• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.532-541
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• 2010

Peroxidase-like activity of Vitreoscilla hemoglobin (VHb) has been recently disclosed. To maximize such activity, two catalytically conserved residues (histidine and arginine) found in the distal pocket of peroxidases have successfully been introduced into that of the VHb. A 15-fold increase in catalytic constant ($k_{cat}$) was obtained in P54R variant,which was presumably attributable to the lower rigidity and higher hydrophilicity of the distal cavity arising from substitution of proline to arginine. None of the modifications altered the affinity towards either $H_2O_2$ or ABTS substrate. Spectroscopic studies revealed that VHb variants harboring the T29H mutation apparently demonstrated a spectral shift in both ferric and ferrous forms (406-408 to 411 nm, and 432 to 424-425 nm, respectively). All VHb proteins in the ferrous state had a $\lambda_{soret}$ peak at ~419 nm following the carbon monoxide (CO) binding. Expression of the P54R mutant mediated the downregulation of iron superoxide dismutase (FeSOD) as identified by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) and peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF). According to the high peroxidase activity of P54R, it could effectively eliminate autoxidation-derived $H_2O_2$, which is a cause of heme degradation and iron release. This decreased the iron availability and consequently reduced the formation of the $Fe^{2+}$-ferric uptake regulator protein ($Fe^{2+}$-Fur), an inducer of FeSOD expression.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.27 no.3 s.47
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• pp.465-473
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• 1994

This study was carried out to evaluate the relations between sociodemographic, work-related factors and health related behaviors in a group of 1,042 workers in Taejeon and Chungnam area. The results were as followings: The older workers took more irregularly meals, more cigarette and more alcohol than the younger. Men had more appropriate sleeping time, more regular exercise than women, but more frequent alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking. The married had more regular sleeping habit than the unmarried. The group of married were smoking more and obese. In view of monthly income which represent the socioeconomic state of workers, the group of more than 1 million won had more frequent alcohol ingestion, more heavier body weight than another group of less than 1 million won. Workers having their work hours exceed 9 hours had inappropriate sleep duration, and shift workers took more irregularly meals. The group having poor self-rated health status showed more regular diet, exercise and overweight. Workers recently experienced chronic illness were more overweight and lesser smokers. Above results showed that the health related behaviors were related to the sociodemographic characteristics and occupation-related characteristics. The study for relationship between variant factors affecting health behavior and disease or mortality is need and it should be emphasized that the publicity and education of health related behavior for industrial workers is necessary.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2013

An underwater acoustic (UWA) communication in shallow water is strongly affected by the water surface and the seabed acoustical properties. Every reflected signal to receiver experiences a time-variant scattering in sea surface roughness and a grazing-angle-dependent reflection loss in bottom. Consequently, the performance of UWA communication systems is degraded, and high-speed digital communication is disrupted. If there is a dominant signal path such as a direct path, the received signal is modeled statistically as Rice fading but if not, it is modeled as Rayleigh fading. However, it has been known to be very difficult to reproduce the statistical estimation by real experimental evaluation in the sea. To give an insight for this scattering and grazing-angle-dependent bottom reflection loss effect in UWA communication, authors conduct experiments to quantify these effects. The image is transmitted using binary frequency shift keying (BFSK) modulation. The quality of the received image is shown to be affected by water surface scattering and grazing-angle-dependent bottom reflection loss. The analysis is based on the transmitter to receiver range and the receiver depth dependent image quality and bit error rate (BER). The results show that the received image quality is highly dependent on the transmitter-receiver range and receiver depth which characterizes the channel coherence bandwidth.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.173-181
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• 2017

In this paper, we have studied tracking as a training stage of considering the position and the scale of a person given its previous position, scale, as well as next and forward image fraction. Unlike other learning methods, CNN is thereby learning combines both time and spatial features from the image for the two consecutive frames. We introduce multiple path ways in CNN to better fuse local and global information. A creative shift-variant CNN architecture is designed so as to alleviate the drift problem when the distracting objects are similar to the target in cluttered environment. Furthermore, we employ CNNs to estimate the scale through the accurate localization of some key points. These techniques are object-independent so that the proposed method can be applied to track other types of object. The capability of the tracker of handling complex situations is demonstrated in many testing sequences. The accuracy of the SVM classifier using the features learnt by the CNN is equivalent to the accuracy of the CNN. This fact confirms the importance of automatically optimized features. However, the computation time for the classification of a person using the convolutional neural network classifier is less than approximately 1/40 of the SVM computation time, regardless of the type of the used features.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.66-74
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• 2012

Test turnaround time (TAT) is the lead time from reception to reporting. In the complete blood cell count (CBC), 4 units of the XE-2100 (Sysmex Corp., Japan) processed around 80% of quantity, 1 unit of the LH-780 (Beckman-Coulter Incorp., USA) processed around 10% and 1 unit of ADVIA-2120 (Siemens AG, Munich, Germany) processed around 10%. We analyzed the change in the TAT for the CBC for over 7 years, from January of 2005 to December of 2011. The delta check made alterations of delta to WBC, hemoglobin, hematocrit, platelet and metamyelocyte, however, did not made them to band neutrophil, eosinophil, basophil and monocyte. The panic value check made alterations of panic value to hemoglobin, hematocrit, platelet and monocyte. In the criteria of currently slide review, LH-780 and ADVI-2120 analyzers prepared suspect flags of "Blast, Imm NE2, Immature granulocyte, Imm NE1, Left shift, Variant lymphocyte, Atypical lymphocyte, Platelet clumps and NRBC". The New slide review in the XE-2100 analyzer altered the preparations of a smear slide more than a "Platelet clumps flag(${\geq}200unit$), a single flag excluding the "Platelet clumps flag (${\geq}250unit$) and a multiple flag (${\geq}200unit$)". Also, below the 240 unit, medical technologists prepared manual slides selectively according to their evaluations. The automatic reporting rate was 33.4% without alterations, whereas it was 41.0% without alterations, and was thus improved by 7.6%. The slide review rate was 15.2% before using the Q-flag limit, whereas it was 12.1% for a reduce 3.1%. TAT was 45 minutes without the creation alterations of the delta and panic value checks, whereas it was 35 minutes after making alterations of the delta and panic value checks and thus was shortened by 10 minutes. We came to the conclusion that the establishment and operation of delta and panic value checks and slide review criteria suitable for laboratory environment can reduce unnecessary smear slides, re-checking, re-sampling, re-testing, telephone inquiries and concentrated workloads during specific times of the day.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.485-496
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• 2002

Background : The NF-${\kappa}B$ transcription factors control various biological processes including the immune response, acute phase reaction and cell cycle regulation. NF-${\kappa}B$ complexes are retained in the cytoplasm in the basal state and various stimuli cause a translocation of the NF-${\kappa}B$ complexes into the nucleus where they bind to the ${\kappa}B$ elements and regulate the transcription of the target genes. Recent reports also suggest that NF-${\kappa}B$ proteins are involved in oncogenesis, tumor growth and metastasis. High expression of NF-${\kappa}B$ expression was reported in many cancer cell lines and tissues. The constitutive activation of NF-${\kappa}B$ was also reported in several cancer cell lines supporting its role in cancer development and survival. The anti-apoptotic action of NF-${\kappa}B$ is important for cancer survival. NF-${\kappa}B$ also controls the expression of several proteins that are important for cellular adhesion (ICAM-1, VCAM-1) suggesting a role in cancer metastasis. In lung cancer, high expression levels of the NF-${\kappa}B$ subunit p50 and c-Rel were reported. In fact, high expression does not mean a high activity, and the activation pattern of NF-${\kappa}B$ in lung cancer has not been reported. Materials and Methods : In this study, the NF-${\kappa}B$ nuclear binding activity in the basal and TNF-${\alpha}$ stimulated states were exmined in various lung cancer cell lines and compared with the normal bronchial epithelial cell line. Twelve lung cancer cell lines including the non-small cell and small cell lung cancer cell lines (A549, NCI-H358, NCI-H441, NCI-H552, NCI-H2009, NCI-H460, NCI-H1229, NCI-H1703, NCI-H157, NCI-H187, NCI-H417, NCI-H526) and BEAS-2B bronchial epithelial cell line were used. To evaluate the NF-${\kappa}B$ expression and DNA binding activity, western blot analysis and an electrophoretic mobility shift assay with the nuclear protein extracts. Results : The basal expressions of the p65 and p50 subunits were observed in the BEAS-2B cell line and all lung cancer cell lines except for NCI-H358 and NCI-H460. The expression levels of p65 and p50 were increased 30 minutes after stimulation with TNF-${\alpha}$ in BEAS-2B and in 10 lung cancer cell lines. In the NCI-H358 and NCI-H460 cell lines, p65 expression was not observed in the basal and stimulated states and the two p50 related protein levels were higher after stimulation with TNF-${\alpha}$ These new proteins were smaller than p50 and are thought to be variants of p50. In the basal state, NF-${\kappa}B$ was nearly activated in the BEAS-2B and all lung cancer cell lines. The DNA binding activity of the NF-${\kappa}B$ complexes was markedly higher after stimulation with TNF-${\alpha}$ In the BEAS-2B and all lung cancer cell line except for NCI-H358 and NCI-H460, the activated NF-${\kappa}B$ complex was a p65/p50 heterodimer. In the NCI-H358 and NCI-H460 lung cancer cell lines, the NF-${\kappa}B$ complex was variant of a p50/p50 homodimer. Conclusion : The NF-${\kappa}B$ activation pattern in the lung cancer cell lines and the normal bronchial epithelial cell lines was similar except for the activation of a variant of the p50/p50 homodimer in some lung cancer cell linse.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.22 no.2 s.26
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• pp.290-301
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• 1989

This is preliminary report on anthrax epidemic occurred in an island with about 100 residents. Since 1982 there had been sudden deaths among all kinds of domestic animals including cattle, dogs, ducks, chicken and goat but only a few among cats in an isolated island about three hours distance away by ferry boat from Mokpo city. From 1986 through 1988 nine human deaths and four patients occurred, which made the government intervene for investigation on June 25 1988. The epidemiological investigation consisted of interview survey and medical examination, medical record analysis, laboratory work to isolate the pathogens under the direction of hypothesis derived from the study and further confirmation of the pathogens by international institute. The summarized results are as followings: 1. According to the interview survey there were many deaths among domestic animals usually in cold and dry season such as January through March and September through November; 36 heads of cattle leaving one head, more than 40 hogs(all), hundreds of chicken leaving few alive, goats that had taken home from mountain and two or three cats out of around 40 had sudden deaths from 1982 till 1985, when the residents stopped to purchase and take them into the island anymore. Also there were eleven persons who had experienced the similar syndrome complex to those of admitted and expired patients and four of them revealed typical chest X-ray findings; from one of these four patients(Rho) B. anthracis is isolated. 2. Medical record on patients who had been admitted, showed common characteristics of the disease course. On admission they had either gastrointestinal or upper respiratory infection symptoms which invariably progressed to septicemic nature with pulmonary interstitial infiltration and mediastinal widening/bulging, and then to deadly acute respiratory distress syndrome. At the end stage chest X-ray revealed multiple bullous emphysema. One of another characteristics was oral ulceration with bleeding occurred in about 50% of the patients. Laboratory test results in common were leukocytosis with left shift and abnormal liver and kidney functions, particularly at the later stage of the illness. 3. Epidemiological characteristics was striking in that both mortality and incidence rates were high: the mortality rate was 8.7% average, male being three times higher than females but there was no distictive clustering by age group. The incidence rate for both sexes was 28.2% and there was no sex difference although a tendency of higher incidence among older ages was noticed. The highest mortality and incidence were observed in Won village where the first death of animal occurred and with the highest frequency among three villages of the island. 4. Among twelve bacilli species isolated from various specimens, two strains, one from patient and the other from soil where the recently died cow is hurried, were confirmed as B. anthracis by Pasteur Institute and CDC of USA(strain from soil). CDC reported that the strain did not produce capsule in bicarbonate media but reacted with the bacteriophage and one of five sera taken from the patients. Mode of transmission as well as incubation period of the agent has not been established yet, which needs further investigation in relation to the antigenic structure of the variant when it is confirmed.