohydrate epitopes but not sialic acid residues since their immunoreactivity was completely abolished by treatment of the mucin with 20 mM periodate but not with neuraminidase. Further characterization of mAbRT03 showed that: (1) it belongs to the IgM type, (2) it binds to high molecular mass mucins based on both Western blot analysis and indirect immunoprecipitation, (3) it binds to the luminal side of tracheal epithelium as well as some goblet cells based on immunohistochemistry, and (4) it also recognizes in vive airway mucins from rats but not from human nor hamsters which have been purified from the airway lavage fluids. This is the first anti-rat airway mucin monoclonal antibody which has been developed against purified rat airway mucins. Therefore, mAbRT03 should be able to serve as an invaluable tool in studying the regulation of airway mucins using various intact rat models that are currently available.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.282-290
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• 2013

Objectives: This study aimed to develop a health needs assessment (HNA) tool for persons with brain disorders and to assess the unmet needs of persons with brain disorders using the developed tool. Methods: The authors used consensus methods to develop a HNA tool. Using a randomized stratified systematic sampling method adjusted for sex, age, and districts, 57 registered persons (27 severe and 30 mild cases) with brain disorders dwelling in Seoul, South Korea were chosen and medical specialists investigated all of the subjects with the developed tools. Results: The HNA tool for brain disorders we developed included four categories: 1) medical interventions and operations, 2) assistive devices, 3) rehabilitation therapy, and 4) regular follow-up. This study also found that 71.9% of the subjects did not receive appropriate medical care, which implies that the severity of their disability is likely to be exacerbated and permanent, and the loss irrecoverable. Conclusions: Our results showed that the HNA tool for persons with brain disorders based on unmet needs defined by physicians can be a useful method for evaluating the appropriateness and necessity of medical services offered to the disabled, and it can serve as the norm for providing health care services for disabled persons. Further studies should be undertaken to increase validity and reliability of the tool. Fundamental research investigating the factors generating or affecting the unmet needs is necessary; its results could serve as basis for developing policies to eliminate or alleviate these factors.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.78-90
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• 2006

Background : The concept of 'service' in a hospital is based on the quality of medical staffs who serve as customer-satisfying media, and this is what distinguishes general hospitals from other business corporations in which customer satisfaction is achieved through commercial products. Thus, the internal employee satisfaction is essential in the improvement of the 'service' and subsequent 'competitiveness' of a hospital. The purpose of this study is to establish internal marketing strategies for a general hospital through regular surveys on employee satisfaction. Method : Surveys on employee satisfaction in radiology department were conducted regularly twice a year in a university hospital with 800 beds 2001 in 2004. The subjects of this study were 35 employees who work in radiology department. The authors developed the questionnaires and the surveys were conducted initially during the first 6 months of the year. After necessary improvements were made by applying 6 Sigma techniques, subsequent surveys were conducted during the latter 6 months of the year and the degree of employee satisfaction was compared. Results : Overall satisfaction increased with a constant rate and the authors were able to assess that the hospital is being gradually stabilized. The degree of satisfaction assessed by multiple choices showed only minor changes. However, as a result of focusing on the demands put forth by the employees through the open questions, the degree of satisfaction increased gradually year after year. Conclusions : It is important to heighten the internal employee satisfaction systematically and harmoniously through the assessment on the demands of the internal customers and feedback-based communications between the management officers and the staffs. Continuous surveys on the internal employee satisfaction will serve to be valuable materials in the establishment of internal marketing strategies for a general hospital.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.144-158
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• 2017

Fur garment has long been the conventional symbol for luxury, or conspicuous consumption. However, as fashion items began to diversify as part of overall fashion trend, fur items are now more about individual taste and style than just lavishness. Synthetic fur is especially emerging as a new promising fashion material, with a touch almost like natural fur at an affordable price. Along with the emergence of 'Vegan Fashion' trend, synthetic fur is establishing itself as a popular fashion textile. This study is an attempt to investigate subjective evaluation and physical properties of natural and synthetic furs, whose results will further serve as basic data in developing synthetic fur materials. Sensory and emotional evaluations are carried out on natural and artificial furs. For analysis, factors such as weight, thickness, air permeability, gloss and compressibility were surveyed to observe how they influence the physical properties. According to the subjective evaluation, natural and artificial fur samples do not differ in conspicuous ways in appearance. Experiments on physical properties, specifically warm/cool touch experiment, show that natural fur has a slightly higher warm sensation than artificial fur. Luster analysis by using a microscope revealed that there are subtle qualitative differences between natural and artificial fur. During the subjective evaluation, subjects found it hard to state distinct quantitative differences in luster. A survey as a means of assessing qualitative differences in gloss seems to be necessary to complement the evaluation. Results from this study will potentially serve as resources for diversification of fashion product designs using synthetic fur.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.408-414
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• 1999

A number of chemical released into the environment eliciting their effects by disrupting normal hormonal pathways. Endocrine disrupting compounds are present in the aquatic environment and pose potential health consequences to wildlife and humans. This review are designing fur xenobiotic estrogens based on induction of the egg-yolk precursor protein vitelloge-nin. In fish of aquatic environment, it may result in decrease fertility and egg production in females or lead to reduced gonad size or feminization of genetic male fish. It has been known that male fish exposed to estrogenic compounds show induced production of vitellogenin. Vitello-genin production is normally restricted to adult females, which have elevated estrogen levels during egg production. However, vitellogenin can be induced in males by Pollution of environmental endocrine disruptors. Consequently, the presence of vitellogenin in male fish can serve as an indicator of exposure of environmental endocrine disrupting compounds. In immature fish pol-luted at low levels of environmental endocrine disrupter, vitellogenin can serve as a reliable biomarker for exposure to endocrine disrupter. This review demonstrates the utility of vitellogenin as a biomarker fur exposure to estrogenin agents in auqatic environment.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.428-437
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• 2007

The potential for humic substances to serve as terminal electron acceptors in microbial respiration and the effects of humic substances on microbial azoreduction were investigated. The dissimilatory azoreducing microorganism Shewanella decolorationis S12 was able to conserve energy to support growth from electron transport to humics coupled to the oxidation of various organic substances or $H_2$. Batch experiments suggested that when the concentration of anthraquinone-2-sulfonate (AQS), a humics analog, was lower than 3 mmol/l, azoreduction of strain S12 was accelerated under anaerobic condition. However, there was obvious inhibition to azoreduction when the concentration of the AQS was higher than 5 mmol/l. Another humics analog, anthraquinone-2-sulfonate (AQDS), could still prominently accelerate azoreduction, even when the concentration was up to 12 mmol/l, but the rate of acceleration gradually decreased with the increasing concentration of the AQDS. Toxic experiments revealed that AQS can inhibit growth of strain S12 if the concentration past a critical one, but AQDS had no effect on the metabolism and growth of strain S12 although the concentration was up to 20 mmol/l. These results demonstrated that a low concentration of humic substances not only could serve as the terminal electron acceptors for conserving energy for growth, but also act as redox mediator shuttling electrons for the anaerobic azoreduction by S. decolorationis S12. However, a high concentration of humic substances could inhibit the bacterial azoreduction, resulting on the one hand from the toxic effect on cell metabolism and growth, and on the other hand from competion with azo dyes for electrons as electron acceptor.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.21-28
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• 2016

Caves can serve as major outposts for future human exploration of the Moon and Mars. In addition, caves can protect people and electronic equipment from external hazards such as cosmic ray radiation and meteorites impacts and serve as a shelter. Numerous pit craters have been discovered on the Moon and Mars and are potential entrances to caves; the principal topographic features of pit craters are their visible internal floors and pits with vertical walls. We have devised two topographical models for investigating the relationship between the topographical characteristics and the inner void of pit craters. One of our models is a concave floor void model and the other is a convex floor tube model. For each model, optical photographs have been obtained under conditions similar to those in which optical photographs have been acquired for craters on the Moon and Mars. Brightness profiles were analyzed for determining the profile patterns of the void pit craters. The profile patterns were compared to the brightness profiles of Martian pit craters, because no good-quality images of lunar pit craters were available. In future studies, the model profile patterns will be compared to those of lunar pit craters, and the proposed method will likely become useful for finding lunar caves and consequently for planning lunar bases for manned lunar expeditions.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.209-215
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• 2000

In the on-demand services like AOD(Audio On Demand) over the internet, existing operating systems cannot serve repeatedly requested data efficiently. This paper proposes a web cache architecture. It predicts the songs to be requested in near future, based on the intervals between the requests in the past on the same song and keeps the songs in the web cache. For the replacement strategy of the web cache, LFRR(Least Frequently Requested Recently) is proposed. LFRR replaces the song that has less probability to be requested in near future. The average of the intervals between the requests in the past and the new request is used as the probability of the requests. It is more likely to be requested in near future as the average is less. The web cache decreases the number of disk access extremely, and support to serve more users with restricted resources. From the simulation result based on the data at the AOD site currently operating, it is shown that the high performance enhancement is achieved.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.165-177
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• 2018

Particulate matter (PM) measurements are important in air quality, public health, epidemiological studies and decision making for short and long-term policies implementation. However, only few cities in the word have advance air quality-monitoring networks able to provide reliable information of PM leaves in the ambient air, trends and extent of the pollution. In Colombia, only major cities measure PM concentrations. Available measurements from Bogota, Medellin and Bucaramanga show that PM concentration are well above World Health Organization guidelines, but up to now levels and trends of PM in other cities and regions of the country are not well known. Satellite measurements serve as an alternative approach to study air quality in regions were surface measurements are not available. The aim of this study is to perform a spatial and temporal assessment of PM in the ambient air of Colombia. We used Aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieved by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite of NASA and surface measurements from the air quality networks of Bogota, Medellin and Bucaramanga. In a first step, we estimated the correlation between MODIS-AOD and monthly average surface measurements (2000 to 2015) from these three cities, obtaining correlation coefficient R values over 0.4 for the cities under study. After, we used AOD and $PM_{10}$ measurements to study the temporal evolution of PM in different cities and regions. Finally, we used AOD measurements to identify cities and regions with the highest AOD levels in Colombia. All the methods presented in this paper may serve as an example for other countries or regions to identify and prioritize locations that require the implementation of more accurate air quality measurements.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.71-78
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• 1969

The present studies were undertaken to determine accurately whether Korean native fresh-water shrimps can serve as the second intermediate host of Clonorchis sinensis. The experimental results obtained were as follows; 1. Metacercaria of Clonorchis sinensis was not discovered in 36 Macrobranchium nipponensis (De Hann), 1992 Palaemon paucidens (De Hann) and Palaemon madestus Heller, and 860 Caridina leucastica Stimpson, collected in Kimhae district, which were digested in artificial gastric juice, using binocular dissecting microscope. 2. Cercariae of the Chinese liver fluke could not approach the body wall of young shrimps due to streaming caused by their motion. 3. Young Palaemon spp. of 247 were divided into two groups and placed in two different room aquariums, one is at high temperature, the other is normal. Then they were contacted with the cercariae. Only 11 degenerated metacercariae were found in 9 Palaemon spp. It was suggested that they had died immediately or within a few days after penetration. Furthermore the temperature did not affect the infective ratio. 4. At the field experimental aquarium, no metacercaria of Clonorchis sinensis was discovered tn 100 Palaemon spp. which had been brought into contact with 5000 Parafossarulus manchouricus two trials. 5. Specific changes in the cercariae mixed with the extract of shrimps meat were not observed through the dissecting microscope. 6. These results suggest that the Korean native shrimps cannot serve as the intermediate host of Clonorchis sinensis.